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LAST HOUSE BEFORE THE MOUNTAIN

One of our recommended novels is Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer

For readers of Ian McEwan, Elena Ferrante, and Julie Orringer, the spellbinding, internationally bestselling, multigenerational family saga set in a fractured rural village in WWI Austria.

Maria and Josef live with their children in a valley in westernmost Austria. When the First World War breaks out and Josef is drafted into the army, Maria is left to provide for her family alone. Every day is a struggle against starvation, the harsh alpine climate and the hostile nearby villagers who see Maria as little more than a beautiful temptress out for the men left behind. But when a red-haired stranger arrives in the village,

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NIGHT FLIGHT TO PARIS

One of our recommended books is Night Flight to Paris by Cara Black

It is once again up to American markswoman Kate Rees to take the shot that just might win—or lose—World War II, in the followup to national bestseller Three Hours in Paris.

Three missions. Two cities. One shot to win the war.

October 1942: it’s been two years since Kate Rees was sent to Paris on a British Secret Service mission to assassinate Hitler. Since then, she has left spycraft behind to take a training job as a sharpshooting instructor in the Scottish Highlands. But her quiet life is violently disrupted when Colonel Stepney, her former handler,

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ONCE WE WERE HOME

One of our recommended books is Once We Were Home by Jennifer Rosner

From Jennifer Rosner, National Jewish Book Award Finalist and author of The Yellow Bird Sings, comes a novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II.

When your past is stolen, where do you belong?

Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them,

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WALLS

One of our recommended books is Walls by L.M. Elliott

This powerful Cold War novel tells the story of two cousins, one German and the other an American Army brat, as they navigate the political and social turmoil that threatens their friendship and ends in the abrupt rise of the Berlin Wall–which may separate them forever.

Drew is an army brat, a hotshot athlete poised to be his high school’s star pitcher, when he has to move for the sixth time in fifteen years—this time to West Berlin, where American soldiers like his dad hold an outpost of democracy against communist Russia in Hitler’s former capital. Meanwhile, in East Berlin,

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IN THE TIME OF OUR HISTORY

One of our recommended books is In the Time of Our History by Susanne Pari

Inspired by her own family’s experiences following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Susanne Pari explores the entangled lives within an Iranian American family grappling with generational culture clashes, the roles imposed on women, and a tragic accident that forces them to reconcile their guilt or forfeit their already tenuous bonds. Set between San Francisco and New Jersey in the late-1990’s, In the Time of Our History is a story about the universal longing to create a home in this world – and what happens when we let go of how we’ve always been told it should look.

Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita’s death,

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UNDESIRABLES

One of our recommended books is Undesirables by Aomar Boum

In this gripping graphic novel, a Jewish journalist encounters an extension of the horrors of the Holocaust in North Africa.

In the lead-up to World War II, the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism in Europe foreshadowed Hitler’s genocidal campaign against Jews. But the horrors of the Holocaust were not limited to the concentration camps of Europe: antisemitic terror spread through Vichy French imperial channels to France’s colonies in North Africa, where in the forced labor camps of Algeria and Morocco, Jews and other “undesirables” faced brutal conditions and struggled to survive in an unforgiving landscape quite unlike Europe.

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