The Girl They Left Behind

The Girl They Left Behind
Author: Roxanne Veletzos
Publisher: Atria Books
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501187694

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.


The Girl He Left Behind

The Girl He Left Behind
Author: Beatrice MacNeil
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1443460664

Fifteen years ago, Willow Alexander was jilted at the altar by her high school sweetheart, Graham Currie, who left their wedding rehearsal the night before knowing he would not be returning the next day. Confused and devastated, Willow remains in the small town of Glenmor in Cape Breton, caring for her ailing parents and nursing her heartache. What no one knows is that Willow lost more than her marriage on that shocking day, which is why she remains on her family’s expansive property, in the shadow of Christy’s Mountain, unable to let go of the secret she has kept hidden for more than a decade. Soon after her fortieth birthday, Willow finds out that Graham is returning to town, without his new wife, after years of working as a doctor in New York City. As Willow grapples with her emotions, wondering how she will deal with Graham’s arrival, tragedy strikes again: her dear friend, Kathleen, and her husband, local doctor James Millhouse, are found dead. Willow was the last one to see the couple on the night they died and fears that she may have accidently had a hand in their deaths. Fearing both Graham’s return and her own imminent arrest, Willow holes up in her family home, reflecting on her past and bracing for her uncertain future. The Girl He Left Behind is a moving story about how confronting life’s greatest uncertainties is often the only way forward.


The Girl You Left Behind

The Girl You Left Behind
Author: Jojo Moyes
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2013-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101638168

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars and the forthcoming Someone Else's Shoes, a sweeping bestseller of love and loss, deftly weaving two journeys from World War I France to present day London. Paris, World War I. Sophie Lefèvre must keep her family safe while her adored husband, Édouard, fights at the front. When their town falls to the Germans, Sophie is forced to serve them every evening at her hotel. From the moment the new Kommandant sets eyes on Sophie’s portrait—painted by her artist husband—a dangerous obsession is born. Almost a century later in London, Sophie’s portrait hangs in the home of Liv Halston, a wedding gift from her young husband before his sudden death. After a chance encounter reveals the portrait’s true worth, a battle begins over its troubled history and Liv’s world is turned upside all over again.


The Girl He Left Behind

The Girl He Left Behind
Author: Patricia Kay
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2016
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0373659547

Two Little Secrets It should be a dream come true for divorcée Eve Kelly. After a dozen years, her high school sweetheart Adam Crenshaw is back--and sexier than ever. But Eve has a problem. Two problems, to be exact. Her eleven-year-old twins. Twins their secret daddy can never know about... Home to care for his ailing mother, the big-time country music star didn't expect to fall so hard for the small-town single mom...again. But Eve isn't the same woman he left. It's as if she's hiding something. Adam is used to getting what he wants--and he wants Eve. This time, though, instead of a fling, he just may get a family--a family he didn't know he had.


Girl Left Behind

Girl Left Behind
Author: Judy Temes
Publisher: Saint Julian Press, Inc.
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1733023364

Girl Left Behind At age five, Judy Temes was living with her parents and brother in a small town near Hungary's southern border. Unlike most, the family had comforts: a roomy apartment, a television, even a vacation home. What more could anyone want? But for her father, a doctor and a survivor of the Holocaust, living among the people who stood by as his family was taken to their deaths in cattle cars had become untenable. On a summer night in 1969, the family packed the car for what was supposed to be a vacation to Vienna. Only this was no vacation. They were escaping Hungary's totalitarian regime, using tourist visas that allowed entry into a Western country. Such visas, however, came at a high price. One child had to be left behind. This was the government's way to ensure that citizens who left the country would return. The child left behind was "Juditka," who would go on to live with her grandmother in a tiny lakeside Hungarian village. When, if ever, would she see her family again? No one knew.


When the Summer Was Ours

When the Summer Was Ours
Author: Roxanne Veletzos
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982180153

This epic World War II tale of star-crossed lovers separated by class, circumstance, and tragedy—from the internationally bestselling author of the “gripping…filled with passion and hope” (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author) The Girl They Left Behind—explores the impact of war on civilian life and the indestructible resilience of first love. Hungary, 1943: As war encroaches on the country’s borders, willful young Eva César arrives in the idyllic town of Sopron to spend her last summer as a single woman on her aristocratic family’s estate. Longing for freedom from her domineering father, she counts the days to her upcoming nuptials to a kind and dedicated Red Cross doctor whom she greatly admires. But Eva’s life changes when she meets Aleandro, a charming and passionate Romani fiddler with a love for painting. With time and profound class differences against them, Eva and Aleandro still fall deeply in love—only to be separated by a brutal act of hatred. As their lives diverge and they are each swept into the tides of war and its aftermath—they try to forget what they once shared. But as the years pass, the haunting memory of their romance will re-shape their destinies and drive them to decisions which are felt through generations. From the horrors of the Second World War to the tensions of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and beyond, When the Summer Was Ours is a sweeping story about the toll of secrets, the blurred lines between desire and loyalty, sacrifice and obsession, and the endurance of the human spirit.


What We Left Behind

What We Left Behind
Author: Robin Talley
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1460399048

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?


Paper Love

Paper Love
Author: Sarah Wildman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2014-10-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101616164

One woman’s journey to find the lost love her grandfather left behind when he fled pre-World War II Europe, and an exploration into family identity, myth, and memory. Years after her grandfather’s death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled “Correspondence: Patients A–G.” What she found inside weren’t dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family’s prewar Vienna. One woman’s letters stood out: those from Valy—Valerie Scheftel. Her grandfather’s lover who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Valy’s name wasn’t unknown to her—Wildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. “She was your grandfather’s true love,” her grandmother said at the time, and refused any other questions. But now, with the help of the letters, Wildman started to piece together Valy’s story. They revealed a woman desperate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom. Obsessed with Valy’s story, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and spanned continents. She discovered, to her shock, an entire world of other people searching for the same woman. On in the course of discovering Valy’s ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfather’s triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history.


What You Left Behind

What You Left Behind
Author: Jessica Verdi
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2015-08-04
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1492608750

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