vienna1934

An exciting story

Anna Marie Linden knows a terrible secret as Nazi putschists move to overthrow the Austrian government and possibly kill her fiancé, foreign correspondent Geoffrey Ashbrook.

Set in Central Europe of the 1930s

Vienna, 1934. As the Austrian government slides towards an Italian-style fascist state, German-backed Nazis move to overthrow Chancellor Dollfuss’s government and deliver Austria to Hitler’s Reich. British foreign correspondent Geoffrey Ashbrook returns to Vienna to write dispatches for his London paper and secret reports for the British cabinet. But Ashbrook has a second secret mission: to find out why his fiancée Anna Marie Linden has mysteriously broken off their engagement. Is her Nazi stepbrother Erich involved? All paths cross on a day in July as Nazi putschists ride their trucks through the streets of Vienna towards the Ballplatz, the square in front of the Austrian chancellery, a day that changes the destiny of nations and people in this exciting book of accurate historical event and dashing fictional romance.

Exciting cast of both fictional and real-life historical characters

Beautiful Anna Marie Linden, a young art historian working in Vienna, weaves her way between an intrepid young suitor and the enveloping tentacles of an evil Nazi treachery.

Geoffrey Ashbrook, English foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, with a secret assignment from powerful officials in London to watch the tumultuous politics of Vienna.

Karl Linden, a war-weary colonel with hard service on the eastern front during the Great War, lives in bucolic retirement at his Schloss Linden estate while nodding approval to his daughter’s choice of husband.

Erich Linden, Anna Marie’s stepbrother, a Pan-German idealist drawn into a sinister web of Nazi intrigue.

Ernst Rűdiger Prince Starhemberg, the “playboy-prince” and vice chancellor in Chancellor Dollfuss’s government, who leads the Austrian fascist home guard, the Heimwehr.

Shelley Moncton, a famous English author living on his luxurious gardened estate at Cap Ferrat in the south of France, watches the rise of Nazi power, a story he has seen before.

Crown Prince Otto von Habsburg, eldest son of Emperor Karl and Empress Zita of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, plots a return to the Austrian throne from exile in Belgium.

Zita, empress of Austria and queen of Hungary, a Bourbon-Parma princess (“the best men in the Bourbon dynasty are the Bourbon women”), schemes to restore her son Otto to the throne of Austria and save it from engulfment by Hitler’s Germany.

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