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The Book of Lost Names

Written by Kristin Harmel Review by Hilary Daninhirsch

The author of The Winemaker’s Wife has penned another phenomenal story set in France during World War II. The Book of Lost Names is an utterly captivating novel about strong women and their often-unsung contributions to the war. Based on a true story, the novel recounts how one woman’s incredible skills as a forger enabled her to save thousands of Jewish children from concentration camps.

Eva never told her son about her past; like the children she saved, she shed her identity years earlier in the war, moved to America from France, and began the arduous process of rebuilding and forgetting. But when she reads that someone has uncovered a rare book that had been looted by the Nazis and brought to Berlin, she is compelled to go there, identify the book and confront her past.

The book is primarily set in the World War II era. After her father is taken away by the Nazis, Eva and her mother plan an escape from Poland to Switzerland by way of a free zone in a quiet French town. But once in France, Eva is swept up in an underground forgery operation, to the extreme consternation of her mother. With her art skills, Eva is able to create new identities for Jewish children so they can fool the Germans. She and Remy, with whom she collaborates, come up with an intricate coding system to record the real names of the children whose identities they are changing, so that their true identities would never be lost. However, Eva does so at great peril to herself, her mother, and to the rest of the people involved.

Equally heartwarming and mesmerizing, this is a beautifully rendered and painstakingly researched story about the courage of a true-life heroine under impossible circumstances.

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Reading Ladies

The book of lost names [book review].

July 21, 2020

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Genre/Categories: Historical Fiction, WW11, France

*This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Inspired by true stories from WW11, a young Jewish woman who flees Paris with her mother after the arrest of her father finds herself committing to a forgery ring whose primary goal is to create documents that will help hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis. The story is told in dual timelines from the present-day perspective of Eva who is a semi-retired librarian living in Florida and the young Eva as she flees Paris and joins an underground forgery operation in a small mountain town near the Switzerland border. The Book of Lost Names becomes an important link between the two timelines.

My Thoughts:

Thanks, #netgalley #gallerybooks @gallerybooks for a complimentary e-ARC of #thebookoflostnames upon my request. All opinions in this review are completely my own.

Engaging: One aspect I appreciate about Kristin Harmel’s storytelling is that she engages me from the first page, and I never experience a lull as I am compelled to turn the pages. In this story, Eva is a likable character as well as independent, feisty, clever, smart, and brave.

Lots to Love: Other reasons I love The Book of Lost Names include the historical details about the forgery operation during the war, the inspiring people in the community and the Catholic priest who all risk their lives to help the Jewish people, the dedication and commitment to help innocent children, and…the love story.

Book Connections: I love when books “talk to each other” and as I read I thought of stories with similar themes like The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah that tells of an underground group dedicated to helping people (especially pilots) escape France, The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton that shares the story of a real-life hero rescuing children from the grip of the Nazis, and The Medallion by Cathy Gohlke that recounts one mother’s sacrifice to secure the safety of her young child from the Nazis.

The Ending: I need to note that even though The Book of Lost Names is a rewarding, compelling, and satisfying read, the emotional and dramatic ending requires a little suspension of disbelief.

Recommended: I enthusiastically recommend The Book of Lost Names for fans of page-turning and engaging historical fiction, for readers who appreciate WW11 stories, for those who love stories featuring inspirational and brave women, and certainly for book clubs. It’s one of my favorite WW11 histfic reads of the year and when I finished reading it, I thought “that was a satisfying read!” I love it when a story feels well worth the investment of time.

Related: My review of The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel

My Rating: 4.5 Stars

The Book of Lost Names Information

Meet the Author, Kristin Harmel

Kristin Harmel is the #1 international bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of The Winemaker’s Wife, The Room on Rue Amelie, and a dozen other novels that have been translated into numerous languages and sold all over the world. Her latest is The Book of Lost Names.

A former reporter for PEOPLE magazine, Kristin has been writing professionally since the age of 16, when she began her career as a sportswriter, covering Major League Baseball and NHL hockey for a local magazine in Tampa Bay, Florida in the late 1990s. After stints covering health and lifestyle for American Baby, Men’s Health, and Woman’s Day, she became a reporter for PEOPLE magazine while still in college and spent more than a decade working for the publication, covering everything from the Super Bowl to high-profile murders to celebrity interviews with the likes of Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, OutKast, Justin Timberlake, and Patrick Dempsey. Her favorite stories at PEOPLE, however, were the “Heroes Among Us” features—tales of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. One of those features—the story of Holocaust-survivor-turned-philanthropist Henri Landwirth (whom both Walter Cronkite and John Glenn told Kristin was the most amazing person they’d ever known)—partially inspired Kristin’s 2012 novel, The Sweetness of Forgetting, which was a bestseller all over the world.

Kristin was born just outside Boston, Massachusetts and spent her childhood there, as well as in Columbus, Ohio, and St. Petersburg, Florida. After graduating with a degree in journalism (with a minor in Spanish) from the University of Florida, she spent time living in Paris and Los Angeles and now lives in Orlando, with her husband and young son. She travels frequently to France for book research (and—let’s be honest—for the pastries and wine) and writes a book a year for Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster.

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48 comments.

Fantastic review Carol I like the sound of this one!

Thanks! I think you’ll like it! 🙌

Thanks, Carol! I’ve been seeing this one, but wasn’t sure. After reading your review I definitely want to read it.

I think you’ll enjoy it! Page turning…..but her endings are always a little but unrealistic!

Amazing review!

This is a book that has been on my radar for a little while! It does sound good.

I loved it and I hope you do too!

Great review, thanks for sharing your thoughts

So happy you loved it, Carol! I’m really looking forward to this one!

I think you’ll like it! 🙌😍

I’m on the fence about this one. I know it is based on a true story but there’s something about the premise that strikes me as just not right…

I had to read the author notes carefully to figure this out…..it seems to me that the character is imagined but the forgery activities were true…..she cited men who were forgers but because she probably wanted a woman character she had to imagine this one. Her wording in the notes is a bit tricky and at first I thought this was based on a real person which is my fav kind of character (like last train to London) but this character is imagined. This might be what you’re sensing?

Yes, that’s part of it. The other part is that I’m worried about a non-Jew portraying Jews, even non-religious ones. Finally, I know for a fact that hiding in the country wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Informers and collaborators were so prevalent that even a walk outside could be dangerous for the whole household.

I understand your concern and the need for an “own voices” author.

It isn’t so much “own voices” but rather that when the authors aren’t Jewish, they far too often don’t do the simple research to get things right. Meg Clayton Waite isn’t Jewish, and yet there wasn’t even ONE thing wrong or out of place in Last Train to London.

That’s interesting about Clayton and reassuring to hear!

I thought she had one thing wrong, with a man’s name, but then… she told me that the person in her book was a real person, and I even looked him up, and she was right!

I meant to say Clayton Waite

[…] Novel Deelights – The Silent Wife & Finders Keepers Reading Ladies Book Club – The Book of Lost Names & The Salt Path What Cathy Read Next – The Young Survivors & Munich Art and Soul […]

Thank you so much! 🙌

Wonderful review Carol. I am on the list at the library for this one and am anticipating getting it before the summer is out. It sounds like one I will like very much. It definitely ticks the boxes for me, even if the ending is a bit hard to believe.

I think you will like it Carla! It’s an engaging heartfelt story.

This looks good! I am going to add it to my list of book to read! It’s reminding me of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network.

Yes! This is a great read! Enjoy 🙌

[…] 4.5 Stars (Rounded to 5). Historical Fiction. WW11. Engaging and page-turning. My full review of The Book of Lost Names. […]

[…] An older woman travels to France in search of a valuable book of names that she created during WW11. My review of Book of Lost Names here. […]

[…] The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel (histfic, WW11). My review of Lost Names here. […]

[…] The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel […]

[…] in WW11 include Code Name Helene, Resistance Women, The Alice Network, The Last Train to London, The Book of Lost Names, and The Lost Girls of […]

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[…] Stars. (ARC) Compelling Historical Fiction (WW11). Author of The Book of Lost Names. Review coming on July 6, […]

[…] Other stories by Kristin Harmel that I have reviewed: The Book of Lost Names, The Winemaker’s […]

[…] Continue here for my full review of The Book of Lost Friends […]

wow, sounds good! I have read a fabulous nonfiction/biography on this same topic: https://wordsandpeace.com/2017/03/28/book-review-adolfo-kaminsky-a-forgers-life/ Highly recommended

Ah ah, I had forgotten I had actually read your review of this book, and that’s where I had recommended the book on Kaminksy!!

It’s a great pairing! Thanks!

[…] The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel#throwbackthursday […]

I think I’m all logged back in now, this is so hard lol!

What happened?

[…] Welcome to Throwback Thursday where I highlight an older review or post a current review of an old read. Today, I’m re-sharing a page-turning historical fiction, The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. […]

[…] This heartfelt story reminds me of The Book of Lost Names in which the main character is a forger who works with the Resistance in Southern France providing […]

[…] Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger’s Life by Sarah Kaminsky paired with The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel […]

[…] Paris Wife by Paula McLainThe Honeybee Emeralds by Amy TectorAll the Devils Are Here by Louise PennyThe Book of Lost Names by Kristin HarmelThe Chanel Sisters by Judithe LittleCode Name Helene by Ariel […]

[…] rescued children during WWII include: The Last Train to London, The Last Lifeboat, The Medallion, The Book of Lost Names, The Winter […]

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#BookReview The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel @kristinharmel @GalleryBooks @SimonSchusterCA #TheBookofLostNames

Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel from the international bestselling author of the “epic and heart-wrenching World War II tale” (Alyson Noel, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Winemaker’s Wife .

