June 4, 2021
New Fiction
The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian – Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father. Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the threats and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing and escalating struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she’s holding about her life in the South and hang them on a line for all to see in Ohio. As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.
Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar – It’s 1979. Olivia Murray, a secretary at a Los Angeles newspaper, is determined to become a photojournalist and make a difference with her work. When opportunity arrives, she seizes it, accompanying her Kurdish boyfriend, Delan, to northern Iraq for a family wedding, hoping to capture an image that lands her a job in the photo department. More important, though, the trip is a chance to understand Delan’s childhood and bridge the differences of their pasts. Yet when the return home proves less safe than Delan believed, Olivia is confronted with a reality she had not expected, and is awakened to the dangers of a town patrolled by Iraqi military under curfew and constant threat. But in this world torn apart by war, there are intoxicating sights and scents, Delan’s loving family, innocence not yet compromised, and small acts of kindness that flourish unexpectedly. All of it will be tested when Olivia captures a shattering, tragic moment on film, one that upends all their lives and proves that true bravery begins with an open heart.
The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray – Nestled in the mountains, Chateau Lafayette has seen revolution, survived two world wars, and harbored more than twenty-five thousand sick and orphaned children. It’s a fortress, a haven, the strength of which is in not its stone but the courage and ideals of those who lived there. A founding mother…1174: Adrienne Lafayette, as defiant as her hero husband, the marquis de Lafayette, will face the threat of the guillotine and make a fateful decision that will inspire generations to come. A daring visionary…1914: Beatrice Chanler is an indomitable socialite with a secret identity who risks everything to change America’s destiny and save people a world way.
A reluctant resistor…1940: Marthe Simone, a French schoolteacher and aspiring artist, simply wants to survive Nazi occupation, until a shocking discovery calls into question who she is and who she’s willing to become.
The Radio Operator by Ulla Lenze – Josef is trying to gain a foothold in America. He has chosen New York’s multicultural Harlem neighbourhood as his adopted home. His day job introduces him to the city’s quintessential colorful characters. Nighttime lets Josef explore his surroundings and his interests. He listens to music, plays chess, and pursues his passion for amateur radio. Josef learns Morse code and builds a radio receiver that brings his homeland into his Harlem apartment. It also brings him into the orbit of charming, intellectual Lauren, with whom Josef falls for across the airwaves. But the arrival of World War II puts Josef’s loyalties to America and Germany to the test. His radio expertise puts him on the radar of German intelligence embedded stateside. He becomes a reluctant collaborator, setting off an unexpected chain of events that eventually lands him back in Germany – and beyond. His younger brother, Carl, is suspicious; the optimistic older brother that left all those years ago is not the man who returns. But Josef is determined to keep his secrets-even as unspoken tensions threaten to come to a head.