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Week of May 31, 2021

New in Paperback

Week of May 31, 2021

Paperback releases for the week of May 31st include IF IT BLEEDS, an extraordinary collection of four new and compelling novellas from Stephen King, each pulling readers into intriguing and frightening places; Shari Lapena's fifth domestic thriller, THE END OF HER, in which the well-ordered lives of a young married couple are shattered when a tragic accident from the past is brought into their present, threatening to destroy everything; FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER by Rachel Beanland, which finds three generations of a family grappling with heartbreak, romance and the weight of family secrets over the course of one summer; Anna Solomon's THE BOOK OF V., a bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries as their stories of sex, power and desire finally converge in the present day; and GROUP by Christie Tate, the refreshingly original debut memoir of a guarded, over-achieving, self-lacerating young lawyer who reluctantly agrees to get psychologically and emotionally naked in a room of six complete strangers --- her psychotherapy group.

Barcelona Dreaming by Rupert Thomson - Fiction

June 1, 2021

Set on the eve of the financial crash of 2008, BARCELONA DREAMING is narrated, in turn, by an English woman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist, and a translator tormented by unrequited love, all of whose lives will be changed forever. Underpinning the novel, and casting a long shadow, is a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.

Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner - Mystery/Thriller

June 1, 2021

Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will --- searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim's wary family tells Frankie she's on her own --- and she soon learns she's asking questions someone doesn't want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang - Fiction

June 1, 2021

One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth --- and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny.

Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby - Thriller

June 1, 2021

Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast. He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying.

Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith - Fiction

June 1, 2021

The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county's aged, sardonic lawman, still thinks it can prove itself --- when confronted by a strange family of drifters, the sheriff believes that the people of Red Bluff can be accepting, rational, even good. The opposite is true: this is a landscape of fear and ghosts --- of regret and violence --- transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers and hiding a terrible secret deeper still. Colburn, a junkyard sculptor who's returned to Red Bluff, knows this pain all too well, though he too is willing to hope for more when he meets and falls in love with Celia, the local bar owner.

The Book of V. by Anna Solomon - Fiction

June 1, 2021

Lily is grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires, while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife in 2016. Vivian Barr is dedicated to helping her husband find success in Watergate-era Washington, D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life --- along with the lives of others. Esther and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls in ancient Persia. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the King, in the hopes that she will save them all. In THE BOOK OF V., these characters' stories overlap and ultimately collide, illuminating how women’s lives have and have not changed over thousands of years.

Brain Storm: A Life in Pieces by Shelley Kolton, MD - Memoir

June 1, 2021

In BRAIN STORM, Dr. Shelley Kolton tells the story of a childhood marked by unimaginable abuse and the distinct parts her brain created to hold those memories and protect her. She balanced the demands of medicine, marriage and family as new parts --- each one requiring her attention and care --- emerged while grueling therapy sessions consumed her days and nights. After 12 torturous years, she finally accepted that the alters colliding inside her brain had, in truth, saved her. Kolton, often using emails and text messages written by her alters, mixed with her own journal entries, paints an honest, intimate and at times humorous portrait of a woman living with dissociative identity disorder (DID), managing the inhabitants of her own creation.

Broken People by Sam Lansky - Fiction

June 1, 2021

“He fixes everything that’s wrong with you in three days.” This is the alluring promise that first hooks Sam when he overhears it at a party in the Hollywood Hills: the story of a globe-trotting master healer who claims to perform “open-soul surgery” on the emotionally damaged. And the shaman seems convincing --- enough for neurotic, depressed Sam to sign up for a weekend under his care. But as Sam begins his slippery descent into the seductive world of modern mysticism, he’ll be forced to reckon with his troubled past, his self-delusions and the very nature of what it means to be well.

The Captain: A Memoir by David Wright and Anthony DiComo - Sports/Memoir

June 1, 2021

David Wright played his entire Major League Baseball career for the New York Mets. A quick fan favorite from Virginia who then earned his stripes in New York, Wright came back time and again from injury and demonstrated the power of hard work, total commitment and an infinite love of the game. Wright’s stats are one thing. He was a seven-time All-Star, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, and a two-time Silver Slugger Award winner. He holds many Mets franchise records and was nicknamed "Captain America" after his performance in the 2013 World Baseball Classic. But there is more: The walk-offs. The Barehand. The Subway Series and World Series home runs. And the electricity that swept through Shea Stadium and then Citi Field whenever number 5, “the Captain,” was in the game.

