Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the victorious, epic account of one young man’s tremendous fortitude and resiliency during one of history’s darkest periods. It is based on the true story of a forgotten hero.
Pino Lella is opposed to both the Nazis and the war. He is a typical Italian adolescent who is fascinated with food, music, and girls, but his days of youth are numbered. Pino joins an underground railroad to aid Jews fleeing from the Alps when the bombs dropped by the Allies destroy his family’s home in Milan. He also falls in love with Anna, a stunning widow who is six years his senior. Pino’s parents push him to enlist as a German soldier in an effort to protect him, believing that this will keep him out of battle.
However, after Pino is hurt, he is hired at the young age of eighteen to work as General Hans Leyers’s personal driver in Italy. General Leyers was one of the Third Reich’s most enigmatic and powerful commanders. Now that he has the chance to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino fights covertly while enduring the atrocities of the war and the Nazi occupation, his fortitude inspired by his love for Anna and the future he hopes they will one day have. This captivating tale of history, suspense, and love will appeal to fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“How do you find happiness?” Anna paused, then said, “You start by looking right around you for the blessings you have.”
“The best thing is to grieve for the people you loved and lost, and then welcome and love the new people life puts in front of you.”
“By opening our hearts, revealing our scars, we are made human and flawed and whole.”
“Nothing in life worth doing is easy,”
“Some loves never die.”
American author Kristin Hannah’s historical fiction book The Nightingale was released by St. Martin’s Press in 2015. The book tells the tale of two sisters who fought to survive and oppose the German occupation of France during World War II while living in France.
Vianne Mauriac bids her husband Antoine farewell in the tranquil village of Carriveau as he departs for the Front. She doesn’t think the Nazis will take over France. However, they do invade in large numbers of marching soldiers, convoys of trucks and tanks, and planes that fill the sky and rain bombs on defenseless people. Vianne and her daughter are forced to coexist with the enemy when a German captain seizes their home. Otherwise, they risk losing everything. She is compelled to make one impossible decision after another in order to keep her family alive when they are without food, money, or hope and as danger mounts all around them.
Isabelle, Vianne’s sister, is a disobedient 18-year-old who is pursuing her sense of purpose with all the wild ardor of youth. She meets Gatan, a partisan who thinks the French can fight the Nazis from within France, while thousands of Parisians march into the unknowable terrors of war, and she falls in love as only the young can—completely. Isabelle enters the Resistance after he betrays her, never looks back, and repeatedly puts her life in danger to defend others.
Bestselling author Kristin Hannah vividly depicts the vast scope of World Struggle II while illuminating a personal aspect of history that is rarely seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale relates the story of two sisters who, in a France conquered by Germany during World War II and divided by years, experiences, ideals, and circumstances, each set out on a perilous journey in search of survival, love, and freedom.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”
“Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.”
“I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.”
“Some stories don’t have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories.”
“Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.”
Texas, 1934. The Great Plains are in a drought, and millions of people are jobless. As crops fail, water runs out, and dust threatens to bury everyone, farmers are fighting to maintain their land and their means of subsistence. The Dust Bowl era, one of the worst parts of the Great Depression, has descended with a vengeance.
Elsa Martinelli, like so many of her neighbors, is forced to choose between fighting for the land she loves and moving to California in quest of a better life in this uncertain and frightening period. A generation will be defined by the heroism and sacrifice of one unbreakable woman, whose book The Four Winds is an unforgettable portrayal of America and the American Dream.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.”
“Courage is fear you ignore.”
“It wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it.”
“Love is what remains when everything else is gone.”
“Books had always been her solace; novels gave her the space to be bold, brave, beautiful, if only in her own imagination.”
Former POW Ernt Allbright returns from the Vietnam War a different and more violent person. He takes an impetuous decision to relocate his family to Alaska, where they’ll live off the net in the country’s final true frontier, after losing yet another job.
Leni, a 13-year-old girl growing up at a turbulent time and trapped in the riptide of her passionate, turbulent connection with her parents, dares to dream that moving to a new country may bring about a better future for her family. She is in dire need of a place to call home. Cora, her mother, is willing to go to any lengths for the man she adores, even if it involves pursuing him into the dark.
