All We Left Behind

For fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz ‘Heart-wrenching. Emotional. A powerful story of wartime love and devotion’ Glynis Peters, author of The Secret Orphan A powerful and incredibly moving historical novel inspired by an untold story of the Second World War.

From the acclaimed author of Lies We Tell Ourselves comes an empowering YA novel of what happens when love may not be enough to conquer all. Toni and Gretchen are the couple everyone envied in high school. When they go off to different colleges—Toni to Harvard and Gretchen to NYU—they’re sure they’ll be fine. Where other long-distance relationships have fallen apart, theirs is bound to stay rock-solid. The reality of being apart, though, is very different than they expected. Toni, who identifies as genderqueer, meets a group of transgender upperclassmen and immediately finds a sense of belonging that has always been missing. Gretchen, meanwhile, struggles to remember who she is outside their relationship. As distance and Toni’s shifting gender identity begin to wear on their relationship, the couple must decide—have they grown apart for good, or is love enough to keep them together?

"Marion is hiding a secret from her past and Kurt is trying to figure out how to recover from his mother's death as they both find solace in each other."--

Jessica Verdi, the author of My Life After Now and The Summer I Wasn't Me, returns with a heartbreaking and poignant novel of grief and guilt that reads like Nicholas Sparks for teens. It's all Ryden's fault. If he hadn't gotten Meg pregnant, she would have never stopped her chemo treatments and would still be alive. Instead he's failing fatherhood one dirty diaper at a time. And it's not like he's had time to grieve while struggling to care for their infant daughter, start his senior year, and earn the soccer scholarship he needs to go to college. The one person who makes Ryden feel like his old self is Joni. She's fun and energetic-and doesn't know he has a baby. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to keep his two worlds separate. Finding one of Meg's journals only stirs up old emotions. Ryden's convinced Meg left other notebooks for him to find, some message to help his new life make sense. But how is he going to have a future if he can't let go of the past? "Ryden's story is a moving illustration of how sometimes you have to let go of the life you planned to embrace the life you've been given. A strong, character-driven story that teen readers will love."-Carrie Arcos, National Book Award Finalist for Out of Reach

Winner of the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction An incredible work of non-fiction that reads like a thriller, All We Leave Behind is the true story of a family fleeing the death sentence of a ruthless warlord, written by the journalist who broke all her own rules to get them to safety. In 2002, Carol Off and a CBC TV crew encountered an Afghan man with a story to tell. Asad Aryubwal became a key figure in their documentary on the terrible power of thuggish warlords who were working arm in arm with Americans and NATO troops. When Asad publicly exposed the deeds of one of the warlords, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it set off a chain of events from which there was no turning back. Asad, his wife, Mobina, and their five children had to flee their home. The family faced an uncertain future. But their dilemma compelled a journalist to cross the lines of disinterested reporting and become deeply involved. Together, they navigated the Byzantine international bureaucracy and the decidedly unwelcoming policies of Stephen Harper's government until the family finally found a new home. Carol Off's powerful account traces not only one family's journey and fraught attempts to immigrate to a safe place, it also illustrates what happens when a journalist becomes irrevocably caught up in the lives of the people in her story and finds herself unable to leave them behind.

A sweeping historical romance that is “gripping, tragic, yet filled with passion and hope” (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author), offering a vivid and unique portrayal of life in war-torn 1941 Bucharest during World War II and its aftermath—perfect for fans of Lilac Girls and Sarah’s Key. On a freezing night in January 1941, a little Jewish girl is found on the steps of an apartment building in Bucharest. With Romania recently allied with the Nazis, the Jewish population is in grave danger so the girl is placed in an orphanage and eventually adopted by a wealthy childless couple who name her Natalia. As she assimilates into her new life, she all but forgets the parents who were forced to leave her behind. As a young woman in Soviet Romania, Natalia crosses paths with Victor—an important official in the Communist regime that she used to know as an impoverished young student. Now they are fatefully drawn into a passionate affair despite the obstacles swirling around them and Victor’s dark secrets. When Natalia is suddenly offered a one-time chance at freedom, Victor is determined to help her escape, even if it means losing her. Natalia must make an agonizing decision: remain in Bucharest with her beloved adoptive parents and the man she has come to love, or seize the chance to finally live life on her own terms, and to confront the painful enigma of her past. The Girl They Left Behind “is a vividly told, beautifully written, impossible-but-true story” (Helen Bryan, internationally bestselling author of War Brides) that you won’t soon forget.

While this book is being published as fiction, the very essence of the story is a true one. The gentleman this book is actually about felt that his sins were far too horrible to be forgiven. While the names and certain events have been altered in order to avoid sharing any inaccurate information, therefore making it fiction, he did, in fact, grow up in a small rural community in the south. The innocence of that idyllic childhood was shattered due to the draft during the Vietnam War. Then he struggled to rebuild his life from that point forward. However, he found that there was no returning to the things he left behind. The innocence of youth was forever lost. While he survived physically, although narrowly, any semblance of normal life was gone. From that point forward, he dealt with overwhelming guilt. Guilt for going and leaving loved ones behind, some he would never see again. Guilt for coming home and leaving his men behind, many whom would never make it home. Guilt for things he had to do during the terror that was an integral part of war. He tried to seek relief by rebuilding and helping as much as he could. He was, however, overwhelmed with the fear that nothing would ever be good enough to bring about forgiveness for his seemingly unthinkable sins. Like many who have been through such traumas, he suffered silently, and this took its toll. He was fortunate enough to have had many caring people who tried to help through the years. In the end, he was blessed to finally find the answer through one seemingly simple question that allowed him to find the peace he so desperately sought. His dying wish was that his story might help others.

Six years after he was lost at sea, James emerges from a dissociative fugue state to find he's a widower with two sons, but as James tries to unravel the mystery of his fractured identity, something he witnessed six years ago puts his family in danger.