The Daughters of Erietown by Connie Schultz - Fiction

June 1, 2021

1957, Clayton Valley, Ohio. Ellie has the best grades in her class. Her dream is to go to nursing school and marry Brick McGinty. A basketball star, Brick has the chance to escape his abusive father and become the first person in his blue-collar family to attend college. But when Ellie learns that she is pregnant, everything changes. Just as Brick and Ellie revise their plans and build a family, a knock on the front door threatens to destroy their lives.

The End of Her by Shari Lapena - Psychological Thriller

June 1, 2021

Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin girls. The babies are a handful, but even as Stephanie struggles with the disorientation of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she's sure of: she has all she ever wanted. Then Erica, a woman from Patrick's past, appears and makes a disturbing accusation. Patrick had always said his first wife's death was an accident, but now Erica claims it was murder. Patrick insists he's innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. Still, Erica knows things about Patrick --- things that make Stephanie begin to question her husband. Stephanie isn't sure what, or who, to believe. As Stephanie's trust in Patrick begins to falter, Patrick stands to lose everything. Is Erica the persuasive liar Patrick says she is? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?

Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland - Historical Fiction

June 1, 2021

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home. Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bed rest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams. When tragedy strikes, Esther pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface.

For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten - Dark Fantasy/Adventure

June 1, 2021

As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose --- to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he'll return the world's captured gods. Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can't control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can't hurt those she loves. Again. But the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn't learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood --- and her world --- whole.

A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes by Eric Jay Dolin - History

June 1, 2021

Hurricanes menace North America from June through November every year, each as powerful as 10,000 nuclear bombs. These megastorms will likely become more intense as the planet continues to warm, yet too often we treat them as local disasters and TV spectacles, unaware of how far-ranging their impact can be. As bestselling historian Eric Jay Dolin contends, we must look to our nation’s past if we hope to comprehend the consequences of the hurricanes of the future. With A FURIOUS SKY, Dolin has created a sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus’ New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria.

The Glass Kingdom by Lawrence Osborne - Literary Thriller

June 1, 2021

Escaping New York for the anonymity of Bangkok, Sarah Mullins arrives in Thailand on the lam with nothing more than a suitcase of purloined money. Her plan is to lie low and map out her next move in a high-end apartment complex called the Kingdom. It is not long before she meets the alluring Mali, a fellow tenant determined to bring the quiet American out of her shell. But as political chaos erupts on the streets below and attempted uprisings wrack the city, tensions tighten within the gilded compound. When the violence outside begins to invade the Kingdom in a series of strange disappearances, the residents are thrown into suspicion. Under the constant surveillance of the building’s watchful inhabitants, Sarah’s safe haven begins to feel like a snare.

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan - Memoir

June 1, 2021

In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In GOOD BOY, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love. This is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman --- accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. Their love enables us to pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.

Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christie Tate - Memoir

June 1, 2021

Christie Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she driving through Chicago fantasizing about her own death? Why was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her in spite of her achievements? Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assures her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest about everything. Christie is skeptical, insisting that she is defective, but Dr. Rosen issues a nine-word prescription that will change everything: “You don’t need a cure, you need a witness.” So begins her entry into the strange, terrifying and ultimately life-changing world of group therapy.

The Half Sister by Sandie Jones - Psychological Thriller

June 1, 2021

Sisters Kate and Lauren meet for Sunday lunch every week without fail, especially after the loss of their father. But a knock at the door is about to change everything. A young woman by the name of Jess holds a note with the results of a DNA test, claiming to be their half sister. As the fallout starts, it's clear that they are all hiding secrets, and perhaps this family isn't as perfect as it appears.

