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Wizard
Posts: 1,384
Karma: 18484273
Join Date: Apr 2013
Device: Paperwhite, Galaxy S22
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This month's Amazon First Reads selections are out, they are:
Cold Waters (Normal, Alabama Book 1) by Debbie Herbert [Genre: Psychological Suspense]
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From USA Today bestselling author Debbie Herbert comes a thrilling story of murder and madness set in the darkest corner of Alabama.
Everyone thinks fourteen-year-old Violet is a murderer. After a summer-night swim with her best friend, Ainsley, Violet is found confused, wandering in the forest—and Ainsley’s never seen again. But without a body, murder charges won’t stick, so Violet is sent away.
After more than a decade in a psychiatric ward, Violet returns to her broken-down hometown of Normal, Alabama, to claim her dead mother’s inheritance and help her overworked sister care for their unstable, alcoholic father. Violet, still haunted by that night eleven years ago, endures horrific flashbacks and twisted hallucinations while townsfolk spit accusations—and for all she knows, they’re right.
As the summer heats up, details of Ainsley’s fate appear like a beast’s wild eyes, watching in the darkness, and grim revelations about Violet’s family threaten to devour her. Already on the edge of madness, Violet must fight to keep her sanity long enough for the terrible truth to burst from the cold, dark waters.
Editor Notes:
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The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms [Genre: Contemporary Fiction]
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“A laugh-out-loud funny, pitch-perfect novel that will have readers rooting for this unlikely, relatable, and totally lovable heroine, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler is the ultimate escape—and will leave moms everywhere questioning whether it isn’t time for a #momspringa of their own.” —New York Journal of Books
Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.
Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.
But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.
Editor Notes:
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A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport by Kate Stewart [Genre: Biography]
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The inspiring true story of an indomitable librarian’s journey from Nazi Germany to Seattle to Vietnam—all for the love of books.
Growing up under Fascist censorship in Nazi Germany, Ruth Rappaport absorbed a forbidden community of ideas in banned books. After fleeing her home in Leipzig at fifteen and losing both parents to the Holocaust, Ruth drifted between vocations, relationships, and countries, searching for belonging and purpose. When she found her calling in librarianship, Ruth became not only a witness to history but an agent for change as well.
Culled from decades of diaries, letters, and photographs, this epic true story reveals a driven woman who survived persecution, political unrest, and personal trauma through a love of books. It traces her activism from the Zionist movement to the Red Scare to bibliotherapy in Vietnam and finally to the Library of Congress, where Ruth made an indelible mark and found a home. Connecting it all, one constant thread: Ruth’s passion for the printed word, and the haven it provides—a haven that, as this singularly compelling biography proves, Ruth would spend her life making accessible to others. This wasn’t just a career for Ruth Rappaport. It was her purpose.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
They were burning books in the streets.
Growing up under fascism in Nazi Germany, Ruth Rappaport read banned titles in the corner of the Leipzig library and decided that if she couldn’t save her family and friends, or even herself, she would save books. This fascinating and distinctive figure, along with debut author Kate Stewart’s gifted storytelling, help us appreciate the complexities of women’s working lives throughout history and understand why access to books and libraries matters.
Luckily, Ruth escaped the fate of many European Jews, and after a number of challenging adventures as a teenager, she eventually immigrated to America, where, despite some initial apprehension and missteps, she renewed her mission to protect and champion the people’s right to information.
Employed under and alongside men, she clashed often with naysayers as she built an enormous library system across Vietnam for embittered American troops, then went on to head the Social Sciences Subject Cataloging Division at the Library of Congress.
While there are many popular Holocaust-related memoirs and biographies, none are about someone who built a life’s work in explicit remembrance of Nazi censorship. Although Ruth had several brief affairs, she never married, or had children; in a time when women’s destinies were solidified in motherhood and homemaking, Ruth Rappaport chose a different path, and her legacy endures. - Erin Calligan Mooney, Editor
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One Word Kill (Impossible Times Book 1) by Mark Lawrence [Genre: Science Fiction]
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Ready Player One meets Stranger Things in this new novel by the bestselling author who George RR Martin describes as “an excellent writer.”
In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.
Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.
He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
Prodigy son of a famed mathematician, Nick Hayes is not your average fifteen-year-old. Especially when you consider that he has just discovered he is dying of leukaemia. But there is a part of Nick in all of us, and I immediately empathised with the struggle at the heart of his story.
Nick knows that his time on this planet might be near its end. But when an alluring new girl, Mia, joins his group of Dungeons & Dragons–playing friends, he realises that life might be giving him one last throw of the dice. Just then, however, his world is turned upside down when he meets a strangely familiar man whose claims about Nick’s future are too harrowing—and unbelievable—to ignore. Soon everything he thought was true, from the laws of physics to the trajectory of his own life, is proved otherwise.
One Word Kill is a story that we’re familiar with: a boy with nothing to lose, forced to put what little he has left on the line. But it’s also the kind of story that comes along once in a generation, because we’ve all dreamed of being like Nick, playing a game with the highest real-life stakes and the world on our shoulders. This time, though, it’s not imaginary.
So, what would you do in his position? What else can you do?
Roll the dice. - Jack Butler, Editor
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Where the Desert Meets the Sea by Werner Sonne (Author), Steve Anderson (Translator) [Genre: Historical Fiction]
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An illuminating and heart-stirring historical novel set in post-WWII Palestine, where the boundaries of love and friendship are challenged by the intractable conflicts of war.
Jerusalem, 1947: Judith, a young Jewish survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, arrives in Mandatory Palestine, seeking refuge with her only remaining relative, her uncle. When she learns that he has died, she tries to take her own life in despair.
After awakening in the hospital, Judith learns that Hana, a Muslim Arab nurse, has saved her life by donating her own blood. While the two women develop a fragile bond, each can’t help but be drawn deeper into the political machinations tearing the country apart. After witnessing the repeated attacks inflicted on the Jews, Judith makes the life-changing decision to join the Zionist fight for Jerusalem. And Hana’s star-crossed love for Dr. David Cohen, an American Jew out of his element and working only to save lives, will put her own life in danger.
Then the political situation worsens. When tensions erupt, a shocking act of violence threatens Judith and Hana’s friendship—and the destinies of everyone they love.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
Journalist Werner Sonne has spent much of his career attempting to understand the roots of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict by speaking with the people on the ground whose lives have been defined by it. It is this deep compassion for the ways in which individual people are affected by the madness of war that drew me to his beautiful novel, Where the Desert Meets the Sea. Werner himself is not Jewish, Muslim, or Arab, and his novel—set during the founding of the state of Israel—doesn’t attempt to explain or take sides, but rather insists only on portraying the human faces behind the historic drama.
Though the characters are fictional, the author’s knowledge of the true historical framework allows him to incorporate real-life elements into the story, and much of the action centers around the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. The hospital—which was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for treating any patient in need, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or ideology—is, in the novel, a symbol of hope. It is within this oasis of humanity, in which the sanctity of life is valued above anything else, that bonds of love and friendship are developed between unlikely soul mates, allowing the characters in Where the Desert Meets the Sea to come roaring to life, in all their hope, heartbreak, and faith. - Liza Darnton, Editor
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We Are (Not) Friends by Anna King (Author), Christopher Weyant (Illustrator) [Genre: Children's Picture Book]
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Two fuzzy friends are having a fun playdate when a new pal hops in. As the day continues, each friend feels left out at times. It isn’t so easy to figure out how to act when everything seems to change. With humor and heart, the beloved characters from Theodor Seuss Geisel Award winner You Are (Not) Small navigate a friendship triangle as only they can.
Editor Notes:
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