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names .

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network , The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

Fascinating, heartwrenching, and exceptionally absorbing!

The Book of Lost Names is an evocative, beautifully written, touching tale set in France during WWII, as well present day, that takes you into the life of Eva Traube, a young Jewish woman who spent the majority of the war, to the detriment of herself and those she loved, using her artistic talents to help save as many lives as possible.

The prose is atmospheric, authentic, and insightful. The characters are vulnerable, brave, and strong. And the plot is a poignant tale of life, loss, love, deception, perseverance, survival, betrayal, sacrifice, courage, selflessness, the unimaginable horrors of war, and the important role of the Resistance in transporting people from the free zone in France to the safety of Switzerland.

Overall, The Book of Lost Names is a thought-provoking, immersive, moving tale by Harmel that does an incredible job of reminding us that millions of lives were lost, numerous aliases were given, but real names and true identities should never be forgotten.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

About Kristin Harmel

Kristin Harmel is the international bestselling author of THE ROOM ON RUE AMELIE, THE SWEETNESS OF FORGETTING, THE LIFE INTENDED, WHEN WE MEET AGAIN, and several other novels. Her latest, THE WINEMAKER'S WIFE, is coming in August 2019 from Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster. A former reporter for PEOPLE magazine, Kristin has also freelanced for many other publications, including American Baby, Men’s Health, Glamour, Woman’s Day, Travel + Leisure, and more.

Kristin grew up in Peabody, Mass.; Worthington, Ohio; and St. Petersburg, Fla., and she graduated with a degree in journalism (with a minor in Spanish) from the University of Florida. After spending time living in Paris, she now lives in Orlando, Fla., with her husband and young son.

Photograph by Phil Art Studio, Reims, France.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the book of lost names.

Kristin Harmel has a proven track record of writing masterful historical fiction, including THE ROOM ON RUE AMÉLIE and THE WINEMAKER’S WIFE. Still, she has far exceeded expectations with her latest effort, THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES.

The novel moves back and forth across decades as readers become acquainted with Eva Traube Abrams. In 2005, Eva is a semi-retired librarian whose life is simple and boring. Sixty-three years earlier, she was a master forger who rebelled against the Nazi regime.

"I absolutely adored this book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fictional accounts of World War II or just appreciates a good story. It will break your heart and then patch it back together again.... THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES will mesmerize you."

Eva has attempted to forget her past, but when a newspaper article catches her eye, she is tempted to revisit her days as a forger. The image she comes across is The Book of Lost Names . After forging documents for children, she would encode their fake and real names into that book. Knowing that some would be too young to remember who they actually were, Eva kept The Book of Lost Names in hopes that they would be able to regain their true identity after the war. When the library was raided by the Nazis, she thought she would never see the book again. Decades later, she knows that she is the only one who can decode it.

As a student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris when her father, a Polish Jew, was arrested. She and her mother made their way to a quaint town in the Free Zone. There, Eva was recruited to forge documents to help young Jewish children escape France to neutral Switzerland. Rebellion was always dangerous, and she had to navigate her work while also dealing with romance, deception and a shaky relationship with her mother.

Most works of historical fiction are dreary and depressing, focusing more on the history than the characters. THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES is well-researched, but the emphasis remains on character development. All of the characters (even the villains) are so well thought-out and engaging, and I was able to invest in them immediately and deeply. I found myself rooting for a certain love interest, wondering if I could trust a particular character, and cringing at the interactions between Eva and her mother that match my own experiences.

I absolutely adored this book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fictional accounts of World War II or just appreciates a good story. It will break your heart and then patch it back together again. While there is violence and gruesome death, the central themes are rebellion, family, love and, most importantly, trust. THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES will mesmerize you.

Reviewed by Alison Lee on August 14, 2020

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Publication Date: May 25, 2021
Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Women's Fiction
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books
ISBN-10: 198213190X
ISBN-13: 9781982131906

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BookBrowse Reviews The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

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Historical Fiction
Romance/Love Stories
1940s & '50s
Dealing with Loss
Adult-YA Crossover Fiction
Jewish Authors
Strong Women
War Related
Top 20 Best Books of 2020

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In this moving work of historical fiction based on real events, a young Polish-French Jewish woman forges identification papers to aid Jews fleeing the Nazis during World War II.

There is certainly no shortage of books set in World War II Europe — from thrillers to family dramas — but even within this crowded setting, The Book of Lost Names stands out thanks to a strong sense of character and a compelling tale of love and survival. While it doesn't carry the emotional or political weight of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin or Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See , Kristin Harmel's novel is tightly written and impressively affecting. The Book of Lost Names tells the story of Eva, a young Jewish Parisian and daughter of Polish migrants, that begins in 1942 and ends in 2005. The novel flits back and forth between World War II Paris and 2005 Florida, with Eva now well into her eighties. When the titular Book of Lost Names — a book which Eva herself created during the war — turns up in Berlin, the events of this time in her life come rushing back to her. In 1942, Eva is 23, living with her parents, and studying for her Ph.D. One night, she and her mother are babysitting the neighbor's children when Eva's father is pulled out of their apartment and stolen away by the Nazis. Eva and her mother escape to a quiet French town where Eva works to forge personal papers for those looking to flee into neutral Switzerland. It's here that Eva meets Remy, a fellow member of the resistance. While The Book of Lost Names is set against the war-torn landscape of Nazi-occupied France and Eva is working as part of the resistance, this is, at its core, a love story — a book about how love can thrive even in the direst of circumstances. It's also a book about identity. Eva creates new identities for those looking to escape and keeps their old ones safe, encoded within the Book of Lost Names. Her mother no longer knows who she is without her husband, and Eva herself is, in her mother's eyes, is betraying the Jewish faith by falling in with a Catholic boy. These themes hold together expertly, and the love story that unfolds is a true tearjerker. Every character in the novel is well-rounded and clearly defined, if a little one-dimensional. The plot is a bit reminiscent of a Disney movie, however; the main characters are good people with small interpersonal dramas and there is a looming villainous presence. Nothing here is narratively complicated or heavy, even given the wartime setting and high political stakes. There are also a frustrating number of contrivances, with things falling into place a little too effortlessly. More than once, a challenge will rise up, only for a character to suddenly appear, equipped with the exact skillset to meet and defeat it. One other small bugbear is the fact that the present-day chapters are written in the first person while the flashbacks are in the third person. Narratively, I felt it would have made more sense for it to be reversed, with present-day Eva telling her own story of the past in the first person, thus creating a greater sense of intimacy with both the present and past versions of her character. Despite these gripes, The Book of Lost Names is a pure kind of novel. It works spectacularly as a love story; its characters are lovable and easy to bond with. The highs and lows all hit hard because of the tight pacing. It flows well from chapter to chapter and from act to act, with every emotional punch landing perfectly. It's not the most thematically or politically deep story — every motif has a spotlight on it and every character is written to be wholly transparent — but everything works in service of an emotionally satisfying story of familial and romantic love in a time of war.

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A blog(ful) of niches, book review: the book of lost names.

Today’s featured book is The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. This was another of those books I wanted to keep reading; and yet wanted to reach the end to find out what happens.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support. For further information, you can see the full disclosure.

The Book Review

The book of lost names.

Title : The Book of Lost Names Author : Kristin Harmel Publishers : Gallery Books Pub Date: 21 Jul 2020 Genre : Historical Fiction Source : NetGalley

Goodreads || Book Depository || Barnes and Noble || IndieBound

Description

My Thoughts

A book that gave me all those warm fuzzy feelings and those teary eyed moments.

What I Loved

The title captured my interest first; even before I knew what it was about. The Book of Lost Names – does it not make you curious as to what it would be about? I certainly was – so count me in!

I certainly love reading historical fiction; and somehow have been drawn to books set in WWII more often than not. Those stories do tend to leave one feeling a bit heart-broken, a little inspired, often teary-eyed, and many a time wondering about humankind (the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of it). The Book of Lost Names does all of that, and does it effortlessly in page-turner fashion.

The Characters and Their Stories

The characters and their endearing, heart-warming, inspiring stories captured my attention and my heart; and without realizing it, I soon found myself at that ending, one that left me feeling all the feels.

From the very first page, to the ‘The End,’ I was swept up in Eva’s world; between present day Eva reclaiming herself, and the Eva of years ago working to ensure that those whose identities she forged could reclaim theirs someday. And of course, was also caught up in the ever present dangers; as well as that sweet yet impossible romance between courageous Eva and the sweet and brave Remy.

Every character in the book is fleshed out so well; I wanted to know more about what was happening to each of them as the story progressed; even Eva’s mom who got on my nerves a few times.

Of course, the history

Harmel weaves fact and fiction together seamlessly; and I love how she integrates the little known stories of the forgers in the resistance. The historical details further added to the richness of the story; and increased my interest in a book I was already heavily invested in!

And the rest

The Author’s Note is a must read.
And so many books/authors are mentioned throughout, including Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Jules Verne and more! What’s not to love about books within books?!
I love that the book reminded me of other favorite reads; Anne Frank, Number the Stars, The Book Thief, and The Sound of Freedom , among others.
And it also reminded me of sweet romance novels that leave you smiling.
I appreciated how the ugly side of WWII was not glossed over, and yet balanced with a sensitivity to pull at heartstrings while not breaking your heart fully.

And as for quotes, there are simply too many, so I will let you read the book for yourself!!

