The Slippage
by Ben Greenman (Harper Perennial)
In his take on suburban ennui, Greenman, an editor at The New Yorker, introduces William and Louisa Day, a childless couple in their early 40s. Following a bout of odd behavior — hoarding mail and suddenly disappearing from parties — Louisa has an American Dream epiphany and purchases an acre of land. She asks William to build a house. In the midst of some troubles — a married woman he once cheated with is moving across the street, and an arsonist is on the loose, for example — he agrees.
Helga’s Diary
A Young Girl’s Accout of Life in a Concentration Camp
by Helga Weiss (Norton)
In a father’s last words to his daughter, a transformational statement. “Draw what you see,” Otto Weiss wrote to his daughter Helga — an artist who still lives in the Prague apartment in which she was born in 1929 — in a note smuggled through Terezin, the most lenient of the WWII Nazi concentration camps. And long after her father disappeared, likely to the gas chambers, Helga Weiss faithfully recorded, in words and pictures, the details of daily life in detention. When she was deported to a series of far more barbaric camps in the east, her uncle hid her diary and pictures in the Terezin records department. Helga and her diary both make it through the war in what is ultimately a tale of survival.
New York City of Trees
by Benjamin Swett (The Quantuck Lane Press)
Think of NYC, and the first thing that comes to mind is maybe skyscrapers. But trees? For former Parks Department photographer Swett, it’s the later. He gives us not only photos of more than 60 trees (there are an estimated 5.2 million in the city), but the stories behind them. One of our faves: a Southern Magnolia planted on a Bed-Stuy block around 1885 and saved from urban renewal in the 1960s by local activist Hattie Carthan.
Voices of the Pacific
Untold Stories From the Marine Heroes of World War II
by Adam Makos with Marcus Brotherton (Berkely Caliber)
Journalist/historian Makos points out that this book couldn’t be written a couple of years from now — the veterans contributing their oral histories are all in their late 80s and 90s. One Marine, Jim Young, recalls how a bad case of hemorrhoids kept him from unloading a destroyer down at a beach, and his replacement on the mission was killed. He still blames himself. Another, Art Pendelton, remembers the dead Japanese soldiers caught in barbed wire. “Their heads were blown open and the brains and innards was dripping out of their heads.” This is an unvarnished picture of war, starting at Pearl Harbor, from 15 Marines.
Hooray for Bread
by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Bruce Ingman (Candlewick)
In a time when bread gets blamed for a variety of ills, even gluten-haters will smile at this rhyming, old-fashioned picture-book ode to the fresh loaf, starting with the baker mixing the dough. “This is the tale. I’ll tell it now. No need to tell it twice. It’s full of fun and flavor. And I’ll tell it slice by slice . . .”