Alaska initially appears to be the solution to their problems. They discover a fiercely independent group of strong men and equally powerful women in a wild, distant area of the state. The Allbrights’ lack of planning and diminishing finances are made up for by the lengthy, sunny days and the kindness of the villagers.
But as winter draws near and Alaska is enveloped in darkness, Ernt’s precarious mental state worsens and the family starts to fall apart. The dangers from within will soon outweigh those from beyond. Leni and her mother discover the terrifying reality that they are on their own in their small cottage, which is covered in snow and enveloped in 18 hours of the night. In the wild, they are their only source of protection.
Kristin Hannah captures the irrepressible spirit of the contemporary American pioneer and the energy of a disappearing Alaska—a place of unparalleled beauty and danger—in this stunning depiction of human weakness and resiliency. The Great Alone is a brave, stunning, all-night-long read about love and sorrow, the struggle for existence, and the savagery that resides in both nature and man.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A thing can be true and not the truth,”
“You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
“Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid.”
“Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become.”
“It’s scary that people can just stop loving you, you know?”
Marie-Laure, whose father works at the Museum of Natural History, resides in Paris close by. When Marie-Laure is twelve years old, the Nazis have taken over Paris, and her father and daughter leave for Saint-Malo, a walled city where Marie-great Laure’s uncle lives alone in a tall home by the sea. They may be transporting the most priceless and hazardous treasure in the museum.
Orphan Werner Pfennig grows up in a mining village in Germany with his younger sister, fascinated by a rudimentary radio they discover that transmits news and tales from locations they have never visited or imagined. Werner gains proficiency in creating and maintaining these essential new tools and is hired to use his skill to find the resistance. Doerr skillfully illustrates the ways people attempt to be kind to one another in spite of all circumstances by weaving together the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner.
The breathtakingly beautiful, immediately successful New York Times bestseller by Anthony Doerr tells the story of a blind French girl and a German boy who cross paths in occupied France as they both struggle to survive the destruction of World War II.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?”
“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
“All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”
1939 in Memphis. On their family’s Mississippi River skiff, 12-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings lead fantastic lives. However, Rill is left in charge when their father has to hurry their mother to the hospital on a stormy night, up until a large group of strangers arrive. The Foss children are taken away from everything they know and placed in an orphanage run by the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. They are told they will shortly be reunited with their parents, but they soon come to grips with the grim reality. Rill battles to maintain her sisters and brother together in a world of peril and uncertainty while being at the merciless mercy of the facility’s sadistic director.
Present-day Aiken, South Carolina. Avery Stafford, who was raised in affluence and privilege, appears to have it all—a distinguished profession as a federal prosecutor, a charming fiancé, and an extravagant wedding in the works. An accidental encounter, however, leaves Avery with unsettling questions and forces her to travel through her family’s long-hidden history, on a road that will eventually lead either to destruction or to atonement, when she returns home to assist her father through a health crisis.
Lisa Wingate’s gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting story reminds us that even though the paths we take can lead to many different places, the heart never forgets where we belong. It is based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals, in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, abducted and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.”
“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.”
“People don’t come into our lives by accident.”
“We plan our days, but we don’t control them.”
“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses.”
Lale Sokolov, a Jew from Slovakia, is forcibly sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in April 1942. He is hired as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), entrusted with permanently marking his fellow inmates after his captors learned that he speaks multiple languages.
Lale, who has been jailed for more than 2.5 years, sees unbelievable acts of courage and kindness in addition to horrifying horrors and cruelty. He puts his own life in danger by using his position of power to buy food for his fellow captives by exchanging jewelry and money from dead Jews.
Lale, prisoner 32407, offers support to a young woman who is shaking while in line to have the tattoo of the number 34902 applied on her arm one day in July 1942. Gita is her name, and Lale makes a promise to marry her and somehow makes it through the camp when they first meet.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a vivid, harrowing, and finally hopeful recreation of Lale Sokolov’s life experience as the man who tattooed one of the most powerful symbols of the Holocaust on the arms of thousands of prisoners. It is also a testament to the resilience of love and humanity in the worst possible circumstances.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day.”
“To save one is to save the world,”
“remember the small things, and the big things will work themselves out.”
“We stand in shit but let us not drown in it.”
“I know he is not perfect, but I also know he will always put me first.”
