What Would You Do?

A Jewish girl is squirreled away at the home of a former family employee after her father dies at the onset of WWII. As she navigates the nuances of learning to pass as Catholic, answer to a new name, and readily recall a fictitious family history, she becomes one of the family. She makes friends. She learns to love the people she lives with. She even learns to trust a German soldier. With the benefit of history, it's easy to believe we know what we would do in a situation in which the world is falling down around us. But do we really know? Are we a dog? Or maybe a wolf?

An Unlikely Hero

Mental illness does not preclude intelligence, as this book illustrates. One of the main contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary, a herculean task taking decades to complete, was an inpatient at a mental hospital for the criminally insane for the majority of his life. It was there that he learned of the opportunity to submit definitions and quotations for consideration. I'd read another book on this topic, but felt this one was more thorough in fleshing out Dr. Minor's life behind the veil of the dictionary. Interesting and honestly, heartbreaking.

Not Gonna Lie--Loved It

Okay, first of all, this is a book for 12 and up. So if you think it's beneath you, move along. But if you want a fun mystery to spice up your evening, here you go! A group of kids and their advisor are traveling to a state drama competition find themselves battling a snowstorm, so they pull off the freeway when they see an option. When another group of high schoolers and their advisor turn up at the hotel, the kids all decide to play Two Truths and a Lie, to spice up their hungry and cold evening. Someone's slip of paper confesses a love of watching people die. Naturally this is the creepiest and most rambling of hotels, with a history of double murder. Is it one of the teens? An advisor? The weirdo hotelier or his sidekick maintenance man? The truck driver? While the cast of characters is trying to survive the power outage, people are disappearing, one by one. No, you won't impress your friends by reading this book. But come on, you wanna see who the villain is, too, doncha?