Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 
Cho Nam-Joo; transl., Jamie Chang , 2016 (2020, U.S.) 
Liveright Publishing
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781631496707


Summary
A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old "millennial everywoman," she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do.

But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission.

Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother.

Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons "family planning" birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Cho Nam-Joo was a television scriptwriter for nine years. Her debut novel, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, has sold in nineteen countries and over a million copies. She lives in Korea.

Jamie Chang is an award-winning translator and teaches at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Cho’s clinical prose is bolstered with figures and footnotes to illustrate how ordinary Jiyoung’s experience is.… When Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, was published in Korea in 2016, it was received as a cultural call to arms….  Cho’s novel was treated as a social treatise as much as a work of art.… The new, often subversive novels by Korean women, which have intersected with the rise of the #MeToo movement, are driving discussions beyond the literary world.
Alexandra Alter - New York Times


This novel is about the banality of the evil that is systemic misogyny.… [Jiyoung] feels so overwhelmed by social expectations that there is no room for her in her own body; her only option is to become something—or someone—else.
Euny Hong - New York Times Book Review


Cho Nam-joo’s third novel has been hailed as giving voice to the unheard everywoman.… [Kim Jiyoung] has become both a touchstone for a conversation around feminism and gender and a lightning rod for anti-feminists who view the book as inciting misandry…. [The book] has touched a nerve globally…. The character of Kim Jiyoung can be seen as a sort of sacrifice: a protagonist who is broken in order to open up a channel for collective rage.
Sarah Shin - Guardian (UK)


Cho Nam-Joo points to a universal dialogue around discrimination, hopelessness, and fear.
Time


In this fine―and beautifully translated―biography of a fictional Korean woman we encounter the real experiences of many women around the world.
Spectator (UK)


Following the life of the titular character from her mother’s generation through her own childhood, young adulthood, career, marriage and eventual "breakdown," the book moves around in time to subtly uncover how patriarchy eats away at the psyches and bodies of women, starting before they’re even born.
Seattle Times


While Cho’s message-driven narrative will leave readers wishing for more complexity, the brutal, bleak conclusion demonstrates Cho’s mastery of irony. This will stir readers to consider the myriad factors that diminish women’s rights throughout the world.
Publishers Weekly


A relatively quick read at under 200 pages, the novel… is credited with launching Korea's own #MeToo moment. It effectively communicates the realities Korean women face,…and the nearly impossible challenge of balancing motherhood with career aspirations. —Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
Library Journal


(Starred review) Cho’s narrative is part bildungsroman and part Wikipedia entry…. Cho’s matter-of-fact delivery [and]…Jiyoung’s therapist’s report―his claims of being "aware" and "enlightened" only [damn] him further as an entitled troll―proves to be narrative genius.
Booklist

[T]here's nothing revolutionary here—it's basically feminism 101 but in novel form, complete with occasional footnotes.… But the story perfectly captures [misogyny]…  recognizable to many. A compelling story about a woman in a deeply patriarchal society.
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 Kind Worth Killing 
Peter Swanson, 2015
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062450319


Summary
A devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception, and an accidental encounter that leads to murder that is a modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train.

On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves.

Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.

But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, "I’d like to help." After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse.

Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda's demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.

Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive...with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 11, 1964
• Where—Carlisle, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity College; M.A., University of Massachusetts-Amherst; M.F.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Somerville, Massachusetts


Peter Swanson is the author of several novels: The Girl with a Clock for a Heart (2014) The Kind Worth Killing (2015), Her Every Fear (2016), and Before She Knew Him (2019). Eight Perfect Murders (2020) is his most recent.

Swanson's poems, stories and reviews have appeared in such journals as The Atlantic, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Epoch, Measure, Notre Dame Review, Soundings East, and The Vocabula Review. He has won awards in poetry from The Lyric and Yankee Magazine, and is currently completing a sonnet sequence on all 53 of Alfred Hitchcock’s films.

