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What Book Clubs are reading this month! |
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Discussion May 20th A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family's displacement across four countries, Kantika-song in Ladino-follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way-a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge-her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old. Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body-in work, art and love-serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one's one and only life--  |
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Have you ever wanted to read The Lord of the Rings? Maybe it's time for a re-read-or simply a love for epic fantasy adventure. Join us either in person or online this year as we travel through Tolkien's legendary world together! |
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Culpability
by Bruce W. Holsinger
Oprah's Book Club
"When the Cassidy-Shaws' autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident. During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie's future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei's odd behavior tugs at Noah's suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident"
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The Carpool Detectives: A True Story of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case
by Chuck Hogan
The incredible true story of a group of moms who, united by a search for new purpose, attempt to solve a fifteen-year-old double murder. A true crime mystery that reads like a novel . . . It can be easy to forget that the underlying case is based on real, not fictional, murder.--Los Angeles TimesA lot of us like to think we could solve a mystery. Can these four moms actually do it? In 2020, Marissa, Jeannie, Samira, and Nicole find themselves at a familiar crossroads: when motherhood takes charge of their lives, they begin grappling with their own identities. Their thriving careers seem like a lifetime ago, and as their children become more independent, they struggle to find purpose. But when they meet at a bowling night fundraiser for their kids' school, they discover a shared interest in true crime that crystalizes around a mysterious double homicide that took place in their hometown a decade earlier: A couple in their 60s vanished overnight from their home and mysteriously shuttered their family business, leaving millions of dollars unaccounted for. Initially believed to have absconded with the money, they went from suspects to victims when their bodies were discovered in their car at the bottom of a steep ravine. And then the case turned cold. But what if the moms could solve it? What if they could bring a killer to justice and give closure to a grieving family? The four women have no connection to the case and no law-enforcement background, but the determined group find themselves in incredible and often dangerous situations-digging for evidence in prohibited ravines, scouring potential crime scenes for blood splatter, and sifting through pages and pages of dense police files. As they get more and more entangled in this complex investigation, they also find themselves in real danger--and with information that could blow the case wide open. An emotional and often terrifying odyssey through a DIY criminal investigation, The Carpool Detectives is the ultimate wish fulfillment for any true crime fanatic, an absolutely thrilling read for armchair sleuths and mystery fans alike.
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Girls Play Dead: Acts of Self-Preservation
by Jen Percy
After a childhood spent learning survival strategies in the wilderness, Jen Percy thought she knew how she would respond in the face of danger series of unsettling interactions with men left her feeling betrayed and confounded by her body's passivity. Forced to reckon the myths of her own empowerment, Percy set off a broader inquiry into the way fear shapes behavior in the context of sexual violence, including the strange behaviors of three generations of women in her family. Drawing on original reporting, years of conversations with survivors, and her own life story, Percy explores the surprising ways in which responses to sexual violence are shaped by both evolutionary instinct and gendered scripts. She takes on taboo subjects--orgasms during assault, sexual promiscuity, female rage, freezing and passivity--illuminating how society misreads these acts as deviance or consent, rather than brilliant acts of self-preservation.--
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Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
by Clare Leslie Hall
Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. ... When Beth's brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn't realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives, for the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager--the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel's life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences--
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Cold Mountain: 20th Anniversary Edition
by Charles Frazier
Winner of the National Book Award for FictionAn instant, international bestseller, Charles Frazier's debut novel of love and peril at the end of the Civil War was a publishing sensation, the inspiration for an Oscar-nominated blockbuster starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, and the subject of an acclaimed opera. Over 20 years later, it stands as an essential, modern classic.Charles Frazier's debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history in 1997 when it stood at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now reissued for its twentieth year, this extraordinary tale of a soldier's perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished land. Adapted into an Oscar-nominated movie starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, and a 2015 opera co-commissioned between Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia and the Minnesota Opera, Cold Mountain portrays an era that continues to speak eloquently to our time.