The incredible story of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, and how she rose to become one of the most powerful women of her time is told in the movie Succession. 1444. By proxy, Henry VI marries Margaret of Anjou, a controversial decision that sparks national outrage. The newborn Margaret Beaufort also becomes a wealthy heiress following the passing of her father, the Earl of Somerset. She brings the Beaufort riches and a beneficial tie with her uncle, so everyone in court is vying to be her guardian. In the years that follow, Henry VI loses his mind, civil war breaks out, and families are set against one another. English rule in France also ends during this time.
Margaret Beaufort, who is barely out of childhood, marries twice by the time she is thirteen and gives birth to her lone child, the future King of England. The bloody, exciting history of the House of Lancaster’s downfall and the Tudor dynasty’s ascent is told in Succession.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“She thought of all the words that went unspoken in the world, throughout time: what happened to them, where did they go? What would happen if they were all spoken? How different would the world be then?”
― Livi Michael, Succession
Graves weaves the endless intrigues, depravity, bloody purges, and mounting brutality of the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, which would soon lead to the deified insanity of Caligula, into the “autobiography” of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiable stammerer who was destined to become Emperor despite himself.
I, Claudius and its follow-up, Claudius the God, are two of the most acclaimed and compelling historical novels ever produced.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.”
“Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”
“there are two different ways of writing history: one is to persuade men to virtue and the other is to compel men to truth.”
“I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate”
“He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about.”
This magnificent debut novel, a literary sensation, and instant bestseller portrays one of Japan’s most famous geishas’ real confessions with perfect authenticity and exquisite lyricism.
Memoirs of a Geisha take us into a world where looks are everything, virginity is sold to the highest bidder, ladies are taught how to seduce the most powerful men, and love is ridiculed as a delusion. It is an original and outstanding piece of fiction that is thrilling, sexual, romantic, and absolutely unforgettable.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.”
“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”
“He was like a song I’d heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.”
“I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”
“Sometimes,” he sighed, “I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see. ”
Approximately seventy years after the death of Christ, A Voice in the Wind’s opening line carries readers back to Jerusalem during the first Jewish-Roman War. The story revolves around an ill-fated romance between Hadassah, a stubborn slave girl, and Marcus, the brother of her owner and a gorgeous aristocrat. It follows the prideHadassah attempts to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and to treat her masters according to His teachings, but she is compelled to conceal her religious affiliation in order to survive. She struggles to quietly introduce God into her captors’ lives while feeling lost and alone, clinging solely to her faith.
Julia is a cunning, rash, and evil character who makes every effort to bring Hadassah down. Marcus, though, is a very different kind than Julia. Is it possible for Hadassah and Marcus’ relationship to succeed in light of not only their different social statuses but also the contrast between Hadassah’s unwavering faith and Marcus’ lack of any kind of belief? and passions of a group of Jews, Romans, and Barbarians living at the time of the siege. Hadassah is caught and sold to a wealthy merchant’s family after escaping the Romans’ killing of her family and the destruction of Jerusalem. She is brought to Rome and forced to work as Julia Valerian’s personal slave. Atretes, a captured German soldier, is made into a gladiator at the same time. The barbarian’s battle for existence in the arena is set against the decadence of a civilization on the edge of self-destruction during the decline of Rome.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We bear the consequences for what we have done to ourselves, and for the sin that rules this world. Jesus forgave the thief, but he didn’t take him down off the cross.”
“Stand firm in the Lord. Stand firm and let Him fight your battle. Do not try to fight alone.”
“True beauty is rare, and seldom recognized by the one who possesses it.”
“Never doubt God in the darkness what he has given us in the light.”
“Have faith have faith. When you have nothing else have faith.”
Edmond Dantes is imprisoned in the gloomy stronghold of If after being accused of a crime he did not commit. He discovers there that the Isle of Monte Cristo is home to a vast treasure trove, and he decides to utilize this information to not only organize his escape but also the demise of the three men who are to blame for his imprisonment. When it was first serialized in the 1840s, Dumas’ epic tale of agony and vengeance—which was based on a true story of wrongful imprisonment—was a hugely successful work of literature.
The entertaining English translation by Robin Buss is accurate to Dumas’s original style and is entire and unabridged. This edition comes with an introduction, explanations, and reading recommendations.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”
“All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope”
“It’s necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
“Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.”