Swanson has degrees in creative writing, education, and literature from Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College. He lives with his wife and cat in Somerville, Massachusetts. (From the publisher and the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A fun read, full of switchbacks and double crosses… With classic misdirection, Swanson distracts us from the details - changing up murderers and victims fast enough to keep us reading. And, implausibly, rooting for the cold-blooded killer at this thriller’s core.
Boston Globe


This devilishly clever noir thriller [has] head-spinning surprises that make it an intoxicating read.... The book will inevitably earn comparisons to Gone Girl.... This one makes good on the promise, right down to the chilling final paragraph.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram


The next Gone Girl?.... There aren’t just two unreliable narrators, there are four. There isn’t just one enormous, game-changing twist. Try three.... You’ll also lose count of all the sociopaths...they’re each deranged but oh-so-compelling.
Entertainment Weekly


Revenge has rarely been served colder than in Swanson’s exceptional thriller.... With scalpel-sharp prose, Swanson probes the nature of cold-blooded evil. Few will be prepared for the crushing climax.
Publishers Weekly


Ted Severson is flying from London to Boston when he gets into an intense tête-à-tête with striking but enigmatic Lily Kintner, finally blurting out that he could just kill his wife. When Lily coolly replies that she'd like to help, a murder plot is born.
Library Journal


Suspenseful twists and turns, expert pacing and a breathless race to a surprise ending.... [A] captivating, powerful thriller about sex, deception, secrets, revenge, the strange things we get ourselves wrapped up in, and the magnetic pull of the past.
Shelf Awareness


[M]eets and exceeds the high-water mark that its predecessor established.... The floor underneath the novel doesn’t just shift, it turns upside down. This top-notch thriller has enough twists and surprises for three books.
Bookreporter.com


A twisty tale of warring sociopaths [and] a good companion to similar stories by Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn.
Booklist


While there are twists, most of them are so clearly telegraphed that only the most careless of readers won't see what's coming, especially since Swanson needlessly doubles back over the same events from different points of view.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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)

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)

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 more one-dimensional heroes and villains?

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

3. Good crime writers are skillful at hiding clues in plain sight. How well does the author hide the clues in this work?

4. Does the author use red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray?

5. Talk about plot's twists & turns—those surprising developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense? Are they  plausible? Or do the twists & turns feel forced and preposterous—inserted only to extend the story.

6. Does the author ratchet up the story's suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? How does the author build suspense?

7. What about the ending—is it satisfying? Is it probable or believable? Does it grow out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 2). Or does the ending come out of the blue? Does it feel forced...tacked-on...or a cop-out? Or perhaps it's too predictable. Can you envision a better, or different, 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?

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The Kindness of Strangers
Katrina Kittle, 2006
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060564780

In Brief  
On a quiet street in the suburban Midwest, a popular, seemingly stable family keeps a terrible, dark secret behind closed doors—a secret that will have life—changing consequences for all who know them.

Sarah Laden, a young widow and mother of two, struggles to keep her own family together. After the death of her husband, her high school-aged son Nate has developed a rebellious streak, constantly falling in and out of trouble. Her kindhearted younger son Danny, though well-behaved, struggles to pass his remedial classes. All the while, Sarah must make ends meet by running a catering business out of her home.

When a shocking and unbelievable revelation rips apart the family of her closest friend, Sarah finds herself welcoming yet another young boy into her already tumultuous life.

Jordan, a quiet and reclusive elementary school classmate of Danny's, has survived a terrible tragedy, leaving him without a family. When Sarah becomes a foster mother to Jordan, a relationship develops that will force her to question the things of which she thought she was so sure. Yet Sarah is not the only one changed by this young boy. The Ladens will all face truths about themselves and each other—and discover the power to forgive and to heal.

Powerful and poignant, The Kindness of Strangers is a shocking look at how the tragedy of a single family in a small, suburban town can effect so many. Told from varying perspectives, The Kindness of Strangers shows that even after the gravest injuries, redemption is always possible. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author 

• Birth—ca. 1968
• Where—Illinois, USA
• Raised—Dayton, Ohio,
• Education—B.A., B.S.,Ohio University, M.F.A., Spalding
  University
• Currently—lives in Dayton, Ohio

Katrina Kittle is the author of Traveling Light and Two Truths and a Lie. She helped found the All Children's Theatre in Washington Township, Ohio, and teaches theatre and English to middle schoolers at the Miami Valley School in Dayton. Chapters from The Kindness of Strangers earned her an Ohio Arts Council grant. She lives in Dayton, Ohio. (From the publishers.)

More
Katrina has lived in the Dayton, Ohio, area for most of her life. She grew up in a home where books were prized possessions, and original stories and poems were given as gifts. Her father is a voracious "chain reader" who encouraged her to read widely, and still greets her at the door with, "Did you bring me any books?" Her childhood was full of horses and books and hiking in the woods and camping with Girl Scouts and bossing the neighbor kids into huge theatrical productions.

