Smorgasbord Free Book Promotions 2023- Share an Excerpt from one of your published books #Russia #WWII – Too Many Wolves in the Local Woods: A Novel of Love and Fate by Marina Osipova

In this series beginning in August 2023, you are invited to share an excerpt of 500 words from any of your published books .

This feature is for any author who has been promoted on Smorgasbord previously.

Please read full details of how to participate at the end of the post.

The aim of the series

1. 1. To showcase your book and sell some more copies.
   2. Gain more reviews for the book.
   3. Promote a selection of your other books that are available

Today’s featured author is Marina Osipova with her romance set in Russia in the 1930s and 1940s Too Many Wolves in the Local Woods: A Novel of Love and Fate

About the book

1st Place WINNER of the 2021 Hemingway Book Awards novel competition for 20th Century Wartime Fiction (a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards)

Two unlikely women with a shared history, two different turns of fate.

The end of the 1930s. The specter of twisted paranoia of Stalin’s unrelenting dictatorship continues to tighten over the Soviet Union. NKVD, the country’s secret police, coerces University graduate Ursula Kriegshammer, a Soviet Volga German with special skills, into serving this regime.

Natasha Ivanova, a worker at a metal plant in Vitebsk, a city at the western border of the Soviet Union, still can’t recover from the betrayal of the man she loves.

When in 1941 the German Army invaded Byelorussia, both women seem to be helping the cause to fight the ruthless occupiers. But when their paths cross, tragedy strikes, and one must carry the burden of guilt. Will she ever find peace with herself and the way out of the trap fate prepared for her?

Years later, the daughter of one of them launches on a quest to uncover the heroic nature of her mother’s role in WWII, only to discover a heart-shattering revelation of her own parentage.

Silver medal: Literary Titan
Finalist: The Wishing Shelf Book award  

The excerpt from Too Many Wolves in the Local Woods

A soft moonlight flooded the room.

Ulya crossed the borderlines from sleep to vague wakefulness and back again when she thought she detected a slight noise from outside and then her eye caught a fleeting shadow behind the lacy curtains. Jumping from the bench and inching along the wall, she hid behind the oven with a good view of the entrance door.

A light creak and the next instant, a man halted in the doorway. Young. Of her height. Slightly built.

She threw herself on him and, putting an armlock on his throat, pushed him down.

“Too many wolves in the local woods,” he wheezed out.

“We can get them all quickly eliminated,” she said then released him.

“What a greeting. I wouldn’t want to come across you in a dark alley,” he breathed out and smartened his shirt while getting to his feet.

In the light from the moon, she noticed he wore belted light-colored cotton pants and a typical Byelorussian shirt with some embroidery at the collar.

He rubbed his face and stretched his hand for a shake. “Nathan.” A smile found its way through the grimace of pain she knew she’d inflicted on him. Two little dimples on his cheeks appeared, making him seriously handsome. He was soft faced, however, close up she detected a few hard lines in his countenance. His eyes seemed dark in the dimness of the room.

From inside his boot top, he plucked a slip of paper. “For you.”

In tiny handwriting, Your assignment is to infiltrate one of the offices (SS, SD, Gestapo, Police, or the civil administration subordinated to the occupying authorities) with the goal of obtaining information about the opponents. You are forbidden to carry out any killing operations or be involved in any other activity that could jeopardize your mission. The person who hands you this message is your liaison.

He took the paper back from her. “First, you need to register in the city council and apply for work. They need translators, so most likely they’ll place you in one of the German institutions. Don’t conceal the fact you are the daughter of an anti-Soviet activist.”

Ulya cringed at the remark.

“No one here except for me knows of your mission. Well, some people over there.” He made an indefinite gesture with his hand. “In case I can’t contact you, another comrade will. The safe word remains the same.”

She nodded, studying his well-defined, generous mouth. His voice was cultured and, again, she caught herself on the sensation it was pleasing to her ears.

