When in NYC last month, I visited my new favorite bookstore, Crawford Doyle. In addition to the usual bestsellers, CD offers a carefully curated selection of books not readily found at Costco or B&N. I scooped up the following four books immediately!
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
Inspired by The Ambassadors, Foreign Bodies is the story of schoolteacher Bea Nightingale. At the behest of her bossy brother, Bea travels to Europe to retrieve brother’s errant son and is irrevocably changed by the experience.
Author Cynthia Ozick is hardly an unknown writer (she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Man Booker International Prize,) but I wasn’t familiar with her work. Having enjoyed this polished and poignant novel, I look forward to reading Ozick’s other novels.
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson
Lynne Olson’s previous nonfiction book, Troublesome Young Men, is one of my favorites, so I eagerly added this to my purchases.
And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding
How did the artists of Paris respond to the German occupation? For many it was business as usual. Theaters, music halls, opera houses, haute couture businesses, and movie theaters reopened soon after the French surrender.
The creative community’s relationship with the occupiers not only shaped the cultural life of the city, but influenced each artist’s creative output, lifestyle, and reputation for years.
Westwood by Stella Gibbons
Stella Gibbons is best known (and often solely known) for her hugely successful comic novel Cold Comfort Farm. (Also a wonderful 1995 BBC film) In fact, Gibbons wrote 20 more novels one of which is Westwood. 
