Ayelet Waldman’s latest novel, Love and Treasure, combines stories of love, art, and atrocity with the history of World War II and the Hungarian Gold Train. Here’s a summary from Knopf:

In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure-a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust. Seventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie Stein, and charges her with searching for an unknown woman-a woman whose portrait and fate come to haunt Natalie, a woman whose secret may help Natalie to understand the guilt her grandfather will take to his grave and to find a way out of the mess she has made of her own life.

Reviews and interviews have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, the Wall Street Journal,  and the Los Angeles Times.

Pull from your database readers of Sarah’s Key, Invisible Bridge and Those Who Save Us. Even though Love and Treasure is a departure from Waldman’s earlier works, call on customers who have previously purchased Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter’s Keeper.

She’s active on Facebook, Twitter, and keeps her website updated, including her reading log. The website is quite impressive, actually, and includes the book trailer (above) that you can share through social media, background on the book, where she got the idea, discussion questions, and a deleted scene. She even offers “thematically appropriate treats to serve at your book club meeting.” These all provide fantastic talking points for handselling.