Christine Manganhas managed to combine the essence of 40s noir with a caper in the 60s. Atmospheric and cinematic she builds characters and situations that continue to draw you in deeper and deeper. Two characters both in search of their identities and futures while trying to lose their pasts. A great book for bookclubs.

When I read the title, I immediately thought of Alvin Ailey..
..but having now read this marvelous first novel by an up and coming star..I have a totally different prospective..
A captivating and vivid portrait of our turbulent past, present, and characters that will stay with you. Opening in the summer of 1982, deep in Mississippi, you meet 11 year old Ella, aware but still naive to the world outside her fairly insular black community. Jump back to 1955,
Philadelphia, Mississippi and meet Kate, a privileged white girl living a totally different lifestyle. We watch as the years progress through the turbulent 60s and Kate's prejudices grow as she ages and is influenced by her bigoted father and community. We are reminded of the horrific news that greeted us too many times on the news depending on where in this country you lived.
By the 80s these two will cross paths. Ella, no stranger to prejudice within her own family and community combined with her community elders' mutual distrust of the opposite race comes face to face with a thoroughly reinvented Kate. Now known as Katherine, perhaps trying to atone for the sins of the past, she has the temerity to enter Ella's world. Posing as a researcher, PhD candidate, then as teacher and mentor, she must also confront her well hidden demons. This is also a coming of age story in many ways as Ella's tries to navigate her family and her own community as her awareness grows as to her role in life.
Vivid characters and voices abound. Our past is not always so distant.
The truth will always surface and how we handle it helps us to grow,
The author knows these voices. Her characters leap off the page, her descriptions are straight out of newsreel, newspapers,and are very cinematic. I could not put this down once I started. As ugly as our past was, it's important to be reminded.

Families are always complicated but even more so for second generation siblings trying to navigate two worlds.

Respect for old world traditions vs new world ideology often are cause for conflicts which drive us away but inevitably draw/suck us back in.

Ms, Chang's lyrical prose paints a picture of intense feelings and struggles that keeps us turning page after page as we are drawn into this family. One brother trying desperately to win approval and honor traditions, another turning his back while attempting to ignore not only these traditions and heritage, and the third still just trying to grow and understand just who he is and who they are.

A deeply engrossing, yet dark portrayal of tradition vs assimilation, family secrets, and awakening.

A must read.

I must admit, due to the current political atmosphere, the rising of global, as well as national antisemitism, the resurgence of nationalism and being underquarentine from an invisible invader, I postponed reading this book. A decision I now, totally regret. A more timely and heartfelt endeavour has not been written in a long time. Her research and desire to paint a truthful portrait of a painful time in world history is evident from the first page to the last.

She tells the story through the eyes of her protagonist, a child and who is more painfully truthful than a child. They are but clay that we mold and shape to our ideals until one day the world forces their eyes to be opened.

Herta is just such a child. She is the only daughter of two loving parents and the sister to a loving brother. She sees what they want her to see, sheltered in the family womb until one day, she is confronted by the ugly truth of a changing world. One she really doesn't understand. The rhetoric at home is kept to adults only until it invades her school, her friends and her surroundings. Friends once welcomed are shunned, without explanation. School mates and favorite teachers become persona non grata again with no explanation. Doctrine becomes the norm and taught as the only acceptable truth.

As all children do, they parrot what they are told is the truth until one day they begin to question. In the 30's in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler, this makes for a very tenuous and dangerous existence. There is Hitler's truth or there is no truth. Her father, once the editor of a local newspaper becomes more and more involved in the Nazi party, rising within its ranks. Her mother becomes the perfect wife of such a man devoting more and more time to her "good works". Her brother becomes involved in the youth movements with eyes on the Luftwaffe and all things childish are brushed to the side. Friends who no longer "fit" are abandoned or scorned. Things that Herta just takes for granted without understanding until one day, when she encounters one of those friends. A friend who was so close to the family a friend who saved her life as a young child, a friend who meant so much to all until he was shunned. When the explanations are made, her world begins to shatter. She begins to question everything. The facade begins to shatter and she enters a very dangerous realm. One difficult for an adult let alone a teenager. Trying to balance both worlds in such dangerous times leads to dangerous decisions. Decisions a teenager like Herta, a child of privilege, is not truly capable to handle. She is forced to develop a strength she was not groomed to possess.

