NAT ENOUGH de Maria Scrivan

A hilarious new illustrated middle grade series about self-confidence and hidden talents

NAT ENOUGH
by Maria Scrivan
Scholastic / Graphix, 2020


In the spirit of The Dork Diaries and the work of Raina Telgemeier comes a hilarious new illustrated middle grade series about self-confidence and hidden talents.
Natalie has never felt that she’s enough—athletic enough, stylish enough, or talented enough. And on the first day of middle school, Natalie discovers that things are worse than she thought—now she’s not even cool enough for her best friend, Lily! As Natalie tries to get her best friend back, she learns more about her true self and natural talents. If Natalie can focus on who she is rather than who she isn’t, then she just might realize she’s more than enough, just the way she is. Written and illustrated in the form of Nat’s sketchbook, NAT ENOUGH is a story about the power of self-love and acceptance, told with warmth and humor.
Maria Scrivan’s cartoons have been published in magazines, newspapers, books, and on national television.

ATHUR UND LILLY de Lilly Maier

The girl and the Holocaust survivor

ARTHUR UND LILLY
by Lilly Maier
Heyne, November 2018

The poignant biography of a Holocaust survivor and the story of an unusual friendship: « I had a wonderful life », Arthur Kern muses, meaning his childhood in Vienna – up to that fateful moment in 1939, when at the age of just ten he is suddenly separated from his family. Hoping to save him from the Holocaust, his Jewish parents send him away to an unfamiliar world with a Kindertransport or children’s transport – a traumatic experience for the ten-year-old. He manages to escape to America via France, but he never sees his family again. 60 years later, while visiting the apartment of his childhood days in Vienna, he makes the acquaintance of eleven-year-old Lilly Maier – a fateful encounter for both of them and one that not only strongly influences Lilly’s future but also leads to Arthur being bestowed with a late legacy of his parents …

ATTRACTION de Ruby Porter

                                       ‘A melancholic and haunting meditation on postcolonial guilt

                                                                           ATTRACTION
                                                                                By Ruby Porter
                                                                                                                    Text publishingr, May 2019

In lyrical fragments, Ruby Porter explores what it means to be and to belong, to create and to destroy.
ATTRACTION is a meditative novel of connection, inheritance and the stories we tell ourselves.
Three women are on a road trip, navigating the motorways of the North Island of New Zealand, their relationships with one another, and the country’s colonial history. Our narrator doesn’t know where she stands with Ilana, her not-quite girlfriend. She has a complex history with her best friend, Ashi. She’s haunted by the memory of her emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend. And her period is late. Ruby Porter was born in 1993 and is a tutor of creative writing at the University of Auckland. She has been published in Geometry Journal, Aotearotica, Spinoff and Wireless, and a selection of her poetry is available on NZEPC. In 2018                                                                   she  won the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest.

AUF DEM SEIL de Terézia Mora

Is life an eternal balancing act?

Auf dem Seil
by Terézia Mora
Luchterhand, September 2019

Darius Kopp threatened to break his misfortune. Three years have passed since his wife, Flora, his great love, died. The IT expert traveled through Europe with Flora’s ashes and finally landed in Sicily. One day his unexpected 17-year-old niece appears there. The girl is on her own and does not give way to him anymore. Lorelei needs Darius’ help – and he needs her. With her he goes back to Berlin. And learn to measure your (c)Peter Van Felbert                                          happiness by what you can and can not change by your own will.

18 TINY DEATHS de Bruce Goldfarb

The fascinating story of the forgotten woman who pioneered forensic science

18 TINY DEATHS: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
by Bruce Goldfarb
Sourcebooks, February 2020

As World War II rages across the Atlantic, Frances Glessner Lee stands at the front of a wood-paneled classroom within Harvard Medical School and addresses the young men attending her seminar on the developing field of forensic science. A grandmother without a college degree, Lee may appear better suited for a life of knitting than of investigation of unexpected death. Her colleagues and students, however, know her to be an extremely intelligent and exacting researcher and teacher—the perfect candidate, despite her gender, to push the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark confines of centuries-old techniques and into the light of the modern day.

Lee’s decades-long obsession with advancing the discipline of forensic science was a battle from the very beginning. In a time when many prestigious medical schools were closed to female students and young women were discouraged from entering any kind of scientific profession, Lee used her powerful social skills, family wealth, and uncompromising dedication to revolutionize a field that was usually political, often corrupt, and always deeply rooted in the primal human fear of death.

18 Tiny Deaths transports the reader back in time and tells the story of how one woman, who should never have even been allowed into the classrooms she ended up teaching in, changed the face of science forever.