Originally interested in dance and theater, Katrina studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts and Ohio University, first as a theater major, then accepting an invitation to join the Honors Tutorial Program in English. She had a double major in English and education, worked in the theater costume shop, rode on the university’s Equestrian Team, kept a Theater minor, and graduated in 1990 with a BA in English and a BS in Education, earning the honor of Outstanding Graduating Senior for both departments.

After graduating, Kittle taught high school Advanced Placement British Literature for five years, then spent several years freelancing as a children’s theater director and creative writing instructor. She has worked as a writer-in-residence and taught creative writing workshops for several elementary, middle, and high schools, universities, and organizations. She has taught students as young as third grade and has had an eighty-year-old student in her Fiction Intensive at The Antioch Writers’ Workshop.

During "the freelance years," Katrina also worked in case management support at the AIDS Foundation Miami Valley (now the AIDS Resource Center), cleaned houses (which she found "very Zen-like and perfect for the writing life: you get left alone with your hands busy doing mindless work while your brain can simmer story ideas"), and worked as a veterinary assistant.

Katrina then taught 6th- and 7th-grade English at the Miami Valley School in Dayton, where she directed a middle school play each year. If she were to remain teaching, she would wish to be nowhere else, but she is so grateful to be fulfilling a lifelong dream to write full-time.

She is the author of Traveling Light and Two Truths and a Lie. Her third novel, The Kindness of Strangers, was released in February of 2006. Early chapters from this third novel earned Katrina grants from the Ohio Arts Council and from the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District. The Kindness of Strangers was selected as a Book Sense pick for February, and was the Fiction Book winner for the 2006 Great Lakes Book Awards.

Katrina runs and studies Latin dance. She's also on a cooking spree (when she's "cooking" figuratively on a new book, she's usually cooking a lot literally, too). In addition to her favorite pesto, she's especially fond of a recent espresso-chocolate cake she discovered in Nigella Lawson's fabulous cookbook, Feast. She is also dabbling in Indian cooking, and so far her friends are willing guinea pigs.

Katrina loves theater and tries to get her theater "fix" at least once a year, usually auditioning for something at the Dayton Theatre Guild.

Katrina loves to travel. Recent travel highlights include spending the night with a goat under her bed in Ghana; riding horseback through the hills of Sintra in Portugal; and floating on her back in the Mediterranean looking up at the cliff-cut city of Positano, Italy.

Katrina keeps Dayton, Ohio, as her home base, where she is the proud aunt of Amy and Nathan. (Also from the publisher.)

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Critics Say . . . 
Master caterer Sarah Laden is barely holding her life together as a widow with two difficult sons—recalcitrant teen Nate and troubled fifth-grader Danny—when the unthinkable happens. Her best friend and neighbor, Courtney Kendrick, is arrested in a child sex abuse scandal. Courtney's husband has vanished; their 11-year-old son, Jordan, is in the hospital recovering from a suicide attempt; and across the street Nate is finding, in Jordan's backpack, evidence of unthinkable abuse. Kittle (Traveling Light; Two Truths and a Lie) crafts a disturbing but compelling story line, as Sarah, Nate and Jordan uncover and come to terms with the horror in alternating chapters. Sarah, for instance, is shocked to learn that she dropped off food for the Kendricks' sex parties; Jordan must decide whether or not he wants to continue a relationship with his mother—who insists she's innocent—if and when she gets acquitted. Kittle's research sits awkwardly in expository dialogue—"One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before their eighteenth birthdays," intones the detective who will later become Sarah's love interest—but it doesn't slow the momentum. Though the movement is toward healing, there are bumpy roads ahead for everybody in this melodramatic but gripping read.
Publishers Weekly

In this slice of contemporary life, Kittle (Traveling Light) introduces Sarah Laden, the recently widowed mother of two challenging sons. While trying to reassemble their lives following her husband's death, Sarah operates a catering business in Ohio, handling many of the small-town functions. Then, unexpectedly, the family is thrown into the maelstrom surrounding an unspeakable crime against a child. Kittle zeroes in on the Ladens' incremental realization that their relationships with this child represent his best chance of repairing his damaged life. Their unselfishness is at the heart of this most memorable, compelling novel of survival. Kittle's careful character development and depiction of a loving family situation, along with the variety of statistics offered, help make this tale hard to put down. Although it is a grim, disturbing study of abuse, the conversational style and vividly drawn characters render it a moving portrait of how we heal. Recommended for all public libraries. —Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA
Library Journal

