THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN
MARIE BENEDICT + VICTORIA CHRISTOPHER MURRAY
Penguin Group LLC
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and a Good Morning America, Book Club Pick. This historical novel explores the life of J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, a Black American forced to hide her identity and pass as White. In her twenties, Belle was hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts ,books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. She became a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world. But Belle has a secret, she is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality.
Hosted by Candy
THE HAPPIEST MAN ON EARTH: THE BEAUTIFUL LIFE OF AN AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR
EDDIE JAKU
In this riveting New York Times bestseller, Eddie Jaku shares his powerful memoir as a Holocaust survivor, paying tribute to those lost as he offers inspiring wisdom on living one’s best possible life despite the most horrible circumstances. Jaku was a teenager when Nazi soldiers sent him to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. He spent seven years in Buchenwald and then Auschwitz, finally enduring a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days. Somehow, he found the will to survive and made himself a promise to smile every day in gratitude and to honor the six million Jews murdered by Hitler.
Hosted by Kim
GOD’S GHOSTWRITERS: ENSLAVED CHRISTIANS AND THE MAKING OF THE BIBLE
CANDIDA MOSS
Christian tradition and scholarship have credited the authorship of the New Testament to a select group of men: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. But hidden behind these men are a cluster of unnamed, enslaved coauthors and collaborators, essential workers responsible for producing the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament. These workers made the parchment on which the texts were written, took dictation, and refined the words of the apostles. And as the Christian message grew in influence, it was enslaved missionaries who undertook the arduous journey across the Mediterranean and along dusty roads to move Christianity to Rome, Spain, and North Africa—and into the pages of history. God’s Ghostwriters is a rigorously researched book about how enslaved people shaped the Bible and with it all of Christianity.