Flair Magazine Courtesy of Barns & Noble
By Farah Amin
The Nightingale
By Kristin Hannah
Set in a quiet village named Carriveau in 1939 France, Vianne says goodbye to her husband who is going to war. Even though she didn’t believe that the Nazis would take over, she was proven wrong when the Nazis invaded in droves of marching soldiers, caravans of trucks and tanks and a sky full of planes dropping bombs on the innocent. Her home get requisitioned by a German captain where she and her daughter are forced to stay with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.
Isabelle a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl is Vianne’s sister who is rebellious and searching for a purpose with the passion of youth. She meets Gäetan, a partisan among the thousands of Parisians who marched into the unknown terrors of war. She falls in love with him as only the young can. He betrays her and Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.
With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and shines light on an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France.
The Girl on the Train
By Paula Hawkins
Gone Girl fans out there, this book is for you. Everyday Rachel takes the same commuter train, where she rattles down the track to a line of suburban homes, and stops at the signal that gives her a view of the same couple having breakfast on their deck. Watching them daily, she begins to feel like shes known them and even calls them “Jess and Jason.” Rachel sees their life as the perfect life. Not unlike the life she has recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. Now everything’s changed. Rachel can’t keep what she has witnessed to herself, taking it to the police where it becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Obsession in Death
By J.D Robb
Eve Dallas has gotten a lot of media attention for the many high-profile murders she has solved for the NYPSD. She and her billionaire husband are getting used to the gossip, speculation and being objects of attention. But now Eve has become the object of one person’s obsession. Someone who thinks she’s extraordinary and can’t get her out of his mind in every hour of the day. Who believes the two of them have a special relationship. Who would kill for her, again and again…
Now Eve is left to handle this very delicate and dangerous case, where it involves her every move and Eve knows that underneath the worship and admiration, a terrible threat lies in wait. Because the beautiful lieutenant doesn’t appreciate all the bloody offerings from her “true and loyal friend.” And in time, idols always fall…
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story
By Dan Harris
Nightline anchor, Dan Harris had suffered a full-blown heart attack on national television ten years ago. That career-shaking shocker has pushed him into a determined far-reaching search for the cure to the stress that was ruining his life. Harris realized that his biggest problem was the very thing he thought of as his greatest asset; that incessant and insatiable voice in hi head. Eventually his quest led him to effectively shut down these voices, something he always assumed to be either impossible or useless: meditation, a tool that research suggests can do everything from lower your blood pressure to essentially rewire your brain.
10% Happier takes readers on a ride from neuroscience to the inner works of network news to America’s bizarre spiritual scene, and leaves them with a takeaway that could actually change their lives.
A Spool of Blue Thread
By Anne Tyler
This is a story of four generations of the Whitshanks delicately follows the thread of aspirations, misunderstandings, reunions, and secrets. A major work by a beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author. It tells the story of Abby Whitshank and how she fell in love with Red in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture.
With four grown children, Abby and Red have accumulated tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets.
Overflowing with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a moving yet unsentimental story in admiration of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.