Teenage Sunja, the beloved daughter of a disabled fisherman, falls in love with a rich stranger at a beach close to her house in Korea in the early 1900s. He makes a lot of promises, but she rejects his advances when she learns she’s pregnant and that her lover is married. Instead, she accepts a marriage proposal from a kind, frail clergyman who is passing through town while traveling to Japan. But by leaving her house and rejecting her son’s wealthy father, she starts a dramatic story that will last for many generations.
Pachinko is a beautifully written and incredibly poignant tale of love, devotion, ambition, and sacrifice. Strong, unyielding women, devoted sisters, and sons, fathers shook by moral crisis, and others Lee’s complex and passionate characters survive and thrive against the uncaring arc of history in everything from bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”
“You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”
“Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.” Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.”
“History has failed us, but no matter.”
“We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.”
The Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is covered in Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, which was first published in 1939. The Joads, an Oklahoma farm family, are driven from their homestead and compelled to move west to the promised land of California. A story that is intimately human yet magnificent in scope and moral vision, elemental but blunt, tragic but ultimately uplifting in its human dignity, emerges from their struggles and recurrent collisions with the harsh reality of an America split into Haves and Have-Nots.
The novel portrays the horrors of the Great Depression and inquires into the very essence of equality and justice in America. It is a depiction of the fight between the powerful and the downtrodden, of one man’s fierce response to injustice, and of one woman’s stoic strength. Steinbeck’s enduring classic work is arguably the most American of all American Classics because it functions simultaneously as a naturalistic epic, captivity tale, road fiction, and transcendental gospel.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
“And her joy was nearly like sorrow.”
“If you’re in trouble or hurt or need–go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help–the only ones.”
“The bank – the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.”
“It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”
In traditional agricultural China, this is the touching story of a Chinese farmer and his family. Wang Lung, a modest man, takes pride in the soil he cultivates, nurturing it as it does for him and his family. The lords of the nearby House of Hwang believe they are superior to the land and its inhabitants, but they will soon meet their own demise.
Wang Lung and his family experience difficult times after being forced to seek employment in the city by flood and drought. The wealthy were forced to evacuate as a result of the working class rioters smashing into their homes. Even when the House of Hwang declines, Wang Lung rises in the world when he offers charity to one noble and is rewarded.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It is the end of a family- when they begin to sell their land. Out of the land we came and into we must go – and if you will hold your land you can live- no one can rob you of land.”
“And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.”
“Hunger makes thief of any man.”
“But hers was a strange heart, sad in its very nature, and she could never weep and ease it as other women do, for her tears never brought her comfort.”
“And out of his heaviness there stood out strangely but one clear thought and it was a pain to him, and it was this, that he wished he had not taken the two pearls from O-lan that day when she was washing his clothes at the pool, and he would never bear to see Lotus put them in her ears again.”
Philadelphia’s streets are bustling with mosquitoes in the late summer of 1793 with reports of fever. Many people have fallen ill down by the docks, and the number of fatalities is rising. They now consist of Polly, a Cook Coffeehouse server. Mattie Cook, then fourteen, is not given time to grieve the loss of her childhood friend. Far from the mosquito-infested river, new customers have flooded her family’s coffee shop, and Mattie’s worries about fever are all but overwhelmed by fantasies of turning her family’s little business into a successful venture. However, when the fever starts to spread closer to her home, Mattie’s effort to start a new life must make way for a new battle—the battle to survive.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Had she ever enjoyed anything? Had every day been a struggle? Perhaps death would be a release, a rest for the weary.”
“What did it feel like to die? Was it a peaceful sleep? Some thought it was full of either trumpet-blowing angels or angry devils. Perhaps I was already dead.”
“Too much sleep is bad for your health, Matilda.” She slipped a freshly made ball of butter into a stone crock. “It must be such a grippe, a sleeping sickness.”
“Life was a battle, and Mother a tired and bitter captain”
“Our inhumane neighbors, instead of sympathizing with us tauntingly proclaim the healthfulness if their won cities…”
Two short pieces from a masterwork that was originally assumed to be lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling novelist who was sent to Auschwitz and perished before her work could be finished. Irène Némirovsky, a Ukrainian-born author living in Paris, had already achieved great success by the early 1900s when she started writing Suite Française, the first two sections of a planned five-part novel. She was also a Jew, thus in 1942 she was sent to Auschwitz after being caught, and a month later she passed away at the age of 39.
