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Norah Piehl

Biography

Norah Piehl


Norah Piehl worked for 10 years at the Boston Book Festival, overseeing their day-to-day operations. She is now the Director for Literary Programs at the Bay Area Book Festival. A former children's bookseller, Norah has also worked in the publishing industry for both university and trade publishers. She is an active writer whose essays, interviews and reviews have been published in Publishers WeeklyThe Horn BookBrain, Child, Skirt! magazine, National Public Radio and many other publications, as well as in several print anthologies. Her short fiction has appeared in Literary MamaThe Linnet's WingsThe LegendaryPrinter's Devil Review and the anthology BATTLE RUNES: Writings on War. Norah lives in Berkeley, California.

Norah Piehl

Reviews by Norah Piehl

by Carolyn Mackler - Contemporary Fiction, Dating, Fiction, Love & Romance, Young Adult 13+

Fifteen-year-old Virginia feels like a plus-sized black sheep in her family, especially next to her perfect big brother Byron. Not to mention her best friend has moved, leaving Virginia to navigate an awkward relationship with a boy alone. He might like her now...but she has her doubts about how he'll react if he ever looks under all her layers of clothes. In order to survive, Virginia decides to follow a “Fat Girl Code of Conduct,” which works, until the unthinkable causes her family's façade to crumble. As her world spins out of orbit, she realizes that being true to herself might be the only way back.

by Erica Bauermeister - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Lillian and her restaurant have a way of drawing people together. Among the cast of characters are Al, the accountant who finds meaning in numbers and ritual; Chloe, a budding chef who hasn’t learned to trust after heartbreak; Louise, Al’s wife, whose anger simmers just below the boiling point; and Isabelle, whose memories are slowly slipping from her grasp. And there’s Lillian herself, whose life has taken a turn she didn’t expect.

by David Maine - Fiction

On the surface of it, there's not much to David Maine's novel THE PRESERVATIONIST. After all, most of us probably knew the plot already, right? The animals came two by two, it rained for forty days and forty nights, and there was a rainbow at the end. What else can be said about the oft-told Old Testament tale of Noah's Ark?

by Justin Kramon - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

To Sam Blount, meeting Julia is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Working at the local college, he’d been feeling troubled about his approaching 40th birthday, but being with Julia makes him feel young and hopeful. Their relationship is tested by a shy young man with a secret, Marcus Broley, who is also infatuated with Julia.

by Jamie Ford - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Twelve-year-old William Eng has lived at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother’s listless body was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. On his birthday --- or rather, the day the nuns designate as his birthday --- William and the other orphans are taken to the historical Moore Theatre, where William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother.
 

by Jojo Moyes - Fiction

Artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his young wife, Sophie, to fight at the front. When their small town falls to the Germans in the midst of World War I, Edouard’s portrait of Sophie draws the eye of the new Kommandant. As the officer’s dangerous obsession deepens, Sophie will risk everything to see her husband again. Almost a century later, Sophie’s portrait is given to Liv Halston by her young husband shortly before his sudden death, and a battle begins for who its legitimate owner is.

by Stephen P. Kiernan - Fiction, Science Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Dr. Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. Remarkably, the frozen man is brought back to the lab and successfully reanimated. Kate and the man, who turns out to be Judge Jeremiah Rice, grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah’s new life is slipping away...and all too soon, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.

by Lionel Shriver - Fiction

For Pandora, cooking is a form of love. But her husband, Fletcher, now spurns her “toxic” dishes and devotes hours each day to manic cycling. Then, when Pandora picks up her brother Edison at the airport, she doesn’t recognize him. In the years since they’ve seen one another, the once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds. After Edison has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: It’s him or me.

by Susan Spencer-Wendel with Bret Witter - Nonfiction

Susan Spencer-Wendel’s UNTIL I SAY GOOD-BYE is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Co-written with Bret Witter, the book is Spencer-Wendel’s account of living a full life with humor, courage and love, but also accepting death with grace and dignity.

by Laurie Halse Anderson - Fiction

The Patriot Army was shaped by the desperate circumstances at Valley Forge, where Curzon the boy becomes Curzon the young man. But as an escaped slave passing for a freedman, Curzon must face the fear of discovery along with the hardships of being a soldier. And then there’s Isabel --- who’s there against her will. Can she and Curzon sort out the tangled threads of friendship and find the path to true freedom?