Independent Press Award
2025 winner
Helena P. Schrader
Cold Peace
Berlin 1948. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is hungry.
In the ruins of Hitler's capital, war heroes and resilient women struggle in the post-war doldrums. Then a Russian fighter brings down a British passenger plane, and the world teeters on the brink of World War Three. The defenders of freedom must now work together to save Berlin from Soviet tyranny. The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin.
Based on historical events, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader brings to life the backstory of the West's bloodless victory against Russian aggression via the Berlin Airlift in Cold Peace, the first book in the Bridge to Tomorrow Series.
Helena P. Schrader is a former U.S. diplomat, who earned her PhD in Modern History from the University of Hamburg. She spent roughly one-third of her life in Berlin and first explored the pivotal events of the Berlin Airlift 1948-1949 in her comprehensive non-fiction study The Blockade Breakers. Schrader is the author of a score of novels, eleven of which have earned a total of 28 literary awards and 24 lesser accolades.