A struggling family responds to the discovery of child sexual abuse very close to home. A middle-class household in small-town USA is transformed into a hellhole as Kittle (Two Truths and a Lie, 2001, etc.) depicts a child in peril. Thanks to the author's exceptionally fluent narrative skill, a novel which at times has the flavor of a public information account of abuse and its aftermath becomes utterly compelling. Jordan is the nerdy, withdrawn, 11-year-old son of glamorous, respected Mark and Courtney Kendrick. One morning, Courtney's best friend Sarah Laden discovers Jordan ill and alone and rushes him to the hospital. Jordan, whose sickness is a suicide-attempt overdose, is discovered to have been not only abused for years but also infected with gonorrhea, for which Courtney, a doctor, has been treating him with stolen drugs. A search of Jordan's home uncovers masses of evidence incriminating Mark but nothing directly implicating Courtney, whom recently widowed Sarah now struggles to recast as a monster. Jordan's own heartbreaking story encompasses fear, fury and loyalty; a sympathetic police officer, doubling as Sarah's love interest, offers useful background information. There are no surprises and a little too much sweet resolution, but Kittle unfurls her tale with absolute devotion.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions 

1. Why was Sarah so reluctant to give up her "friendship" with Courtney? What is she holding on to when she refuses to believe in Courtney's guilt? What does this say about Sarah?

2. Jordan's relationship with his mother is complicated. His relationship with his father is more black and white. Which relationship is the more harmful one to Jordan's long-term health? Why?

3. In addition to parent-child relationships, what other relationships of dependence merge in the novel? How do the Kendricks prey on the weakness and vulnerability of others, both children and adults?

4. Consider the relationship between Danny and Jordan. In many ways it is the most difficult, but at the same time it could be argued that it is the most redeeming. Discuss the complexity and evolution of this relationship.

5. Jordan demonstrates a rare psychological sophistication when he rejects Danny in order to protect him from the Kendricks. In what other ways does Jordan behave in more mature ways than this age might predict?

6. Nate, Sarah, Danny, and Jordan all feel guilt at some point, yet those who are genuinely guilty do not seem abashed by their deeds. Examine these various manifestations of guilt; are they justified?

7. What role do domestic pets play in the novel? Why does Jordan take the rabbit to his closet? In what ways does Sarah's interaction with the robin suggest what is to come in the novel?

8. The chick is a powerful symbol in Sarah's first chapter. How does it follow through? What other instances of birds or flight play a significant role in the text?

9. What is the role of food in the novel? How does it create family? How does Sarah's talent as a caterer and cook shape her relationships with others? How does the metaphor of feeding and nourishment extend to the entire novel?

10. Each character in this novel has experienced a loss that has changed them. How does loss connect the various characters in the book to each other?

11. If Sarah's husband were alive, would circumstances be significantly altered? Why or why not?

12. Sarah's perceptions of Nate's behavior has been clouded by his earlier troubles. What allows her to go beyond this perception and to trust him again? What does it take to restore trust between parents and children?

13. The author chooses to begin and end the book in the future. How does this choice influence your reading of the book?

14. Why does the novel begin in Danny's voice rather than Jordan's or Sarah's?

15. The novel has four narratives: Danny, Sarah, Nate, and Jordan. What effect does this have on how the story is told? How does this narrative strategy reveal information about the characters?
(Questions from the publishers.)

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Kindred 
Octavia E. Butler, 1979
Beacon Press
264 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780807083109


Summary
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband, when she is abruptly snatched from her home in present California and transported back to the antebellum South.

Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning; and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back again and again to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who is to become her ancestor. Each time, however, the stays grow longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has even begun. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 22, 1947
• Where—Pasadena, California, USA
• Death—February 24, 2006
• Where—Lake Forest Park, Washington (State)
• Education—A.A., Pasadena Community College; attended University of California, Los Angeles
• Awards—Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards (more below)


Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, nicknamed the Genius Grant.

Life and education
Butler was born and raised in a struggling, racially mixed neighborhood of Pasadena, California. Her father Laurice, a shoeshiner, died when she was a baby, and she was raised by her grandmother and mother (Octavia M. Butler) who worked as a maid.

According to the Norton Anthology of African American Literature Butler was "an introspective only child in a strict Baptist household" who was "drawn early to [science fiction] magazines such as Amazing Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy. She soon began reading all the science fiction classics."

Nicknamed Junie, Octavia was paralytically shy and a daydreamer; she was later diagnosed as dyslexic. She began writing at the age of ten "to escape loneliness and boredom" and by twelve began her lifelong interest in science fiction. As she later told the journal Black Scholar,

I was writing my own little stories when I was 12. I was watching a bad science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars and decided that I could write a better story than that. And I turned off the TV and proceeded to try, and I've been writing science fiction ever since.

