Kerr, Philip: The Winter Horses

It will soon be another cold winter in the Ukraine. But it's 1941, and things are different this year. Max, the devoted caretaker of an animal preserve, must learn to live with the Nazis who have overtaken this precious land. He must also learn to keep secrets--for there is a girl, Kalinka, who is hiding in the park. Kalinka has lost her home, her family, her belongings--everything but her life. Still, she has gained one small, precious gift: a relationship with the rare, wild, and wily Przewalski's horses that wander the preserve. Aside from Max, these endangered animals are her only friends--until a Nazi campaign of extermination nearly wipes them out for good. Now Kalinka must set out on a treacherous journey across the frozen forest to save the only two surviving horses--and herself.

Philip Kerr (1956-2018) was the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Bernie Gunther novels, three of which--Field Gray, The Lady from Zagreb, and Prussian Blue--were finalists for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Kerr also won several Shamus Awards and the British Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction. In 2009, If the Dead Rise Not won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing worth 125,000. The book also won the 2009 British Crime Writers' Association's Ellis Peters Historic Crime Award. In 2018, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Writing as P. B. Kerr, he was the author of the much-loved young-adult fantasy series Children of the Lamp.