Fiction

Give Me Your Hand 
Megan Abbott, 2018
Little, Brown &Company
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316547208


Summary
You told each other everything. Then she told you too much.

Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn't let anything stop her.

But now someone else is standing in her way: Diane. Best friends at seventeen, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret—the worst thing she'd ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine—and it blew their friendship apart.

Kit is still the only person who knows what Diane did. And now Diane knows something about Kit that could destroy everything she's worked so hard for.

How far would Kit go to make the hard work, the sacrifice, worth it in the end? What wouldn't she give up? Diane thinks Kit is just like her. Maybe she's right. Ambition: it's in the blood. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—near Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan; Ph.D., New York University
• Awards—Edgar Award for Outstanding Fiction
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and a non-fiction analyst of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing, with a female twist.

Abbott grew up in suburban Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan. She is married to Joshua Gaylord, a New School professor who writes fiction under his own name and the pseudonym "Alden Bell."

Abbott was influenced by film noir, classic noir fiction, and Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Virgin Suicides. Two of her novels reference notorious crimes. The Song is You (2007) is based around the disappearance of Jean Spangler in 1949, and Bury Me Deep (2009) is based on the 1931 case of Winnie Ruth Judd, who was dubbed the "Trunk Murderess."

Abbott has won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for outstanding fiction. Time named her one of the "23 Authors That We Admire" in 2011.

Book Reviews
Abbott excels in evoking the strange mix of camaraderie and rivalry that exists in academic research…. Female friendship and ambition are threaded throughout her work, and here they form a rich tapestry…. Ultimately, though, the reason to read this compelling and hypnotic novel is… Abbott’s expert dissection of women’s friendships and rivalries. She is…one of the most intelligent and daring novelists working in the crime genre today.
Ruth Ware - New Times Book Review


Give Me Your Hand steadily intensifies its atmosphere of claustrophobia to the point of constriction.… Abbott deliciously draws out tension by hopping back and forth in time, slowly disclosing Diane’s skeleton-in-the-closet while divulging Kit’s moral failings that will inadvertently add to the body count.… Give Me Your Hand, like so many of Abbott’s disturbing tales, dramatizes the adage, "Be careful what you wish for."
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post


Abbott strongly dissects obsessions that easily morph into destruction and aspirations that spiral into blind ambition. The personalities of Diane and Kit are manifested through their work.… Abbott again shows why she’s one of our best story tellers.
Associated Press


Abbott isn’t just any crime writer. She earned a Ph.D. from New York University studying noir literature and has built a blockbuster caree.… Abbott couldn’t resist the idea of a condition that could be both an explanation for bad behavior and an excuse that ignores the complexity of female killers. She masterfully mines that gray area to build tension.… Abbott’s talent lies in dissecting the complicated tension between women at any age.
Time


(Starred review) When Diane’s secret pulses to the surface, lives are lost and futures are put in doubt in a mad rush to keep the past in its place. No writer can touch Abbott in the realm of twisted desire and relationships between women, both intimate and feral.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) [A] vividly realized world of intense competition and creates life-or-death stakes where we wouldn’t have known to look for them…. Procedural fans may have a few nitpicks, but this is a brilliant riff on… the ultimate unknowability of the human brain.
Booklist


(Starred review) In Abbott’s deft hands, friendship is fused to rivalry, and ambition to fear, with an unsettling level of believability. It will take more than a cold shower to still the blood thumping in your ears when you finish this.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for GIVE ME YOUR HAND … then take off on your own:

GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers

1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?

2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?

3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?

4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?

5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.

1. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
2. Are they plausible or implausible?
3. Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?

6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?

7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?

1. Is the conclusion probable or believable?
2. Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
3. Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
4. Perhaps it's too predictable.
5. Can you envision a different or better ending?

8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?

9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?

(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Piranesi 
Susanna Clarke, 2020
Bloomberg USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781635575637


Summary
From the bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others.

Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant.

But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge.

But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 1, 1959
• Where—Nottingham, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in England


Susanna Mary Clarke is an English author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Her second novel, Parenesi, was published in 2020.

Clarke is the eldest daughter of a Methodist minister and his wife. Although she was born in Nottingham, because of her father's ministerial posts, she spent her childhood in various towns across Northern England and Scotland. Reading became one of her main pleasures, especially the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen.

Clarke received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1981. For eight years, she worked in publishing at Quarto and Gordon Fraser, then spent two years teaching English as a foreign language in Turin, Italy and Bilbao, Spain.

