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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

March 2011

BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY by Ruta Sepetys is a young adult book that deserves attention from Bookreporter.com readers. It's the story of a little-spoken-about series of events that occurred in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, where Stalin exiled people from those countries to Siberia during World War II. The war ended, but they stayed prisoners for 15 years. More than 20 million people were killed during these years, 14.5 million of whom were starved to death. It's brilliant, and I was enveloped in the story from the first page.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

March 2011

It's 1941, and Lina is just like any other 15-year-old Lithuanian girl. That is, until Soviet officers barge into her home. Separated from her father, Lina, her mother and her brother travel north on a crowded train to a camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here, under Stalin's orders, they are forced to dig for beets --- and fight for their lives --- under the cruelest conditions.

May 2019

May's Books on Screen roundup includes the feature films Aladdin, UglyDolls, A Dog's Journey and The Professor and the Madman; the series finale of HBO's "Game of Thrones," along with the premieres of such limited series as "The Spanish Princess" on Starz, SundanceTV's "The Name of the Rose" and "Good Omens" on Amazon Prime; and the DVD releases of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Ashes in the Snow, The Upside and Lords of Chaos.