The Librarian of Burned Books

September 1, 2022

The Emmy Award--winning Calvi (Dear George, Dear Mary) returns with the story of a young Teddy Roosevelt wooing Boston belle Alice Lee in If a Poem Could Live and Breathe (60,000-copy first printing). Three Souls author Chang goes hardcover with The Porcelain Moon, about a young Chinese woman who flees her uncle's Paris home in 1918 to avoid an arranged marriage, seeking a cousin in the French countryside working with the Chinese Labour Corps and befriending a Frenchwoman who wants quit of her abusive husband (50,000-copy first printing). Set in 1940s Trinidad, when British colonialism and U.S. occupation were folding, Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Hosein's Hungry Ghosts contrasts the lives of wealthy farm owners Dalton and Marlee Changoor and their impoverished workers, with the plot driven by Dalton's disappearance (100,000-copy first printing). In Code Name Sapphire, from World War II fiction titan Jenoff, Hannah Martel flees Nazi Germany for Brussels and joins the Sapphire Line, which spirits downed Allied airmen to safety; when her cousin Lily's family is slated for deportation, she must decide whether she should risk trying to rescue them (350,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Best-selling thriller writer Labuskes turns to historical fiction with The Librarian of Burned Books, which moves from U.S. author Althea James's discovery of Nazi resisters in 1933 Berlin to German refugee Hannah Brecht's work at the German Library of Burned Books in 1936 Paris to Vivian Childs's efforts in 1944 New York to block the censorship of the Armed Service Editions, paperbacks shipped to soldiers overseas (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). Writing under his father's Lithuanian surname, Maetis, British thriller writer John Matthews takes readers to 1938 Vienna, where members of The Vienna Writers Circle fear that the Anschluss means they won't be able to write and then fear for their very survival (50,000-copy first printing). In Canadian author Marshall's best-selling debut, Angela Creighton's discovery in 2017 of a long-misplaced letter with great import to her family sends her Looking for Jane, with Jane the codename for a network providing illegal abortions in 1970s-80s Toronto. Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award and National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honors for Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, Moustakis tries out full-length fiction in Homestead, about a couple named Marie and Lawrence who marry impulsively and then learn about each other while homesteading in Alaska as it nears statehood (75,000-copy first printing). In Pulitzer Prize-winning Verble's Stealing, a Cherokee girl named Kit Crockett is taken from her home in 1950s bayou country and sent to a Christian boarding school intent on expunging her heritage (50,000-copy first printing).

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January 13, 2023

Labuskes's fifth stand-alone novel (following Her Final Words) plunges into human relationships and pushes her characters to do not what is easy but what is right. In 1933, young U.S. novelist Althea James visits Berlin on a Nazi exchange program. Enchanted by German nationalism, she attends official events, but for off-hours fun she relies on flirtatious Hannah Brecht. Together they visit Berlin's nightclubs, hotbeds of sex and politics where Althea wakens to her sensuality. One night, the Nazis torch huge pyres of banned books. Althea soon heads home, bereft of her lover, while Hannah resists the Nazis by building a Parisian repository of banned books and newspapers. Years later, as World War II rages, Hannah finds work in a Brooklyn library where Jewish titles lost to the Nazi pyres are reclaimed. The action builds up to 1944, when the United States faces a dangerous censorship challenge, as Republican Senator Taft wants to rid Armed Forces Editions of "pro-FDR" propaganda. The Council on Books in Wartime and its smart publicist, Vivian Childs, are desperate to keep titles like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn free from Taft's blitz. Viv's radiant solution will not surprise romance readers. VERDICT Terrific research buttresses strong writing that will keep readers riveted. Molly Guptill Manning's When Books Went to War and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are great tandem reads for Labuskes's latest.--Barbara Conaty

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2023
In 1943 New York City, Vivian coordinates the Armed Services Edition (ASE) program that sends books to soldiers, and she knows how vital it is because of the many letters she receives, including one from her husband shortly before he died in battle. In 1932 Berlin, Althea, having left her sheltered life in Maine, joins a cultural program for writers organized by the Nazis, who don't seem all that dangerous at first. In 1936 Paris, Hannah works at the Library of Burned Books, haunted by memories from Berlin, desperate for news about her detained brother, and bitter about a betrayal by the young American author she thought she could trust. When the ASE program is threatened by partisan legislation, Vivian knows that the only way to fight a powerful senator is with the stories of women who've witnessed book burnings in Germany. As Labuskes weaves the women's perspectives together, she not only highlights the pain of censorship, suppression, and dehumanization but also issues a stark reminder that history repeats itself. At the same time, she plants seeds of hope in her characters' refusal to let the stories that should bring us together be silenced and their ability to let love conquer despair.

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