Set during World War II, this poignant, briskly paced historical novel relays the events of one extraordinary summer from three engaging points of view. On the morning of the dedication of the new children’s library in Belle Beach, Long Island, eleven-year-old Julie Sweet and her six-year-old sister, Martha, find a baby in a basket on the library steps. At the same time, twelve-year-old Bruno Ben-Eli is on his way to the train station to catch the 9:15 train into New York City. He is on an important errand for his brother, who is a soldier overseas in World War II. But when Bruno spies Julie, the same Julie who hasn’t spoken to him for sixteen days, heading away from the library with a baby in her arms, he has to follow her. Holy everything, he thinks. Julie Sweet is a kidnapper. Of course, the truth is much more complicated than the children know in this heartwarming and beautifully textured family story by award-winning author Amy Hest. Told in three distinct voices, each with a different take on events, the novel captures the moments and emotions of a life-changing summer — a summer in which a baby gives a family hope and brings a community together.

“The dawn of integration challenges the Southern smalltown conventions of Bainbridge, Ala. . . . in Devoto’s gracefully written new novel.” —Publishers Weekly My Last Days as Roy Rogers, Pat Cunningham Devoto’s notable debut, received widespread praise in the Denver Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Kirkus Reviews, among other publications. Born and raised in North Alabama, Devoto taps into her personal experiences and memories of growing up in the changing South to infuse The Summer We Got Saved with astonishing honesty and poignancy. “Alabama in the 1960s was still in denial about the civil rights movement. Tab Rutland proudly proclaimed that Cousin John Lester was one of the founding members of the Klu Klux Klan. Her sister, Tina, was too interested in makeup and boys to bother with history or politics. And their father would back the same tired candidate for governor because that’s what his kinfolk always did—until Aunt Eugenia visits from California . . . This is a wonderfully poignant, funny, and intelligent book about coming-of-age and wisdom. The narrative never becomes preachy, and all the characters are realistically flawed and completely delightful.” —Booklist (starred review) “Affecting . . . a remarkable read . . . her characters ring true as their worlds collide and their lives intersect, leaving them all change forever.” —Lalita Tademy, New York Times bestselling author “Nicely woven: Devoto captures the internal ambivalence of a society teetering on the uneasy verge of change.” —Kirkus Reviews “Superb . . . the work of a gifted storyteller.” —Robert Inman, author of Dairy Queen Days

List of members in each volume.

Wind back the clock on any Australian or New Zealand woman in her thirties or forties today and you'd probably find a Triangl bikini tucked away in her swimwear drawer. The uniquely neoprene, colour-blocked bikinis were the summer accessory season after season. Yet as customers snapped selfies at the beach, one woman was holed up in a smog-filled Hong Kong apartment, living on canned soup, battling twenty-hour days and debilitating depression, trying to make it all happen. Hanging by a Thread takes a vulnerable deep dive into success and the challenge of caring for your mental health while in pursuit of your dreams. From getting scammed out of $50,000, trying to illegally cross the border into China, meeting with elite private equity firms with a three-month-old baby in tow and even experiencing the Kardashian-Jenner-kiss-of-death, Hanging By A Thread shares what it was really like behind the closed doors of one of Australia's young start-up success stories, and to be a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.