The Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse

1943, occupied Amsterdam. While working for a local funeral director, Hanneke, a young girl just out of high school, delivers black market goods obtained with the ration cards of the deceased. When one customer begs her to help find a missing Jewish teenager, Hanneke is drawn into a bigger black market involving the Dutch resistance. Her search ultimately leads to both sorrow and hope, in this compelling novel of the Second World War.

What’s so Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey

Christian writer Philip Yancey takes on the confounding and “amazing” idea of grace. Indeed, as he suggests, we live in a graceless time, where the never ending cycle of tit-for-tat means that grace can seldom be achieved as each new transgression requires something similar in response. Who will, rather than retaliate, apologize first? Who will break the cycle of ungrace? For nations and for individuals what is amazing is that grace can break this relentless pattern and set free all who suffer in its wake.