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Crooked Heart

August 5, 2015

crooked heart

  Noel is a ten-year-old who has been living with his godmother in London, until she dies. He moves in with her nephew and his wife but they are not well suited for a child of Noel’s personality and use the excuse of the impending war to send him to the suburbs to live with a foster family. Vera Sedge is the frazzled woman who sees Noel less as a child to be helped and ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Harper, historical fiction, London, WWII

A God in Ruins

May 11, 2015

god

  In her new novel, A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson answers the question that arises when one is spared from death but others are not: Is my life worth it? In her previous novel Life After Life Ursula Todd is reborn back into her life for second and third chances to change history in World War II but rather than doing so on a global scale she opts for the life that allows ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, England, historical fiction, Little Brown and Company, WWII

The Book of Aron

May 4, 2015

book of aron

Set in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland The Book of Aron is, like any Holocaust novel, difficult reading. But what makes it so, is not graphic depictions of violence against Jews it is the interminable grind of life lived in circumstances that have nowhere to go but down. At first, it is simply that the community is being segregated as a health precaution against typhus. ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Europe, historical fiction, Holocaust, Knopf, literary, WWII

Land of Dreams

October 29, 2014

land of dreams

When Ellie Hogan’s sixteen-year-old son leaves his expensive boarding school and heads across the country to Hollywood she wastes no time in asking questions but gets on a train from New York City and follows him. Once in L.A. she decides that rather than punish the boy she’s going to let him have his chance at fame. It’s 1942 and this is Land of Dreams by Kate Kerrigan. Ellie ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: family saga, historical fiction, William Morrow, WWII

Gretel and the Dark

October 15, 2014

gretel

Unless you’re reading a book of short stories it is unusual to get more than one scary plot in a single novel, but that is exactly what happens in Eliza Granville’s debut novel Gretel and the Dark. There is Lilie, the beautiful young patient of Dr. Josef Breuer, Sigmund Freud’s mentor.  She is found beaten, abused and with her head shaved. She only speaks when ordered and ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, debut, Europe, historical fiction, Riverhead Books, WWII

The Paying Guests

September 22, 2014

paying guests

  By the end of World War I Frances Wray has lost almost everyone in her life she cares about—her two brothers to the war, her father to a heart attack, and the person she loves to the circumstances brought about by so much death and change. She and her mother are left with a grand old house but no money, as her father lost it all in bad investments before his death. It is ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: historical fiction, London, Riverhead Books, WWII

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