SCPL Reads: Get ready for SCPL LitFest with these titles

Berlin 1961: When Uli Neumann proposes to Lise Bauer, she has every reason to accept. He offers her love, respect, and a life beyond the strict bounds of the East German society in which she was raised—which she longs to leave more than anything. But only two short days after their engagement, Lise and Uli are torn violently apart when barbed wire is rolled across Berlin, splitting the city into two hostile halves: capitalist West Berlin, and the socialist East, a country determined to control its citizens by any means necessary. As distance and suspicion bleed into their lives and as weeks turn to months, how long can true love survive in the divided city?

Bryn Turnbull will be reading from The Berlin Apartment at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre on Friday, October 2nd as part of SCPL LitFest. Get your tickets now.

Barred from military service in 1942 due to his race, Chinese Canadian Josiah Chang works in a Vancouver shipyard where he meets white Poppy Miller, but her parents take exception to their relationship. Trying to prove himself, Josiah goes to Toronto, where he's allowed to join the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion headed to Europe. Read-alikes: Adriana Allegri's The Sunflower House; Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

Jack Wang will be reading from The Riveter at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre on Friday, October 2nd as part of SCPL LitFest. Get your tickets now.

What it’s about: Fifteen-year-old Maggie is pregnant by her French farm boy neighbor in 1950s Québec -- and her disappointed parents force her to give up the baby, Elodie. Maggie’s story alternates with that of her daughter, who grows up under harrowing circumstances in an orphanage that is converted into a psychiatric hospital.Why you might like it: Readers who enjoyed Christina Baker Kline's Orphan Train or the film Philomena will like the intertwining narratives of this bittersweet, poignant tale, which is based on true events.

Joanna Goodman will be reading from The Home for Unwanted Girls at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre on Friday, October 2nd as part of SCPL LitFest. Get your tickets now.

1910: Eighteen-year-old Mathilde has escaped her lonely provincial childhood to become a painter in Montmartre. Moving in bohemian circles, she models for Picasso and lives hedonistically amongst the artists, writers and intellectuals of Paris, indulging her passions and her ambitions in art and love. But when the Mona Lisa is stolen from the Louvre, and some of Mathilde's friends and lovers become suspects, life takes a dramatic turn. 1940: As the enemy marches into Paris, Mathilde, now an archivist at the Louvre working quietly under a new identity, is tasked with the evacuation of hundreds of priceless masterpieces to the sprawling Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley. With her she carries a secret--the Mona Lisa is under her sole protection and she vows to hide it from the Nazi occupiers. Nobody must discover its whereabouts. It isn't until a lover from her past arrives at the château, dressed in a Nazi uniform, that Mathilde finds herself agonizingly torn between her sworn duty to France and a love that still endures.

Lisa Rochon will be reading from The Paris Thief at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre on Friday, October 2nd as part of SCPL LitFest. Get your tickets now.

Author Ted Staunton and illustrator Josh Rosen will be hosting a presentation for young readers about their graphic novel at the Central Library on Saturday, October 3 as part of SCPL LitFest. Register now.