On Bittersweet Place

On Bittersweet Place is the powerful coming-of-age story of Lena Czernitski, a young Russian Jew whose family flees their homeland in the Ukraine after the October Revolution. The story unfolds in Chicago during the Jazz Age of the 1920 s, where Lena s impoverished family has settled and where she must traverse the early years of adolescence. Lena s new world is large and beautiful and full of promise, but it is also cold and unwelcoming and laden with danger. Ronna Wineberg delivers a moving, universal story of family, self-discovery, young love, and the always relevant experience of the immigrant, the refugee, the outsider struggling to create a new home and a better life in an unfamiliar place.

There's a long silence. "Zach?" "Yeah?" "Are you going to make me say it first?" There's another pause and, 'if he says "say what?" I'll just die', Daniel thinks. "I've wanted to say it for a while," says Zach, and Daniel breathes again. "Let's say it together, then nobody has to be first." "Okay. Yeah. Ready?" "Ready." "I love you," they say. And they lie very still, waiting for the sky to fall. Bittersweet Place is the first book in the Courtesans series, a book about two young men and their growing commitment: to one another, and to the difficult decisions they must make. Daniel Sylvan and Zach Graham come to Chicago to find new lives. Each has darkness in his past that he would rather forget, but both young men learn that there is no future without the past; that trying to bury old pain only leads to new pain. Difficult as it may be, the past must be faced before they can grow. Daniel and Zach must find the courage to grow ... together. Sarz Maxwell, a native Chicagoan, tells Zach and Daniel's story with humor and authenticity. In Bittersweet Place the reader will meet not only two extraordinary young men, but also a very special place: Chicago's Boystown, in all its vibrant, breathing life.

Annie Le seemed to have it all. A beautiful graduate student at one of the world's most prestigious universities, she was also deeply in love. But just days before she was set to get married, Annie went mysteriously missing...and her fiancé started to fear the worst. Raymond Clark III seemed like an average, all-American boy next door. He was a sports hero in high school, adored by friends and family. But he had a secret dark side—and a history of violence that was about to come to light. Annie and Ray worked in the same lab facility. Security records indicated that, on September 8, 2009, Annie entered a restricted basement area...followed by Ray. On the thirteenth, the date of her wedding, Annie's lifeless body was found. DNA evidence at the crime scene was eventually linked to Ray. Why did he do it? What did Annie do to set him off? This is the shocking true story of a Murder at Yale.