To Read, or Not To Read

Reach Higher: An Inspiring Photo Celebration of First Lady Michelle Obama by Amanda Lucidon Hardcover, 112 pages Published October 23rd 2018 by Crown Books for Young Readers 9780525644002
Summary A collection of striking and intimate photographs of Michelle Obama, coupled with personal reflections and behind-the-scenes stories from official White House photographer and New York Times bestselling author of Chasing Light , Amanda Lucidon, presented in a deluxe format for young readers. 
My Thoughts I was fortunate to catch an interview with Michelle Obama a few weeks ago while she was celebrating International Day of the Girl on a news show. Listening to her speak about the Obama Foundation's launch of the Global Girls Alliance and the importance of education for girls was inspiring. So it's no wonder that Amanda Lucidon chose to honor the former First Lady by putting together this book of photographs with interesting information and facts regarding the White House and its hist…

Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust by Planaria Price with Helen Reichmann West
Publication Date: March 13, 2018 Farrar, Straus and Giroux Hardcover, eBook, AudioBook Genre: YA/NF/History/Holocaust/WWII

A Junior Library Guild selection

Claiming My Place is the true story of a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by escaping to Nazi Germany and hiding in plain sight.

Meet Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrkow Trybunalski. As the war escalates, Gucia and her family, friends, and neighbors suffer starvation, disease, and worse. She knows her blond hair and fair skin give her an advantage, and eventually she face…

Freefall: Divine Comedy by Lily Iona MacKenzie Publisher:  Pen-L Publishing (Oct 1, 2018) Category: Women’s Fiction, Literary Fiction Tour dates: Oct-Nov, 2018 ISBN: Available in print & ebook, 255

During a four-day reunion in Whistler, B.C., Tillie Bloom, a wacky installation artist, reconnects with three women she had hung out with in the late ’50s and early ’60s. While in Whistler, secrets surface and a near death experience occurs during a hike, both of which bind the women at a deeper level.

Their new intimacy prompts them to celebrate the millennium as well as their approaching sixtieth birthdays in Italy. So a few weeks later, Tillie travels to Venice to have an extended reunion with her friends. While the women assume they’re in Venice to vacation and deepen their relationships, Tillie has a hidden agenda: she intends to crash the Venice Biennale, hoping to find a larger audience for her art. Cupid’s arrows complicate her goals when she and an Italian priest fall for each…

A Conversation with Lisa Gabriele Author of The Winters
“From the brilliant first line to the shattering conclusion, The Winters will draw you in and leave you breathless. . . . A must read.” —Liv Constantine, author of The Last Mrs. Parrish

A spellbindingly suspenseful new novel set in the moneyed world of the Hamptons, about secrets that refuse to remain buried and consequences that can’t be escaped

After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded Long Island mansion of her new fiancé Max Winter—a wealthy politician and recent widower—and a life of luxury she’s never known. But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter Dani makes her life a living hell. She soon realizes there is no clear place for her in this twisted little family: Max and Dani circle each other like cats,…

Regrets Only by Erin Duffy Narrated by Nan McNamara 406 pages | 11 hrs and 19 mins Published May 8th 2018 by Harper Audio 9780062698247
Summary Claire thought she had everything a woman was supposed to want—a loving husband, a newborn son, a beautiful home in the suburbs. Then she walks in on her husband canoodling with their realtor in their newly renovated kitchen, and in an instant, her perfect life comes crashing down.  
With her marriage heading for divorce, Claire knows it’s time to stop feeling sorry for herself. But how can she move on when she’s still stuck in the orbit of her husband’s world? For starters, she can get rid of her soon-to-be ex’s possessions—including his prized, gigantic foosball table—by dumping them onto the curb…until complaints from the neighbors get the police involved. Now Claire is busy dodging the mean mommies at story hour and hiding from her ex-husband’s girlfriend in the grocery store. But as Claire soon learns, suburbia still has a few surprises i…

Time's Convert by Deborah Harkness Kindle Edition, 400 pages Published September 18th 2018 by Viking 9780399564512 Available @ Amazon
Summary On the battlefields of the American Revolution, Matthew de Clermont meets Marcus MacNeil, a young surgeon from Massachusetts, during a moment of political awakening when it seems that the world is on the brink of a brighter future. When Matthew offers him a chance at immortality and a new life free from the restraints of his puritanical upbringing, Marcus seizes the opportunity to become a vampire. But his transformation is not an easy one and the ancient traditions and responsibilities of the de Clermont family clash with Marcus's deeply held beliefs in liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
Fast-forward to contemporary Paris, where Phoebe Taylor—the young employee at Sotheby's whom Marcus has fallen for—is about to embark on her own journey to immortality. Though the modernized version of the process at first seems uncomplicated, the …

ebook, 226 pages Published September 1st 2018 by Woodhall Press Llp 9780997543797
Summary On the eve of the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing comes a novel in which a Jewish astronaut must reassess his moral compass when forced to confront NASA's early collaboration with Nazis and the role it may have played in his father's death.
Jonathan Stein thinks only a bad heart can stop him from reaching the moon. But when he discovers his father may have been murdered to protect an appalling NASA secret, he must decide whether his moral compass still points towards the stars. Days before the Apollo 18 launch in 1974, Jonathan's father, an Israeli astronaut at NASA, died of an apparent heart attack. A year before his own launch, in 2005, Jonathan, a typically devout skeptic, becomes captivated by the tale of a mysterious online conspiracy theorist who claims that his father had been killed. Unable to keep long-buried suspicions from resurfacing, he reopens the case, digging int…