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Norah Piehl

Biography

Norah Piehl


Norah Piehl worked for 10 years at the Boston Book Festival, overseeing their day-to-day operations. She is now the Director for Literary Programs at the Bay Area Book Festival. A former children's bookseller, Norah has also worked in the publishing industry for both university and trade publishers. She is an active writer whose essays, interviews and reviews have been published in Publishers WeeklyThe Horn BookBrain, Child, Skirt! magazine, National Public Radio and many other publications, as well as in several print anthologies. Her short fiction has appeared in Literary MamaThe Linnet's WingsThe LegendaryPrinter's Devil Review and the anthology BATTLE RUNES: Writings on War. Norah lives in Berkeley, California.

Norah Piehl

Reviews by Norah Piehl

by Lily Tuck - Fiction, Historical Fiction

First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, 14-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in THE REST IS MEMORY, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation.

by Amanda Lee Koe - Fiction

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret: once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China. A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her, but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both.

by Jane Pek - Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literary Mystery, Mystery

Claudia Lin --- mystery novel superfan and, until recently, clichéd underemployed English major --- has scored her dream job: co-running Veracity, a dating detective agency for chronically online New Yorkers who want to know if their prospective partners are telling the truth. Unfortunately, along the way, she and her colleagues have uncovered a far-reaching AI conspiracy. And the corporate matchmakers may be resorting to murder to protect their secrets. In the wake of a client’s sudden death, Claudia convinces his ex, an industry insider, to turn on his employer and feed the verifiers information about what the powerful dating platforms are really up to. But even as Claudia starts to get a feel for this new genre, she fears that her beloved older brother is unwittingly being drawn into the matchmakers’ deadly web.

by Weike Wang - Fiction

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection, while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife. Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

by Sophie Cousens - Comedy, Fiction, Humor, Romance, Women's Fiction

Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she’d rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children. From awkward encounters to unexpected connections, Anna gamely begins to put herself out there, asking out waiters, the mailman and even her celebrity crush. But when a romantic connection appears where she least expected it, will she be brave enough to take another chance on love?

by Katherine Rundell - Essays, Nature, Nonfiction

The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In VANISHING TREASURES, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes --- to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and, above all, how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures.

by Emma C. Wells - Fiction, Humor, Suspense, Thriller

Cordelia Black loves exactly three things: her chosen family, her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip) and killing bad men. By day, she's an ambitious pharma rep with a flawless reputation and designer wardrobe. By night, she culls South Louisiana of unscrupulous men --- monsters who think they've evaded justice, until they meet her. But when the evening news starts throwing around the term "serial killer" and her best friend starts dating a man who just might unravel everything Cordelia has worked for, she must come face to face with the choices she's made. The good, the bad and the murderous. Her family and her freedom depend on it.

by Louise Erdrich - Fiction

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He is determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker. Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, she tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future --- her daughter’s and her own. Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009.

by Molly Aitken - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up watching her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities --- and she vows that she will never suffer the same fate. In time, she discovers she has a flair for making money and takes her father's flourishing business to new heights. But as her riches and stature grow, so too do rumors about her private life. By the time she marries her fourth husband --- the three earlier are dead --- a storm of local gossip and resentment culminates in a life-threatening accusation.

by Danzy Senna - Fiction, Humor, Women's Fiction

Jane and her family are living in luxury for a year, house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles. The gig magically coincides with Jane’s sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel --- a centuries-spanning epic that her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her “mulatto WAR AND PEACE.” Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer,” and together they begin to develop “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.” Things finally seem to be going right for Jane --- until they go terribly wrong.