My Reading Radar 5/24/2014

Let's see what struck my fancy this week.... First up, Saving Amelie by Cathy Gohlke. I've known for some time how the Nazis felt about deaf people...and it's sad, but this story sounds good. It is about a woman who tries to save a deaf girl--I think--from her Nazi father.


Increasingly wary of her father's genetic research, Rachel Kramer has determined that this trip with him to Germany--in the summer of 1939--will be her last. But a cryptic letter from her estranged friend, begging Rachel for help, changes everything. Married to SS officer Gerhardt Schlick, Kristine sees the dark tides turning and fears her husband views their daughter, Amelie, deaf since birth, as a blight on his Aryan bloodline.Once courted by Schlick, Rachel knows he's as dangerous as the swastikas that hang like ebony spiders from every government building in Berlin. She fears her father's files may hold answers about Hitler's plans for others, like Amelie, whom the regime deems "unworthy of life." She risks searching his classified documents only to uncover shocking secrets about her own history and a family she's never known.Now hunted by the SS, Rachel turns to Jason Young--a driven, disarming American journalist and unlikely ally--who connects her to the resistance and to controversial theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Forced into hiding, Rachel's every ideal is challenged as she and Jason walk a knife's edge, risking their lives--and asking others to do the same--for those they barely know but come to love.

***

On my wishlist after spotting it on Edelweiss, Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan. The twist about the Manhattan Publishing world really got my interest, but the entire story sounds intriguing.

For a small-town girl with a big dream in 1955, there is no address more glamorous than New York’s Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives in its vaunted halls to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate Dolly comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. Vivian, a brash, redheaded British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel’s rules, rounds out the unlikely trio of friends.As the summer wears on, Laura struggles to find her footing in the chic but formidable world of Manhattan publishing while Dolly battles her own demons of self-doubt. Vivian longs to sing at the Stork Club instead of just shilling cigarettes there, but finds herself floundering in more ways than one. Together, the girls embark on a journey of self-discovery that will take them from the penthouse salons of Park Avenue to the Beat scene of Greenwich Village to Atlantic City’s Steel Pier — and into the arms of very different men who will alter their lives forever.

***

Spotted and requested on NG. I love the fact this is by a publisher called SHE WRITES Press.. After Midnight by Diane Shute. 


As far as Alix is concerned, she has no past she only has today, and her plans for the future: raising a dynamic string of racehorses that will take the 1830s British racing world by storm by storm. Enter Lily, Alix s estranged twin sister, spoiled, defiant and recently married for money and social status. As Alix is forced into a position that threatens to alter the course of her future, she begins to remember details about the mysterious events surrounding her father s death when she was a child. When Alix seeks her uncle s help, it sparks his dangerous return to France to reclaim the lives they left behind long ago.