about the book
Forget what you know about history. In this alternate 1956 world, the Third Reich and Imperial Japan have won the war. Emperor Hirohito and Adolph Hitler are brutal dictators. Hitler’s death camps still eliminate “undesirables.”
This story begins on a train, with cattle cars carrying five thousand condemned souls. Tightly-packed men, women, and children are forced to stand for days during their long last ride. Once the train reaches the concentration camp, a single man decides their fate. Dr. Geyer’s cold eyes fall on a six-year-old Jewish child, a girl. She glares back at him. He marks her for Experiment 85.
Over the years, the child, Yael, survives the horrors of the camp and Dr. Geyer’s brutal genetic injections. But his experiment does far more than the evil doctor ever envisioned. He sees the shift in her features to blue eyes and blond hair, but he doesn’t know that he has inadvertently given her the ability to easily change her appearance into whoever she wants. Yael has become a skinshifter!
Years later, seventeen-year-old Yael is still a Jew. She is also a daring camp escapee, a rare beauty, a black-market scoundrel, and a kick-ass world-hardened resistance conspirator. The Nazis would do anything to capture her. She lives for one thing only—to take Hitler down and end his deadly rein. As a constant reminder of her goal, five tattooed wolves scamper from her wrist to her elbow, hiding the death camp’s crooked numbers. Her wolves have names: Mama, Miriam, Babushka, Aaron-Klaus, and Vlad-five souls lost, five heart-rending memories.
To commemorate their Great Victory, the Axis nations will host a motorcycle race across their conjoined continents. The prize is an exclusive audience with the reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victor’s Ball in Tokyo. Yael will impersonate the national darling, Adele Wolf, the only female racer. But her assassination plan is full of pitfalls. What Yael doesn’t count on is Adele’s twin brother, Felix, joining the race—nor Luka, Yael’s old love interest.
Her competitors are ruthless in the grueling and deadly race. Keeping her true identity a secret is nearly impossible; past thoughts interfere with her concentration. Yael can’t trust anyone. One thing is certain—her mission is critical. She has to win the race. She has to stop the mass murderer, regardless of the cost!
about the author
Ryan Graudin was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. There, she attended an artsy high school that cemented her dream of becoming a writer.
Ryan earned her degree in Creative Writing from the College of Charleston in 2009. She married young, when she was 21, and since then, she and her husband have travelled the world. They’ve been to nearly 20 countries; teaching English in South Korea, farming in New Zealand, hiking in Peru, and observing lions on safari in Kenya.
Her globe-trekking inspires much of her writing. For example, The Walled City was based upon her travels in Asia, and her All That Glows series was inspired by spending time in London, England. Wolf by Wolf is inspired by Ryan’s love of history, her interest in World War II, a BBC comedy miniseries about a motorcycle journey, and her dog, a wolf hybrid.
When Ryan isn’t writing or travelling, she attempts to garden with her husband, drinks delectable chai lattes, and watches shows like “Sherlock”, “Firefly”, and “Doctor Who”.
Sources:
Author website
Author Interview: Bookables
Book Trailer
Also by Ryan Graudin:
Blood for Blood (Wolf by Wolf, Book 2). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2016.
All That Burns (All That Glows, Book 2). Harperteen. 2015.
The Walled City. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2014.
All That Glows (Book 1). Harperteen. 2014.
read more!
Blood for Blood (Wolf by Wolf, Book 2) by Ryan Graudin
Yael and her comrades are on the run again. This time, they enter enemy territory to try to turn the tide against the New Order. There is no alternative. They must see their mission through, no matter the dark secrets revealed, no matter the cost. The only question Yael faces is how far she will go to save the ones she loves.
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