After getting her Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena City College, she next enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles. She eventually left UCLA and took writing classes through an extension program.

Butler credited two writing workshops for giving her "the most valuable help" she had received with her writing:

• The Open Door Workshop of the Screenwriters' Guild of America, West, a program designed to mentor Latino and African American writers. It was Through Open Door that she met the noted science fiction writer Harlan Ellison.
• The Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, (introduced to her by Ellison), where she first met Samuel R. Delany.

Throughout her career, she remained a self-identified science fiction fan, an insider who rose from within the ranks of the field.

In November, 1999, Butler moved to Seattle, Washington, describing herself at that stage in life as

Comfortably asocial—a hermit in the middle of Seattle—a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.

Themes of both racial and sexual ambiguity are apparent throughout her work. Her writing has influenced a number of prominent authors. When asked if he could be any author in the world, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz replied that he would be Octavia Butler, who he claimed has written 9 perfect novels.

Death
Butler died outside of her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington, on February 24, 2006, at the age of 58. Contemporary news accounts were inconsistent as to the cause of her death, whether it was from a fatal stroke or from head injuries caused by a fall during the stroke.

Awards
2012: Solstice Award
2010: Induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame
2005: Langston Hughes Medal of The City College
2000: Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the PEN American Center
1999: Nebula Award for Best Novel for Parable of the Talents
1995: MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
1985: Hugo Award for Best Novelette for Bloodchild
1985: Science Fiction Awards Database for Bloodchild
1985: Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette for Bloodchild
1984: Nebula Award for Best Novelette for Bloodchild
 984: Hugo Award for Best Short Story forSpeech Sounds
 980: Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA

Scholarship fund
The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship was established in Butler's memory in 2006 by the Carl Brandon Society. Its goal is to provide an annual scholarship to enable writers of color to attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop and Clarion Writers' Workshop, descendants of the original Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania, where Butler got her start. The first scholarships were awarded in 2007. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/12/2014.)

Book Reviews
Butler's literary craftsmanship is superb.
Washington Post Book World


A celebrated mainstay of college courses in women's studies and black literature and culture; some colleges require it as mandatory freshman reading.
Linell Smith - Baltimore Sun


One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity.
Lynell George - Los Angeles Times


Butler's characters are so vivid and the racist milieu in which they struggle to survive so realistically depicted that one cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery, and racial dilemmas, then and now.
Sam Frank - Los Angeles Herald-Examiner


No other work of fantasy or science fiction writings brings the intimate environment of the antebellum South to life better than Octavia E. Butler's Kindred.
Kevin Weston - San Francisco Chronicle


This powerful novel about a modern black woman transported back in time to a slave plantation in the antebellum South is the perfect introduction to Butler's work and perspectives for those not usually enamored of science fiction.... A harrowing, haunting story.
John Marshall - Seattle Post-Intelligencer


Kindred is as much a novel of psychological horror as it is a novel of science fiction. . .a work of art whose individual accomplishment defies categorization.
Barbara Strickland - Austin Chronicle


Like emotion that uplifts and enriches, like exquisite music or the taste of some special candy remembered from childhood, I never wanted Kindred to end. It overwhelmed me, dominated me, drew me on page after page. To express my total admiration and wonder for the originality of this surpassingly compelling novel, I am driven to a despised cliche: I could not put it down! It is a book that simply will not be denied; its power is hypnotic. Kindred is a story that hurts: I take that to be the surest indicator of genuine Art. It is an important novel, filled with powerful human insight and the shocking impact of the most commonplace experiences viewed in a new way, and it demands that once begun, the reader continue till it has done its work on the heart and mind and soul. Octavia Butler is a writer who will be with us for a long, long time, and Kindred is that rare, magical artifact...the novel one returns to, again and again, through the years, to learn, to be humbled, and to be renewed. Do not, I beg you, deny yourself this singular experience.
Harlan Ellison


Truly terrifying.... A book you'll find hard to put down.
Essence


Butler's books are exceptional.... She is a realist, writing the most detailed social criticism and creating some of the most fascinating female characters in the genre...real women caught in impossible situations.
Dorothy Allison - Village Voice


A startling and engrossing commentary on the complex actuality and continuing heritage of American slavery.
Sherley Anne Williams - Ms Magazine


Her books are disturbing, unsettling… In a field dominated by white male authors, Butler's African-American feminist perspective is unique, and uniquely suited to reshape the boundaries of the sci-fi genre.
Bill Glass - L. A. Style

Discussion Questions
1. Both Kevin and Dana know that they can't change history: "We're in the middle of history. We surely can't change it." (page100); and "It's over.... There's nothing you can do to change any of it now." (page 264). What, then, are the purposes of Dana' s travels back to the antebellum South? Why must you, the reader, experience this journey with Dana?
     