Inspired by the past of her father's family, Fein dove into the research of the era, location and facts that existed during those dangerous years. Like many, including friends of my family, these times were to be buried and not talked about for a very long time. It was too painful. Too ugly. Too frightening to think it could ever rear its ugly head again.

I applaud her and cannot recommend this book highly enough. I assure you it will be high on the list for several of the book clubs I belong to. This is a must read for both its passion, history and as a warning for these dangerous times to not let this happen again.

Thank you BookBrowse for bringing this book to my attention and thank you Ms. Fein for a marvelous book.

I have read Joshilyn Jackson's books from the very beginning but never have I ever been unable to put one down until I was through. Ms.Jackson never fails to captivate or entertain or hold my attention but this newest, Never Have I Ever is in a class by itself! Bravo!

For those of us who grew up in the 60s in the days of Kennedy, Khrushchev, Batista, Che and Fidel this book will bring back many memories...For those of us who grew up in Miami or even the Northeast, where many flew to avoid the wrath of the revolution, this will bring back many memories.

Ms. Cleeton introduced readers to the Perez family in Next Year in Havana and now tells the tale of another of the daughters and the family's secrets. The intrigues of the revolution and those that were disappointed by it and how they were used by others with different agendas are illustrated with a depth of understanding that those that don't remember or never knew will find compelling.

This is a wonderful book for a book club and I encourage others to read it.

You know you have a good read when you become so invested in the characters that you find yourself yelling and talking back to them. laughing with them, embarrassed for them and wishing they would have talked more to each other.

While some readers may be off put by the bouncing back and forth between narrators, once I became more familiar with their cadence and thought process, this did not present a problem to my enjoyment of the book

I thoroughly enjoyed Echoes and hated to see it end..

Told in the first person, this intriguing first novel enters the realm of the psychological mystery so well done by B.A Paris and Gillian Flynn.

All we know is that our narrator is in a coma, the how and why are never quite clear. Her few moments of lucidity are centered in the past of childhood and the recent present. we hear the same snippets of conversation that her semi-conscious mind hears but We still know no more or less than she herself is willing to relinquish.

This is an intriguing read that will holds the reader spellbound up until the very last page. To say more would give too much away and ruin the experience.

32 years ago, my husband accepted an appointment that took our family as far from our roots as we could possibly imagine. Although we were living in a small Pennsylvania town in the heart of the Susquehanna valley as far removed from all the conveniences both culinary and otherwise that we had grown up with, we were ill prepared for the move to a South we thought had ceased to exist. The South portrayed by Eleanor Henderson not only existed in some towns 32 years ago, the same is true today.

Based on stories her father and grandparents shared, she paints a vivid picture of the late 20s and mid 30s in the South of the sharecropper and mill towns where timber or cotton were king. Class distinction between the large farmers and factory owners, their workers and races was very distinct. Farm owners led separate lives from their sharecroppers although they would allow them better living accommodations while their coloured workers oft lived in shantys without any comforts. Factory workers lived in company owned homes in the factory town. The races lived separately in separate divided parts of town never to mix without consequences. When they did, there was hell to pay with a lynching not uncommon.

The story Eleanor Henderson weaves was part of the fabric of the deep South and one I heard often when I moved here. Whether it was to test my sensitivities or to educate me, I never did figure out but in many cases it was as an apology for a past many tried to forget. A past where many stereotypes still lay hidden with the rest of the family skeletons.

When I picked up The Orphan's Train by Christina Baker Kline, I was swept away into a part of history I knew nothing about but her intensity and attention to detail. When I read that her next project was an exploration into Christina's World, I was thrilled and excited.

Of all of Andrew Wyeth's paintings, Christina's World has always been my favorite. I would spend hours in front of this painting trying to imagine who this girl was and what she was feeling. There was so much yearning in her pose.