Harmel has created wonderful characters, and then proceeded to spin together their stories – of love, sacrifice, of duty and of helping others in need first, of family, of the love of books, and last but, not the least, secret codes and math – into a book that will constantly tug at heartstrings, amaze and inspire as you read it; and then stay with you long after you close it

Perfect for readers who love women’s fiction, WWII fiction, historical fiction, or romance, or books about books; in short, perfect for readers!

Get It Here

Book Depository || Barnes and Noble || IndieBound

Disclaimer: Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the digital review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Would You Rather

Today’s WYR

Would you rather write secret messages in a numerical code or using a made up language?

I know this question is oh-so-offbeat!! As for me, I am unable to choose between these two as I do love both numerical codes and made up languages equally well!!

And Now, the End of This Post

Dear reader, do you have any recommendations of books set in this time? Or books with similar themes? I would love to hear from you about those.

12 thoughts on “ Book Review: The Book of Lost Names ”

This looks like an amazing book! I’ll have to check it out.

I will definitely be recommending this book for my next book club read. We haven’t done a WWII story yet.

WOW this sounds like an awesome book. I’m going to have to check this one out. As for your question, I’ll do the secret code.

I can’t imagine being able to think up a secret language, but I am sure it would be easier than trying to create a numerical code! That book sounds wonderful!! I really kinda want to read it now, except for the parts that would be painful.

Looks like a book I should read soon. Thanks.

What a neat story! I love historical fiction, it really is fascinating and brings history to life.

Every time I read one of your reviews, I add another book to my to-read list!

Oh I’m going to add this to my amazon wish list for sure!!!

This sounds like an amazing book! I like reading stories set in WWII but it always hard to find ones that treat the subject with respect and care. I am going to put this on my TBR and I really enjoyed how in-depth your review is.!

Sounds like a very poignant story. Great review.

Great review.

So glad you enjoyed this one 🙂 I have been loving my recent historical fiction reads.

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Book of Lost Names (Harmel)

The Book of Lost Names Kristin Harmel, 2020 Gallery Books 400 pp. ISBN-13: 9781982131890 Summary Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel . Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names . The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral-und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code. But researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war? As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears. An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network , The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil. ( From the publisher .)

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The Book of Lost Names

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a newspaper nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names .

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the nazis across europe during world war ii—an experience eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. the book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from france in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. now housed in berlin’s zentral- und landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. only eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war, as a graduate student in 1942, eva was forced to flee paris after the arrest of her father, a polish jew. finding refuge in a small mountain town in the free zone, she begins forging identity documents for jewish children fleeing to neutral switzerland. but erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named rémy, eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. the records they keep in the book of lost names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and rémy disappears., an engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of the lost girls of paris and the alice network , the book of lost names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil., to purchase the book of lost names (paperback):, to purchase the book of lost names (hardcover):.

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Book Reviews

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

I actually got an ARC of The Book of Lost Names a while ago, and I never read it. I had started it on a family road trip, and it just wasn’t what I needed to read at that time. My aunt read it recently and told my mom she just had to read it. She got it at Costco, read it, loved it, and gave her copy to me.

My Thoughts

For the last few years, I have claimed that historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. After reading The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton , I became obsessed. However, it has been a while since I read a book that qualified. I tend to go with my thrillers or a Christie-like mystery. I know that I will like them. Thus, I was a bit out of sorts when I was reading The Book of Lost Names .

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Well, at least as much as anyone can enjoy a book about World War II. Reading about the roundups was certainly difficult. However, even harder than that was reading how severely Eva’s mother had turned against her. I can’t even imagine being in their position, being a Jew in the time of Hitler, but turning against your own family? It was just difficult for me.

I really appreciated that Kristin Harmel wrote with such heart. I don’t really know how else to explain it other than the fact that there was a lot of heart in The Book of Lost Names . The ending also warmed my heart exponentially more than I expected (but I am a sucker for love).

The Book of Lost Names will likely stay on my shelves, with my other favorite historical fiction books. I’ll come back to it another day when I need to escape into a story of hope and resilience.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, so I may receive a small commission from sales generated (at no extra cost to you).

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Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Editorial note: I received a copy of The Book of Lost Names in exchange for a review.

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres! If you haven’t read it yet, be sure to check out this great list of historical fiction recommendations that I co-wrote with one of my favorite book friends, Cindy Burnett. And be sure to subscribe to her book podcast too! We’re talking about co-writing another list post together so keep an eye out for that.

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel is such a well-written historical fiction novel. I was so engrossed in the story that I read it one sitting. I highly recommend this one. It’s actually been a while since I’ve read a historical fiction novel too. And this was such a great one to pick up.

The synopsis

Historical details

I always say this but one of the best aspects of historical fiction is learning something new! That is something that really makes this genre stand apart from others. In this case, the author Kristin Harmel was inspired by real-life document forgers for the Resistance in France during the war. Here’s what she told me in her Q&A :

Now that I’m primarily writing about World War II, I draw most of my inspiration from research; I really enjoy stumbling upon stories I haven’t heard before. For example, The Book of Lost Names is about document forgers for the Resistance in France during the war. I’ve read a ton about the Resistance, but I hadn’t spent much time thinking about where all of the millions of false documents that allowed Jews, pilots, Resistance fighters, and others to escape had actually come from. So I began to dig into it, and I realized immediately that it would be a great basis for a novel. Once I have that sort of fascinating historical story to frame a novel around, I set to work creating characters who make sense in that landscape.

I was so fascinated by the story of these forgers—I didn’t know anything about it until I read this story. You can tell Kristin did plenty of research (which she details in the Q&A) as the details are so vivid.

Eva is a very compelling protagonist and you root for her in every step of her journey. She has so much courage throughout the story and grows quite a bit. There is a romance in this one that is a bit understated compared to others in the genre and I really liked how it was handled. But by far, the most engaging parts are dedicated to the document forgers.

WWII historical fiction will always have an important place in the book world. This is one of this novels that will stick with you long after you finish the last page. Check out my book club questions here .

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The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Publication Date: May 25, 2021
Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Women's Fiction
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books
ISBN-10: 198213190X
ISBN-13: 9781982131906
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Book Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Table of Contents

by Harriet Gross

About The Book of Lost Names

The Holocaust has provided, after 75 years, something that rightly deserves to exist – a distinctly recognized grouping of literary writings. And there have been so many: books by Survivors of their own experiences…books by their children on what, and how, their parents or grandparents have shared these experiences with them…books by and for children as well…and especially, in the most recent of all the time that has passed since Hitler’s failed plans to destroy all Jews (and many other smaller groups of people he also despised – including Gypsies, Esperanto speakers, homosexuals, those with birth defects or later-in-life sad physical and/or mental acquisitions…) a book like this one.

A new and now major sub-genre in Holocaust writings is fictionalization of it and its experiences.

Among the newest of these is The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel, best-selling author of other historical novels. Here she created a truly new kind of character: Eva Abrams ( nee Traube), a young woman whose parents “escaped,” they thought, from Hitler by moving to Paris in the early days of the Nazi rise to power. They themselves could not survive, but Eve is able to do so because of her unique talent: she is a forger, someone essential for creating the kind of false documents that in her time could get people to safety from many places – in this case, from France — to neutral Switzerland. And so, ultimately, she also saves herself…

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The “hook”

The “hook” in this book is right there in its title: Along with her forgery, Eve finds a way to remember the real names of those for whom she’s able to write different ones in the documents that can mean their freedom. And since many of those who receive her special kind of anonymous help are children orphaned by the Nazis’ takeaways of their parents, she devises her “Book of Lost Names” to make sure that their real names, their birth names, will not be lost forever.

Of course, this book is fiction, and every such novel whose main characters are adults is filled with both angst and love. The heartache in this one arises between Eve’s desires and her mother’s: Mrs. Traube constantly reminds her daughter that her duty to both family and heritage is to marry that always-desirable young Jewish man, and so she continually worries about her daughter’s close association with a handsomely tempting non-Jewish fellow forger. The love in this book splits in two, to encompass both Eve’s perceived duty to fulfill her mother’s wishes and expectations, and her own young-womanish romantic desires and experiences. And since Eve is indeed the main character in this story, the often-conflicting emotions of love and duty form its dual core.

The heroine lives to fully outwit the Nazis

No one has the right to tip off the readers of this book by hinting at any ending except the one that any good novel of this type should and would supply: its heroine lives to fully outwit the Nazis. You must read it yourself to find out just how, because it has not by any means been something easy to accomplish. And, of course, you must – and will want to — read on to the finish to find out what happens afterward, because Eve’s story doesn’t end, not by any means, with her final forgery. There remains – after all – the special book she created, the book that gives title to author Harmel’s own creation.

It would also be a normal assumption to believe that such a special book should live on beyond that story if only as a fiction. It is now up to you, as potential readers, to find out whether the assumption is correct or not.

Highly recommend The Book of Lost Names

Other Kristin Harmel books

About the author

Today, Harriet’s “In My Mind’s I” column runs weekly in the Texas Jewish Post. She received many writing awards from the Press Club of Dallas, American Jewish Press Association, National Federation of Press Women, Illinois Woman’s Press Association and Press Women of Texas, and is listed in five Who’s Who publications. In her community, Harriet currently works as a book reviewer, discussion leader, and program presenter for clubs, senior living facilities, and Jewish institutions such as the JCC’s Senior Program.

Top image source: Kristin Harmel

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Book Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Rating: ☆☆☆☆ Audience: Historical Fiction Length: 400 pages Author: Kristin Harmel Publisher: Gallery Books Release Date: July 21st, 2020 Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

I had a lot of up and down with this one, but by the end I was really invested in getting some kind of ending I could be satisfied with. And even though it took awhile, I loved the way this ended which solidified a great book for me.