2. How would the story have been different with a third person narrator?
     
3. Many of the characters within Kindred resist classification. In what ways does Dana explode the slave stereotypes of the "house-nigger, the handerkchief-head, and the female Uncle Tom" (page 145). In what ways does she transcend them?
     
4.  Despite Dana's conscious effort to refuse the 'mammy' role in the Weylin household, she finds herself caught within it: "I felt like Sarah, cautioning." (page 156), and others see her as the mammy: "You sound just like Sarah" (page 159). How, if at all, does Dana reconcile this behavior? How would you reconcile it?
     
5. "The ease. Us, the children.... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery." This is said by Dana to Kevin when they have returned to the present and are discussing their experience in the antebellum South. To what extent, if any, do you believe racial oppression exists today?
     
6. How do you think Butler confronts us with issues of difference in Kindred? How does she challenge us to consider boundaries of black/white, master/slave, husband/wife, past/present? What other differences does she convolute? Do you think such dichotomies are flexible? Artificial? Useful?
     
7. Compare Tom Weylin and Rufus Weylin. Is Rufus an improvement or simply an alteration of his father? Where, if any, is there evidence of Dana's influence on the young Rufus in his adult character?
     
8. Of the slaves' attitude toward Rufus, Dana observes "Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him at the same time." (page 229) How is it they can feel these contradictory emotions? How would you feel toward Rufus if you were in their situation?
     
9. Compare Dana's 'professional' life (i.e. her work as temporary help) in the present with her life as a slave.
     
10. When Dana and Kevin return from the past together, she thinks to herself: "I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time. Rufus's time was a sharper, stronger reality." (page 191) Why would the twentieth century seem less vivid to Dana than the past?
     
11. Dana loses her left arm as she emerges—for the last time in the novel—from the past. Why is this significant?
     
12. Kevin is stranded in the past five years, while Dana is there for almost one. Is there a reason why Butler felt Kevin needed to stay in the past so much longer? How have their experiences affected their relationship to each other and to the world around them?
     
13. A common trend in the time-travels of science fiction assumes that one should not tamper with the past, lest s/he disrupt the present. Butler's characters obviously ignore this theory and continue to invade each other's lives. How does this influence the movement of the narrative? How does this convolute the idea of "cause and effect"?
     
14. Dana finds herself caught in the middle of the relationship between Rufus and Alice? Why does Rufus use Dana to get to Alice? Does Alice use Dana?
     
15. The needs and well-being of other residents of the plantation create a web of obligation that is difficult to navigate. Choose a specific incident; and determine who holds power over whom and assess how it affects that situation.
     
16. Dana states: "It was that destructive single-minded love of his. He loved me. Not the way he loved Alice, thank God. He didn't seem to want to sleep with me. But he wanted me around—someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him and care about what he said, care about it." (page 180) How does the relationship between Dana and Rufus develop? How does it change? What are the different levels of love portrayed in Kindred?

17. Discuss the ways in which the title encapsulates the relationships within the novel. Is it ironic? Literal? Metaphorical? What emphasis do we place on our own kinship? How does it compare with that of the novel?
     
18. Do you believe that Dana and Kevin's story actually happened to them, or that they simply got caught up in the nostalgia of moving old papers and books?
     
20. Butler opens the novel with the conclusion of Dana's time travels. The final pages of the book, however, make up an epilogue demonstrating a, once again, linearly progressive movement of time. How does the epilogue serve to disrupt the rhythm of the narrative?
     
21. After returning from his years in the nineteenth-century, Kevin had attained "a slight accent" (page 190). Is this "slight" alteration symbolic of greater changes to come? How do you imagine Kevin and Dana's relationship will progress following their re-emergence into life in 1976?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The King's Curse  (Cousins' War, 6)
Philippa Gregory, 2014
Touchstone
624 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451626117


Summary
The story of lady-in-waiting Margaret Pole and her unique view of King Henry VIII’s stratospheric rise to power in Tudor England.

Regarded as yet another threat to the volatile King Henry VII’s claim to the throne, Margaret Pole, cousin to Elizabeth of York (known as the White Princess) and daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, is married off to a steady and kind Lancaster supporter—Sir Richard Pole.