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The Heart of Winter
by Jonathan Evison
Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together--at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and out of their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged. But when Ruth's loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they've created together comes to a crisis--
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The housemaid
by Freida McFadden
"'Welcome to the family,' Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I'll soon learn that the Winchesters' secrets are far more dangerous than my own... Every day I clean the Winchesters' beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny roomon the top floor. I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew's handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina's life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband. I only try on one of Nina's pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it's like. But she soon finds out... and by the timeI realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it's far too late. But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don't know who I really am. They don't know what I'm capable of..."
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The lion women of Tehran : a novel
by Marjan Kamali
When Homa, a girl from her childhood, reappears in her privileged world, Ellie, amidst Iran's political turmoil, joins her in pursuing their goals for meaningful futures until one earth-shattering betrayal has far-reaching consequences, altering the course of both their lives,
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My Friends
by Fredrik Backman
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger's life twenty-five years later.
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The plot
by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Wildly successful author Jacob Finch Bonner, who had stolen the plot of his book from a late student, fights to hide the truth from his fans and publishers, while trying to figure out who wants to destroy him. 200,000 first printing.
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The Seamstress of New Orleans: A Fascinating Novel of Southern Historical Fiction
by Diane C. McPhail
Set against the backdrop of the first all-female Mardi Gras krewe at the turn-of-the-century, the acclaimed author's mesmerizing historical novel tells of two strangers separated by background but bound by an unexpected secret--and of the strength and courage women draw from and inspire in each other.An undercurrent of New Orleans's dark side propels the story, heightening the tension and supplying McPhail with a wealth of evocative details. --Publishers Weekly 1900: Though the dawn of a new century promises social progress, there are few options for women like Alice Butterworth, pregnant and abandoned by her husband. In desperation, Alice leaves Chicago's bitter cold and travels to New Orleans, where she offers sewing lessons at an orphanage. Young widow Constance Halstead has thrown herself into charity work since her husband's death. Seeing Alice's skill, she offers lodging in exchange for help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all-female krewe of Mardi Gras. Leap Years offer women a rare opportunity--to turn the tables on men, upending convention. As the breathtaking gown takes shape piece by piece, it becomes a symbol of empowerment for them both. But overshadowing all is the Black Hand--the vicious New Orleans gang to whom Constance's husband was deep in debt. His death hasn't satisfied them. And as Mardi Gras draws near, a secret emerges that will cement the bond between Alice and Constance, even as it threatens the new lives each is building . . .
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The Silent Patient
by Alex Michaelides
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman's act of violence against her husband--and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations--a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
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Twice : a novel
by Mitch Albom
GMA Book Club
Young Alfie Logan can rewind any moment for a do-over -- but must accept the results of his second try -- and having navigated through adolescence and finding seemingly lasting love with Gianna, he must confront an impossible choice when his power unravels during a casino arrest.
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The violin conspiracy
by Brendan Slocumb
When, right before the cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition--the Olympics of classical music, his priceless Stradivarius is stolen, with a ransom note for five million dollars in its place, Ray McMillian must piece together the clues to reclaim the violin before it's too late
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The Wedding People
by Alison Espach
A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew. It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn't here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she's dreamed of coming for years--she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan--which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can't stop confiding in each other.--
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Caller Unknown
by Gillian McAllister
Read with Jenna
An unputdownable adventure that was both heartwarming and thrilling! Everything I've come to expect from Gillian McAllister! --Freida McFadden, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Only a Gillian McAllister thriller can make your heart race and then your heart melt from one page to the next! I'm a devoted fan! --Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling authorHow far would you go to rescue your child? A mother races against the clock--and finds herself on the wrong side of the law--in a desperate fight to save her teenage daughter in this pulse-pounding thriller from the author of Reese's Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time.There is nothing that Simone won't do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don't tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal...Though Simone's husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can't take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up.What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn't want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable.A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone's courage--and morality--is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a mother.Unbearably tense, compassionately told, and full of well-crafted moral dilemmas, Caller Unknown proves once again why Gillian McAllister's thrillers are the best of the best (Lisa Jewell).
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Change of Plans
by Sarah Dessen
GMA YA Book Club
From acclaimed and #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Dessen comes a sweet, nuanced, and reflective coming-of-age love story (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about an unassuming girl who learns to stand on her own while falling in love during a life-changing summer.