One of the things I struggled with was Eva’s Mother. I could understand the grief and despair she was feeling, but kept being angered at how much she taking out on Eva. There was never a chance for them to truly reconcile and it hurt my soul watching the relationship slowly deteriorate because of atrocities outside of their control.

World War II historical fiction is common in the genre. While sometimes I find the stories repetitive, I thought this one took on new aspects. I liked the focus on the children and of a Jewish woman working to forge papers to help those around her. Not to mention the romance sub-plot thrown in was SO SWEET. I mean, definitely tore my heart out, but also the development was spot on. The action and movement kept me interested and I enjoyed reading this as an audio book. Even when you could kind of see things coming, the whole of the plot still took me by surprise.

Overall audience notes:

Historical fiction [WW2]
Language: very little
Romance: kisses, one little detailed open scene
Trigger/Content Warnings: loss of loved ones, depictions of World War 2, suicide (a small paragraph with depiction of method)

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Dec 6, 2020

Review: The Book of Lost Names

“Once you’ve fallen in love with books, their presence can make you feel at home anywhere, even in places where you shouldn’t belong.”

As a great lover of WWII novels, Kristin Harmel's The Book of Lost Names tells the inspired true story of a Jewish woman's courage to save thousands of Jewish childrens' lives with her talent of forgery.

Eva's story begins as a graduate student in 1942 Paris, France, where she lives with her parents. As the Nazi's storm France and arrest her Jewish father, Eva and her mother are forced to flee to the French countryside avoid capture. Upon arriving, she begins using her talents of forgery to save the lives of Jewish children fleeing into neutral Switzerland. As she begins erasing the children's original names in order to ensure they will not be discovered, she and creates a book to track their real names so they can be found whenever the war ends. Her quest to preserve her culture may come at the price of love, family and future...but the impact of her quest lasts for years to come.

As a historical fiction novel of a different side of WWII, I completely enjoyed the literary aspect of this book along with such a testament to the human spirit. I always appreciate when an author gives us a different side of WWII in order to tell another side of such a complex time in human history.

There were points I cried, smiled and thought deeply about sections of this story. I specifically got emotional with the horrors Jewish families faced as Germany tore their lives apart. I cannot fathom families being separated, children fleeing for their lives and people of faith hiding refugees from the evil the war produced. Harmel did a wonderful job weaving all these roles together into a story I couldn't help but get absorbed into within just a few pages.

Overall, this book is a fabulous read that makes you want to go into the rabbit hole of the history of WWII and leaves you with an ending that may bring on the tears. What type of tears? You will have to read and find out for yourself!

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"Fascinating, captivating and special all in one ... It takes you on a journey like most books do, but this one, I ... hope that it becomes a part of me so that I can carry it with me always," commented a riveted Amazon reviewer who gave "The Lost Bookshop" book five stars.

This feel-good book is an Amazon Kindle bestseller and ranked number one by the Wall Street Journal and Sunday Times. An enchanting tale of self-discovery, "The Lost Bookshop" is more than meets the eye and carries so many beautiful, heart-warming lessons for the reader. The story revolves around three characters living in different timelines: Opaline, Martha, and Henry. In 1921, Opaline opened up a rare bookshop in Paris after fleeing London to avoid a forced marriage. In modern times, Martha — fleeing her abusive husband — meets Henry, a Ph.D. student on a mission to discover Emily Brontë's lost manuscript, after reading about it in one of Opaline's letters. Past and present story plots intertwine in this "beautiful story that begs to be read in one sitting ... a magical story filled with beautiful prose and many surprises that readers will not soon forget," wrote another reviewer.

Measuring over 41,000 ratings so far with an average 4.4 stars, "This novel has it all: wit, a dash of magic, and a large heart." If you are looking for a captivating, spellbinding story that will give you the fuzzy nostalgic vibe of the classic novels of the Brontë sisters, then this is it.

How We Chose The Books

With an abundance of books available, it's easy to get lost while browsing Kindle options. And due to Amazon's algorithms, suggestions will pop up on your page based on your latest reads. So if you've been enjoying a good thriller or two, it's easy to go down the rabbit hole and keep up with the specific type of books. While this is not by any means wrong, we figured you might be missing out on other genres that you could ultimately end up finding enjoyable (or interesting in the case of biographies and informative in the case of history books). So, before making our final suggestions list, we first compiled an inventory of different genres we wanted to include in our roundup to offer a diverse selection that might spark your interest.

As such, we decided to include a thriller for avid page-turner enthusiasts, a sultry romance novel that deviates from the ordinary, a timely and insightful biography, a heartwarming, feel-good read, and a captivating history/anthropology book to expand your horizons and make you fall in love with diverse genres. Next, we went onto Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and browsed the Best Sellers. Books that fit into our categories were selected for round two of the ultimate countdown. From this list, we eventually chose books that measured over 10,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.4 stars and above. Of course, books that won an award or were written by nationally acclaimed authors earned a bonus point. Books that earned a Goodreads Choice award or became a global phenomenon were indeed no-brainers and had to be included.

So, if you are dealing with a book hangover and lamenting the end of a reading era, we hope this list will help you pick up your next "portable magic" to cozy up and get lost in its pages.

Read the original article on Glam .

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Saving Life

Claire messud’s new novel revisits algeria’s lost colonial past..

“I’m a writer; I tell stories,” reads the first line of Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History , a novel based on her own family’s past. Admittedly, that’s not the most promising opener, since everyone from ad executives to life coaches goes around calling themself a “storyteller” these days. “Of course, really,” Messud’s narrator continues, “I want to save lives. Or simply: I want to save life.”

That’s more like it. That’s a meaningful assertion of this novel’s purpose: to preserve and cherish the beauty and sorrow of a way of life since passed from this earth and in danger of being lost to memory. This Strange Eventful History is very much a midlife novel, a work reflecting the sudden knowledge of how swiftly one reality cedes to another. Messud’s family— pied-noir French, colonials born and raised in Algeria—knew this truth with a particularly deep pain. Algeria regained its independence in 1962, and for the clan in This Strange Eventful History , the Cassars, it became a lost homeland, one that they could never return to because it no longer existed.

This Strange Eventful History begins in 1940, with the fall of Paris to the Nazis and the evacuation of Lucienne Cassar and her children back to Algiers, while her husband, Gaston, a naval officer, remains in service. It ends with the death of Lucienne and Gaston’s son, François, at 80 in Connecticut. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one person: François, his Canadian wife Barbara, his sister Denise, Gaston, and François’ daughter Chloe—the only character to claim a first-person voice, and clearly the true “teller” of this tale. Chloe, as did Messud herself , comes into possession of two texts: her grandfather’s 1,500-page history of his family and her aunt’s diary. These serve as the basis for the novel, but much of it also springs from an adult child’s evolving understanding of her two unhappy parents.

This Strange Eventful History

By Claire Messud. W.W. Norton.

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Although Messud has written about the political history of Algeria before, in this novel, politics simmer deep in the background. What drives these characters has little to do with colonialism and its legacy. Chloe refers to “the shame of the family history, of the history into which we were born” in the novel’s prologue; it seems as if it might be an allusion to politics but is revealed, in the final chapter, to be a reference to a shockingly intimate transgression instead. At one point, a young Chloe raises the Algerian issue with her grandfather, who mildly points out that “your happy and free United States of America is, at root, no different from French Algeria—merely, for the colonizers, a more successful iteration.” What really matters to the older Cassars about Algeria is not how or why it changed; it’s that their Algeria is gone. “We might have wished for a happier ending, one that would have made it possible for everyone to live in harmony, to build a nation together,” Gaston adds. “But wishing does not make it so.”

“Wishing does not make it so”—this melancholy observation is one of the abiding themes of This Strange Eventful History . At the center of the family stands one wish fulfilled: Gaston and Lucienne’s marriage, founded on a love Gaston pronounces “the masterpiece of our lives.” Their devotion to each other is genuine and legendary. In every other part of their lives, though, the Cassars are prone to near-fatal miscalculations and deferred dreams. Gaston wants to be a writer but ends up in the navy and, after the war, the oil industry. When de Gaulle summons French troops to Britain to regroup after the fall of Paris, Gaston decides that he dislikes the general’s “arrogance” and will instead follow orders from the collaborationist commanders to repair to a posting in Beirut. These disappointments are echoed in the next generation: François surrenders his academic ambitions for a corporate career, then feels his sacrifice insufficiently appreciated by his wife and daughters. Denise convinces herself that she and a married colleague share a love so secret they’ve never acted on it, only to be disillusioned by a piece of idle gossip.

Most of the major events in the Cassars’ lives—a car accident, breakdowns, courtships, childbirth, the Algerian war for independence itself—happen offstage. Each chapter portrays a slice of time during which a character weathers the ripples caused by life’s disruptions. This is a deliberately antidramatic choice. Messud’s selection of epigraph, a quote taken from Elias Canetti’s Notes From Hampstead , underlines her intentions here. It refers to a man in whose life “absolutely nothing” happened: “All he ever did was live in this century. But that alone was enough to give his life dimension, both of feeling and of thought.”

