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#ClubCalvi selects the Readers' Choice for December
We asked you to choose from our Top 3 FicPicks: "The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom, "The General and Julia" by Jon Clinch or "The Watchmaker's Hand" by Jeffery Deaver.
After thousands of votes, you selected "The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom as the Readers' Choice. The novel takes place in Greece during the Holocaust and it's about how the action of a little boy who was tricked by the Nazis affects him and those he loves.
Meet the author: Mitch Albom
Just a week after its release, "The Little Liar" reached number four on the New York Times Best Sellers List.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on fiction with plots and/or authors connected to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut. We will read "The Little Liar" through the December holidays. Join the CBS New York Book Club Facebook group and read along with us.
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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
Excerpt: "The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom
1943
"It's a lie."
The large man's voice was deep and hoarse. "What's a lie?" someone whispered. "Where we're going."
"They're taking us north." "They're taking us to die."
"Not true!"
"It is true," the large man said. "They'll kill us once we get there."
"No! We're being resettled! To new homes! You heard the boy on the platform!"
"To new homes!" another voice added.
"There are no new homes," the large man said.
A shriek of train wheels silenced the conversation. The large man studied the metal grate that covered the only window in this lightless wagon, which was intended to carry cows, not humans. There were no seats. No food or water. Nearly a hundred others were crammed inside, a solid block of human beings. Old men in suits. Children in their sleeping clothes. A young mother cupping an infant to her chest. Only one person was sitting, a teenaged girl with her dress hiked up over a tin bucket the passengers were given to relieve themselves. She hid her face in her hands.
The large man had seen enough. He wiped sweat from his forehead then pushed through the bodies toward the window.
"Hey!"
"Watch it!"
"Where are you going!"
He reached the grate and jammed his thick fingers through the holes. He grunted loudly. With his face contorting, he began to pull.
Everyone in the cattle car went silent. What is he doing? What if the guards come? In the corner, a lanky boy named Sebastian stood against the wall, watching all this unfold. Next to him was most of his family, his mother, his father, his grandparents, his two younger sisters. But when he saw the man pulling at the window grate, his focus turned to a thin dark-haired girl a few feet away.
Her name was Fannie. Before all the trouble began, before the tanks and the soldiers and the barking dogs and the midnight door-pounding and the rounding up of all the Jewish people in his home city of Salonika, Sebastian believed that he loved this girl, if there is such a thing as love when you are fourteen years old.
He had never shared this feeling, not with her or anyone else. But now, for some reason, he felt swollen with it, and he focused on her as the large man wiggled the grate until it loosened from the wall. With a last mighty pull, he ripped it free and let it drop. Air rushed through the open rectangle, and a springtime sky was visible for all to see.
The large man wasted no time. He pulled himself up, but the opening was too small. His thick midsection could not fit through.
He dropped down, cursing. A murmur went through the train car.
"Someone smaller," a voice said.
Parents clutched their children. For a moment, nobody moved. Sebastian squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, then grabbed Fannie by the shoulders and pushed her forward.
"She can fit."
"Sebastian, no!" Fannie yelled.
"Where are her parents?" someone asked.
"Dead," someone answered.
"Come, child."
"Hurry, child!"
The passengers shuffled Fannie through the scrum of bodies, touching her back as if sealing wishes upon it. She reached the large man, who hoisted her to the window.
"Legs first," he instructed. "When you land, curl up and roll."
"Wait—"
"We can't wait! You must go now!"
Fannie spun toward Sebastian. Tears filled his eyes. I will see you again, he said, but he said it to himself. A bearded man who had been mumbling prayers edged forward to whisper in Fannie's ear.
"Be a good person," he said. "Tell the world what happened here."
Her mouth went to form a question, but before she could, the large man pushed her through the opening, and she was gone.
Wind whooshed through the window. For a moment, the passengers seemed paralyzed, as if waiting for Fannie to come crawling back. When that didn't happen, they began pushing forward. Ripples of hope spread through the boxcar. We can get out! We can leave! They crushed up against one another.
And then.
BANG! A gunshot. Then several more. As the train screeched its brakes, passengers scrambled to put the grate back over the window. No luck. It wouldn't hold. When the car stopped moving, the doors yanked open, and a short German officer stood in blinding sunlight, his pistol held high.
"HALT!" he screamed.
Sebastian watched the hands fall away from the window like dead leaves dropping from a shaken branch. He looked at the officer, looked at the passengers, looked at the teenage girl crying on the waste bucket, and he knew their last hope had just been extinguished. At that moment, he cursed the one missing member of his family, his younger brother, Nico, and he swore he would find him one day, make him pay for all this, and never, ever, forgive him.
Excerpted from The Little Liar by Mitch Albom. Copyright © 2023 by Mitch Albom. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