Returning to County Durham in 1992, Clarke spent the rest of that year in a house overlooking the North Sea. There she began working on her first novel in 1993 and also took a position as a cookbook editor for Simon & Schuster in Cambridge. She remained in that job for the next ten years.

In 2003, Bloomsbury began working on the publication of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which became a bestseller when released in 2004.

Two years later, Clarke published a collection of her short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (2006). The novel and short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pastiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Piranesi, Clarke's second novel came out in September, 2020 to excellent reviews.

Awards
2005—Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
• Hugo Award for Best Novel
• Locus Award for Best First Novel
• Mythopoeic Award
• British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year Award
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/24/2020.)

Book Reviews
Piranesi is a high-quality page-turner-even the most leisurely reader will probably finish it off in a day-but its chief pleasure is immersion in its strange and uncannily attractive setting.… Establishing that sense of totality—and the feeling of peacefulness that accompanies it—is Ms. Clarke's standout feat.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


Infinitely clever…. [N]one of [Clarke's] enchantment has worn off—it's evolved.… to abide in these pages is to find oneself happily detained in awe.
Washington Post


Could Piranesi match [the hype]? I'm delighted to say it has, with Clarke's singular wit and imagination still intact in a far more compressed yet still captivating tale you'll want to delve into again right after you read its sublime last sentence.
Boston Globe


The long-awaited followup to Jonathan Strange is even more magically immersive.… Here is a protagonist with no guile, no greed, no envy, no cruelty, and yet still intriguing.
Los Angeles Times


Enthralling [and] transcendent….  [T]he sweetness, the innocence of Piranesi's love for this world is devastating to read. Clarke's writing is clear, sharp—she can cleave your heart in a few short words.… The mystery of Piranesi unwinds at a tantalizing yet lightening-like pace—it's hard not to rush ahead, even when each sentence, each revelation makes you want to linger.
NPR.org


(Starred review) Clarke wraps a twisty mystery inside a metaphysical fantasy in her extraordinary new novel…. Sure to be recognized as one of the year's most inventive.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Clarke creates an immersive world that readers can almost believe exists. This is a solid crossover pick for readers whose appreciation of magical fantasy leans toward V.E. Schwab or Erin Morgenstern. —Lucy Roehrig, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal


(Starred review) As questions multiply and suspense mounts in this spellbinding, occult puzzle of a fable, one begins to wonder if perhaps the reverence, kindness, and gratitude practiced by Clarke's enchanting and resilient hero aren't all the wisdom one truly needs.
Booklist


(Starred review) Readers who accompany [Piranesi] as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world. Weird and haunting and excellent.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Last Story of Mina Lee 
Nancy Jooyoun Kim, 2020
Park Row Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778310174


Summary
A profoundly moving and unconventional mother-daughter saga, The Last Story of Mina Lee illustrates the devastating realities of being an immigrant in America.

Margot Lee’s mother, Mina, isn’t returning her calls. It’s a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died.

The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother’s life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.

Interwoven with Margot’s present-day search is Mina’s story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she’s barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love.

But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.

Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—B.A., University of California, Los Angeles; M.A., University of Washington
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area


Born and raised in Los Angeles, Nancy Jooyoun Kim is a graduate of UCLA and the University of Washington, Seattle. Her debut novel, The Last Story of Mina Lee, was released in 2020.

Her essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, NPR/PRI’s Selected Shorts, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, The Offing, and elsewhere. (From the publisher .)

Book Reviews
The novel’s interior moments — in which mother and daughter think tragically past each other—work best.… Had the author kept the narrative this close, The Last Story of Mina Lee would have been a stronger book, its tangled subplots (Korean flashbacks, organized-crime figures) more of a counterbalance to the characters’ yearnings. Unfortunately, Kim succumbs to a common failing of first novels, telling too much.
Los Angeles Times


Mina’s immigration story poignantly mingles optimism with the heartbreak of exploitation. The more contemporary portions of the narrative, however, lack both emotional pull and narrative conviction.… As a personal immigration narrative Kim’s novel largely succeeds, but as a mystery novel or a mother-daughter drama it fails to connect.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Haunting and heartbreaking, troubled threads between a mother and daughter blend together in a delicate and rich weave… With both sadness and beauty, [Kim] describes grief, regret, loss, and the feeling of being left behind. Fans of Amy Tan and Kristin Hannah will love Kim's brilliant debut.
Booklist

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:

1. How would you describe Mina and Margot, the two characters at the heart of this novel? What about their relationship—why it is so difficult? Why do mother and daughter find it so hard to understand one another?

