Laurie Gwen Shapiro

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties’ most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica. It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? There wouldn’t be another encounter with an unknown this magnificent until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Jazz Age celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.

A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica

The Stowaway

When a fantastic PR opportunity arises to televise the family Passover seder, Heather Greenblotz, the millionaire heiress to the world's leading matzo company, is forced to hire a stand-in cast to masquerade as members of her family, a scheme undermined by the surprise arrival of her bisexual father, his lover, and her estranged mother. Original. 100,000 first printing.

The Matzo Ball Heiress

While studying dead languages, Shari Diamond, who has a secret penchant for British men despite her mother's urgings to find a nice Jewish boy, goes head-to-head with her latest conquest, Kit the Brit, when she discovers that he is withholding information that is relevant to the completion of her Ph.D. Original.

The Anglophile

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age, The Stowaway is “a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation” (David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon). It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler, desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, author Laurie Gwen Shapiro “narrates this period piece with gusto” (Los Angeles Times), taking readers on the “novelistic” (The New Yorker) and unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Roaring Twenties celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.

Q: What turns thirty-five-year-old graduate student Shari Diamond on? A: Anything British. Forget tall, dark and handsome. For Shari there's only tall, pasty and from Across the Pond (despite her aunt's advice to find a nice Jewish boy). Ever since Shari first happened upon Christopher Robin in her childhood reading, she's had a passion for all things Anglo-Saxon. First it was books, then it was blokes, now…well, it's still blokes. Unbeknownst to her, Kit, Shari's latest British conquest (and decidedly not a Jew), also happens to be her biggest competition in her search to find the last-known speaker of a language close to extinction. Shari's spent four years trying to find this guy so she can complete her Ph.D. and now Kit has beaten her to the punch? When she learns that there might be more (and less) to Kit than meets the eye, will this Anglophile turn her back on the land of tea and crumpets once and for all?

Laurie Gwen Shapiro

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