She started writing her novel, a brilliant picture of a human drama in which she too would become a victim, two years prior while residing in a little village in central France with her husband and their two young girls. The handwritten manuscripts for the two parts of the epic that she had finished when she was arrested were kept in a suitcase that her daughters would later use to flee to safety. We may now read Némirovsky’s literary masterwork after 64 years.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Waiting is erotic”
“After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees other enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire.”
“All the light of the day, fleeing the earth, seemed for one brief moment to take refuge in the sky; pink clouds spiralled round the full moon that was as green as pistachio sorbet and as clear as glass; it was reflected in the lake.”
“Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darknes the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Everyone looked at their house and thought, “Tomorrow it will be in ruins, tomorrow I’l have nothing left.”
“The tender June day persisted, refusing to die. Each pulse of light was fainter and more exquisite than the last, as if bidding farewell to the earth, full of love and regret.”
An elderly church deacon by the name of Sportcoat rearranges into the yard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn in September 1969, pulls a.38 from his pocket, and shoots the project’s drug dealer in front of everyone at point-blank range.
In Deacon King Kong, McBride vividly depicts the individuals impacted by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx witnesses, the white neighbors, the neighborhood police assigned to the investigation, and the congregants of the Five Ends Baptist Church, where Sportcoat served as a deacon, the Italian mobsters in the area, and Sportcoat himself.
As the plot develops, it becomes apparent how unexpectedly the lives of the characters—caught in the turbulent whirl of 1960s New York—overlap. When the truth finally comes out, McBride demonstrates that not all secrets are intended to be kept a secret, that facing change fearlessly is the best way to advance, and that the roots of love are found in compassion and hope.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“God was forever generous with His gifts: hope, love, truth, and the belief in the indestructability of the good in all people.”
“Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. The lies they tell each other sound better to them than the truth does when it comes out of our mouths.”
“A man who doesn’t trust cannot be trusted”
“You ain’t got to worry about your skin.” “I do worries about my skin. It covers my body.”
“A man ain’t got to stand in church every Sunday to do God’s work.”
Lalita Tademy follows four generations of strong, motivated black women as they fight against injustice to reunite their family and build success on their own terms, starting with her great-great-great-great grandmother, a slave possessed by a Creole family. They are women whose lives began as slaves, who survived the Civil War, and who now must contend with the paradoxes of liberation, Jim Crow, and the South prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Tademy paints a magnificent image of rural Louisiana and the tenacious spirit of one legendary family as she peels back decades of racial and cultural views.
Suzette, Elisabeth’s youngest daughter, is the first to experience the promise—and heartbreak—of freedom. Elisabeth carries a noble legacy and the burden of bondage. Emily, Philomene’s passionate daughter, works to ensure her children’s just due and maintain their dignity and future. Philomene, Suzette’s strong-willed daughter, utilizes a drive born of tragedy to rejoin her family and achieve unheard-of economic independence. Cane River reveals a chapter of American history that has never been seen in such searing and personal depth. It is meticulously researched and masterfully written.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You can’t tell how heavy somebody else’s load is just from looking. The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can carry”
“Reaching too deep into something not meant for you is full of pain. Figure out what you can have and work on that”
“Sometimes while you wait for what you think is better,” Philomene said, “what is good enough slips away.”
“This was the face of slavery. To have nothing, and still have something more to lose.”
“There is nothing more satisfying than having plans.”
It is now World War II. Irish-born Michael O’Shaunessey now resides in Nazi Germany with his parents. Michael is a member of the Hitler Youth, much like the other guys in his school. But Michael is hiding something. He is a spy, as are his parents. Michael abhors all that the Nazis represent. But he participates in the gruesome games and book burnings of the Hitler Youth while acting the part so he might learn insider information.
Things become much more problematic when Michael learns about Projekt 1065, a covert Nazi war mission. At all costs, he must demonstrate his allegiance to the Hitler Youth, even if it means jeopardizing everything he values. Include his own existence. Alan Gratz, the renowned author of Prisoner B-3087, has written a heart-pounding book. Known author Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087) has written a heart-pounding tale about conquering anxieties and defending what is most important.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I had managed to scare even the monsters, and when you can scare monsters, you can be sure you’ve become one yourself.”