2.The police have ruled Mina's death accidental. Why does Margot doubt their conclusion? What, in her mind, makes it suspicious?

3. As Margot begins her investigation into her mother's death, whom does she come to suspect? What about you?

4. The Last Story of Mina Lee is about the perils and hardships of immigration. Why did Mina leave South Korea, and what were her hopes for a life in the United States? In what way did those dreams fall short?

5. Do you believe that Mina's story typical of most, or at least many, newly arrived immigrants? Does the novel offer you insights into the rationale, dreams, and hardships of those who leave their countries and families behind to come to America?

6. Talk about Margot's own journey as she explores her mother's life. How it change her? What does she come to understand about who her mother was—and, just as important, who she herself is?

7. What do you see for Margot in the coming years? Do you believe she will see her grandmother?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Winter Counts 
David Heska Hanbli Weiden, 2020
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062968944


Summary
A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.

Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget.

But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power.

As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

Winter Counts is a tour-de-force of crime fiction, a bracingly honest look at a long-ignored part of American life, and a twisting, turning story that’s as deeply rendered as it is thrilling. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
David Heska Wanbli Weiden is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He's a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, and the recipient of the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship. A lawyer and professor, he lives in Denver, Colorado, with his family. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Weiden is from a branch of the Lakota tribe himself, and his book relies on deep research into its history and traditions. Winter Counts is written with a light touch and a good deal of humor and sobering truths about Native American life.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times Book Review


You can zip through Winter Counts for the fast-paced thrills or the chance to learn about native culture, but slow down to enjoy the beauty of Weiden’s writing.
Washington Post


Winter Counts is a once-in-a-generation thriller, an unforgettable debut set in and around South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation that brims with complex characters, believable conflicts and an urgent message about Native culture, inequities and criminal justice.… Propulsive.
Los Angeles Times


[V]ivid and convincingly rendered… with fresh insight into the durable charms of the whodunit…. And while some readers may correctly suspect who the true bad guy is long before the reveal, there is plenty to enjoy in the journey to the novel’s satisfying conclusion…. [A] compelling read and an insightful perspective on identity and power in America.
USA Today


(Starred review) [G]orgeous…. The novel twists delicately around various personal conflicts while artfully addressing issues related to the politics of the reservation. Weiden combines funny, complex, and unforgettable characters with strong, poetic prose. This is crime fiction at its best.
Publishers Weekly


Weiden’s series launch sheds much-needed light on the legal and societal barriers facing Native Americans while also delivering a suspenseful thriller that builds to a bloody climax. A worthy addition to the burgeoning canon of indigenous literature. —Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
Library Journal


[An] engrossing, and culturally revelatory debut crime novel…. Suspenseful, gritty, gruffly endearing, and resonant, Weiden’s thriller, with its illumination of Lakota spiritual traditions and hopes raised for Virgil’s evolution from thug to sleuth, launches a promising and meaningful series.
Booklist


Key characters have a way of fading from view, and things get talky just when the action is picking up.…Weiden is at his best allowing Native culture to curl naturally around the mystery plot.… A solid if inconsistent crime novel.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What did you think about the setting of the book—the Rosebud Indian Reservation? If you’ve never visited a Native reservation, were you surprised by anything described in the book about reservation life?

2. What did you think about the main character, Virgil Wounded Horse? Did you like or dislike him? Did that change as you read further in the book?

3. Who was your favorite character in Winter Counts? Did you dislike any of the characters?

4. What are your feelings about the criminal justice system on reservations? Do you think the U.S. government should change the laws that prevent Native nations from prosecuting felony crimes that occur on their own lands?

5. At times, Virgil is troubled by his role as a hired enforcer. What are your thoughts about this issue? Is Virgil serving or harming justice?

6. There are other social issues discussed in Winter Counts: the problematic health care system on reservations and the lack of healthy food options. What do you think about these issues?

7. How did you feel about the relationship between Virgil and Marie? How about Virgil and his nephew Nathan? How do these relationships change over the course of the novel?

8. How do you feel about the conclusion of the novel? Were you satisfied with the ending? If not, what would you have changed?

9. Did anything surprise you in the book? What did you like most about the novel? What were your favorite scenes from the book?

10. If Winter Counts were turned into a television series or a film, which actors would you like to play Virgil and Marie? How about Nathan and Tommy?

11. What aspect of Native American life would you like to learn more about?
(Questions from the author's website.)

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