Winter Holiday Reads 2019

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After
by Anna Todd
Tessa is a good girl with a sweet, reliable boyfriend back home. She’s got direction, ambition, and a mother who’s intent on keeping her that way. 
But she’s barely moved into her freshman dorm when she runs into Hardin. With his tousled brown hair, cocky British accent, tattoos, and lip ring, Hardin is cute and different from what she’s used to. 
http://www.goodreads.com
35247769
Always and forever, Laura Jean
by Jenny Han

Lara Jean is having the best senior year.
And there’s still so much to look forward to: a class trip to New York City, prom with her boyfriend Peter, Beach Week after graduation, and her dad’s wedding to Ms. Rothschild. Then she’ll be off to college with Peter, at a school close enough for her to come home and bake chocolate chip cookies on the weekends.
http://www.goodreads.com

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Away
by Amy Bloom

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. 
http://www.goodreads.com
1738972
The Believers
by Zoë Heller

 
Zoë Heller, author of Notes on a Scandal and Everything You Knowhas written a comic, tragic tale about one family’s struggles with the consolations of faith and the trials of doubt. 

When Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to re-examine her ideas about their forty-year marriage. Joel’s children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling discovery themselves, but for the time being, they are grappling with their own dilemmas.
http://www.goodreads.com
36203664
A Crystal of Time
by Soman Chainani ,Iacopo Bruno (Illustrator)

In this fifth installment in Soman Chainani’s New York Times bestselling fantasy series, The School for Good and Evil, Sophie, Agatha, and their friends must find a way to overthrow the sinister evil that twists lies into the truth and seeks to rewrite their story.

A false king has claimed the throne of Camelot, sentenced Tedros to death, and forced Sophie to be his queen. Only Agatha manages to escape.
 www.goodreads.com
202677
Disobedience
by Naomi Alderman  

A small, close-knit Orthodox Jewish community in London is the setting for a revealing look at religion and sexuality in Alderman’s frank yet heartfelt debut novel, Disobedience. The story begins with the death of the community’s esteemed rabbi, which sets in motion plans for a memorial service and the search for a replacement. The rabbi’s nephew and likely successor, Dovid, calls his cousin Ronit in New York to tell her that her father has died. Ronit, who left the community long ago to build a life for herself as a career woman, returns home when she hears the news, and her reappearance exposes tears in the fabric of the community.
 www.goodreads.com
46003373
Don’t Follow Vee
by Oliver Phommavanh

I’m not on social media, but everyone knows all about my life – from birth – thanks to Mum’s Instagram, The Chronicles of Vee. It used to be a bit of fun, but when we got to 100,000 followers, Mum’s started to take it way too seriously. 

My mission? 
Stop my mum posting everything about my life. 

How? 
1. Become Anti-Vee and make my life unfollowable. 
2. Make Mum’s life more exciting than mine so she posts stuff about herself instead.
http://www.goodreads.com
36476450
The Dysasters
by P.C. Cast ,Kristin Cast

Foster Stewart knows she’s different. Her life has never been “normal.” Talking to plants and controlling cloud formations aren’t things most seventeen year olds are into. Tate “Nighthawk” Taylor is perfect. Star quarterback and all around dreamy boy next door he never thought about his “extra” abilities. What quarterback wouldn’t want night vision? That’s not weird, right? It’s cool! 
 www.goodreads.com
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The Invisible Hero
by Elizabeth Fensham

From award-winning author Elizabeth Fensham comes a book with heart for the hero in us all. Philip has spent his whole life at school either being invisible or being called stupid. He’s used to being the loner, the odd one out, the boy who lives with his nan. So when Philip’s class is given a school assignment to write about heroes and villains, the project causes conflict in the classroom as everyone weighs in on the debate. For the first time, Philip has the opportunity to shine in school – but can he convince the class that being different is not necessarily a bad thing and that heroes have many disguises? 
 www.goodreads.com
7313457
Nocturne
by Diane Armstrong

Few know the story of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Polish Resistance … Even fewer know the stories of the children caught in it …

She closed her eyes and listened to the forbidden Chopin nocturne … its magic hung in the air. It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elz’unia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF. Forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, Elz’unia learns that even children must create their own rules to survive. 
 www.goodreads.com
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Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay 

Paris, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family’s apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
 www.goodreads.com
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Four Dead Queens
by Astrid Scholte 

Seventeen-year-old Keralie Corrington may seem harmless, but in fact, she’s one of Quadara’s most skilled thieves and a liar. Varin, on the other hand, is an honest, upstanding citizen of Quadara’s most enlightened region, Eonia. Varin runs afoul of Keralie when she steals a package from him, putting his life in danger. When Varin attempts to retrieve the package, he and Keralie find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that leaves all four of Quadara’s queens dead.
 www.goodreads.com
32762937
Flashback
(Keeper of the Lost Cities #7)
by Shannon Messenger 

In this unforgettable seventh book, Sophie must let the past and present blur together, because the deadliest secrets are always the ones that get erased.

Sophie Foster doesn’t know what—or whom—to believe. And in a game with this many players, the worst mistake can be focusing on the wrong threat.
http://www.goodreads.com
38355410
Elevation
by Stephen King ,
 Mark Edward Geyer (Illustrator)

The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together—a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences.

Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis.
http://www.goodreads.com
36404262
What I Like About Me
by Jenna Guillaume 

You know all those movies where teenagers have, like, THE SUMMER OF THEIR LIVES?

This summer is probably not going to be that.

Source: Everything that’s happened since yesterday … 

The last thing sixteen-year-old Maisie Martin thought she’d be doing this summer is entering a beauty pageant.

