QUICK FACTS@ Markus Zusak

• Genre: YA/Realistic Fiction/Historical Fiction/
• Born and currently lives in Sydney Australia with wife and children
• New York Times Best Seller Author
• Has won numerous literary awards
• His novel The Book Thief was made into movie

The book thief – Zusak, Markus. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up, and closed down.

I am the messanger – Zusak, Markus. protect the diamonds – survive the clubs – dig deep through the spades – feel the hearts

Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He’s pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.

That’s when the first ace arrives in the mail.

That’s when Ed becomes the messenger.

Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who’s behind Ed’s mission? 

Bridge of clay : a novel – Zusak, Markus. The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.

At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle.

The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?

The underdog – Zusak, Markus. Boys are like dogs – ready to bite, bark and beg to be given a chance to show their value.. “I vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever.” Cameron Wolfe is a dirty boy. He knows it. His brother Rube knows it, because he’s one too. they could change – but what would it take?

Fighting Ruben Wolfe – Zusak, Markus. It’s the difference between being a winner and being a fighter…Cameron and Ruben Wolfe are brothers from a family clinging to the ragged edge of the working class. Initially to make some money, the boys hook up with a sleazy fight promoter who sees something marketable and audience-pleasing in the untrained brothers’ vulnerability.

So they hide the boxing from their long-suffering mother. And Cameron hides what’s going on in his head from the girls who come to the matches, the girls he wishes he could reach. But the Wolfes soon find that they’re fighting for more than tips and pay-off money. It becomes for them a fight for identity, for dignity, and for each other.

The question is, in a fight like that, who makes it out of the ring intact? 

Getting the girl – Zusak, Markus Cameron Wolfe’s life gets very complicated when he falls for his brother’s girlfriend in this winning, wise novel from the dynamic author of FIGHTING RUBEN WOLFE.

Cameron Wolfe is the quiet one in his family, not a soccer star like his brother Steve or a charming fighter with a new girl every week like his brother Rube. Cam would give anything to be near one of those girls, to love her and treat her right. He especially likes Rube’s latest, Octavia, with her brilliant ideas and bright green eyes. But what woman like that would want a loser like him? Maybe Octavia would, Cam discovers. Maybe he’d even have something to say. And those maybes change everything: winning, loving, losing, the Wolfe brothers, and Cameron himself

Books to Movies

The book thief. – 2014

Interviews