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.

Heart of Darkness

Few literary works have achieved the sustained, unflinching pessimism of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's haunting tale of one man's journey into the African subcontinent. One new novel that can justly make that claim is The Catastrophist, by the talented Irish writer/activist Ronan Bennett. Here, Conrad's classic tale is transmogrified by a century of irony, Westernization, and a tip of the hat to Graham Greene and John le Carré. Benett's Marlow is James Gillespie, an Irish historian turned novelist who travels to the Congo in 1959. Set against the death throes of the age of imperialism, the new nation's violent struggle for independence from Belgium provides ample opportunity for Gillespie to explore the dark territory of political and emotional engagement.

Gillespie's Kurtz, the figure who draws him to the Congo and whose maddening attachment to the place both fascinates and repulses him, is Inès, a fiery Italian journalist, who pens fiercely pro-Congolese articles for a radical newspaper. Inès and Gillespie met in London at the house of Gillespie's publisher, and soon after, were heading to Ireland for a romantic getaway. Inès was smitten instantly ("I am already loving you" she whispers as they first make love), but Gillespie, considerably less headstrong, was slower to recognize his feelings. Following Inès to Léopoldville (Kinshasa), the Congolese capital, was his emotional plunge, his gesture toward commitment. But soon after his arrival, Gillespie realizes that he has been displaced from Inès's attentions by her devotion to Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic Congolese independence leader. Gillespie, on the other hand, is incapable of viewing the disorganized independence movement as anything more than an unfortunate farce; nor does he sympathize with the Belgians in Léopoldville, who live in cloistered luxury, walled off from the cité indigène -- "where the blacks live" -- by well-patrolled walls and their own willful obliviousness.

Martha and the infamous League of Pensioners are back in The Little Old Lady Strikes Back , from the author of the smash-hit The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules .

After stealing some priceless Russian jewels from the Stockholm Auction House, Martha and her gang flee to the small village of Hemmavid to lie low. But what they find is a village in crisis, so they decide they want to help revive the place.

But to do so, the village needs money. In steps the League of Pensioners to arrange events to attract paying tourists. Which all turns out to be a rather delicate, and dramatic, balancing act when you are wanted by the police. Even when the school is about to be closed, they step up to put on classes in technology, seamanship and entrepreneurship so that the students can start companies and create new jobs and hopefully a future.

Having donned the mantle of guerrilla fighters, come to save Sweden’s countryside from depopulation, Will they be able to help the villagers get the attention of the politicians to save the village without being caught?

Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg's socially engaged, riotous comedy is perfect for fans of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Series and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel .