THE QUIETEST PLACE
Literary Young Adult
Numbers crawl from sixteen-year-old Kell’s head into his fingers and not only when he plays his cello. He must tap everything four times, especially Father’s doorbell when he visits him each Friday. And blink four times. And clear his throat four times. It’ll be okay. Except it’s not.
According to Father’s harsh, alcohol-infused teachings, if Kell doesn’t want to end up jobless like him, at every competition he must outsmart the foreigners who are here to steal our grades, our jobs, our culture. And by the way, music is for losers.
With the help of grumpy Grandpapa’s hidden war diary and the bashfully silent and secretive Shadow Girl, Kell must find a way to get a grip on the numbers inside his head, defend what he believes in even when it’s unpopular and downright dangerous, and learn that the only perfect silence is the one we create for ourselves.
The Quietest Place takes us to places no one should ever have to go, where the only way to survive is to be kind to others. It’s a story of acceptance, bravery, and finding one's own voice amid all the noise.
THE SHOEBOX
Contemporary Women's Fiction
Hungarian teenager, Anna Toth, came to the United States just before the Berlin Wall crumbled, swearing never to look back. And she didn’t. Until twenty years later when a shoebox from her past arrived. Absorbed in nostalgia, she sets out to discover the truth about her past. But when she leaves for Hungary to find what she’s looking for, it’s not just her new country she leaves behind - it’s also a husband and two daughters and a hard-earned life.
The Shoebox transports us to a place where eating is more than just feeding the body and dancing is more than a sport, in a time when people waited for a telephone line for eight years, went to church in secret, and picked snowdrops from underneath the hardened snow.
It is a tale of time's power to enhance the past and of acute grief that can both distort and elucidate the obvious.