“Michael, it’s terrible to say so, but sometimes you have to weigh the cost of one man’s life against the value of an entire operation.”
“we’d stood up to Hitler and the Nazis with the rest of the Allies.”
“None of the boys were studying for the math test we had today, because none of them cared.”
“A girl from the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the girls’ version of the Hitler Youth, came and collected him.”
Abigail Rook, a recent immigrant to New Fiddleham, New England, in 1892, encounters R. F. Jackaby, a paranormal investigator with a sharp eye for the extraordinary—including the capacity to see ghostly beings. Abigail is the ideal candidate to serve as Jackaby’s assistant because she has a knack for spotting unremarkable but crucial information. A serial killer is on the run, and Abigail finds herself in the middle of a riveting investigation on her first day. The police, with the exception of a lovely young investigator named Charlie Cane, are persuaded it’s a typical bad guy, but Jackaby is positive it’s an alien monster. William Ritter’s debut book, which features a paranormal detective as seen from the eyes of his ambitious and bright sidekick in a tale bursting with cheeky comedy and spice of the macabre, is like Doctor Who meets Sherlock.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“That the battles are usually in her head does not lessen the bravery of it. The hardest ones always are.”
“I have ceased concerning myself with how things look to others, Abigail Rook. I suggest you do the same. In my experience, others are generally wrong.”
“This world is full of dragon-slayers. What we need are a few more people who aren’t too proud to listen to a few fish.”
“I wondered which was sadder, leaving someone to cry after you were gone, or not having anyone who would miss you in the first place”
“Happiness is bliss – but ignorance is anesthetic, and in the face of what’s to come, that may be all we can hope for our ill-fated acquaintances.”
Why does Cassie’s family value the land so highly? The events of one traumatic year—the year of the night riders and the burnings, as well as the year a white girl publicly humiliates Cassie because she is black—are necessary to convince Cassie that the Logan family’s ability to live independently is essential. No matter how others may treat them, the Logans own something that no one can take away. It is the soil that provides the Logans with their strength and pride.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“There are things you can’t back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. But it’s up to you to decide what them things are. You have to demand respect in this world, ain’t nobody just gonna hand it to you. How you carry yourself, what you stand for–that’s how you gain respect. But, little one, ain’t nobody’s respect worth more than your own.”
“Baby, we have no choice of what color we’re born or who our parents are or whether we’re rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we’re here.”
“You have to demand respect in this world, ain’t nobody just going to hand it to you. How you carry yourself, what you stand for– thats how you gain respect. but little one aint nobody’s respect worth more than your own”
“One word can sometimes be sharper than a thousand swords”
“There are things you can’t back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. But it’s up to you to decide what them things are.”
In his 1966 book Tai-Pan, James Clavell tells the story of American and European traders who settled in Hong Kong in 1842 after the First Opium War. The second volume of Clavell’s Asian Saga is this one.
The tale of Dirk Struan, the Tai-Pan of the most powerful trading corporation in the Far East, is told in the 1840s during the volatile times surrounding Hong Kong’s foundation. He is also a great manipulator of men, a pirate, and an opium smuggler. This is the tale of his struggle to make his dynasty and himself the uncontested rulers of the Orient.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If you’re a sailor, best not know how to swim. Swimming only prolongs the inevitable—if the sea wants you and your time has come.”
“Gods are like people. They believe anything if you tell them right way.”
“I’ll thank you to remember that not so many years ago men were burned at the stake just for saying the earth went round the sun!”
“If you smile when you lose, then you win in life.”
“I’m saying that some men are saints. Some are happy being meek and humble and unambitious. Some men are born content to be second-best.”
Dinah is her name. Her existence is only briefly and violently hinted at in the Book of Genesis passages that are more familiar about her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons. This book describes the customs and conflicts of ancient womanhood—the red tent world—in Dinah’s words. The tale of her mothers, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah, the four wives of Jacob, is where it all starts. They care about Dinah and send her presents that help her get by during her hardworking youth, call to midwifery, and move to a new country. Dinah’s story establishes a close connection to the past by drawing on a spectacular time of early history. The Red Tent is incredibly moving because it blends intricate storytelling with an important contribution to contemporary fiction: a fresh perspective on biblical women’s society.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.”