For his loyalty, Sir Richard is entrusted with the governorship of Wales, but Margaret’s contented daily life is changed forever with the arrival of Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon. Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend to the honeymooning couple, hiding her own royal connections in service to the Tudors.

After the sudden death of Prince Arthur, Katherine leaves for London a widow, and fulfills her deathbed promise to her husband by marrying his brother, Henry VIII. Margaret’s world is turned upside down by the surprising summons to court, where she becomes the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine.

But this charmed life of the wealthiest and "holiest" woman in England lasts only until the rise of Anne Boleyn, and the dramatic deterioration of the Tudor court. Margaret has to choose whether her allegiance is to the increasingly tyrannical king, or to her beloved queen; to the religion she loves or the theology which serves the new masters.

Caught between the old world and the new, Margaret Pole has to find her own way as she carries the knowledge of an old curse on all the Tudors. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1954
• Where—Nairobi, Kenya
• Raised—Bristol, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Sussex University; Ph.D., Edinburgh University
• Currently—lives in the North York Moors, Yorkshire, England


Philippa Gregory is a British historical novelist, writing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Early life and academic career
Philippa Gregory was in Nairobi, Kenya, the second daughter of Elaine (Wedd) and Arthur Percy Gregory, a radio operator and navigator for East African Airways. When she was two years old, her family moved to Bristol, England.

She was a "rebel" at Colston's Girls' School where she obtained a B grade in English and two E grades in History and Geography at A-level. She then went to journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year as an apprentice with the Portsmouth News before she managed to gain a place on an English literature degree course at the University of Sussex, where she switched to a history course.

She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.

Private life
Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing a PhD in 18th-century literature and living in a cottage on the Pennine Way with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter, Victoria. They divorced before the book was published.

Following the success of Wideacre and the publication of The Favoured Child, she moved south to near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the Wideacre trilogy was set. Here she married her second husband Paul Carter, with whom she has a son. She divorced for a second time and married Anthony Mason, whom she had first met during her time in Hartlepool.

Gregory now lives on a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm in the North York Moors national park, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening.

Writing
She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of the slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.

Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. She has also written contemporary fiction—Perfectly Correct; Mrs Hartley And The Growth Centre; The Little House; and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.

Some of her novels have won awards and have been adapted into television dramas. The most successful of her novels has been The Other Boleyn Girl, published in 2002 and adapted for BBC television in 2003 with Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May and Jared Harris. In the year of its publication, The Other Boleyn Girl also won the Romantic Novel of the Year and has subsequently spawned sequels—The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Other Queen. Miramax bought the film rights to The Other Boleyn Girl and produced a film of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and co-starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry Tudor, Juno Temple as Jane Parker, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn. It was filmed in England and generally released in 2008.

Gregory has also published a series of books about the Plantagenets, the ruling houses that preceded the Tudors, and the Wars of the Roses. Her first book The White Queen (2009), centres on the life of Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. The Red Queen (2010) is about Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. The Lady of the Rivers (2011) is the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, first married to John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry the Fifth. The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012) is the story of Anne Neville, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the wife of Richard III. The next book, The White Princess (2013), centres on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII.

Controversy
In her novel The Other Boleyn Girl, her portrayal of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn drew criticism. The novel depicts Anne as cold and ruthless, as well as heavily implying that the accusations that she committed adultery and incest with her brother were true, despite it being widely accepted that she was innocent of the charges. Novelist Robin Maxwell refused on principle to write a blurb for this book, describing its characterisation of Anne as "vicious, unsupportable." Historian David Starkey, appearing alongside Gregory in a documentary about Anne Boleyn, described her work as "good Mills and Boon" (a publisher of romance novels), adding that: "We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous." Susan Bordo criticized Gregory's claims to historical accuracy as "self-deceptive and self-promoting chutzpah", and notes that it is not so much the many inaccuracies in her work as "Gregory’s insistence on her meticulous adherence to history that most aggravates the scholars."

Media
Gregory is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, with short stories, features and reviews. She is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team. She won the 29 December 2008 edition of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC1, taking Elizabeth Woodville as her specialist subject.

Charity work
Gregory also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia. Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book A Respectable Trade.

Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.