As anticipated, Ms. Kline's talent and love of detail and research brought the rich history of the Maine coast, her people and specifically the Olson family and Christina alive. Andrew Wyeth, his wife Betsy and Christina became three dimensional and more than just historical characters I had read and studied about in art school. The empathy she shows for her characters made it all the more real for me.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. And, for those in book clubs, this is one entry that must be added to any list.

Having read Balson's Once We Were Brothers, I was anxious to read Karolina's Twins. Mr. Balson's knowledge and skills in bringing a human face to the history and horror of the Holocaust remains incomparable.

Once again the action and impetuous for the story involves a court case and our story is told in flash-back. Mr. Balson's voice this time is female and told with the sincerity of one forced to endure the unthinkable in order to survive and to ensure the lives and safety of those we love.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough and as with Once We Were Brothers, a must read. It is a true picture of a time and history we must not forget.

As recent events in our courts and news have illustrated, what we originally perceived was there to protect us has become a tool to be used to embarrass and discredit us. Ms. Wohlsdorf takes it one step further. The newest luxury hotel about to open on the California coast is a threat not only to the disappearing landscape but to any of the competition. Purported to be the epitome of luxury and to have state of the art security measures owned by one of the coast's richest, albeit most paranoid entrepreneurs, Manderley (a nod to DuMaurier) is preparing for its grand opening. With nods to Hitchcock and a little Christie, one by one the key players in the staff are picked off one by one. Tense, tending towards the cinematic. Who are these people and why are they doing what they are doing? More importantly, who is relating this action to us?

This is a first novel and the author shows great promise. I did feel the erotica was unnecessary for no other reason than I felt it distracted from the action. The murders are not described in extreme detail compared to other books I have read and for those that I am sure complained, as the accompanying blurb warns, "the terrible truth about Manderley is that someone is always watching"! And this is written over blood spatter. Forwarned is forearmed.

I doubt I will ever trust hotel or the eye in the sky again.

You can never really escape your past but it is your past that makes you who you are, whether you chose to use it is another story. Once again, Jackson introduces us to quirky, complicated characters who, whether or not you want them to, touch us in places we don't expect with feelings we are surprised at ourselves.

Paula Vauss has had to reinvent herself so many times during her lifetime it is amazing she has become as successful as she has as a lawyer. It is obvious that her past and upbringing have not only haunted her and driven her but it has also held her back in ways she didn't necessarily fully understand until 1 fateful day when the past alluded to in a long forgotten letter comes to visit and draws out emotions that she never knew she possessed.

I promise the reader will not be able to put The Opposite of Everyone down. It is a complicated web of a story but one that will touch you to the core.

As many of us find these days, circumstances often find us back in our parents' homes or towns either out of our economic need or to be full time caregivers.

David Harwood, widower and single parent, finds himself in just such a situation. A print reporter he has tried to make a life for himself and his son in the big city however, in order to do so he finds he must compromise the quality of their life. The decision to move home is not easily arrived at but is inevitable.
Unfortunately, as a print reporter he finds that his career is short lived when the hometown paper he is to write for, folds shortly after his return leaving him jobless and forces him to stay in his parents' home beyond what he had hoped. It also compromises his time by drawing him into a complicated family drama.
Small town politics, intrigues and scandals eventually come to the fore as he is drawn deeper and deeper into what is obviously not just a family matter.
This is an intricate and tightly woven story that will hold you tightly until the last page but I must warn you, this is only the beginning. It brings you to the precipice and leaves you hanging in the best tradition of cliffhangers.
I HIGHLY recommend this and cannot wait to see how this plays out in the next installment.

It is always exciting to find an author that can transport you so thoroughly to another place and time and it's even more exciting when it is a debut novel. The title alone was intriguing and I really had no idea what to expect. For an author to find their voice and make a character interesting is hard enough but Ms.Swyler manages to convincingly find the voice of multiple characters in different times, ages, nationalities and sex. She has made all characters, no matter how prominent in the story, so complete and three dimensional that you can believe them to be real.

As she allows you to peel back the layers, she taunts you to find the secrets that bind her tale together.

I cannot wait to suggest this book as a book club selection as I feel it will be great choice for discussion.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read a book I might easily have dismissed as "just another circus/carney story."