From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:
Hardcover
Displaced Persons: A Novel by Ghita Schwarz (Morrow, $25, 9780061881909/0061881902). "This is a bold first novel about those who survived the Holocaust and how they continued to live their lives after the horrors of the war. Beginning in 1945, Pavel, Fela, and Chaim meet and become fast friends. After emigrating to America, the three start families and created new lives, all without discussing their experiences with anyone. The weight they carry inside themselves affects their lives and those of their children. Displaced Persons is a story of survival, but it is also about rebuilding ones life and maintaining the promise of hope."--Sherri Gallentine, Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif.
The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry (Viking, $25.95, 9780670021970/0670021970). "Chicago during Prohibition in the year 1924 was a dangerous place to be an adulterer and a great place to be a killer. A lady killer. Just ask Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan, two murderesses who became media sensations thanks to Maurine Watkins, a lowly 'girl reporter' for the Chicago Tribune. With detailed accounts of Jazz Age Chicago and 'Murderess Row' in Cook County Jail, Perry highlights a time when newspapers clamored over these killers, giving birth to the celebrity criminal and the power behind the manipulations of the mighty press."--Kristin Bates, McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich.
Paperback
The Homecoming Party by Carmine Abate (Europa Editions, $15, 9781933372839/1933372834). "The Christmas bonfire, a communal effort held in the church courtyard, is the scene of an annual homecoming party in an Albanian-speaking village in Calabria. For Tullio, a victim of the crushing poverty of southern Italy who is forced to seek work as a manual laborer in France where he leads an isolated life most of the year, it is a time to renew social ties with village friends and family, and to resume his paternal responsibilities. The bonfire is where Tullio and his son Marco tell their tales, share sorrows and frustrations, and cast off painful memories of the long absences. This Christmas, to mark Marco's passage to manhood, will be different."--Darwin Ellis, Books on the Common, Ridgefield, Conn.
For Ages 9 to 12
Countdown: A Novel by Deborah Wiles (Scholastic Press, $17.99, 9780545106054/0545106052). "In this fantastic debut historical novel, 11-year-old Franny is growing up in the early 1960s against a backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis. What makes this book unique is the nonfiction component that Wiles integrates into the book. Between each chapter there are pages of real images from the 1960s that serve to help the reader better imagine the era."--Suzanna Hermans, Oblong Books and Music, Rhinebeck, N.Y.
[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]