The Girl on the Train: Irma Joubert

This was a heartbreaking story about two people who found each other during WWII. Gretl Schmidt and her sister are told by her mother and grandmother to jump from the train they are on and to travel only at night to get to Switzerland to family members. As the story progresses you realize Gretl's remaining family was on a train to Aushwitz. There was an explosion shortly after the girls jumped from the train and soon Gretl's sister, who is dying of tuberculosis, tells Gretl that their mother and grandmother will not be joining them. She dies that morning around the time Gretl sees a man in the woods, Jakob. Jakob is 21 and takes Gretl back to his parents where she lives with them for four years disguising that she is Jewish and German. A little girl in school tells of the burning of Jews in the camps and Gretl starts to have nightmares. Jakob in trying to comfort her, tells her that the explosion was from her family's train being blown up and they couldn't have been burned to death in the camp. He doesn't tell her until later that he set the bombs hoping to derail a Nazi supply train and that the Jewish train was unscheduled and a surprise. Jakob eventually learns to love the little girl, but then his mother says Gretl must go because there are too many mouths to feed. Jakob doesn't know what to do with her, he knows she is extremley intelligent and doesn't want her to have to go to work in a factory. He drops her off at a German orphanage that is trying to get children adopted in South Africa. The seperation is agonizing as Gretl keeps losing those she loves. She is adopted to wonderful, though racist, parents and knows she must never expose who she really is. Life goes on and the nightmares get worse. One day in college she is told she has a visitor. It is Jakob. She finally has someone who loves her even knowing who she is and is able to start their relationship where it left off. Jakob is surprised to find a woman and not the 10 year old girl he dropped off at an orphanage. He falls in love with her. She still thinks of him as a protector and it isn't until she is in a fire and invites him to a college dance that she realizes she has fallen in love with him. A stove explodes when she is home on holiday and Jakob is phoned by her grandfather to come as Gretl is disoriented and asking for him. He learns through her delirium that she lost a baby brother in the ghetto to a fire. Many painful memories that she had buried resurface and her parent learn everything about her past. Her parents feel horrible about all the negative comments they have made about Jewish people. Eventually Gretl and Jakob get married, but the book has a little twist where Gretl mentions she wants to write a book about her life and since it is her book she can have a happy ending. The reader is left wondering if this is the actual ending of the story or the happy ending Gretl wanted people to enjoy.

A Madness so Discreet: Mindy McGinnis

Grace may is a teenage girl sent to an insane asylum after her father rapes her and she becomes pregnant. Everyone is told she is travelling in Europe until her pregnancy is over. The "warden" is brutal and she miscarriages after a "hot wrap" treatment. She does not want to go home because she knows the raping will continue. A Doctor, Dr THornhollow, who is leaving the asylum for a new job in an Ohio asylum understands her predicament and decides to help her. He tells the warden he performed a brain operation on her leaving her clueless and unable to communicate. He tells the doctor to get rid of her, possibly in the prostitution ring, and he will tell the father she died. Instead the doctor takes her to Ohio with him while he both works at an asylum and helps solves crimes using criminal psychology. A serial killer is on the loose in their new town and Grace figure out who he is. Dr THornhollow mentions that now the real work begins as they have to prove he is the murderer. Grace takes matters into her own hands and kills the murderer. Dr Thornhollow knows she murdered him and though angered, does not expose her. Grace then decides to take revenge on her father after learning that her little sister is to be her father's next victim.

Longing for Darkness; Kamante's Tales: Collected by Peter Beard

I believe this is the journal of Kamante as a child on Karen Blixen's coffee farm, but it could have been done when he was an adult? It is done on lined paper and tells of visits from Europe's princes and dukes to the homestead as well as how Kamante came to work at the farm. Each page either had a drawing or a photo and progresses as Kamante gets older telling of how Mrs Blixen's husband died, car accident, to her leaving Africa and we assume he takes over the farming by the letters included. I found it interesting how many times he notes an animal is killed only for it's skin or just for the dogs to eat, and the abundance of the animals in the photos. It's a very different world 100 years later.

