Eva Abrams is startled to see a picture of a book. The 18th century book is believed to have been stolen by the Nazis. A German librarian is attempting to find the rightful owners of looted Nazi-era books, and believes that the text of this one has been altered to contain a secret code he has been unable to decipher. Of course, Eva has seen this book before. More than six decades earlier, she helped develop the code contained within it. The story shifts to the 1940s when the young Eva and others used the book to conceal the real names of children who were sent into hiding.
Two women fight for survival during a nighttime drive across the desert in New Mexico in “Don’t Turn Around.” A truck menaces them for hours. Is it targeting Cait, who posted a story online about her sexual assault by a famous country-western singer? Or perhaps Rebecca, in a bad marriage to a politically ambitious man?
Erin has postponed death once against all odds by responding to her cancer treatment. In “The Falling Woman” by Richard Farrell, she postpones it a second time by being the lone survivor when a passenger airplane breaks apart over Kansas. In a loveless marriage and with her children out of the nest, and with her family already mourning her death, Erin decides not to be found and to die in peace. Charlie Radford, investigating the accident, at first doesn’t believe the stories of a survivor found in a barn still strapped into her seat, but finds they are true. He eventually must make a decision: bring Erin to public attention, or give her the privacy she craves.
“The Lending Library” by Aliza Fogelson features a thirty-something small town art teacher afraid that time is running out to find love and have a baby. When the local library closes indefinitely, she opens the sunroom of her house to lend books out. This brings new friends, and perhaps a new relationship, into her life.
Until well into World War II, black men in the Navy could only be cleaners or cooks. Under pressure, the Navy reluctantly sent its first cohort of thirteen black men to officer training in 1944. The nonfiction book “The Golden Thirteen” by Dan Goldberg tells the story of these thirteen men, the first blacks to wear the Navy’s gold officer stripes. It recounts how they endured verbal abuse, the incredulity of white sailors that they could be subordinate in rank to a Black man, the refusal of some sailors to salute them, and even violence as they blazed a trail.
