: Karin B. Jankowski
: Ghosts over Provence The thin Line between Good and Evil
: Books on Demand
: 9783756259809
: 1
: CHF 7.90
:
: Spannung
: English
: 368
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
This is an almost true story about love and death: the thin line between good and evil. The author shows us the Provence as we know and like it and where she has lived and worked for 20 years; but also, that even the brilliant sun can hide the opposite of love: hate, dependency and, above all, abuse in all its shapes. The beautiful and mysterious Alice has experienced all of it and when she meets Steven, a former professional soccer player and now owner of a castle in the vineyards, she is afraid of putting her trust, so often misplaced and abused, in him. First, she will have to vanquish the ghosts over her life (and Steven of his) and get rid of the shady lawyer Fuentes with the help of her psychiatrist and the friends she has made in her therapy group. A psychological thriller full of suspense and deep insights into the human mind and into a world many are afraid of - the real world.

Karin Bohr-Jankowski was born in Mettlach/Saar (Germany) at the end of the 50s. After university, she worked with the European Union, then as independent consultant in Brussels and postgraduate lecturer in a European Masters at the Aix-Marseille University. She lived for more than 20 years with her husband and their four Golden Retrievers in Forcalquier in the French Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Since 2019, they divide their time between the town of Kaltennordheim in the Rhön Mountains of Thuringia and a tiny village in the French region of Franche-Comté. If you want to follow the author and her work you are very welcome to visit her website: karinbjankowski.de and on facebook.

Chapter 1.1


Test of Courage


“Why get out of bed in the morning?”

There were days when Alice just couldn’t. Let alone go to the window, open the shutters, and let in the glittering sunshine of the Provence. The same questions kept running through her mind on those days. And when she couldn’t think of an answer, the avalanche rolled over her very quickly: “Why move? Why breathe?”

Today, though, everything was good. She had a reason to get out of bed. Not like most people around her, who crawl out of bed every morning to earn their daily bread, and maybe even more.

“Not everyone has it as good as you do, and those people can live from their savings,” she heard often.

If they were talking about money, she had to admit those people were right. Thanks to the generous support of her friend Claude Fuentes, she had the opportunity to live a good life. But otherwise—no, otherwise she didn’t have any savings. Not anymore!

“Should I get up first and open the shutter—the first test of courage of the day—or should I try to decide what clothes to put on? Getting dressed is such a challenge. But everything is easier in summer. Then, though, showering, brushing my teeth, breakfast—no, better change that. First breakfast, then brush my teeth, right? Damn it—it really isn’t easy to start a day.”

Alice enjoyed her conversations with herself, and Dr. Noël said that’s okay. He even thinks it’s not a problem if Alice, sometimes, sees herself as a small child or as a teenager in the mirror. And it’s even okay if the mirror images were to speak to Alice—apparently not a problem! But why is starting the day so very difficult for her, then? Why does she get so intimidated by the smallest details? She was going to ask him that today.

Lost in thought, she combed her hand through her chestnut brown curls. It was good that she was wearing her hair so short again. Otherwise she’d have to brush her tangled hair in the morning, too. This is just how she wore her hair as a child. But she didn’t want to think about that at all right now. It was much more important to figure out what she was going to wear today.

If she was going to stay at home, she could run around like she did yesterday—with almost nothing on. Since it was over 90□F in the shade, she would like to run around in the old linen nightgown that she bought at the flea market. But today she needed to go into town, to Aix. Today was the group therapy session with Dr. Noël. And she couldn’t show up there just dressed like she wanted to be, but only a