Favorite Books
5 stories
In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly) by DianaAltman
DianaAltman
  • WpView
    Reads 1,461,618
  • WpVote
    Votes 2,789
  • WpPart
    Parts 34
In a world where jugglers entertain on the street, a boy loses his parents in a factory fire. Taken from the Lower East Side to New England, Harry is abandoned at The Elizabeth Home for Destitute Children. In Theda Bara’s Tent follows the spirited boy’s quest for love and prosperity. He finds comfort at the movies and is befriended by the young theater owner, Louie, who will one day become a Hollywood legend. The orphanage closing is the beginning of Harry’s adventures in a wider world. He encounters screen stars, Tin Pan Alley song pluggers, bootleggers, dare-devil cameramen, movie moguls, and a young gossip columnist who steals his heart. Rich in historical context, with a cast of characters real and imagined from the movies’ early days, this page-turner follows Harry Sirkus as he makes a mark in the flourishing film industry and goes on to become a famous news broadcaster. Harry’s personality is so captivating and vivid readers will be hard-pressed to remember that the author made him up.
The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones by keyframed
keyframed
  • WpView
    Reads 691,222
  • WpVote
    Votes 30,898
  • WpPart
    Parts 27
WATTPAD ORIGINAL EDITION In 1955, mixed-race Ethan Harper leaves his progressive hometown for a summer in Alabama where he's not welcome, except by resident free spirit, Juniper Jones. ***** After getting himself into a bout of trouble, 16-year-old Ethan Harper's parents send him to Ellison, Alabama, to live with his aunt and uncle for the summer. But the year is 1955, and Alabama is a far cry from his beloved home of Arcadia, Washington. As much as it's hotter in temperature, it's colder in every other way, and Ethan learns the hard way that people see his mere existence as a threat. Amidst all the mayhem, a fiery, free-spirited, oddball walks into Ethan's life. Her name is Juniper Jones. She is the first person in Ellison who seems unfazed by their racial differences, and she promises to give Ethan a summer he will always remember, filled with endless adventure and discovery. With Juniper, Ethan can breathe, he can be, despite the incessant attention and bullying their newly formed friendship attracts. Can the two survive the summer, run in the light and block out the noise of the outside world? [Published version comes out June 16, 2020 with Wattpad Books!] [[word count: 70,000-80,000 words]]
Vergessenheit by motherhenna
motherhenna
  • WpView
    Reads 11,701
  • WpVote
    Votes 219
  • WpPart
    Parts 11
For Kerza Freiborne, the war began with fire and ended in ice. But Ally bombs and a march through frozen fields did not come first: the war had a precursor that brought it to her doorstep in the shape of hunched shoulders, dirt-smudged cheeks and a gold star sewn to the breast of a sweater. A fugitive Jew in the heart of Nazi Germany is not a thing that can be simply swept beneath a rug, and thusly, it is the attic of Kerza's family in which the traumatized, stammering boy must take shelter. With the battlefield drawing closer and a country's old prejudice reaching a boiling point, the line between us and them is blurred and the duplicity of human nature becomes clearer every day. But for better or worse, this Jew and German are the most important people in each others lives, and everything they thought they understood of their world will soon change forever.
Paper Stars by motherhenna
motherhenna
  • WpView
    Reads 38,508
  • WpVote
    Votes 1,018
  • WpPart
    Parts 43
Sara is the temperamental, quick-to-judge daughter of an upstanding Protestant family in the countryside of Cologne. To her, the war has always seemed a far-away nuisance. That is, until a warm night in the summer of 1944, when a jarring dose of reality is dumped upon their doorstep: young, fraught, and Jewish. Enter Benjamin Jastrow, the child of an old family friend and the new and indefinite resident of the Fleischers' attic. He is violently shy, coping with various stages of post-traumatic stress, and can hardly form a sentence without stammering—a nearly perfect opposite of the blustering Sara, who positively abhors his presence in her home. But for better or worse, they are the most important people in each others lives, and everything they thought they understood of their world will soon change forever.
The Things That Stay by motherhenna
motherhenna
  • WpView
    Reads 23,637
  • WpVote
    Votes 535
  • WpPart
    Parts 20
The year is 1965: a year thrumming with promise and hope and change all around the globe. But for two people, change seems out of the question. Their worlds are rigid, stuck, fixed—and completely contradictory to one another. Holly is a frazzled and reclusive mess from the wrong side of the tracks—well, the wrong side of everything, really—struggling to keep herself afloat as she copes with the loss of her nursing school scholarship two years before. Simon, on the other hand, is charming, arrogant, smart-mouthed and spoiled rotten—the only thing he has ever wanted for is a pair of proper lungs, as his own have been slowly ruined by the effects of Cystic Fibrosis. When Holly joins a peculiar non-profit agency in hope for nursing experience, their worlds are suddenly conjoined a little too close for comfort. Through bickering, old maps, collect calls and a great many letters, Holly and Simon are intertwined in a journey to find a future they never knew existed, suspended in the transience of yesterday, today and tomorrow.