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What Book Clubs are reading this month! |
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Discussion April 15th London, 1895: Trapped by oppressive marriages and societal expectations, three women receive a mysterious invitation to an afternoon tea at the home of the reclusive Lady Duxbury. Beneath the genteel facade of the gathering lies a secret book club--a sanctuary where they can discover freedom, sisterhood, and the courage to rewrite their stories. |
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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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Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home
by Stephen Starring Grant
Steve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown [of Blacksburg, Virginia]. Suddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail, including a family legacy of rage and the anxiety of having lost his identity along with his corporate job. And yet, slowly, surrounded by a ragtag but devoted band of letter carriers, working this different kind of job, Grant found himself becoming a different kind of person. He became a lifeline for lonely people, providing fleeting moments of human contact and the assurance that our government still cares--
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Atmosphere : a love story
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
GMA Book Club
In 1980, professor Joan begins training for the Space Shuttle in Houston with Top Gun pilot Hank, scientist John, mission specialist Lydia, warm-hearted Donna, and aeronautical engineer Vanessa, who become unlikely friends—until December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, when everything changes in an instant.
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The book club for troublesome women : a novel
by Marie Bostwick
In suburban Virginia of the 1960s, Margaret Ryan forms an impromptu book club with three neighbors, discovering shared dissatisfaction with societal expectations, as the group bonds over personal struggles, feminist ideas and the transformative power of friendship during a life-changing year. Original.
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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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The Correspondent
by Virginia Evans
Sybil is seventy-three years old, in the winter of her life. Sybil has always made sense of the world through writing letters and through this epistolary novel we see how she comes to terms with her past and present and learns forgiveness--
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A Dress of Violet Taffeta
by Tessa Arlen
A sumptuous novel based on the fascinating true story of La Belle Époque icon Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, who shattered the boundaries of fashion with her magnificently sensual and enchantingly unique design from the USA Today bestselling author of In Royal Service to the Queen. Lucy Duff Gordon knows she is talented. She sees color, light, and texture in ways few people can begin to imagine. But is the male dominated world of haute couture, who would use her art for their own gain, ready for her? When she is deserted by her wealthy husband, Lucy is left penniless with an aging mother and her five-year-old daughter to support. Desperate to survive, Lucy turns to her one true talent to make a living. As a little girl, the dresses she made for her dolls were the envy of her group of playmates. Now, she uses her creative designs and her remarkable eye for color to take her place in the fashion world--failure is not an option. Then, on a frigid night in 1912, Lucy's life changes once more, when she becomes one of 706 people to survive the sinking of the Titanic. She could never have imagined the effects the disaster would have on her fashion label Lucile, her marriage to her second husband, and her legacy. But no matter what life throws at her, Lucy will live on as a trailblazing and innovative fashion icon, never letting go of what she worked so hard to earn. This is her story.
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The Frozen River: A GMA Book Club Pick
by Ariel Lawhon
A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who found herself at the center of a murder trial--
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The god of the woods
by Liz Moore
In 1975, when a camp counselor discovers the 13-year-old daughter of the summer camp's owners has disappeared just like her brother 14 years earlier, a panicked search begins as the secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow are revealed.
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald's family and from his lifelong publisher. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
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Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember.
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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 Paris Daughter
by Kristin Harmel
A gripping historical novel about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation--
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The rose code : a novel
by Kate Quinn
Joining the elite Bletchley Park codebreaking team during World War II, three women from very different walks of life uncover a spy’s dangerous agenda against a backdrop of the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip.
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The Therapist
by B. A. Paris
The multimillion-copy New York Times bestselling author B.A. Paris returns to her heartland of gripping psychological suspense in The Therapist--a powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret. When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they've dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive... As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before. Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem...
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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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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. A bold and biting satire, Yesteryear...will have you cackling and gasping right to the final page.--Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid series My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive. Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie's followers--all 8 million of them--don't know won't hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They're sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn't simply living the good life, she's living the ideal--and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn't hers. Her home, her husband, her children--they're all familiar, but something's off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she's expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.
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Her Hidden Fire
by Cliodhna O'Sullivan
GMA YA Book Club
In the first book of a heart-pounding, Irish-inspired debut romantasy series set in a world of dragons and magic, one girl must make an impossible decision: watch the boy she loves get exiled for lack of magic, or pass her formidable powers off as his own. "Brimming with intrigue, romance, and peril...a lush and compelling debut."--Kirkus Reviews
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Kin: Oprah's Book Club
by Tayari Jones
Oprah's Book Club
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother's death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life. A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
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Lady Tremaine
by Rachel Hochhauser
Reese's Book Club
MEET LADY TREMAINE in this spellbinding reimagining of Cinderella, as told by its iconic evil stepmother, revealing a propulsive love story about the lengths a mother will go for her children.
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The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives
by Elizabeth Arnott
GMA Book Club
A remarkable trio whose lives have been cracked wide open by their husbands' crimes unite to catch a serial killer in this dazzlingly captivating novel. Beverley, Elsie, and Margot are not your average housewives. They are all wives of convicted killers. During the sun-drenched summer of 1966, the three women form an unlikely friendship after the discoveries of their husbands' brutal crimes. With their exes--some of California's most infamous murderers--dead or behind bars, they are attempting to forge a new future for themselves. Headstrong Beverley tries compulsively to maintain control of everything around her, all while raising two children. Bookish Elsie fights to make a name for herself in the newsroom, working among men who sneer at her career goals. Glamorous Margot prefers partying to homemaking and devotes all her energy to upholding the appearance that everything is fine--anything to quell the shame from her husband's deceit. They know people look at them and think only one thing: How could they not have known what their husbands were doing? How much are they to blame? And yet when a string of local killings hits the news, the three women--underestimated, overlooked, shrewd--decide to get to work. After all, who better to catch a killer than those who have shared their lives and homes with one? At once a riveting portrayal of shattered trust and a story of gripping suspense, The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives is a testament to the intricacies of women's lives and how the deep bonds of female friendship can empower, uplift, and lead us to endure.
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Wait for Me
by Amy Jo Burns
Read with Jenna
When young folk singer Elle Harlow reaches the height of her prowess in 1973, she has two wildly beloved albums to her name and a hidden history of impossible heartbreak. After she sets foot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage, a far cry from the mountain that raised her, Elle gives the biggest performance of her life. Then, to the dismay of shocked fans, her producer, and the man who still loves her, she vanishes. Almost two decades later, eighteen-year-old Marijohn Shaw is spending her summer pumping gas, writing songs on her broken mandolin, and longing for a mother. Her father Abe has always sworn he was the last person to see Elle Harlow alive, but when a meteor strikes the woods of their sleepy Pennsylvania town and a piece of Elle's past emerges from the wreckage, the truth of her disappearance sets fire to everything Marijohn believes about herself, her music, and her ability to love with abandon. Wait for Me is an unapologetic, deeply emotive story set in Appalachia and Nashville that defies the trope of the missing woman and gives us a female duo who can find hope in each other and sing the ache in every good song-- Provided by publisher.
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