CBS New York Book Club looks back #ClubCalvi's first year
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#ClubCalvi celebrates the holidays with Readers' Choice authors from 2023!
The CBS New York Book Club is ushering in the holiday season with a look back at its first year, and what a year it's been because of you -- our readers and viewers!
We take another look at the iconic places we visited with our authors, and the the fun we had with them on their off-hours.
We share updates from our Readers' Choice authors about their books since they were read by the club.
We are also looking ahead with Mitch Albom, author of our current read "The Little Liar."
Thank you #Club Calvi. Take a look at our reads from 2023. We look forward to reading with you in 2024!
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"The Little Liar " by Mitch Albom
From the publisher: Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis never told a lie. When the Nazi's invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading to "new homes" where they are promised jobs and safety. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. But when the final train is at the station, Nico sees his family being loaded into a large boxcar crowded with other neighbors. Only after it is too late does Nico discover that he helped send the people he loved—and all the others—to their doom at Auschwitz.
Nico never tells the truth again.
Mitch Albom was born in Passaic, NJ and lived in Buffalo, NY until his family settled in Oaklyn, NJ.
"The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom (Hardcover) $19
"The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom (Kindle) $15
"Bright Lights, Big Christmas" by Mary Kay Andrews.
From the publisher: When fall rolls around, it's time for Kerry Tolliver to leave her family's Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina for the wilds of New York City to help her gruff older brother & his dog, Queenie, sell the trees at the family stand on a corner in Greenwich Village. Sharing a tiny vintage camper and experiencing Manhattan for the first time, Kerry's ready to try to carve out a new corner for herself. In the weeks leading into Christmas, Kerry quickly becomes close with the charming neighbors who live near their stand. When an elderly neighbor goes missing, Kerry will need to combine her country know-how with her newly acquired New York knowledge to protect the new friends she's come to think of as family. And complicating everything is Patrick, a single dad raising his adorable, dragon-loving son Austin on this quirky block. Kerry and Patrick's chemistry is undeniable, but what chance does this holiday romance really have?
Mary Kay Andrews lives in Georgia.
"Bright Lights, Big Christmas" by Mary Kay Andrews (Hardcover) $17
"Bright Lights, Big Christmas" by Mary Kay Andrews (Kindle) $12
"Broadway Butterfly" by Sara DiVello
From the publisher: A true-crime novel based on one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the roaring twenties. Scandalous flapper Dot King is found dead in her Midtown Manhattan apartment, a bottle of chloroform beside her and a fortune in jewels missing. Dot's headline-making murder grips the city. It also draws a clutch of lovers, parasites, and justice seekers into one of the city's most mesmerizing mysteries.
Among them: Daily News crime reporter Julia Harpman, chasing the story while navigating a male-dominated industry; righteous NYPD detective John D. Coughlin, struggling against city corruption; and Ella Bradford, the victim's Harlem maid, closest confidante, and keeper of secrets. Adding fuel to the already volatile crime: a politically connected Philadelphia socialite, an Atlantic City bootlegger, Dot's dicey gigolo lover, a sultry Broadway dancer, and a cagey sugar daddy guarding secrets of his own.
Sara DiVello is the founder and host of the author interview series, Mystery and Thriller Mavens.
""Broadway Butterfly" by Sara DiVello (Hardcover) $27
"Broadway Butterfly" by Sara DiVello (Kindle) $5
"Tropicália" By Harold Rogers
From the publisher: In the heady days before a New Year's Eve party on the bustling sands of Brazil's Copacabana Beach, a family reckons with a matriarch's long-awaited return, causing old secrets to come to light in this debut that explores the heartbreak and hope of what it means to be from two homes, two peoples, and two worlds.
Daniel Cunha has a lot on his mind. He got dumped by his pregnant girlfriend, his grandfather just dropped dead, and on the anniversary of the raid that doomed his drug-dealing aunt and uncle, his mother makes her unwanted return, years after she fled to marry another American fool like his father.
Misfortune, however, is a Cunha family affair, and no generation is spared. Not Daniel's grandfather João-poor João-born to a prostitute and forced to raise his siblings while still a child himself. Not João's wife, Marta, branded as a bruxa, reviled by her mother, and dragged from her Ilha paradise by her scheming daughter, Maria. And certainly not Maria, so envious of her younger sister's beauty and benevolence that she took her vicious revenge and fled to the States, abandoning her children: Daniel and Lucia, both tainted now by their half-Americanness and their mother's greedy absence.
There's poison in the Cunha blood. They are a family cursed, condemned to the pain of deprivation, betrayal, violence, and, worst of all, love.
Harold Rogers lives in New York City.
"Troplicália" By Harold Rogers (Hardcover) $19
"Troplicália " By Harold Rogers (Kindle) $13
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"The Puzzle Master" By Danielle Trussoni
From the publisher: All the world is a puzzle, and Mike Brink-a celebrated and ingenious puzzle constructor-understands its patterns like no one else. Once a promising Midwestern football star, Brink was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that caused a rare medical condition: acquired savant syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower-he can solve puzzles in ways ordinary people can't. But it also left him deeply isolated, unable to fully connect with other people.
Everything changes after Brink meets Jess Price, a woman serving thirty years in prison for murder who hasn't spoken a word since her arrest five years before. When Price draws a perplexing puzzle, her psychiatrist believes it will explain her crime and calls Brink to solve it. What begins as a desire to crack an alluring cipher quickly morphs into an obsession with Price herself. She soon reveals that there is something more urgent, and more dangerous, behind her silence, thrusting Brink into a hunt for the truth.
The quest takes Brink through a series of interlocking enigmas, but the heart of the mystery is the God Puzzle, a cryptic ancient prayer circle created by the thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia. As Brink navigates a maze of clues, and his emotional entanglement with Price becomes more intense, he realizes that there are powerful forces at work that he cannot escape.
Ranging from an upstate New York women's prison to nineteenth-century Prague to the secret rooms of the Pierpont Morgan Library, humankind, technology, and the future of the universe itself are at stake.
Danielle Trussoni lives in Mexico.
"The Puzzle Master" By Danielle Trussoni (Hardcover) $17
"The Puzzle Master" By Danielle Trussoni (Kindle) $14
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" By Brenda Janowitz
From the publisher: When Emma Jansen discovers that the grand Long Island estate where she grew up is set to be demolished, she can't help but return for one last visit. After all, it was a place filled with firsts: learning to ride a bike, sneaking a glass of champagne, falling in love.
But once Emma arrives at the storied mansion, she can't ignore the more complicated memories. Because that's not exactly where Emma grew up. Her mother and father worked for the family that owned the estate, and they lived over the garage like Audrey Hepburn's character in the film Sabrina. Emma never felt fully accepted, except by the family's grandson, Henry—a former love—and by the driver's son, Leo—her best friend.
As plans for the property are put into motion and the three are together for the first time in over a decade, Emma finds herself caught between two worlds and two loves.
Brenda Janowitz lives in New York.
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" By Brenda Janowitz (Hardcover) $19
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz (Kindle) $12
"A Likely Story" by Leigh McMullan Abramson
From the publisher: Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. The only child of an iconic American novelist, she discovers a shocking tangle of family secrets that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career.
Leigh McMullan Abramson lives in New York City.
"A Likely Story" by Leigh McMullan Abramson (Hardcover) $20
"A Likely Story" By Leigh McMullan Abramson (Kindle) $15
