The Book Thief

January 1939.

Germany. A country holding its breath. Never has death had so much work to do. And there will be even more. A mother is taking nine-year-old Liesel Meminger and her younger brother to foster parents near Munich, because their father is no longer there — he was taken away by the breath of a foreign and strange word "communist," and in the mother's eyes, the girl sees fear of the same fate. On the road, death visits the boy and notices Liesel for the first time. Thus, the girl finds herself on Himmel Street — Heaven Street. Whoever invented this name had a healthy sense of humor. Not that it was utter hell there. No. But it was certainly not paradise either. "The Book Thief" became a publishing sensation. Its English-language edition alone exceeded 1.5 million copies. The novel by Markus Zusak, written in 2005 and on the "The New York Times Best Seller list" for over 230 weeks, continues to win readers around the world.