Not when she’s spent most of her life hiding her body from everyone.

http://www.goodreads.com
8474766
Between Sky & Sea
by Herz Bergner,
 Arnold Zable (Introduction)
, Judah Waten (Translator)

A group of Jewish refugees are thrown together on board a dilapidated freighter charting a course for Australia. Fleeing terrible scenes of destruction in Europe, they are bound by a deep sense of loss and the uncertainty of their fate.

As the ship lists, inner conflicts burst to the surface and romance, revenge, guilt and desperation fill the craft. There’s poignancy, drama and an abiding strength of humanity as the passengers’ lives play out in this unbearable hinterland between sky and sea.
http://www.goodreads.com
836957
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories
by Etgar Keret, Miriam Schlesinger (Translator)

Israel’s hippest bestselling young writer today, Etgar Keret is part court jester, part literary crown prince, part national conscience. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God gathers his daring and provocative short stories for the first time in English. 

Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Keret’s stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. 
http://www.goodreads.com
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The Clothes on Their Backs
By Linda Grant

In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents’ home? This is a novel about survival – both banal and heroic – and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.  
http://www.goodreads.com
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The Coldest Winter
By Elizabeth Lutzeier

It is 1846 in Ireland and the potato harvest has failed. English soldiers are turning families out of their homes, and the roads are full of people with nowhere to go. Eamonn and his family must struggle to stay alive in spite of the cold and famine and try to build a new life for themselves. But first they must survive the coldest winter Ireland has ever known.A heartbreaking story that is an emotionally raw, and painfully honest account of an episode in history which is of huge political significance even today.
 www.goodreads.com
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Devoted
by Jennifer Mathieu 

Rachel Walker is devoted to God.

She prays every day, attends Calvary Christian Church with her family, helps care for her five younger siblings, dresses modestly, and prepares herself to be a wife and mother who serves the Lord with joy.
 www.goodreads.com
15944406
Doll Bones
by Holly Black, Eliza Wheeler (Illustrator)

 Zach, Poppy and Alice have been friends for ever. They love playing with their action figure toys, imagining a magical world of adventure and heroism. But disaster strikes when, without warning, Zach’s father throws out all his toys, declaring he’s too old for them. Zach is furious, confused and embarrassed, deciding that the only way to cope is to stop playing . . . and stop being friends with Poppy and Alice. 

 www.goodreads.com
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Dunbar (Hogarth Shakepeare)
by Edward St,Aubyn

‘I really did have an empire, you know,’ said Dunbar. ‘Have I ever told you the story of how it was stolen from me?

Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he handed over care of the family firm to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him doubting the wisdom of past decisions…

Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. But who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?
 www.goodreads.com
1452848
Homecoming
by Bernhard Schlink, Michael Henry Heim (Translator)

The first novel by Bernhard Schlink since his international best seller The Reader, Homecoming is the story of one man’s odyssey and another man’s pursuit.

A child of World War II, Peter Debauer grew up with his mother and scant memories of his father, a victim of war. Now an adult, Peter embarks upon a search for the truth surrounding his mother’s unwavering–but shaky–history and the possibility of finding his missing father after all these years. The search takes him across Europe, to the United States, and back: finding witnesses, falling in and out of love, chasing fragments of a story and a person who may or may not exist. Within a maze of reinvented identities, Peter pieces together a portrait of a man who uses words as one might use a change of clothing, as he assumes a new guise in any given situation simply to stay alive.
 www.goodreads.com
3755250
The Kindly Ones
by Jonathan Littell,
 Charlotte Mandell (Translator)


Named one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times of London
“Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened.”
A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max’s story. 
 www.goodreads.com
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The Place on Dalhousie
by Melina Marchetta 

‘You look the type to break your father’s heart.’
‘Yeah, but he broke mine first.’


When Rosie Gennaro first meets Jimmy Hailler, she has walked away from life in Sydney, leaving behind the place on Dalhousie that her father, Seb, painstakingly rebuilt for his family but never saw completed. Two years later, Rosie returns to the house and living there is Martha, whom Seb Gennaro married less than a year after the death of Rosie’s mother. Martha is struggling to fulfil Seb’s dream, while Rosie is coming to terms with new responsibilities. And so begins a stand-off between two women who refuse to move out of the home they both lay claim to.
 www.goodreads.com
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The Tattooist of Auschwitz
by Heather Morris 

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
 www.goodreads.com
40221987
Gravity Is the Thing: A Novel
by Jaclyn Moriarty

The adult debut from bestselling, award-winning young adult author Jaclyn Moriarty—a frequently hilarious, brilliantly observed novel in the spirit of Maria Semple, Rainbow Rowell, and Gail Honeyman—that follows a single mother’s heartfelt search for greater truths about the universe, her family and herself.
http://www.goodreads.com
38532155
The Three Secret Cities
by Matthew Reilly

The thrilling new novel featuring Jack West, Jr. from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Matthew Reilly!

A shadow world behind the real world 

When Jack West, Jr. won the Great Games, he threw the four legendary kingdoms into turmoil.

A world with its own history, rules and prisons 

Now these dark forces are coming after Jack…in ruthless fashion.
http://www.goodreads.com
42479096
The War Artist
by Simon Cleary

When Brigadier James Phelan returns from Afghanistan with the body of a young soldier killed under his command, he is traumatised by the tragedy. An encounter with young Sydney tattoo artist Kira leaves him with a permanent tribute to the soldier, but it is a meeting that will change the course of his life. What he isn’t expecting is a campaign of retribution from the soldiers who blame him for the ambush and threaten his career. With his marriage also on the brink, his life spirals out of control. Years later, Phelan is surprised when Kira re-enters his life seeking refuge from her own troubles and with a young son in tow. She finds a way to help him make peace with his past, but she is still on the run from her own. The War Artist is a timely and compelling novel about the legacy of war, the power of art and the possibility of redemption. 
http://www.goodreads.com

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