THE RED LEATHER DIARY by Lily Koppel

974.71092

KOP

When Lily Koppel, a 20-something writer in New York, hurried to work one fall morning, she noticed a dumpster filled with antique trunks in front of her building. Finding them irresistible she climbed in to pull out the locked trunks from their landfill destination. One item changed her life - a diary written by a teenager over an unbroken 5-year span from 1929-1934. Manhattanite Florence Wolfson received the diary on her 14th birthday. From that day until she turned 19 she recorded her life from her first kiss to her crushes on women as well as men, to her interest in writing and art.

In a chance phone call, Koppel discovers Wolfson is still alive and living in Florida. They meet and develop a relationship that neither one could have anticipated.

LUCIA, LUCIA by Adriana Trigiana

FIC

TRIGIANI

Lucia Sartori is an elderly woman living in an old apartment building in New York City. One day she decides to tell her young neighbor, Kit, the story of her life. In the early 50's Lucia was a beautiful 25-year old whose father was a successful grocer in Greenwich Village. Lucia was a seamstress working at B. Altman's; she was engaged, happy, content. Soon, however she perceived inevitable conflicts between marriage and career and hesitated to proceed with the wedding. Her situation was further complicated when she met handsome and charming John Talbot. It appeared that Talbot would give her a life of uptown luxury, something she could never hope to achieve as a career girl. There was something mysterious about John, though, and all was not as it seemed. It seemed everything in Lucia's personal and professional was shifting when a crisis occurred that jeopardized both her career and her family.