In May, 1945, Pavel Mandl, a Polish Jew recently liberated from a concentration camp, searches for surviving family in the Allied Zones of a crushed Germany. While searching for family members and waiting for a visa to America, he befriends a pair of refugees, Fela, and a teenaged boy named Chaim, and soon the trio form a makeshift family. Fifteen years later, Pavel and Fela are married and living in Queens with their children. Chaim and his wife, Sima, recently emigrated from Israel, are raising a daughter nearby. Though the deprivation and terror of the war are still with them, these survivors consider their memories private; experiences never to be spoken of, even with each other. It is in everyday moments—taking the children to the pool, shopping for liquor—that they find refuge from the horrors of their remembrances.

For decades, these survivors have successfully compartmentalized the past. But when the Iron Curtain falls in the 1990s, Pavel, Fela, and Chaim are reluctantly forced to confront the legacy of their experiences by a culture that has unexpectedly embraced their tragedy as a commodity in need of exploration and understanding.

In Displaced Persons, Ghita Schwarz creates indelible portraits of immigrants shaped by their histories—ordinary men and women who lived through cataclysmic times—and uses them to illuminate changing cultural understandings of trauma and memory and its impact for us all.

"This book is a stunner. Elegantly written in exquisite, vibrant and witty prose that rides well with the clever use of quotes from Shakespeare, it interweaves an astonishing historic take on the tale of the star-crossed lovers with a fast-paced, modern thriller. Every sentence is a joy, every character lives, and medieval and modern Siena are brilliantly evoked. The theme is delightfully original—and the kind of thing you wish you had thought up yourself. The author is to be congratulated on a truly fabulous book that will surely be a resounding success! We will never see Romeo and Juliet in quite the same way again… ." —Alison Weir, author of The Lady Elizabeth

At the news of her father's death, Flora quits her big-city magazine job and returns to Darwin, the quaint New England town where she grew up, to retreat into the house he has left her, filled as it is with reminders of him. Even weightier is her appointment as her father's literary executor. It seems he was secretly writing poems at the end of his life—love poems to a girlfriend Flora didn't know he had. Flora soon discovers that this woman has her own claims on Lewis's poetry and his memory, and in the righteousness of her loss and bafflement at her father's secrets—his life so richly separate from her own in ways she never guessed—Flora is highly suspicious of her. Meanwhile, Flora is besieged by well-wishers and literary bloggers alike as she tries to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, her memories of her parents' divorce, and her own uncertain future.

At once comic and profound, Perfect Reader is a heady, uplifting story of loneliness and of the spur to growth that grief can be. Brimming with energy and with the elbow-patchy wisdom of her still-vivid father, Flora's story will set her free to be the "perfect reader" not just of her father's life but of her own as well.

In Radiant Daughter, award-winning novelist Patricia Grossman follows a Czech-American family for twenty-seven years, beginning in suburban Chicago in 1969 and ending in Brooklyn, in seaside "Little Odessa," in 1996. Though the novel begins as a traditional assimilation story—immigrant parents, "native" children, and the conflicts one might expect—it evolves into a highly particular and harrowing tale surrounding the descent of Elise Blazek, the family's brightest star. Radiant Daughter is also a story of translation—between generations, from the Czech of Irena and Stepan, to the "American" of the children, and finally to the Russian that is Elise's academic specialty.

Led by their indomitable mother, Marie, the Reesers make a daring escape from under the watchful eyes of the Gestapo, fleeing their comfortable home in Czechoslovakia to safety and a new life in Canada. Their lives are saved, but all else is lost, including four beautiful and valuable paintings that Marie loved. In all the years that follow, she never gives up hope that they will be found and returned, symbols of their vanished world.

The search to reclaim these pieces of their lost legacy spans more than fifty years of war and political upheaval. Marie and her son Karl face Nazis and Communists, prejudice and corruption, before enlisting the help of two unlikely saviors—a brave Canadian diplomat and an honest smuggler—in the struggle for their return.

At the height of the Belle Epoque, the bourgeois lawyer François Dubon lives a well-ordered life. He spends his days at his office, his evenings with his aristocratic wife—and his afternoons with his generous mistress. But this complacent existence is shattered when a mysterious widow pays him a call. She insists only Dubon can rescue her innocent friend, an army captain by the name of Dreyfus who has been convicted of spying. Against his better judgment, Dubon is drawn into a case that will forever alter his life—and tear France herself apart. Kate Taylor artfully mixes mystery and history in this page-turning jaunt through 19th-century Parisian society.

"Racculia's irresistibly charming debut is an artful mix of genres: oddball domestic (set in a boardinghouse, characters named Desdemona and Oneida), coming-of-age (high school loves and teen angst) and literary women's fiction (love, loss, and friendship). Sixteen years ago, Amy Henderson ran away from home to become a special effects creator in Hollywood. After she is killed in an on-set accident, her widower, Arthur, finds a box of memorabilia and sets off to her hometown to understand her past. He moves into a boardinghouse run by Amy's childhood best friend, Mona, and her teenage daughter, Oneida. Initially, Mona acts as Arthur's emotional nurse, but as they realize they hold answers for each other about Amy, their bond grows deeper. Oneida, meanwhile, gets involved with a local bad boy. The third act is nearly done in by an overly foreshadowed secret, but Racculia smartly keeps the focus on Oneida, Arthur, and Mona's reactions to the revelation (rather than the reveal itself). With its happy ending and rich trove of Gen-X references and humor, this is a thoroughly enjoyable first novel, both accessibly absurd and quite touching." Publishers Weekly

Few writers portray the dignity of people trapped by poverty or emotional isolation as compassionately as Gabrielle Roy does in the four stories of western Canada that comprise Garden in the Wind. The effortless craft and poetic sensitivity evident in all her writing are here in full abundance as she recounts the stories of a tramp who belongs to no one, a Chinese immigrant struggling to fulfill his dream, Doukhobor settlers fired by a vision of a new land, and a lonely woman who nurtures her small but splendid garden. Imbued with a poignant simplicity,these are stories of sheer artistry.

Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70's and 80's, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can "taste" words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Linda's is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past.

Then, when a personal tragedy compels Linda to return to Boiling Springs, she gets to know a mother she never knew and uncovers a startling story of a life, a family. Revelation is when God tells us the truth. Confession is when we tell it to him.

This astonishing novel questions many assumptions—about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected and to be disconnected—from others and from the past, our bodies, our histories, and ourselves.