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The Fine Art of Lying
by Alexandra Andrews
Reese's Book Club
In the beginning, there was art. It was Clare Bast's love of art that saved her from a bleak, predictable life in upstate New York, and drew her to the cultured world of Manhattan's Upper East Side where she met Jed, her doting, affluent husband. Despite her best efforts--including a half-finished PhD, abandoned when her daughter Sadie was born--Clare secretly can't help but feel like an imposter in Jed's one-percent, Park-Avenue life. When the well-connected wife of Jed's new boss introduces her to influential friends--a curator here, a gallerist there, an aficionado abroad--Clare feels an essential part of herself coming alive again. And when she discovers that an important work painted by the subject of her unfinished dissertation is hanging in the brownstone of a seductively attractive dealer, she believes fate is leading her where she belongs . . . until she finds herself at the scene of a gruesome murder and a stolen masterpiece. Caught in the perfectly wrong place at the perfectly wrong time, every clue the investigation uncovers points back to her. Suddenly, Clare is trapped inside a dark and treacherous art world filled with unscrupulous dealers and international criminals. What, exactly, has she gotten herself into . . . and how is she going to get herself, and her family, out?
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Homebound
by Portia Elan
GMA Book Club
Five lives are entangled across time by one story of survival and hope, uploaded to a floppy disk in the 1980s and destined to ripple across the centuries... A joy--at once a gripping mystery that confidently spans centuries, and a hauntingly beautiful exploration of what makes us human...It kept me up all night --Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe and Song of Achilles It's 1983 and Becks can't wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She's nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete--one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness. Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection--and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space. A novel about our deep interconnectedness, Homebound is a clear-eyed, hopeful adventure into humanity's future and capacity for love.
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John of John
by Douglas Stuart
Oprah's Book Club
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother. Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son's long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding together the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before. John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart's reputation as one of our greatest novelists working today.
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Go Gentle: Oprah's Book Club
by Maria Semple
Oprah's Book Club
The New York Times bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette returns to form in her most exuberant and life-affirming novel yet with the story of one woman's cheerful determination to live a life of the mind only to have the heart force its way in. Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorce, she lives a contented life on New York City's Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she's applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She's even assembled a coven--like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia--and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora's carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger. Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past--which she has worked so hard to bury--lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she'll risk everything to get it. Adora Hazzard's journey of self-discovery will grip you from the start. Romantic, hilarious, intelligent, and bursting with the stuff of life, Go Gentle is a thrilling story of one woman's mid-life transformation, cementing Maria Semple in the pantheon of our most exciting and important contemporary writers.
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Into the Blue: A Love Story
by Emma Brodie
Reese's Book Club
The truth is there's no such thing as a normal life. There's just the time you get and how you spend it. In the summer of 2000, AJ Graves dreams of writing for Saturday Night Live; instead, she's stuck working in a video rental store, with slim odds of escaping her small Massachusetts town. Then in walks Noah Drew, the enigmatic and intense scion of the Drew acting dynasty, and her life changes forever. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two forge a deep, cosmic bond, first as friends, then as acting partners--until one day, Noah disappears without a word. Seven years later, in New York City, AJ is shocked to find herself cast in the same intergalactic TV production as Noah, by then a well-known Hollywood heartthrob. As their on-screen characters grow closer every day, the lines between reality and acting begin to blur. Unable to stay away from each other, AJ and Noah are forced to confront the truth of what happened years ago--and the devastating secret that will send their lives careening apart, even as fate continues to draw them together. Blending unforgettable characters, explosive chemistry and yearning, and profound emotion, Into the Blue is a journey unlike any other--one that asks: What does it mean to diverge from the script to forge your own story?
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Legendborn
by Tracy Deonn
GMA YA Book Club
To discover the truth behind her mother's mysterious death, a teen girl infiltrates a magical secret society claiming to be the descendants of King Arthur and his knights--
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Upward Bound: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Woody Brown
Read with Jenna
Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles's disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister Delia; Jorge, the gentle nonverbal giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center's pool who feels out of her depth; then there's Mike, Upward Bound's director who came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an impressive holiday show starring the center's sorely underestimated clients. Framing these interlocking narratives - and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways - is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers-- Provided by publisher.
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Yesteryear
by Caro Claire Burke
GMA Book Club
A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1855--where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.
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