We Were Strangers: The Story of Magda Preiss <h2><strong>Book Synopsis</strong></h2><p><strong></strong><em>We Were Strangers </em>is the true story of Magda Preiss, a breathtaking masterpiece of Holocaust literature, composed in her own words upon arriving in America in the 1940s. Lived and told by a beautiful young bride with fearless defiance, Magda’s harrowing experience reveals a character who is larger than life and death. Hers is a love story more complex than any happy-ever-after tale. It recounts the love of culture, beauty, and life itself that fueled Magda’s will to survive; the love for her husband that made her stay to face Nazi horror instead of escaping with her parents and siblings; and her love for strangers, whose humanity amidst the most inhumane circumstances illuminates every page through Magda’s heroic voice.<br><br>From an idyllic childhood in Czechoslovakia through the hells of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, and Beendorf, Magda shows what it means to be a stranger at home and in foreign lands, to be estranged from loved ones and even from oneself as the world goes insane. In devastating sentences as sharp as barbed wire, Magda uncovers universal truths from her experience as a woman in the Holocaust. Then in words as sweet as an unexpected smile, she redeems our love of life. Dreamlike but all too real; dripping raw passion but unsentimental; righteous without moralizing—they don’t make books like this anymore, yet we need books like this now more than ever.</p><strong></strong>
The Summer Society (Gull's Landing Book 1) <p><strong>Dive into a spellbinding story of friendship, secrets, and the pact that started it all in this <B><i>USA Today</B></i> bestseller.</strong><br><br>Thirty years ago, Beatrice and Sophia Russo and their two best friends swore to reunite every summer in Gull's Landing. Now Sophia is gone and Beatrice is on the verge of losing their family beach house. Determined to protect her sister's memory and their girlhood oath, Beatrice turns to the two others for help. But saving the house means facing old secrets...<br><br>Diane's nest is empty but her weekly planner is full. Still, she needs more than Bunco nights and Taco Tuesdays to be happy.<br><br>Sue is cracking under the heat of a dysfunctional marriage. When she learns the truth about her husband, a summer with old friends could change everything.<br><br><strong>The three women are at a crossroads: leave the past behind them or conquer their ghosts with heart and laughter on the boardwalk of Gull's Landing. With a beachfront setting and flashbacks to their teenage years, The Summer Society is a moving and witty story about love, loss, and everlasting friendship.</strong><br></p><p><strong></strong><em>The Summer Society is a standalone women's fiction featuring romance and mystery set against the backdrop of a boardwalk reunion. Readers can enjoy novels in the Gull's Landing series in any order. </em><br></p><p><em>The Summer Society</em><br></p><p><em>The Garden Guild</em><br></p><p><em>The Country Club</em><br></p> The Island Daughter: When past secrets shatter you present, how do you face your future? (Love on the Island Book 3) <h3><strong>When past secrets shatter your present, how do you face your future?</strong><br></h3><p>After her dear stepfather has a fatal heart attack, Alicia returns home to the Åland Islands to support her mother, Hilda. She leaves behind a new life with her lover, Patrick, in Stockholm. <br></p><p>But when her lover’s ex, Mia, the daughter of the local property magnate, makes moves to rekindle her relationship with Patrick, Alicia is torn between duty and her own happiness.<br></p><p>Alicia’s hopes of a brighter future are further dashed when deeply buried family secrets surface. How can she forge a new life when everything she believed to be true about her past is a lie? <br></p><p>Meanwhile, Alicia’s best friend, Brit, has her own problems. After a life spent footloose and fancy-free, traveling the world working on cruise ships, she’s both horrified and delighted when she sees the thin pink lines on a test tube. But how can she have a baby with a man she’s only known for a matter of months?<br></p><p><em>The Island Daughter</em> is the third novel in Helena Halme’s<em> Love on the Island </em>series, but it can also be enjoyed as a standalone read.<br></p><p><strong>Join Alicia’s small island community for another installment in the “captivating” new series set on the most picturesque of Scandinavian islands. Once you enter her world, you’ll never want to leave.</strong><br></p> Before We Were Strangers: A Love Story <b>From the <i>USA TODAY</i> bestselling author of <i>Sweet Thing</i> and <i>Nowhere But Here</i> comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City.</b><br /><br />To the Green-eyed Lovebird:<br /> <br />We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House.<br /> <br />You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more.<br /> <br />We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other.<br /> <br />Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding…<br /> <br />I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello.<br /> <br />After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half?<br /> <br />M Swimming in the Moon: A Novel Used Book in Good Condition William Morrow & Company Under the Same Blue Sky: A Novel <p>From the <em>USA Today</em> bestselling author of <em>When We Were Strangers</em> and <em>Swimming in the Moon</em> comes a lush, exquisitely drawn novel set against the turmoil of the Great War, as a young German-American woman explores the secrets of her past.</p><p>A shopkeeper’s daughter, Hazel Renner lives in the shadows of the Pittsburgh steel mills. She dreams of adventure, even as her immigrant parents push her toward a staid career. But in 1914, war seizes Europe and all their ambitions crumble. German-Americans are suddenly the enemy, “the Huns.” Hazel herself is an outsider in her own home when she learns the truth of her birth.</p><p>Desperate for escape, Hazel takes a teaching job in a seemingly tranquil farming community. But the idyll is cracked when she acquires a mysterious healing power—a gift that becomes a curse as the locals’ relentless demand for “miracles” leads to tragedy.</p><p>Hazel, determined to find answers, traces her own history back to a modern-day castle that could hold the truth about her past. There Hazel befriends the exiled, enigmatic German baron and forges a bond with the young gardener, Tom. But as America is shattered by war and Tom returns battered by shell-shock, Hazel’s healing talents alone will not be enough to protect those close to her, or to safeguard her dreams of love and belonging. She must reach inside to discover that sometimes the truth is not so far away, that the simplest of things can lead to the extraordinary.  </p><p>Filled with rich historical details and intriguing, fully realized characters, <em>Under the Same Blue Sky</em> is the captivating story of one woman’s emergence into adulthood amid the tumult of war. </p>