“I wanted to cry, but I realized that I was too old for that. I would be a woman soon and I would have to learn how to live with a divided heart.”
“Of all life’s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.”
“Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life’s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.”
“If you want to understand any woman, you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. ”
One unprecedented move is about to be taken by three regular women. Skeeter, who is twenty-two years old, graduated from Ole Miss and has since moved back home. Even though she may have a degree, it is 1962 in Mississippi, and Skeeter’s mother won’t be content until she has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would often seek comfort from the lady who reared her, her loving maid Constantine, but Constantine has vanished, and no one would tell Skeeter where she has fled.
Aibileen is a smart, regal black maid who is parenting her seventeenth child who is white. After losing her beloved son, who passed away while his superiors turned a blind eye, something inside of her changed. Despite knowing that both of their hearts might be crushed, she is dedicated to the young girl she tends after.
Kathryn Stockett invents three exceptional people with pitch-perfect voices, whose will to begin a campaign of their own transforms a community and the way in which mothers, daughters, carers, and friends see one another. The Help is a profoundly touching book that is full of poignancy, comedy, and hope. It is a timeless and enduring tale about the lines we follow and the ones we can’t control.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”
“All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”
“Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”
“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”
“Stuart needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.”
Ken Follett is renowned across the globe as the king of split-second suspense, yet his most cherished and successful book tells the beautiful story of a twelfth-century monk who is motivated to do the seemingly impossible: construct the greatest Gothic cathedral that has ever seen.
There is a mystery, quick-paced action, and intense romance—everything fans have come to expect from Follett. But what sets The Pillars of the Earth apart from other novels is the period—the eleventh century—the setting—feudal England—and the subject—the construction of a magnificent cathedral. Every feature of Middle Ages England has been faithfully recreated by Follett. It becomes routine to see the enormous forests, walled cities, castles, and monasteries.
The master storyteller entices the reader magnetically into the linked lives of his characters into their dreams, labors, and loves against this vividly envisioned and intricately interwoven backdrop, packed with the horrors of war and the rhythms of daily life: Tom, the master builder, Aliena, the stunningly attractive nobility, Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge, Jack, the stone artisan, and Ellen, the curse-casting forest creature round out the cast. Each individual, from the lowly stonemason to the regal ruler, is wonderfully portrayed. Follett spins a tale of betrayal, retaliation, and love around the building site that starts with an innocent man being publicly hanged and ends with a king being humiliated.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.”
“She wanted to say ‘I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage’…”
“The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.”
“Hunger is the best seasoning.”
“Proportion is the heart of beauty.”
Marie de France, age 17, is sent to England to become the new prioress of a destitute abbey, with its nuns on the verge of starvation and plagued by illness. Marie de France was expelled from the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine because she was thought to be too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life.
With her solitary and erratic sisters, Marie finds focus and affection after initially being overwhelmed by the intensity of her new life. In this test, Marie gradually replaces her longing for her family, her native land, and the passions of her childhood with something new to her: love for her sisters and a firm belief in her own supernatural visions.
Marie, who was the last in a long line of female fighters and crusaders to be born, is determined to set the women she now leads and defends on a daring new route. Will Marie’s vision alone be a sufficient defense in a world that is corroding and altering in horrifying ways and that cannot accept her existence?
A captivating depiction of blazing desire, irrational faith, and a woman whose history both moves through and around, Matrix brings together currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy. It is a film that is equally attuned to the sacred and the profane. The first book by Lauren Groff since Fates and Furies, the new book explores the unbridled potential of feminine creativity in a corrupted society.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Nothing is all stark and clear any longer, nothing stands in opposition. Good and evil live together; dark and light. Contradictions can be true at once. The world holds a great and pulsing terror at its center. The world is ecstatic in its very deeps.”
― Lauren Groff, Matrix
“Aging is a constant loss; all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not. Skins are shed, and left at the roadside for the new young to pick up and carry on.”
― Lauren Groff, Matrix
“Animals are closer to god, of course; this is because animals have no need of god.”
― Lauren Groff, Matrix
“Open your hands and let your life go. It has never been yours to do with what you will.”
― Lauren Groff, Matrix
“Women act counter to all the laws of submission when they remove themselves from availability.”
― Lauren Groff, Matrix