The Light After the War is the author’s first novel under the name Anita Abriel although she has been published previously as Anita Hughes. Based on her mother’s life, the book is the story of two young Jewish-Hungarian women who miraculously survived the purges of WWII and in the aftermath struggle to build lives for…
Dizzying time loops, fascinating human stories, and a really lovely romance captivate in Lisa Grunwald’s Time After Time. To tell the reader too much about its plot is to reveal too much about its central mystery; this is the kind of book that requires the retention of a little of the element of surprise going…
In this brand-new love letter to New York City, the follies of youth and the joys of the theater, Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert brings us the uneven story of a woman named Vivian Morris. Morris comes to New York for a summer vacation in 1940 and never really leaves – and tells us…
Jillian Cantor’s In Another Time takes us tastefully into the romance of Hanna and Max, two young people who meet and fall in love in Germany on the brink of the outbreak of World War II… and then introduces an awkward plot point that nearly wrecks the proceedings. In 1931, Hanna Ginsberg, a wannabe composer…
Early in 2018, I picked up a copy of Susan Meissner’s breath-taking novel As Bright As Heaven, the story of one family’s desperate struggle to survive the influenza epidemic of 1919. It was one of my favorite books of the year, and I’ve been powering through Ms. Meissner’s other novels ever since. Now though, she’s…
World War II stories are some of my favorite things to read, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that I jumped at the chance to review Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill. It’s the story of two teenagers torn apart by the decision of the American government to force Americans of Japanese…
Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room is the story of Hedy Lamarr, a woman best known for her roles on the silver screen. Ms. Benedict looks deeper into Hedy’s life, bringing us an engrossing tale of a woman who is both brilliant and beautiful. Hedy Kieseler is a Jewish woman married to an…
Lynda Cohen Loigman’s The Wartime Sisters checked a couple of my book-catnip boxes. As you’ll know if you’ve followed my reviews for any length of time, I absolutely adore books that take place during the Second World War. I also really enjoy reading about the close but messy relationships shared between sisters. I don’t have…
In this story based on the real-life experiences of Roxanne Veletzo’s grandmother, a young girl is left by her Jewish mother on the stoop of a house in Bucharest, believing that this will be the only way to save the child from the Nazi invasion. She’s taken in by a kindly concierge, who brings her…
The Nightingale is a book I’ll hold on to because I enjoyed quite a lot of it. On the other hand, I don’t plan on rereading it very often, because a certain major aspect of the story was fingernails-on-a-chalkboard grating. Too bad I couldn’t have the one without the other. The novel starts with Vianne…