Subtitled: the Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland
Nonfiction by Betty Lauer
This story is an amazing firsthand account of her experience, and it was both fascinating and terrible to read.
Subtitled: the Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland
Nonfiction by Betty Lauer
This story is an amazing firsthand account of her experience, and it was both fascinating and terrible to read.
Subtitled: A Woman's Quest to Uncover Her Royal Family's Secret
Nonfiction by Eve Haas
Fiction by Karen McQuestion
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde.
Fiction by John Grisham
In 1988, John Grisham published his first novel, A Time to Kill, a great courtroom thriller about Jake Brigance, a lawyer defending a man who killed his daughter's rapist. This book returns to the same town and takes place only five years after the events of that first book, although it was published in 2020.
In this book, Jake Brigance once again is defending a murderer in a case of what might be called justifiable homicide. But this story is more complicated, and unfortunately it's less enjoyable to read.
I don't want to spoil anything, but the ending ruined this book for me. The story was good up until I got near the end and realized that no resolution seemed to be in sight. The best thing about fiction is the fact that the author can tell you a full story and its ending. In this book I think Mr. Grisham forgot that his job is to tell us how the story ended.
Fiction by J.K. Rowling
This was a fun little story that was NOT like the Harry Potter series. It was more of a light fantasy. This edition had illustrations done by children across Canada and the USA that were very nice.
I enjoyed it.
Fiction by Sue Miller.
Fiction by Dean Koontz
Fiction by Angie Thomas
I've been intending to read this book for a while; the Christmas before last I was at a "dirty Santa" gift exchange where people were talking about how good it was. I tried to take the book home --it was one of the gifts-- but someone took it from me. When I saw the book available on audible being read by one of my favorite narrators (Bahni Turpin), I bought it right away.
The story centers on Starr, a sixteen-year-old black girl in a fictional urban area called Garden Heights. Because of the poverty and gang violence in the neighborhood, Starr's parents send her and her two brothers to a fancy prep school in the "white" part of town. As a result, Starr feels caught between black and white, trying to navigate both worlds at school and at home.
Then racial profiling and police violence come too close to Starr, and an unarmed black teenage boy she knows well is killed. Starr has to merge her two worlds and find her own voice to speak out against injustice.
This was a really good book with great characters. It also makes you think. The audiobook narration makes the story even better.
Fiction by Karen McQuestion
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde
I also read recently by this author: Brave Girl Quiet Girl
Fiction by Miriam Toews
Yolandi and Elfrieda are sisters who grew up as Canadian Mennonites and are still close as adults. However, they are very different.
Elfrieda, the older sister, is a successful concert pianist with a loving husband and beautiful apartment in Winnipeg. Yolandi is a broke divorcee with two kids by two different dads and a crappy apartment in Toronto. But the biggest problem the sisters face is the fact that Elfrieda keeps trying to kill herself.
This was a hard book for me to read, because I could not see it ever ending well. Elf was just so despairing. Nothing anyone said seemed to make her want to live. The characters were so realistic I could feel both sisters' sorrow. (Not to mention their mother!)
I can't say how this book ended of course (I have rules about that), but it's not really a sad ending. The interesting thing is how little actual life circumstances seemed to affect these women's natural optimism or pessimism. This book definitely made me think.
Fiction by Tracy Manaster
This story takes place in 2010, in an Arizona retiree community, one of those golf-course-centered condo developments where all residents must be over 55. Into this setting several characters converge: an attractive recent widow, a divorced man still hung up on his ex-wife, a grandmother struggling to make ends meet due to the recent recession, and a couple of visiting grandchildren, one of which has stayed too long and is now in violation of the community's strict no-kids policy.
Also there is the owner/developer of the place, a man with an ego big enough to hold a festival on his birthday and call it Founder's Day, who has recently hired a couple of teachers from back East to try to give his upstart little community some culture and history.
This was a good character story that had a few small surprises.
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde
This is a really good book!!