Antigone Books

This memorable novel blends the tragic past with a powerful present. In Paris 1942, ten-year-old Sarah is rounded up in the middle of the night by French soldiers. She locks her younger brother in a cupboard to protect him, thinking she would be home by morning. Sixty years later a journalist who is researching the roundup realizes that the family apartment her French husband has inherited is one that once belonged to Jews. Her research uncovers a trail of secrets about Sarah and her husband's relatives.

We all know who shot Abraham Lincoln, but do you know the story of the 12-day search for John Wilkes Booth and his near escape?

This is a riveting book, a true-life thriller filled with rich historic detail and adventure. You will find it hard to put down.

In the 1930's, stunt flying and record breaking endurance flights helped the world forget the Great Depression and the impending war in Europe.

Women pilots were a novelty but were also treated like heroines for their exploits.

Helen Humphrey's debut novel, published in 1997, is based on the true story of two women aviators who attempt to stay aloft in a biplane for 25 days to set a new record.

As the women circle Toronto, the world below is fraught with hardship for the working class.

Twelve-year-old Maddie adoringly follows the daily newspaper accounts fantasizing that one of the pilots is really her mother while denying her real mother who is Jewish and in peril from local hooligans.

I particularly liked the how the author portrayed the tedium and the danger of circling in flight which made the women's relationship both intimate and strained.

There are several subplots and they all build toward a suspenseful ending.

Helen Humphreys has created a novel that is both heartrending and heart-mending. With prose both economical and rich she transports us to England 1941 and tells a haunting story of love, loss and solace.

Horticulturaist Gwen Davis, a lonely plain woman in her thirties, heads up a group of young women volunteers (the Women's Land Army) who are to live on a country estate and grow food for the war effort. Not particularly adept at dealing with people, Gwen flounders at first while learning to trust herself and the others she must work with.

A Canadian regiment is also billeted on the estate which provides an entertaining distraction from the hard work at hand and Gwen falls under the spell of the poetry reading Captain Raley.

Gwen has discovered a secret garden on the estate and as she tries to unravel its mysteries she also unravels her own secret desires.

March Of Folly, written in 1984, examines the pervasive presence throughout the ages of folly in government. Barbara Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit of policies contrary to self-interest, and perceived as counter productive in their own time, when feasible alternative courses of action were available.

Sadly, today we are witnessing Bush's Folly.

Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighbor's dog (Sherlock Holmes being one of his heroes) leads him on a path both terrifying and tender, funny and sad.

A captivating story from a remarkable point of view.

I had considered myself somewhat "Anne Tylered-out." I mean how many stories can one read about quirky characters residing in Baltimore?

Amateur Marriage, though, transcends the formulaic and chronicles the bittersweet saga of an American family from pre-World War II (1941) to the present day. As a seemingly perfect couple, so young and smitten with each other, Michael and Pauline are, in truth, tragically mismatched. Pauline is impulsive and impractical whereas Michael is plodding and judgmental. Throughout their 30 year marriage they are incapable of bridging their deep-rooted differences with devastating effect on themselves and their two children.

A complex and poignant exploration of the family and marriage in American culture.

In her second novel (after The Necessary Hunger), Nina Revoyr examines the gritty, colorful, sometimes tumultuous history of Los Angeles's Crenshaw district-once a truly integrated neighborhood but now predominantly African American. As Jackie Ishida helps her aunt deal with her grandfather's will, she finds out that a beneficiary named Curtis Martindale died in the searing 1965 Watts riots. When she subsequently discovers that Curtis and three other young men died in her grandfather's grocery store, she is alarmed and shaken. She locates one of Curtis's cousins, and together they launch an investigation into what happened and whether her grandfather was involved. The story line takes more twists and turns than a road full of hairpin curves, as possible suspects in the four boys' deaths-murders, to be precise-are identified and dismissed and some long-held secrets revealed. The result is foremost a meditation on race, cultural beliefs, opportunity, prejudice, and family obligation that drives home its messages by way of presenting and solving the murders. Though her writing can be stilted, Revoyr (of Japanese and Polish American descent) has crafted a provocative, absorbing story with fully realized characters. --Lisa Nussbaum, Dauphin Cty. Lib. Syst., Harrisburg, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.