Bad Girls Don't Die: Katie Alendar

This was a teen fiction book about a highschool girl, Alexis, who starts thinking her little sister is going crazy. SHe follows her sister down to their creepy basment to comfort her after one of her fits. Alexis tells her the story of a little girl and doesn't know where the inspiration to make up the story comes from, she feels like she was the mouthpiece for telling a true story. The little sister, Kasey, finds something and brings it upstairs without letting ALexis know what it is. The weeks that follow bring her father getting into a serious accident because his breaks were cut and the little sister stalking people and trying to posion the neighbor. In the end Alexis finds out Kasey found the conduit, a doll, to bring a little girl who lived in that house and fell to her death out of a tree years ago, to life. The dead girl was trying to seek revenge on all the descendants of the girls who chased her into the tree and caused her death. Alexia finds the doll and lets it burn as their house burns from a mysterious fire.

The White House Boys: Roger Dean Kiser

This was a very sad book. A little boy (the author) is found by the police when he is five years old in a house his mother abandoned with her three children still there to run off with a man. He was found holding his dead baby brother that was 2 weeks old. The authorities sent both Roger and his sister to her grandparents where the grandparents wanted nothing to do with him because he wasn't their blood. A teacher finally reports the abuse he suffered with his grandparents and he is sent off to an orphanage where he is sexually abused. From there he goes to the "WHITE HOUSE" where he is beaten to a bloody pulp, and sees other children killed. He is eventually released to yet more foster parents and actually wishes for the familiarity of the White house because that is the only home he knew.

Dark Matter: Blake Crouch

This was a fast pace interesting novel. A man, Jason, heads out to a friend's celebration of an award for his achievements and thinks about how ordinary he has become compared to his friend. Upon walking home he realizes how lucky he is as he loves his wife and son. A man in a hoodie kidnaps him and it is obvious he has been following Jason for some time and knows Jason's wife and son. Before drugging Jason, the unknown man asks if he is happy and if he would have lived his life any differently and made different choices. Jason said he wouldn't have and then blacks out. Jason awakens in a lab where the people seem to know him and he has been a part of some experiment. He escapes the lab and goes home to find his wife and son don't exist. He then goes to the hospital because people from the lab chase him to his house. The hospital says there is a drug in his system and he doesn't recognize it and neither does the doctor. He finds an address for his wife at her maiden name and when he gets there she is not home, but he sees a flyer for an art gallery opening she is having that night. He goes. She knows him. She doesn't have a son and hasn't seen him in a while. He realizes he has invented a machine that can travel to alternate dimensions. He understands that another Jason from another dimension that invented the machine has just swapped lives with him. With the help of someone at the lab they escape back into the machine,but realize getting back is not going to be easy. There are a countless number of other dimensions and we get to glimpse the other possibilities where there are disease break outs, snow ins, one or both of them have already died etc. He finally makes it back home only to find out there are at least 10 other Jasons who have found this dimension since it was the only one where he was happy. In the end he goes back into the time machine with his wife and son knowing they can't get back, but that as long as they are together they will be happy, and they will never be safe in their world again.

A Good Marriage: Stephen King

This was a short story about a marriage that had a dark secret. One evening when Darcy's husband is away on business she goes to the garage for a battery and finds a hiding place of her husband's. Opening a box she sees IDs from a woman whose name is familiar, but she can't place it. She puts everything back and then it hits her, the woman was murdered and all over the news. After some research she realizes every time a woman was murdered by the mass murderer "Beatie", her husband was out of town on "business". After hours of restlessness she falls asleep to be awaken at 3am because her husband has returned home, about 17 hours early. He knows she knows and asks her what she is going to do about it. He claims he could never hurt her and explains that all his community service is to make up for his "wrongs" which he doesn't exactly see as wrong. Darcy keeps thinking about one of the women's sons who was also murdered because he came home from school too soon. Beatie claims all these women threw themselves at him teasingly and he got revenge. A couple months go by and Beatie wants to have sex. She can't bear the thought and when he comes up the stairs she pushes him back down. He breaks his neck and arm and she suffocates him before calling 911. Later a detective shows up at the door and knows what she has done. He tells her the case needs to connect her husband with the murders so the families of the victims have closure. He tells her the little boy had been sexually assaulted as well, but it wasn't reported on the news. Darcy is sickened. The investigator leaves telling her she did the right thing and that he won't expose her husband and leaves.