If It Bleeds by Stephen King - Supernatural Thriller/Horror

June 1, 2021

Readers adore Stephen King’s novels, and his novellas are their own dark treat, briefer but just as impactful and enduring as his longer fiction. Many of his novellas have been made into iconic films, including “The Body” (Stand By Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (Shawshank Redemption). The four new tales in IF IT BLEEDS are sure to prove as iconic as their predecessors. In the title story, reader favorite Holly Gibney (from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and THE OUTSIDER) must face her fears, and possibly another outsider --- this time on her own. In “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,” an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. “The Life of Chuck” explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in “Rat,” a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition.

Imperfect Women by Araminta Hall - Psychological Thriller

June 1, 2021

When Nancy Hennessy is murdered, she leaves behind two best friends, an adoring husband and daughter, and a secret lover whose identity she took to the grave. Nancy was gorgeous, wealthy and cherished by those who knew her --- from the outside, her life was perfect. But as the investigation into her death flounders, and Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief, dark details surface that reveal how little they knew their friend, each other and maybe even themselves.

Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell - Psychological Thriller

June 1, 2021

Owen Pick has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure. Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. They think Owen is a bit creepy, and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Meanwhile, young Saffyre Maddox spent three years as a patient of Roan Fours. Feeling abandoned when their therapy ends, she searches for other ways to maintain her connection with him. Then, on Valentine’s night, Saffyre disappears --- and the last person to see her alive is Owen Pick.

Long Division by Kiese Laymon - Fiction

June 1, 2021

In 2013, after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, 14-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has disappeared. Before leaving, City is given a strange book called Long Division, which is set in 1985. This version of City travels into the future, and steals a laptop and cell phone from an orphaned teenage rapper called Baize Shephard. They take these items with them to 1964 to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan. City’s two stories converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance.

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs - Fiction

June 1, 2021

In the wake of a shocking tragedy, Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s charming but financially strapped bookshop in San Francisco. She also becomes caretaker for her ailing grandfather Andrew, who has begun displaying signs of decline. Natalie thinks it’s best to move him to an assisted living facility to ensure the care he needs. To pay for it, she plans to close the bookstore and sell the derelict but valuable building on historic Perdita Street, which is in need of constant fixing. There’s only one problem --- Grandpa Andrew owns the building and refuses to sell. To Natalie’s surprise, her sorrow begins to dissipate as her life becomes an unexpected journey of new connections, discoveries and revelations, from unearthing artifacts hidden in the bookshop’s walls, to discovering the truth about her family, her future and her own heart.

Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey - Memoir

June 1, 2021

At age 19, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. In MEMORIAL DRIVE, the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet explores this profound experience of pain, loss and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.

Miracle Country: A Memoir of a Family and a Landscape by Kendra Atleework - Memoir

June 1, 2021

Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. After Kendra’s mother died of a rare autoimmune disease when Kendra was just 16, her once-beloved desert world came to feel empty and hostile, as climate change, drought and wildfires intensified. The Atleework family fell apart, even as her father tried to keep them together. Kendra escaped to Los Angeles, and then Minneapolis, a land of tall trees, full lakes and water everywhere you look. But after years of avoiding her troubled hometown, she realized that she needed to come to terms with its past and present and had to go back.

Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin by Howard Blum - History

June 1, 2021

The year is 1943, and the three Allied leaders --- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin --- are meeting for the first time at a top-secret conference in Tehran. But the Nazis have learned about the meeting, and Hitler sees it as his last chance to turn the tide. So a plan is devised --- code name Operation Long Jump --- to assassinate FDR, Churchill and Stalin. Immediately, a highly trained, hand-picked team of Nazi commandos is assembled, trained, armed with special weapons and parachuted into Iran. With no margin for error and little time to spare, Mike Reilly, the head of FDR’s Secret Service detail, must overcome his suspicions and instincts to work with a Soviet agent from the NKVD (the precursor to the KGB) to save the three most powerful men in the world.

The Ninth Metal by Benjamin Percy - Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

June 1, 2021

It began with a comet. At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet’s debris field and the sky rained fire. The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omnimetal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source…and a weapon. John Frontier --- the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall --- returns for his sister’s wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong - Fiction

June 1, 2021

ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born --- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam --- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class and masculinity.

