Victoria Dawson has always felt like an outcast. When her little sister Grace is born, father Jim tells Victoria she was the tester cake, and they finally got it right with the beautiful Gracie. Victoria grows up in her sister's shadow, and though she loves Gracie dearly, she's anxious to leave home. The pain doesn't stop there, though. Her father calls her first job at a prestigious private school in Manhattan pathetic, and Victoria begins a battle with her weight and her belief that she is unlovable (even though men pursue her).
In this excellent sequel to 2003's No Graves As Yet, bestseller Perry continues the exploits of the Reavley children, who lost their parents in a devastating car crash that proved to be no accident on the eve of WWI. The implications of that double homicide continue to dog Joseph, a military chaplain in the thick of trench warfare at Ypres; his sister, Judith, a volunteer driver/translator for the general in command of that front; and their brother, Matthew, an intelligence officer.
The depth and passion of Perry's fifth and final volume in her acclaimed WWI series won't disappoint readers who have followed this engrossing and moving tale from its inception with No Graves as Yet. In the last days of the war, the Reavley family—Joseph, an army chaplain; his brother, Matthew, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service; and their sister, Judith, an ambulance driver—find themselves together in the mud, blood and trenches of Flanders.
A Rita Hayworth look-alike and her sister keep the home fires burning for young men going off to fight WWII in Berg's nostalgic tale of wartime romance and family sacrifice. Hoping her boyfriend, Julian, will propose before shipping out to the Pacific, beautiful redhead Kitty Heaney discovers not only is she not engaged, but she's enlisted as the delivery person for her sister Louise's engagement ring from Michael, her boyfriend, who has departed for the European front. Distance makes Louise's and Michael's hearts grow fonder while Kitty discovers independence through her job at a bomber factory.
Set in the mid '60s, Roy's outstanding debut melds strong characters and an engrossing plot with an evocative sense of place. When Negro boys start phoning Elaine, Arthur Scott's teenage daughter, Arthur decides it's time to leave Detroit and return to the small Kansas town that he left 20 years earlier after his sister Eve's mysterious death. His wife, Celia, resents the move that will put her close to in-laws she barely knows and that will change her family dynamic. That Arthur's younger daughter, Eve-ee, resembles her late aunt unsettles Arthur's older sister, Ruth, and Ruth's husband, Ray, who have never seen Eve-ee before.