“Exercise extreme caution. Avoid any confrontation with the locals. All the communication goes through a hiding place. Let’s step out, I’ll show it to you.” He limped, slightly favoring his left leg.

“Is it I who—?”

He followed her gaze. “No, not at all. As a teenager, I broke my knee.”

She exited with him into a cool night. A rainy wind blew fat white clouds rapidly across the sky, now and then revealing a large white moon.

©Marina Osipova

One of the reviews for the book

Réal Laplaine 5.0 out of 5 stars A thrilling and brutal wartime spy intrigue that will grip you to the very end  Reviewed in the United States

Too Many Wolves in the Local Woods, by Marina Osipova, is an historical fiction novel set in World War II Stalinist Russia at the outset of the Nazi invasion of the Motherland, and throughout the war years.

The novel starts out slow, detailing the lives of two women, leading entirely different lives in different cities. One of them is trained as a spy and killer, destined to lead a double life in service of Russia; while the other woman takes a different path, but one which, by coincidence more than plan, also winds her up in the same spider’s net. Their paths eventually cross in the most unlikely, and in fact, shocking manner, and when they do, this story suddenly ramps up into a thrilling intrigue.

While the threads of romance provide the humanistic link that pulls the reader along, there is another weave of brutality in this book that reminds us how terrible and shocking war really is – one that provides an inside view of Stalinist Russia, and the fascist Nazi invaders, and just how barbarous and callous both regimes were. One sees this war torn theater through the eyes of these two women, both loyal to Russia, and yet both torn by their circumstances, to the point where their patriotism is the death of their principles and self respect. The author has done a brilliant job of painting a picture of just how cold and pallid and Spartan was the existence of the Russian people, not only because of what the Nazi’s did to them during the invasion, but also because of the very nature of Stalin’s oppressive grip over their lives and their minds, one which created a world of deprivation in the name of a demented ideology – one that demanded, by fear and terror, their unabated loyalty.

One sees, through the eyes of these women, that both Hitler and Stalin were equally mad, and equally destructive. We need more books like this, books that remind future generations to preserve unalloyed freedom and to ensure that tyrannical people and their divisive attempts to trade that freedom for something else, never sees the light of day again. This story will keep you transfixed, to the end, because you only really find out what happens in the final pages. A great read. 

Read the reviews and buy the book: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK

Other books by Marina Osipova

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon US – And on: Amazon UK – follow Marina : Goodreads – website:Marina Osipova – Twitter: @marosikok

About Marina Osipova

Marina Osipova was born in East Germany into a military family and grew up in Russia. Her educations: the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives and the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages.

It is the move to the United States in 2001 that enabled her to discover her love of writing.
Osipova is dedicated to writing historical fiction, especially related to WWII. Her first book, The Cruel Romance, was published in March 2016. By now, she has four more books under her belt. Her sixth, The Drau River Flows to Siberia: The Victims of Victory, is to be released in the fall of 2023.

Her books garnered numerous literary awards, including a 1st Place WINNER of the 2021 Hemingway Book Awards novel competition for 20th Century Wartime Fiction (a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards) for Too Many Wolves in the Local Woods.

What will be in the post and how to get in touch

• • • • I will top and tail the post in the usual way with your other books and links, bio, photo and social media.
      • I will also select a review from Amazon or Goodreads that I feel has the best selling pitch for the book.
      • Please share a book that has reviews to select from.
        
      • This series is open to all authors who have previously been featured in the promotions on Smorgasbord.
      • I do have a younger readership for the book posts so please consider that when selecting your excerpt.
      • I suggest an excerpt of 500 words that you feel would encourage a reader to buy the book, or a poem that you feel best reflects the theme of your collection.
      • No need to send the cover as I will have that or will access from Amazon.
      • Please send your excerpt to sally.cronin@moyhill.com
      • I only ask that authors share the link to their social media and respond to each comment individually as a matter of courtesy.

 

Thank you for dropping in today and I hope you will be leaving with some books.. Sally.