It’s true that in these vignettes taken from everyday life we can glimpse some of the burgeoning social forces of that time: feminism, multinational capitalism, liberation movements. Gaston and Lucienne are devout Catholics. François is agnostic, flees tradition-bound French society (where the pied-noirs are disdained) for the Americas, and marries a Protestant. Chloe worships art, specifically literature, and finds her grandfather’s world at once familiar and exotic—the latter felt most strikingly just after his death, as friends and family gather in his home while his corpse lies in state in his bedroom. The two older generations in This Strange Eventful History smoke incessantly; the youngest, when grown, beg them in vain to stop and banish them outdoors when they refuse.

But the power of this novel, which is considerable, has little to do with the historical events that flicker through it. Its effects cumulate, each scene enriching the one before it, the characters with their idiosyncratic delusions and habits and yearnings gradually acquiring the dimensions of full human beings much like the impossible and precious people we live with every day. This blossoming requires some patience from readers more accustomed to novels that wear their talking points on their sleeves or that—like Messud’s two biggest hits, The Emperor ’ s Children and The Woman Upstairs , comment on some highly identifiable aspect of contemporary society. The chattering classes won’t see themselves reflected as discussable phenomena in This Strange Eventful History .

By the end, however, the Cassars came to feel almost as real to me as my own relatives. The novel has the attentiveness—Chloe’s attentiveness—that could be inspired only by the compassion and exasperation found in inescapable bonds. Gaston and Lucienne’s marriage, “a sort of courtly love from medieval romance—fated, mythic, enormous,” distorts the expectations of both the married François and the unmarried Denise. As a result, Barbara thinks, the unsatisfiable François had “swallowed and swamped her, belittled and criticized her, had also wept and sworn his devotion—and she’d held her heart an icy shard for decades, had tortured him as he’d tortured her.” She regrets the marriage but somehow can’t extract herself from it. Then, as this generation’s characters age and begin to fail, dementia melting Barbara into a surprising sweetness, François decides “getting older was like inhabiting a mansion you couldn’t afford, so that you were forced to shut down one room after another, eventually entire wings, until you huddled in the kitchen, breaking up the furniture for firewood.” And yet, he is happier. Experience is forever confounding expectations. In much the same way, this novel that, when summarized, seems to be about the smallest of things ends up being about everything.

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What’s the Greatest Jazz Record? Here’s a Clue: Miles Davis.

James Kaplan’s new book, “3 Shades of Blue,” examines the lives of Miles, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, and the extraordinary album they made.

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This black-and-white photo shows four men in a recording studio. One of them is playing the piano, another is playing a trumpet, and the other two are playing saxophones.

By Peter Keepnews

Peter Keepnews is an editor at The Times.

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3 SHADES OF BLUE: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool, by James Kaplan

Miles Davis was one of the biggest stars in jazz as well as one of the most innovative and influential musicians. John Coltrane was both a saxophone virtuoso and a fearless explorer whose lifelong musical and spiritual quest attracted a passionate following — and later, as that quest went beyond the boundaries of jazz as many people understood the word, heated criticism. Bill Evans redefined the concept of the piano trio and rewrote the rules of jazz harmony. And on one memorable occasion in 1959, all three participated in the creation of what many consider the greatest jazz record ever made, Davis’s “Kind of Blue.”

Countless words have been devoted to Davis, Coltrane and Evans, including biographies, an autobiography (Davis’s) and at least three books focused on that one record: Ashley Kahn’s “Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece,” Eric Nisenson’s “The Making of ‘Kind of Blue’: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece” and Richard Williams’s “The Blue Moment: Miles Davis’s ‘Kind of Blue’ and the Remaking of Modern Music.” Do we also need a book that recounts the life stories of all three?

Well, we may not need it, but we have it. And if “3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool” is neither an essential addition to the jazz literature nor quite the sweeping statement its subtitle promises, it’s certainly a compelling read.

James Kaplan is not a jazz expert — he refers at one point to how “nonprofessional ears” hear a certain recording, presumably meaning his — but he knows how to tell a story, and in “3 Shades of Blue” he has a good one to tell. Or, rather, three good ones.

He never makes it clear why, “Kind of Blue” aside, he considers these three musicians uniquely emblematic of their era in jazz history; why them and not Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman? But he leaves no doubt that they loomed large, and he deftly draws a line from Davis, who began as a musically untested disciple of the pioneering saxophonist Charlie Parker in the late 1940s, to both Coltrane, who was a largely unknown quantity when Davis hired him in the mid-1950s, and Evans, a similarly under-the-radar white pianist whose presence in Davis’s sextet a few years later raised eyebrows for racial as well as musical reasons. (If he never quite makes a connection between Coltrane and Evans beyond their brief time together with Davis, there’s a good reason: There really isn’t one.)

This book does not contain much that the serious jazz fan won’t already know. Kaplan does offer enough new material, culled from interviews he has done over the years with, among other people, Miles Davis himself, to hold the interest of even the most jaded I’ve-heard-it-all-before jazzbo, but his book seems primarily aimed at the jazz novice.

Moments here, however, are likely to leave the jazz novice feeling lost. For example, early in the book Kaplan quotes Davis’s trumpet protégé Wallace Roney recalling that Davis told him, shortly after their first meeting, “I never liked Brown — Clifford Brown.” Anyone who shares the widely held view that Clifford Brown was one of the outstanding jazz trumpeters of the modern era will probably wonder: Was Davis just trying to get a reaction? Was he, even decades after Brown’s early death, jealous? Or did he really mean what he said? The non-aficionado, on the other hand, will probably wonder: Who’s Clifford Brown? Kaplan doesn’t say, and he doesn’t shed any light on Brown’s place in jazz for another hundred pages.

Telling three life stories in one book is an impressive feat of conciseness for an author who took two hefty volumes (“Frank: The Voice” and “Sinatra: The Chairman”) to tell the story of Frank Sinatra. Inevitably some nuance has been sacrificed, some details left out — I wish crucial sidemen like the saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, a key member of Davis’s second great quintet, had gotten more attention — but Kaplan hits the most important notes.

Whether “3 Shades of Blue” amounts to more than three mini-biographies is another question.

Kaplan’s subtitle suggests an ambitious agenda. I’m not entirely sure what he means by the “empire of cool,” but this is his basic thesis:

His three protagonists played a vital role in bringing jazz to an artistic peak in the 1950s and ’60s. Then things went south for the music, in terms of both its quality and the size of its audience, to the point that “jazz today, when it isn’t utterly ignored, is widely disliked.” For Kaplan, the genres known as bop and hard bop, which flourished in those years, provided “almost all of jazz that I want and need.”

It’s undeniably true that jazz had become less popular, and much less a part of the cultural conversation, by the time Coltrane began exploring the music’s outer limits and Davis, shortly after Coltrane’s death in 1967, went electric on albums like “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew.” (In contrast, Evans, who died in 1980, played pretty much the same way his entire career.) But had it become less good?

Kaplan clearly thinks so, and he quotes many others who agree, notably the celebrated critic Stanley Crouch, whom he calls a “grumpy purist” — affectionately, I think — and who aggressively dismissed both electric-era Davis (“firmly on the path of the sellout”) and late Coltrane (“so emotionally narrow and so far removed from his roots and his accomplishments”). But while the music of the bop and hard bop years may be virtually all the jazz Kaplan wants and needs, it’s not necessarily all the jazz other people want and need; some of my favorite jazz records were made in the 1970s and later, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way.

But that’s just my take, and — to quote the title of a well-known Miles Davis composition that figures prominently in Kaplan’s narrative — so what? James Kaplan has framed “3 Shades of Blue” as both a chronicle of a golden age and a lament for its decline and fall. One doesn’t have to accept the decline-and-fall part to acknowledge that he has done a lovely job of evoking the golden age.

3 SHADES OF BLUE : Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool | By James Kaplan | Penguin Press | 484 pp. | $35

An earlier version of this review, using information from the publisher, included a photograph that had been reversed. The correct image is above.

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The Summer Reading Guide

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T r a n s p o r t Y o u r s e l f t o A n o t h e r P l a c e

Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani

I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

Cassandra Mortmain, 17, lives in a crumbling medieval castle in 1930s England. Her father purchased it with the royalties from his one successful novel, the income from which has long since run dry. As an escape—and as practice for her own novel, which she hopes might spring her family from its now-less-than-genteel poverty—Cassandra has dedicated herself to “capturing” the characters around her in a diaristic, curious first person: irascible, blocked-writer father; bohemian stepmother; beautiful, dissatisfied older sister; lovelorn farmhand. Cassandra’s circumstances are at odds with her romantic temperament, but they animate her narration; charm, humor, and frustration spark off of every page. I Capture the Castle has the enjoyably familiar trappings of the Jane Austen marriage plot—there are wealthy bachelor neighbors and sisterly schemes in the damp yet charming English countryside. But in this book, the tropes collapse in on one another in comic and quietly poignant ways as the reader is welcomed into the nostalgic mood of interwar Britain, with its tea cozies and tweeds and trousseaus bought in London. It’s a novel that you sink into like a chintz armchair, only to emerge warm but wistful as the light fails and the evening mist appears. — Christine Emba

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Wandering Stars

by Tommy Orange

Orange’s previous novel, There There , conjured an interconnected cast of characters who were a part of a widespread Native community in Oakland, California. Wandering Stars , a sequel of sorts, is in part an exploration of what happens after the earlier book’s dramatic and painful ending—but it is also Orange’s attempt to provide a deeper, historical backstory to the contemporary, urban reality he described so well. The novel rewinds more than 100 years, beginning in the 19th century with a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and following his bloodline through the decades, with characters wandering to and around California until they end up back in the present day, in Oakland. You can’t understand these people unless you delve into the years of brutality and assimilation that brought them here, Orange implicitly argues—and he brilliantly captures the confusion of the youngest generation, which feels disconnected from its roots even as its inheritance weighs heavily. — Emma Sarappo

Someone Like Us

by Dinaw Mengestu

At one point in Mengestu’s new novel, the main character, Mamush, having missed a flight from his home in Paris to Washington, D.C., decides on a whim to buy a ticket to Chicago instead. He’s not dressed for the freezing cold, which provokes a stranger’s concern, but Mamush remains nonplussed: “What she saw was a shadow version of me,” he thinks. “My real self was hundreds of miles away in the suburbs of northern Virginia.” The soul of this short, disorienting book, which drifts between continents and cities, does indeed lie in the anonymous, dense suburbs north and south of Washington, D.C. These communities are where Mamush, a failed journalist, grew up in a milieu of Ethiopian immigrants. Mamush’s French wife, Hannah, struggles to wrap her mind around these American nonplaces —and even Mamush fails to describe them with anything but the blandest words. “We lived in apartment buildings, surrounded by other apartment buildings, behind which were four-lane highways that led to similar apartments,” he remembers. His trip home, meant to be a family reunion, becomes a sobering and eerie voyage after a sudden tragedy. But as his visit unlocks long-buried memories and secrets, these places that began as ciphers end up specific enough to make the hairs on one’s neck stand up in recognition. — E.S.

