Vanessa
Diffenbaugh
fiction
352 pages
paperback
Victoria Jones is just eighteen, recently
"emancipated" from British foster-care system and now sleeping on
park benches. Timid and self-deprecating, she speaks with confidence in only
one tongue, the language of flowers. Her gift with floral subtleties, however,
proves to be enough, at least temporarily; it opens the way to a new vocation
that nurtures both others and herself. Eventually though, Victoria discovers that to truly flourish,
she must grapple with the painful secrets of her own past.
Marisa de los Santos
fiction
320 pages
paperback
When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown
manages, her life changes forever. But little does she know that her newfound
love is only the harbinger of greater changes to come. Meanwhile, across town,
Clare Hobbs—eleven years old and abandoned by her erratic mother—goes looking
for her lost father. She crosses paths with Cornelia while meeting with him at
the café, and the two women form an improbable friendship that carries them
through the unpredictable currents of love and life.
Love Walked In, the first novel by award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos, is bursting with keen insight and beautifully rendered prose. Invoking classic movies to illuminate the mystery and wonder of love in all its permutations, Love Walked In is an uplifting debut that marks the entrance of an enchanting literary voice.
Laura Hillenbrand
nonfiction
473 pages
paperback
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
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