Mud Season by Jeff Kramer
Mud Season tells the story of Woody Hackworth, a disgraced newspaper reporter and wannabe novelist. Resentful, bored, and looking for a way to get back at his ex-employer, Woody makes a fateful decision: to write an environmental thriller and post chapters online as he goes.
His novel-in-progress gains traction in the gossipy snow-belt city of Icarus, New York, but not for reasons Woody wanted. His readers believe Woody is using his fiction to expose his in-laws and their successful family-owned construction business.
With each new post, Woody’s domestic discord grows, but how can he stop now? He’s almost famous.
Mud Season merrily wallows in the classic conflict between ambition and family, digs into the murky perils of online notoriety, and slings a comic-tragic elegy to the daily newspaper.
The Silversmith’s Secret by Stephen A. Seche
In April 1949, gifted silversmith Moishe Azani presses a note into the hand of an American pilot who has just delivered hundreds of Yemeni Jews like himself to the Promised Land of Israel. For over sixty years, the note sits untranslated and unread, until it comes into the possession of Hank Amato, the pilot’s grandson. Unemployed and aimless, Hank seizes the opportunity to retrieve Moishe’s abandoned jewelry, a decision that leads him-in the company of a charming female journalist-to a corner of the globe where poverty, corruption, and virulent terrorism have taken root. As Hank finds himself caught up in a dangerous terrorist scheme, he may also find the makings for a fresh start.
Not the Trip We Planned by Linda N. Edelstein and Carol G. Kerr
Chickie and Maddy are aging in their typical yin and yang styles when old friend Lena’s husband, Edward, suddenly dies. Maddy, a retired social worker, is eager to offer support; Chickie, a chronically underemployed journalist, is peeved at the inconvenience. Friendship prevails and the two reluctantly return to Chicago, where they’d all met decades earlier.
They soon learn that Lena requires more than comfort or casseroles-she is certain Edward was murdered and demands answers. Chickie and Maddy dismiss her suspicions as grief but agree to help. They’re soon astonished to discover they have a penchant for unraveling secrets, learning more about Edward than they ever wanted to know. As the tensions increase, the women must choose to remain silent or pursue justice . . . or is it revenge?
Yankeeland by Lacy Fewer
Fiercely independent and passionate, Brigid feels hindered by her family and the strict society of her small Irish town in the early 1900s. Brigid and her cousin Molly, who is more like a sister, dream of a new life in the seemingly unlimited land of opportunity they call Yankeeland—America. Brigid gets her chance when she emigrates with her husband Ben and her brother James, while Molly stays in Ireland. But when Brigid’s quest to have a child leads her to seek unconventional help, her mental stability is questioned. She is soon caught up in a patriarchal medical establishment she has little power to fight. The new life in America Brigid dreamed about takes a drastic turn. Decades later Brigid’s grandniece discovers a sack full of letters between the two cousins. She unravels the story and vows to tell the tale of what really happened to Brigid in Yankeeland.
Two Women, One War by Jane Barton Griffith
Women have been overlooked in the history of the Vietnam War. The gap is now filled with this riveting, true memoir. Two Women, One War is a story of the insanity of war, the human capacity for resilience, the power of hope, and the strength of women.
Wars are profoundly tragic, horrific, and cruel. Yet these two female authors-an American and Vietnamese-found joy in their friendship amid the human and physical destruction in Vietnam. Their story is not sad. Instead, this stunning memoir unpacks how they coped with the fear and found joy in the discovery that they shared a common humanity and desire for peace and love. They have kept their friendship alive over the past fifty years and felt compelled to share stories of their rare friendship as they grew older.
A Life Made from Scratch by Marie Newman
A Life Made From Scratch is a brutally honest, frequently funny memoir about Marie Newman’s rise to “controversial” congresswoman, mother of a transgender daughter, antibullying activist, and CEO. Marie shares the stories of her hard-fought business and political wins and losses, while managing her family’s transitions and mental health struggles. At its heart, this is the story of a woman who has moved mountains and built movements. Her invaluable lessons illustrate how movements, life solutions, careers, and families are built from a person’s motivation to solve a problem.
Completely unvarnished, she shares the inside story of congressional life, her unsuccessful bid for reelection, ever-present misogyny throughout her career, and the devastating sequence of events that would crush her political career and, paradoxically, be the fire that would finally free her.
Drinking from the Stream by Richard Scott Sacks
Part action-adventure novel, part political thriller based on historical facts, Drinking from the Stream is set during 1971 and 1972, a time of violent upheaval when the Vietnam War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution marked a generation. The action leapfrogs from Louisiana to London, Paris, and Tanzania in a coming-of-age tale of international youth colliding with post-independence Africa.
Jake Ries, a twenty-two-year-old Nebraska farm boy turned oil roughneck, turns fugitive when he unintentionally kills a homicidal White supremacist on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. On the run, he meets Karl Appel, a restless Oxford dropout and former anti-war activist struggling with his own personal demons. Together they throw caution to the wind and plunge into the Ethiopian and East African hinterland, where they discover that dictatorship and mass murder are facts of life.
Boy with Wings by Mark Mustang
What does it mean to be different? When Johnny Cruel is born with strange appendages on his back in the 1930s South, the locals think he’s a devil. Determined to protect him, his mother fakes his death, and they flee. Thus begins Johnny’s yearslong struggle to find a place he belongs. From a turpentine camp of former slaves to a freak show run by a dwarf who calls herself Tiny Tot and on to the Florida capitol building, Johnny finds himself working alongside other outcasts, struggling to answer the question of his existence. Is he a horror, a wonder, or an angel? Should he hide himself to live his life? Following Johnny’s journey through love, betrayal, heartbreak, and several murders, Boy With Wings is a story of the sacrifices and freedom inherent in making one’s own special way-and of love and the miracles that give our lives meaning.
Dreams and Shadows by Emma Violand-Sánchez
Emma Violand-Sánchez knew little English when she arrived in Virginia from Bolivia in the summer of 1961 as a high school senior. In the decades that followed, she would lose a husband in Vietnam, raise two children as a single mother, and become a transformative figure in American public education and in service to immigrants and refugees, advocating for bilingual education and expanding opportunities for immigrant students and their families.
Part testament to the power of suffering and faith and to the challenges women face across the world, Dreams and Shadows is also a meditation on politics, class, the immigrant experience, acculturation as a lifelong process, and the importance of maintaining bicultural identity against the myth of the
American “melting pot.” On a deeper level, it is also the story of a life lived in service-and about the ways that suffering and joy are contained each within the other, binding us all together across cultures and boundaries.
One Rogue Raider by Larry Allen Lindsey
In late June 1914, two gunshots in Sarajevo have changed the course of history. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is dead, and World War I begins. Across the world, the German dreadnought SMS Emden is sent to the Far East to disrupt Allied shipping.
The Emden is outnumbered sixty to one, but the men on board will do their duty. What follows is a three-month cat-and-mouse chase with the Royal Navy. Under the leadership of “gentleman pirate” Captain Karl Friedrich Max von Müller, the elusive “White Swan of the East” manages to sink sixteen civilian Allied vessels without a single loss of life on either side before meeting her demise.
Solidly grounded in history, One Rogue Raider imagines the thoughts and dreams and deeds of Emden‘s crew, her pursuers, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill himself, bringing to life what was perhaps the last instance of a conflict at sea where tonnage sunk and body counts did not trump human decency and honor.