Learn Something Completely New

The Secret Life of Groceries

by Benjamin Lorr

Great nonfiction books take you into worlds you could never otherwise know: deepest space, Earth’s extremities, the past. The best nonfiction books explore places you know intimately but haven’t thought nearly enough about. The Secret Life of Groceries begins elbow-deep in trout guts and melting ice, a smell “thick in the air like you are exhuming something dangerous, which perhaps you are,” as the low-wage laborers who make a Manhattan Whole Foods fit for the daily rush do their best to clean the fish case. Lorr starts there because it’s a near-perfect metaphor for the American grocery store and its global machinery: It is gross, it is miraculous, it is where plants and animals become products , and where desire becomes consumption. After following him from specialty-food shows to shrimping boats to new-employee orientation, you’ll never think of groceries the same way again. — Ellen Cushing

Becoming Earth

by Ferris Jabr

In his new book, Jabr invites the reader to consider the true definition of life . Earth doesn’t just play host to living beings, in his telling; it’s alive itself because it is fundamentally made up of the plants and creatures that transform its land, air, and water. “Life, then, is more spectral than categorical, more verb than noun,” he explains. It is “not a distinct class of matter, nor a property of matter, but rather a process—a performance.” Plankton release gases that can alter the climate; microbes below the planet’s surface sculpt rock into caverns and, Jabr suggests, might have even helped form the continents. Jabr is a science journalist who has written searching articles on inter-tree communication, the possibilities of botanical medicine, and the beauty of certain animals; here, he travels from the kelp forests near California’s Santa Catalina Island to an observatory high above the Amazon rainforest in Brazil to his own backyard in Portland. Along the way, he makes a convincing, mind-opening case that “the history of life on Earth is the history of life remaking Earth,” which means that humans are just one part of a changing, multifarious whole—and that we must work urgently to mitigate our disproportionate effects on the planet. — Maya Chung

by Anne Truitt

Truitt’s sculptures—tall wooden columns of pure color—are almost mystically smooth. But her writing, especially in her first published journal, Daybook , flies in the face of those unbroken surfaces: She chronicles her complex experiences as a mother and a working artist, giving readers an intimate look into how her biography and her process cannot be separated. Daybook , which covers Truitt’s life in the late 1970s, emerges directly from her maxim that “artists have no choice but to express their lives.” In her case, that means capturing serene meditations on the creative spark, recounting the labor of applying 40 coats of paint to her forms, and groaning over the financial discomfort of raising three kids. Most spectacular are her ruminations on how life is what we feed to art in order to make it grow. Watching her daughter take a bath is a source of inspiration. “I had been absorbing her brown body against the white tub, the yellow top of the nail brush, the dark green shampoo bottle, Sam’s blue towel, her orange towel, and could make a sculpture called Mary in the Tub if I ever chose to,” she muses. Daybook is full of all the luminous colors Truitt, who died in 2004, evoked—the soothing lilacs, blaring yellows, revolutionary reds. It’s a powerful lesson that an artist is not only a person who planes towering poplar sculptures but also someone who removes a splinter from a child’s finger. — Hillary Kelly

Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet

by James Atlas

You might not ever have heard of Schwartz, and it doesn’t really matter. Atlas’s biography of him is such a psychologically acute, stylishly executed portrait of a doomed genius and his milieu of New York intellectuals that it effortlessly propels the reader through its pages. Schwartz was supposed to become the American W. H. Auden; he had the potential to be the greatest poet of his generation, and his work provoked the awe of peers such as Saul Bellow (who loosely based the novel Humboldt’s Gift on Schwartz’s troubled life). Atlas depicts a legendary conversationalist, a brilliant wit (Schwartz coined the aphorism “Even paranoids have real enemies”), and a life brutally overtaken by mental illness. — Franklin Foer

S t a r t the Book You’ll Read All Summer

At the Edge of Empire

by Edward Wong

For years, the only uniform that Wong, The New York Times ’ former Beijing bureau chief, could imagine his father wearing was the red blazer he put on to go work at a Chinese restaurant every day. Then he saw a photo of young Yook Kearn Wong dressed as a soldier, and two stories opened up. His nonagenarian father had once been in Mao’s army and witnessed firsthand the Communist attempt to resurrect a Chinese empire; he dramatically left China in 1962 for Hong Kong and then Washington, D.C., disillusioned with what he had seen. This mix of memoir and efficiently recounted history covers 80 turbulent years. Wong is especially detailed about the decades his father spent in the People’s Liberation Army; he was sent to Manchuria, where he trained with the Chinese air force, and Xinjiang, where he met the Muslim populations of Uyghurs and Kazakhs that the state has struggled to subdue. Along with his father’s history, Wong unpacks his own years reporting on Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power and quashing of dissent—a mirror of what his father saw. This book’s power comes from Wong’s broad sense of the patterns of Chinese history, reflected in the lives of a father and son, and from his ability to toggle effortlessly between the epic and the intimate. — Gal Beckerman

Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally

Kristin, the pivotal character in Undset’s historical 1,000-page trilogy, is introduced as a young girl in 14th-century Norway. She is the adored daughter of Lavrans, a widely respected nobleman who runs their family’s estate with wisdom and faith, and a member of a well-drawn social world of relatives, friends, and neighbors with defined feudal roles. As she grows up, she becomes beautiful, bighearted, and religious, though she is also willful and disobedient in ways that will bring her deep sorrow for the rest of her life. Kristin’s saga, rich with detail, has shades of Tess of the d’Urbervilles ’ tragedy and Brideshead Revisited ’s piety, but more than anything, the story is deeply human . Readers follow an imperfect, striving, warm, petty, utterly understandable woman from her childhood during the peak of medieval Norwegian strength to her death during the Black Plague, a time when Catholicism ordered social and political life but pagan traditions and beliefs were not yet forgotten. Her journey from maid to sinner to pilgrim to matriarch, first published in the 1920s, is gorgeous, fresh, and propulsive in Nunnally’s translation. A century later, spending weeks or months tracking the years of Kristin’s life remains wildly rewarding. — E.S.

The Bee Sting

by Paul Murray

The setup for the Irish author Murray’s fourth novel is a classic one: Take one family and explore its dynamics in intimate detail, turning it over to reveal all of its flawed facets, and expose it as a microcosm of larger social and cultural forces roiling us all. Jonathan Franzen is the current American master of this particular novelistic gambit, but Murray brings new energy to the enterprise with his portrait of the Barneses, Dickie and Imelda, and their two children, Cass and PJ. They’re a once-prosperous family living in a small Irish town; they’ve been suddenly struck down by the 2008 financial crash, which sends Dickie’s chain of car dealerships and garages into freefall. You could read this book in a week, and you’ll want to, but give yourself the whole summer to appreciate how fully Murray inhabits the perspectives of each family member chapter after chapter. Their psychologies—scarred in so many ways, both subtle and dramatic—become impossible to turn away from. After 600 pages, the elements Murray has been putting in place build to a wrenching climax, one that, like in all great tragedies, was foretold from the first page of this beautifully crafted book. — G.B.

