Dream Within A Dream

Title: Tweet Cute Author: Emma Lord Publication Date: January 21, 2020 Synopsis: A fresh, irresistible rom-com from debut author Emma Lord about the chances we take, the paths life can lead us on, and how love can be found in the opposite place you expected.  Meet Pepper , swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account. Enter Jack , class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time. All’s fair in love and cheese ― tha...

In the preface to his autobiographical narrative about surviving Auschwitz, Night , Elie Wiesel wrote that it is the responsibility of witnesses to history to bear witness, that "[s/he] has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory." In Night, " [t]he witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future." (pg xv ) In Chapter 3 of Night , Elie describes how he and his father had survived the first selection process by which who lives and who dies is immediately decided upon arriving at Auschwitz Birkenau Concentration Camp, and their subsequently witnessing the burning of the bodies of adults and children that same night. As the Jewish men begin to say the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, Elie wonders where God is in Auschwitz. Elie breaks out of the narrative form and inserts this poem: January 27, 2020 marks the 75th a...

When Daniel's class begins studying WWII, he volunteers that his Granny, Anna Schlesinger, had come to England as a refugee from Germany, but that is all he knows. When he asks her about it, he also discovers that there is an M15 file on her with the Secret Service. Now, Daniel can't wait to hear her story. And what a story it is, one that really begins on November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, when the Schlesinger apartment is destroyed by Nazis and Anna's father is arrested and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. Back home weeks later, a heartbreaking decision is made by her parents to send Anna, 12, to safety in England on the Kinderstransport. No sooner does her journey begin, then she has a sleeping baby boy thrust at her through the train window. Anna cares for the baby, refusing to give the little stowaway up until they arrive in England and she has assurances he will be taken care of properly. After more traveling, Anna finds herself on an estate farm in Kent with no ...

It's 1942 and there is nothing Rosetta Wolfson, 12, likes more than eavesdropping in on a good conversation. So when a man named Mr. Schwartzberg arrives at the Wolfson home in Westmount, a small suburb of Montreal, Canada, Rosetta is right there hiding behind the overhang of the dining room tablecloth. And what she overhears will suddenly change the whole Wolfson family's - Mom, Dad, older sister Annette, 16, and young sister Esther, 6 - dynamic. The Wolfson sisters are about the get a new brother, 16-year-old Isaac Guttman, a German Jewish refugee who had been part of the Kindertransport, was later interned by the British, and is presently living in a Canadian internment camp.  Coincidentally, while in England, Isaac had been supported for a while by the Wolfson's granny living in London. It's decided that Isaac will be given Rosetta's room and she will move into Annette's room, an arrangement neither is happy about. Issac's presence, however, doesn't ...

Title: Graveyard Shift Author:  Jenn Burke Series:  Not Dead Yet, #3 Publisher:  Carina Press Publication Date:  November 4, 2019 Synopsis: Shifting Into High Fear Ghost/god Wes Cooper and his not-life partner, vampire Hudson Rojas, have settled into cohabitation in an upscale part of Toronto. So what if their hoity-toity new neighbors haven’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat for the paranormal pair? Their PI business is booming, and when a suspect they’ve been tailing winds up in the morgue, it’s alongside a rash of other shifters in apparent drug-related fatalities. Now Wes and Hudson must connect the dots between the shifter deaths and an uptick in brutal vampire attacks across the city. Throw in a surprise visit from Hudson’s niece—who may or may not be on the run from European paranormal police (who may or may not exist)—and guardianship of a teen shifter who might be the key to solving the whole mystery (if only she could recover her memory), and Wes and Hu...

Like most Americans, I first learned about Oskar Schindler and the 1,200 Jewish lives he was able to save watching Steven Spielberg's movie  Schindler's List . And yes, I am sorry to say I have not yet read Thomas Keneally's 1982 book Schindler's Ark (published as Schindler's List in the US). However, you may recall a book published in 2013 called The Boy On the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson, who was a young Jewish boy working for Schindler. Now, we have this book by Rena Finder, who was a still a young girl when she was working for Oskar Schindler. Rena, who maiden name was Ferber, had lived a pretty happy and comfortable life in Krakow, Poland with her parents Moses and Rosa Ferber. But all that changes in 1939 when the Nazis march into and occupy Poland and World War II begins. First, friends and neighbors begin to turn their backs on their former Jewish friends, and Krakow's Jews are faced with more overt acts of anti-Semitism, even as more and more restrictiv...