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin - Fiction

June 1, 2021

Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives on the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. Though the teenager has been told she’s dying, she still has plenty of living to do. Joining the hospital’s arts and crafts class, she meets the magnificent Margot, an 83-year-old rebel who transforms Lenni in ways she never imagined. Though their days are dwindling, both are determined to leave their mark on the world. With the help of Lenni’s doting palliative care nurse and Father Arthur, the hospital’s patient chaplain, Lenni and Margot devise a plan to create 100 paintings showcasing the stories of the century they have lived --- stories of love and loss, of courage and kindness, of unexpected tenderness and pure joy.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - Romantic Comedy

June 1, 2021

For cynical 23-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. There’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Her subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her.

Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino - Fiction

June 1, 2021

The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet? Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother. In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.

Riviera Gold: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes by Laurie R. King - Historical Mystery

June 1, 2021

It’s summertime on the Riviera, and the Jazz Age has come to France’s once-sleepy beaches --- along with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. Russell falls into easy friendship with an enthralling American couple, Sara and Gerald Murphy, whose golden life on the Riviera has begun to attract famous writers and artists --- and some of the scoundrels linked with Monte Carlo’s underworld. The Murphy set’s importance for Russell lies in one of their circle’s recent additions: the Holmeses’ former housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, who hasn’t been seen since she fled England under a cloud of false murder accusations. When a beautiful young man is found dead in Mrs. Hudson’s front room, she becomes the prime suspect in yet another murder.

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary - Romantic Comedy

June 1, 2021

Four years ago, Dylan and Addie fell in love under the Provence sun. Two years ago, their relationship officially ended. They haven’t spoken since. Today, Dylan’s and Addie’s lives collide again. It’s the day before Dylan’s friend Cherry’s wedding, and Addie and Dylan crash cars at the start of the journey there. The car Dylan was driving is wrecked. So, along with Dylan’s best friend, Addie’s sister, and a random guy on Facebook who needed a ride, they squeeze into a space-challenged Mini and set off across Britain. Cramped into the same space, Dylan and Addie are forced to confront the choices they made that tore them apart --- and ask themselves if that final decision was the right one after all.

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld - Fiction

June 1, 2021

In 1972, law students Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton meet on the campus of Yale University. In each other, they find a profound intellectual, emotional and physical connection that neither has previously experienced. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and eventually they married. But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail --- one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life.

Safe by S. K. Barnett - Psychological Thriller

June 1, 2021

Jenny Kristal was six years old when she was snatched off the sidewalk from her quiet suburban neighborhood. Twelve years later, she has miraculously returned home after escaping her kidnappers. But as her parents and older brother welcome her back, the questions begin to mount. Where has she been all these years? Why is she back now? And is home really the safest place for her…or for any of them?

A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom by John Boyne - Fiction

June 1, 2021

This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons --- one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars in the third, the world will change around them, but their destinies remain the same. It must play out as foretold.

Walking on Cowrie Shells: Stories by Nana Nkweti - Fiction/Short Stories

June 1, 2021

In her genre-bending debut story collection, Nana Nkweti mixes deft realism with clever inversions of genre. In the Caine Prize finalist story “It Takes a Village, Some Say,” Nkweti skewers racial prejudice and the practice of international adoption, delivering a sly tale about a teenage girl who leverages her adoptive parents to fast-track her fortunes. In other stories, she vaults past realism, upending genre expectations in a satirical romp about a jaded PR professional trying to spin a zombie outbreak in West Africa. In between these two ends of the spectrum, there’s everything from an aspiring graphic novelist at a comic con to a murder investigation driven by statistics to a story organized by the changing hairstyles of the main character.

The Warsaw Orphan by Kelly Rimmer - Historical Fiction

June 1, 2021

Young Elzbieta Rabinek has no fondness for the Germans who patrol Warsaw’s streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality --- and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending Sara, a nurse who shares her apartment floor, Elzbieta makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism. Using Sara's credentials to smuggle children out of the ghetto brings Elzbieta face to face with the reality of the war behind its walls, and to the plight of the Gorka family, who must make the impossible decision to give up their newborn daughter or watch her starve.