I m m e r s e Y o u r s e l f in a Cult Classic

by Rachel Ingalls

If nothing else, read In the Act for the fights. Helen and Edgar, who are unhappily married, have developed a caustic fluency in the art of spiteful exchange. “You’re being unreasonable,” he says at one point. “Of course I am. I’m a woman,” she replies. “You’ve already explained that to me.” But also, read Ingalls’s sneakily brilliant 1987 novella for the absurd plot, which begins at a grouchy, oddball simmer—Edgar is adamant that Helen give him privacy to work on a mysterious project in the attic; Helen, suspicious of the sounds she hears up there, is determined to learn more—and ultimately reaches an exhilarating, tragicomic boil. In between, we discover the particular, creative way in which Edgar is two-timing Helen, the equally creative way in which she takes revenge, and just how delightful a story can be when each lean, mean sentence carries its weight. — Jane Yong Kim

Let’s Talk About Love

by Carl Wilson

What might a music critic with a knee-jerk distaste for Celine Dion stand to gain from careful, open-minded consideration of her work? This is the premise of Wilson’s 2007 touchstone of cultural criticism, which proved so popular that an expanded edition, released in 2014, includes response essays by luminaries such as Mary Gaitskill and James Franco. Let’s Talk About Love focuses on the singer of “My Heart Will Go On,” yes, but at its core it’s an investigation of taste: why we like the things we like, how our identities and social status get mixed up in our aesthetic preferences, and how one should wrestle with other people’s wildly different reactions to works of art. The book will have you scrutinizing your own preferences, but its true pleasure is unlocked simply by following along as a critic listens to music and thinks deeply about it—particularly one as intelligent, rigorous, and undogmatic as Wilson. — Chelsea Leu

Ripley’s Game

by Patricia Highsmith

The suave serial murderer Tom Ripley’s actions can be notoriously hard for readers to predict—but in Highsmith’s third novel about the con man, Ripley surprises himself. No longer the youthful compulsive killer of The Talented Mr. Ripley , the character is aging and getting bored. So when a poor man named Jonathan responds coolly to him at a party, Ripley fashions an elaborate drama for his own amusement: He cons the mild-mannered and entirely inexperienced Jonathan into taking a job as a freelance assassin targeting Mafia members, but the more Ripley watches Jonathan struggle with the task and his morals, the more Ripley itches to get his own hands dirty again. When I revisited Highsmith’s books ahead of their (rather dour) Netflix adaptation , I found myself unexpectedly drawn most to Ripley’s Game and its absurd humor. The novel explores a classic Highsmith preoccupation: how reducing strangers to archetypes can feel irresistible. Ripley is as much a petty meddler as he is a cold-blooded murderer—and that makes him endlessly fun to follow. — Shirley Li

Sirena Selena

by Mayra Santos-Febres

In 1990s San Juan, Puerto Rico, the drag queen Martha Divine hears a young boy singing boleros while picking up cans. She helps transform him into Sirena Selena—a beguiling drag performer who is soon invited to sing at a luxury hotel in the Dominican Republic and inspires an erotic obsession in one of its rich investors. Santos-Febres has pointed out that the Caribbean has long “been a desire factory for the rest of the world,” and her story looks squarely at the power dynamics inherent in these fantasies, especially those between tourists and locals. When it was published in 2000, Selena’s story was immediately heralded as crucial Puerto Rican literature, and it remains beloved partially for the force of its central allegory: Tourism, it argues, forces Caribbean people into a performance of exoticism—yet another type of drag. Santos-Febres will make you reconsider gender and the travel industry while luring you in with prose so sumptuous that reading it feels like putting on a pair of delicate satin gloves. — Valerie Trapp

Feel W o nder About the Universe

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

edited by Ada Limón

This collection of verse defines the natural world loosely: Here, yes, we have lovely descriptions of ancient redwoods and the “buttery platters of fungus” ascending their trunks; sparrows and spiderwebs and “geckos in their mysterious work.” But the book is largely about human nature , and our place in a world that contains so many other living things. An address to a saguaro becomes a meditation on immigration; a walk with a baby is tinged with sadness for the climate disasters surely to come; bearded irises give someone the strength to keep living ; lilacs and skunk cabbage are envisioned through the haze of distant memory—it’s an ephemeral act, “like wrapping a scoop of snow in tissue paper.” Who are we, the poets ask, as individuals and as a species? How have our surroundings shaped our pasts and our presents, and what can they tell us about how to exist in the future? The Earth here is rather like a supporting character—a foil—who can surprise us, devastate us, and bring us back to ourselves. As Limón writes in a gorgeous introduction, she started repeating “You are here” to herself after seeing the phrase on a trail map. When I feel like a disembodied mind this summer, I’ll take myself to the ocean, this book in hand, and try doing the same. — Faith Hill

Lives Other Than My Own

by Emmanuel Carrère

Carrère’s books demand some surrender on their reader’s part. You have to be okay not knowing exactly where the story—to the extent that there is anything resembling a traditional story—is going. You are there to spend time with his mind. Lives Other Than My Own , my favorite of his works, is no exception. It begins in Sri Lanka in 2004, where Carrère was witness to the tsunami that pulverized the island. Amid the immense death and destruction, Carrère befriends a French family whose little girl drowned in the waves. But just as Carrère pulls us into this grieving family’s emotional upheaval, his mind drifts. He returns from Sri Lanka to Paris and shifts his attention to his girlfriend’s sister, Juliette, a judge who has just died of cancer; he then carries out an investigation of sorts about the life she lived and the loved ones she left behind. The two strands don’t obviously connect—but they also make perfect sense next to each other. Each one fundamentally shakes Carrère, forcing him to ponder death, love, and how a meaningful existence comes together. — G.B.

by Rita Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas

Tentacle may be a bit of a spooky read for this summer: In its world, initially set a few years into the future, the island of Hispaniola was devastated by a tidal wave in 2024 that wiped away coral reefs and food stands. But as you read on, the story asks you to let go of your attachments to chronology, flitting among three time periods: a post-storm island that is livable only for the ultrarich; an early-2000s milieu of beach-town artists; and a colonial-era past centered on a band of buccaneers. The book was originally written in Dominican Spanish and sprinkled with Yoruba and French, and the English translation retains a fiery love for the dynamic Earth. In one of the timelines, “an enormous school of surgeonfish” shoots out of a coral reef like “an electric-blue stream.” In another, the same sea is described as “a dark and putrid stew.” Holding voltaic awe in one hand and profound grief in the other, Indiana helps us see how the years behind us have led to our present climate crisis, and ignites a desire to fight for all we can still save. — V.T.

D i v e Into Someone Else’s Mind

Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

Every time I come across footage of January 6, I think of this book, the greatest study of mob violence ever written. Since its publication in 1990, English police have largely eliminated what was once euphemistically called “hooliganism” from the soccer stadium, but Buford’s first-person account of embedding with the Inter-City Jibbers, a group of pugilistic Manchester United fans, remains as readable and relevant as ever. He unforgettably recounts the experience of being pummeled by Italian police in Sardinia—and he describes the human capacity for brutality with terrible candor and compelling empathy. The violence he experiences is addictive, adrenaline-induced euphoria, as is his technicolor, emotionally vibrant account of it. — F.F.

Broughtupsy

by Christina Cooke

By the time that 20-year-old Akúa travels back to Jamaica to see her estranged sister, she’s spent half her life in the United States and Canada. Before Akúa even arrives at her sister’s house, she begins to realize how difficult the transition to her birthplace will be. In the cramped taxi ride from the Kingston airport, other passengers joke with one another in patois, “their words flying hot and quick.” Akúa’s inability to join their banter leaves her feeling like she’s “listening through water,” one of many such indignities detailed by her evocative, searching narration. But language isn’t the only thing that weighs heavily on her relationship with the island; she also has to confront the grief and familial resentment that have unmoored her in the years since her mother’s death. Cooke’s vibrant debut novel is a queer coming-of-age story and a chronicle of diasporic rediscovery: Akúa makes new memories with her sister—and with rebellious strangers whose lives challenge the religious conservatism around them all. Along the way, Akúa’s loneliness starts to lift, and the island’s misfits help make Jamaica feel like home again. — Hannah Giorgis

Mina’s Matchbox

by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen B. Snyder

In 1972, a young Japanese girl named Tomoko is sent by her mother to live with her aunt’s family in the seaside town of Ashiya. Things are a bit odd in their house: Her wealthy, half-German uncle disappears for long stretches; her sickly cousin, Mina, spends much of her time hidden away indoors, but rides a pygmy hippopotamus named Pochiko to school; her aunt searches for typos in books and pamphlets, obsessively identifying these “jewels glittering in a sea of sand.” Most enchanting are Mina’s many matchboxes, hidden underneath her bed, each of them featuring an intricate, beautiful picture. Mina collects them like talismans and writes devastating stories about the characters that appear on their illustrated labels. Everything, from the eerie events that happen at home to the bigger, global events such as the terror attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics, is filtered through a child’s perspective—curious but lacking adult judgment. Tomoko’s narration is subtle, almost detached, but the reader is immersed in her ardent love for her fragile cousin, and comes to appreciate how history seeps into every life, even the most sheltered ones. — M.C.

This Is Salvaged

by Vauhini Vara

The physical experience of being a human is pretty weird, with our little flappy arms and occasional runny noses. To read Vara’s short stories is to briefly inhabit a mind attuned to the fumbling and freedom of having a body. One character draws our attention to “a crust clinging in the tiny bulbed corner” of an eye. Another pronounces that we don’t “talk enough about labial sweat.” Even flowers are not immune to the indecency of physicality: “ Blooming seemed too formal for what the flowers were doing on their stems. They were doing something obscene: spurting; spilling.” Vara injects that same irreverence into all of her characters’ situations: Two girls work as phone-sex operators after the death of one of their siblings. One woman transforms into a buffalo. “I felt wet, porous, as if the world were washing in and out of me, a nudity of the soul,” says another character. These stories, similarly, reveal the leaky boundaries between our bodies and the universe, and bare what’s vulnerable, and beautiful, underneath. — V.T.

