The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato - Finally! I have to admit I did save this one for last. I didn't think I was going to be gone for a month, so I took four real books out of town with me, and figured I'd read books on my iPad when I finished them. It's really good. It's the story of a modern day young British woman who was born in Venice and her ancestor who was a famous Venetian glassblower named Corradino. To say anything else will spoil the story. It was a pleasure to get lost in this book. 
An Armenian Doctor in Turkey by Dora Sayakan - Dora is the granddaughter of Garabed Hatcherian who was an eyewitness to the Smyrna Catastrophe and this book is his journal of those events. It's an excellent day by day account of the few weeks in August and September 1922 when the Turks wiped out the Armenian and Greek Christian populations of western Turkey. As the turkish soldiers chased them, the citizens of the surrounding villages fled to the large port city of Smyrna. Once in Smyrna, the turks set fires that burned the Armenian and Greek quarters of the city right down to the harbor. It was a tragedy of epic proportions and over 30,000 people lost their lives. My grandmother was a survivor of that history and a refugee who made it to Greece, so an account like this is gold to me as part of my family's legacy. 
It's My F---ing Birthday by Merrill Markoe - This is an amusing story about a single woman with birthday, parent and boyfriend issues. She's an art teacher in her mid thirties and into her forties and in the way of all fiction, she has a lot of time on her hands to get into crazy situations with people. She has an honest funny voice and it's great to laugh while reading. The part about the flowers that arrive on her birthday every year is particularly fun.
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