This month, as we’ve been focusing on the Baltic nation of Lithuania in our online book club, Travel Europe Through Books, we thought you’d like a few more recommendations for books set in, or otherwise connected to, Lithuania:

1. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys.  Fifteen-year-old Lina is an artist who loves drawing and painting. One night Soviet officers arrive at her home, tearing her family away and sending her father to another location. Lina is forced into a Siberian hard labor camp with her family where Stalin has forced them to dig for beets and suffer cruel conditions. Only her art brings Lina solace, and she survives, incredibly, by love and hope.

2. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys.  In 1945, a group of war-weary refugees from various lands travel together toward a ship that will hopefully bring them to safety in Germany. A young Lithuanian nurse, a Prussian soldier, an old shoemaker, a young Lithuanian boy, and a young pregnant Polish girl find strength and teamwork in each other amid death-defying challenges. Ultimately they board the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship whose story has become the biggest maritime disaster in history. Read our interview with Ms. Sepetys on this book HERE.

3. Words on Fire by by Jennifer A. Nielsen. Occupying Russian soldiers are insisting that everything Lithuanian be banned: books, religion, culture and language. When they arrive at Audra’s door, her parents insist that she escape, carrying an important package with her. If she joins the underground resistance, will she be able to deliver the package and rescue her parents?

4. Vilnius Poker by Ričardas Gavelis. A mixture of troubled Lithuanians struggle to maintain their identity and sanity in the 1970s and 1980s under Soviet rule. A labor camp survivor and his genius friend, a beautiful young siren, a library worker, and a failed intellectual who chronicles the struggles of Vilnius give voice to a city ravaged by the terrors and inhumanity of tyrrany.

5. Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe. A young father named Lucas takes his daughter Vera to Europe, hoping to help her overcome a mental breakdown and to help him forget his past. In Vilnius, Lukas discover that his grandmother was a home army rebel who escaped Stutthof and Vera struggles to learn more about her mysterious roots. A blending of Lithuanian history and family lore, this novel is a story of mental illness, inheritance, young love, and adventure.

6. Above Us Only Sky by Michele Young-Stone. A woman born with wings has them amputated, but they never really go away. When at 15, she meets her Lithuanian grandfather, she learns of her bird-women lineage and other heroes of Lithuanian history. She sets off on a quest to discover her ancestors and discover where she belongs. This story spans time between the 1863 Lithuanian uprising against the Russian Tsars, and the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent Lithuanian independence in 1991.

7. Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again by Giedra Radvilavičiūtė. Ten essay-stories that combine fiction and non-fiction follow the author’s journey from old town Vilnius to Chicago’s Brighton Park. They are filled with memory and reality, fantasy, absurdity, and humor, with which Radvilaviciute tells the experiences of life “unrecognizably transformed, like the flour, eggs, nuts, and apples in a cake.”

8. Underground by Antanas Šileika. A book inspired by true events, Underground chronicles the story of two romantically involved members of the Lithuanian resistance of the mid-1940s. After shooting Soviet government workers, both go into hiding. A raid uncovers their hiding place, and the lovers are separated, having to suffer unspeakable crises as they each struggle to each find happiness in a world torn by oppression. Underground is an engaging literary thriller and love story that reveals the desperate situations Lithuanians faced in this time period.

9. Lithuanian Lullaby by Gordon Mott. This story follows the lives of six people between 1987 and 1997. A Soviet conscript in Afganistan decides to devote his life to undermine the country he serves; a Hungarian teenager escapes over the border, but ends up robbed and in debt in London; an American discovers that language is no barrier to true love; and an English couple struggle to raise their love child in Yorkshire. All of them experience a peculiar connection to the Baltic nation of Lithuania, newly independent.

10. Lost Birds by Birute Putrius. Lost Birds follows the tale of Irene Matas and her friends, who leave Lithuania as young children and begin new lives with their families in Chicago after the Second World War. Their parents are weighed down with grief and nostalgia for their lost homeland, while their children struggle between allegiance to their parents and the lure of American culture. When Lithuania wins her independence, many of them return.

The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art  by Cynthia Levinson Ben Shahn is an observant child growing up in Lithuania. He draws everything he sees. When his father is banished by the Tsar for demanding worker’s rights, he develops a sense of justice, too. After Ben and his family make it to America, he uses his keen artistic eye to speak justice, disarming classmates who bully him because he’s Jewish, defying his teachers’ strict assignments, and finally pushing for government reform in the Depression-era. A 48-page picture book in hardcover.