My Dear English

When young Zalmen Itzkowitz steps off the train on a dark, dreary day at the close of the nineteenth century, the residents of Miloslavka have no idea what’s in store for them. Zalmen is a freethinker who has come to the rural town to earn his living as a tutor. Yet, rather than teach Hebrew, he plans to teach his students the Russian language and other secular subjects. Residents of the town quickly become divided, with some regarding Itzkowitz as the devil’s messenger and others supportive of his progressive ideas. Set during the time of the Haskalah, the great Jewish Enlightenment that was sweeping through Europe, Pioneers is a charming tale of one ambivalent young man’s attempt to join the movement and a compassionate portrait of one shtetl on the brink of transformation.

After the death of Joanie Holzer Schirm’s parents in 2000, she found hundreds of letters, held together by rusted paperclips and stamped with censor marks, sent from Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, China, and South and North America, along with journals, vintage film, taped interviews, and photographs. In working through these various materials documenting the life of her father, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, she learned of her family history through his remarkable experiences of exile and loss, resilience and hope. In this posthumous memoir, Schirm elegantly re-creates her father’s youthful voice as he comes of age as a Jew in interwar Prague, escapes from a Nazi-held army unit, practices medicine in China’s war-ravaged interior, and settles in the United States to start a family. Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters ranging from the humorous to the menacing, Holzer’s life story is an inspirational account of survival during wartime, a cinematic epic spanning multiple continents, and ultimately a tale with a twist—a book that will move readers for generations to come. Purchase the audio edition.

When a body is found in Holmes's 221B Baker Street lodgings on the set at Mammoth Studios during the shooting of The Valley of Fear, Groucho Marx and his sidekick Frank Denby begin investigating, in Ron Goulart's hilarious mystery Elementary, My Dear Groucho. The victim is the German emigre director of the movie who was found in the great detective's favorite armchair, stabbed in the chest with Holmes's pearl-handled letter opener. There is another murder but it takes more than murder to stifle Groucho's quips or to quiet the laughter this surprising reincarnation inspires. "Chance meetings with celebrities and Groucho's constant wordplay keep the action light and snappy." - Publishers Weekly