Indulge in a Breezy Beach Read

by Marisa Meltzer

There was a brief moment in 2017 when The Atlantic ’s London bureau shared a WeWork floor with the U.K. marketing team for Glossier, and this was when I first became fascinated with the cult beauty brand, its playful tubes of color, and its virtuoso Instagram presence. Meltzer’s 2023 book, Glossy , is a rich, gossipy history of the company’s rise. But it’s also a fairly succinct examination of womanhood in the 2010s: the cursed girlboss ethos, the growth of social media, the aesthetic nature of aspiration in a moment when feminism was a trend more than a movement. Meltzer thoroughly examines how Glossier’s founder, Emily Weiss, ascended seamlessly from her supporting role on The Hills to blogging to founding a billion-dollar brand; the book delivers thrilling details and structural analysis along the way. (Beauty is a business with extremely high profit margins, which explains a lot about its ubiquity in our culture when you think about it.) Mostly, the book left me marveling at how selling a business in this environment was as much about selling yourself as any particular product. — Sophie Gilbert

by Yasmin Zaher

“Woman unravels in New York City” is hardly an innovative storyline for a novel. Yet The Coin , the Palestinian journalist Zaher’s debut—which is, yes, about a woman unraveling in New York City—feels arrestingly new. Its unnamed protagonist, a Palestinian multimillionaire who teaches at a middle school for gifted, underprivileged boys, is a neat freak, a misanthrope, a dirty-minded isolate who dislikes the United States profoundly but lives there because “I wanted a certain life for myself … Wearing heels was important to me.” Her narration is spiky and honest, her choices gleefully, consciously bad. The pleasure she takes in making those decisions and then recounting them is what makes The Coin both unusual and compelling. Our protagonist denies herself nothing she wants, and she denies her audience no detail. The combination renders the book tough to put down. — Lily Meyer

The English Understand Wool

by Helen DeWitt

My copy of The English Understand Wool came with a little silver sticker on the front proclaiming it actually funny . Perspicacious sticker: This book is funny in the sense that it will make you laugh—for real, out loud, more than once—but also in the sense that it’s a little off-kilter and unlike anything else. Its narrator is Marguerite, a 17-year-old who has been taught by her elegant, commanding maman to play piano and bridge, spot fine tailoring from a distance, and live a life unmarred by mauvais ton : “bad taste.” On a trip to London from their home in Marrakech, Marguerite learns something that elevates the novella from a charming comedy of manners to a truly divine combination of psychological thriller, caper, tender coming-of-age story, and barbed publishing-industry satire. It also does all of this in just over 60 pages, making this a book you can actually finish over a single drink from your beach cooler—though once you do, you may well return to the beginning to try to figure out how DeWitt pulled it off. — E.C.

The Birthday Party

by Laurent Mauvignier

Despite its title, The Birthday Party isn’t … fun , per se. It’s violent and exceedingly dark; when it was longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize, the judges said , “It is a very scary book.” And it’s not a quick read—following a couple, their young daughter, and that family’s lone neighbor as they’re visited by three menacing men, the plot is unspooled detail by minute detail over the course of roughly 500 pages. Single sentences stretch on so long that by the end of one, you might have forgotten its beginning. But the novel, in its own way, is breezy: Mauvignier drifts gently as a leaf in the wind among characters’ perspectives, swirling acrobatically through their interior worlds and sketching their psyches finely before he plunges them into terror. The first explicitly frightening event happens about 100 pages in; by that point, I’d come to care about these people a great deal, and my jaw hurt from anxious clenching, knowing something bad was on the way. The action is made more suspenseful because it explodes in slow motion—gripping enough to make you forget about the sand in your teeth and the seagull circling your sandwich. That’s my kind of beach read. — F.H.

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The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Kristin Harmel. 31 books11.8k followers. Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling and #1 international bestselling author of THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES, THE WINEMAKER'S WIFE, and a dozen other novels that have been translated into numerous languages and sold all over the world. A former reporter for PEOPLE magazine, Kristin has been writing ...
Reviews of The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
The plot is a bit reminiscent of a Disney movie, however; the main characters are good people with small interpersonal dramas and there is a looming villainous presence. Nothing here is narratively complicated or heavy, even given the wartime setting and high political stakes. Despite these gripes, The Book of Lost Names is a pure kind of novel.
The Book of Lost Names
The Book of Lost Names. Written by Kristin Harmel Review by Hilary Daninhirsch. The author of The Winemaker's Wife has penned another phenomenal story set in France during World War II.The Book of Lost Names is an utterly captivating novel about strong women and their often-unsung contributions to the war. Based on a true story, the novel recounts how one woman's incredible skills as a ...
The Book of Lost Names [Book Review]
The Ending: I need to note that even though The Book of Lost Names is a rewarding, compelling, and satisfying read, the emotional and dramatic ending requires a little suspension of disbelief. Recommended: I enthusiastically recommend The Book of Lost Names for fans of page-turning and engaging historical fiction, for readers who appreciate ...
Book Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Review: Fascinating, heartwrenching, and exceptionally absorbing! The Book of Lost Names is an evocative, beautifully written, touching tale set in France during WWII, as well present day, that takes you into the life of Eva Traube, a young Jewish woman who spent the majority of the war, to the detriment of herself and those she loved, using ...
The Book of Lost Names
The Book of Lost Names. by Kristin Harmel. Publication Date: May 25, 2021. Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction. Paperback: 416 pages. Publisher: Gallery Books. ISBN-10: 198213190X. ISBN-13: 9781982131906. Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in ...
Review of The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Despite these gripes, The Book of Lost Names is a pure kind of novel. It works spectacularly as a love story; its characters are lovable and easy to bond with. The highs and lows all hit hard because of the tight pacing. It flows well from chapter to chapter and from act to act, with every emotional punch landing perfectly.
Book Marks reviews of The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
It was dangerous, with some heart wrenching moments that will have readers' pulses thudding wildly. But Eva's bravery paid off in the end. As it did for those she met who stood up against the Nazis and fought to take back France. A story of courage and perseverance, The Book of Lost Names is the type of novel that will linger in readers ...
Book Review: The Book of Lost Names
Summary. Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of ...
Book of Lost Names (Harmel)
The Book of Lost Names. Kristin Harmel, 2020. Gallery Books. 400 pp. ISBN-13: 9781982131890. Summary. Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel. Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is ...
The Book of Lost Names
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent ofThe Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil. To Purchase The Book of Lost Names (Paperback): Amazon Barnes & Noble Indie Bound Books-A-Million Writer's Block Bookshop.
The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
The Story. Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of ...
Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
There are a lot of historical fiction books surrounding WWII and most of them follow male characters that are fighting in the war. Kristin Harmel's The Book of Lost Names takes a WWII historical fiction book and turns it into something incredibly unique for a genre that can often seem overdone. Harmel takes aspects of a true story to create an incredible tale filled with action, passion, and ...
The Book Of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
The Book of Lost Names is a record of people's real identity rescued from the Nazis during the war; many were too young to remember their names. The intent was to reunite families after the war. It's a quick but inspiring read about a brave group who risk their lives to save others. There are a few twists to keep you guessing and a lot to discuss.
The Book of Lost Names
DAUGHTER, THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS, THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES, THE ROOM ON RUE AMÉLIE and THE SWEETNESS OF FORGETTING. She€is published in more than 30 languages€and is the cofounder and cohost of the popular web series, "Friends and Fiction." She lives in Orlando, Florida. The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel Publication Date: May ...
Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel is such a well-written historical fiction novel. I was so engrossed in the story that I read it one sitting. I highly recommend this one. It's actually been a while since I've read a historical fiction novel too. And this was such a great one to pick up.
The Book of Lost Names
The Book of Lost Names. by Kristin Harmel. Publication Date: May 25, 2021. Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction. Paperback: 416 pages. Publisher: Gallery Books. ISBN-10: 198213190X. ISBN-13: 9781982131906. A site dedicated to book lovers providing a forum to discover and share commentary about the books and authors they enjoy.
Book Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Highly recommend The Book of Lost Names. The Book of Lost Names, the sixth historical novel to Kristin Harmel's prolific credit, was published by Simon and Schuster under its Gallery Books imprint and is now available in bookstores and online for about $20. For that, you receive almost 400 pages of good reading: a family story - the tale of ...
The Book of Lost Names
The Book of Lost Names. Hardcover - July 21, 2020. Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the "epic and heart-wrenching World War II tale" (Alyson ...
Book Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads. BOOK SUMMARY: Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.
Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Book of Lost Names
Review of The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ While shelving books at the library one day, Eva comes across a newspaper article with a photo that immediately catches her eye; because in the photo is a book that she hasn't seen in over 60-years.
The Book Of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Praise For This Book. "With meticulous research and an assured hand, Kristin Harmel once again spotlights French Resistance figures of the Second World War, unique heroes whose bravery and immeasurable sacrifices are too often lost to history. THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES is a fascinating, heartrending page-turner that, like the real-life forgers who ...
Review: The Book of Lost Names
2 min read. Review: The Book of Lost Names. "Once you've fallen in love with books, their presence can make you feel at home anywhere, even in places where you shouldn't belong.". As a great lover of WWII novels, Kristin Harmel's The Book of Lost Namestells the inspired true story of a Jewish woman's courage to save thousands of Jewish ...
Anne MacDonald's review of The Book of Lost Names
2/5: To be fair, I knew by the title and cover of the book that it would not be my kind of book, but I was at the last minute trying to find a few ebooks that I could borrow from the library to read on a trip. This one was available. Here's what I liked: the premise is intriguing. Problems: *The main character, Eva, is whiny and repetitive. *Her mother blames Eva for everything even though it ...
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The 2019 book has over 295,000 reviews so far on Amazon, ... Originally published in 2015, the book has not lost its appeal to readers nearly a decade later. With well over 137,000 ratings on ...
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Algeria regained its independence in 1962, and for the clan in This Strange Eventful History, the Cassars, it became a lost homeland, one that they could never return to because it no longer existed.
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In this moving work of historical fiction based on real events, a young Polish-French Jewish woman forges identification papers to aid Jews fleeing the Nazis during World War II.

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Book of Lost Names (Harmel)

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a newspaper nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names .

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