THE BOOK THIEF - SECOND HAND

Over the course of one summer that begins with a shocking tragedy, three generations of the Adler family grapple with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets.

Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. This is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence. Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams.

When tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth—at least until Fannie’s baby is born—and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal after tragedy.

Argen­tine author Marce­lo Bir­ma­jer uses his recur­ring char­ac­ter, Javier Mosan, to present a com­pli­cat­ed polit­i­cal tale with roots in his country’s trou­bled past. Mosan, a jour­nal­ist who does his best to avoid writ­ing sto­ries, spends a great deal of time indulging in sex­u­al fan­ta­sy. When his edi­tor asks him to inter­view Elias Traúm, an Argen­tinean who now lives in Israel, he thinks that it is just anoth­er rou­tine assign­ment. Traúm and two dead friends were known as the  “three mus­ke­teers” when they fought in the left-wing Per­o­nist guer­ril­la group, the Mon­toneros. Javier goes to the air­port to meet Traúm and ends up get­ting a severe beat­ing. Traúm is kid­napped. He is lat­er dumped by the side of the road and, Javier, relieved to learn that they both sur­vived, finds him­self drawn to the account of Traúm’s past despite orders from his edi­tor to drop the sto­ry. Read­ers who enjoyed Nathan Englander’s The Min­istry of Spe­cial Cas­es will find this com­pelling, too. It pro­vides insight into the world of Argentina’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty as well as a top-notch con­spir­a­cy plot.

From the author of The New York Times best seller Possession , comes a highly acclaimed novel which captures in brilliant detail the life of one extended English family-and illuminates the choices they must make between domesticity and ambition, life and art.

Stephanie Potter gives up a promising academic career to marry Daniel Orton, while her sister, Frederica, enters Cambridge, and her brother, Marcus, begins recovering from a nervous breakdown.

An exciting literary debut: the unflinching and powerful story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America.

Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.

But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her--from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee--while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.