In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in batik and pottery and is working with larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)

Book Reviews
“Margaret’s story is shocking, deeply moving and offers an alternative view on a much-told tale. Gregory is on form here; her depiction of Henry VIII’s transformation from indulged golden boy to sinister tyrant is perfectly pitched and seems more horrific still when we are made intimate witnesses to the devastation of Margaret’s family.... I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed as the story reaches its tragic denouement.
Sunday Express (UK)

Loyalties are torn, paranoia festers and you can almost hear the bray of royal trumpets as the period springs to life. It’s a bloody irresistible read.
People Magazine


An illuminating portrait of historical figure Margaret Pole...whose royal Plantagenet lineage was both a blessing and a curse.... Gregory moves confidently through a tangle of intrigue, revenge, and tyranny toward a shocking betrayal that brings Margaret face-to-face with the king’s ire.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Taking place after the Tudor victory at Bosworth in 1485, Gregory's dramatic conclusion to the "Cousins' War" series is narrated by Margaret Pole, a member of the defeated Plantagenet family.... [G]ripping...with plenty of court intrigue and politics to spice up the action. —Kristen Stewart, Pearland Lib., Brazoria Cty. Lib. Syst., TX
Library Journal


Nobody does dynastic history like Gregory.
Booklist


[T]he last Plantagenets wage a losing and mostly subterranean battle against the unscrupulous Tudor upstarts....[who]cause countless executions [and] change a national religion.... It would be a spoiler to recount what happens next although we already know. Under Gregory's spell, we keep hoping history won't repeat itself.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The King’s Curse spans over forty years of Lady Margaret Pole’s presence in and around the Tudor court, as she and her family rise and fall from favor with Henry VII and then Henry VIII. How do Lady Margaret, her characteristics, and her goals change over the course of her life at and away from court?

2. Discuss the meaning of the title, The King’s Curse. What is the actual curse? How does Henry VIII’s belief that he is cursed affect his behavior? Do you believe that the curse that Elizabeth of York and her mother spoke against the Tudors comes to fruition?

3. Consider how deeply Margaret is affected by the execution of her brother Edward, “Teddy,” the Earl of Warwick. How does this affect her familial loyalty and influence her actions? What does it mean to Margaret to bear the name Plantagenet? What does the White Rose mean to her?

4. How does Margaret see Henry VIII change over the course of his life? As a child, how was he different from his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales? What are his primary characteristics as a young king, and then as an aging monarch?

5. Describe the ways in which motherhood and maternity are portrayed in The King’s Curse. How does the pressure to produce a male heir define the role of royal mothers? How does Margaret’s presence at the loss of so many royal babies affect her own view of motherhood? Compare the differences between Katherine of Aragon’s and Margaret’s sense of motherhood.

6. Lady Margaret Pole is a unique figure in the Tudor court: when her title is restored to her, she becomes one of the wealthiest individuals in England in her own right. In what ways does Margaret use her position and influence that was unusual for a woman of this time?

7. “‘It’s just that from boyhood, the king has never admired something without wanting it for himself,’” Margaret cautions her cousin Edward, Duke of Buckingham. How does Margaret’s advice to her family to desire obscurity, and therefore safety, contradict her ambitions for her family, her sons in particular, and desire for power? What does the loss of Margaret’s son Arthur mean to her? Consider this moment: “We walk back to the house, and I look at the great house that I have renewed, with my family crest above the door, and I think, as bitterly as any sinner, that all the wealth and all the power that I won back for myself and my children could not save my beloved son Arthur from the Tudor sickness.”

8. Margaret forces Reginald to stay in the king’s service as a scholar and theologian, even if it means being exiled to Padua, Paris, and Rome and separated from his family; Reginald resents his mother for much of his life because of this. Do you think this shaped Reginald’s opinion toward the new religion and his eventual letter to the king on his findings? Why or why not?

9. Compare and contrast Margaret’s attitudes about illness, contagion, and death with those of Henry VIII. How does each handle the Sweat and other diseases among their subjects? How is each affected by the death of Katherine of Aragon?

10. Think back to the promise that Margaret made to Katherine when she first revealed Prince Arthur’s deathbed wish to his young wife: If Margaret had not promised to keep Katherine’s secret then, how might have the following events turned out differently?

11. The wheel of fortune, or rota fortunae, is a popular notion in medieval philosophy that refers to the unpredictability of fate: the goddess Fortuna spins the wheel at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel. Keeping this in mind, discuss the many great fortunes and misfortunes that befall Margaret and her family, and England as a whole, throughout the novel. What is the driving force behind these quick changes of fortune?

12. “The one thing I would have taught him, if I had kept him at my side, is to never weary of life, but to cling to it. Life: at almost any cost. I have never prepared myself for death, not even going into childbed, and I would never put my head down on the block.” Margaret encourages her children to choose life on multiple occasions, even over loyalty or truth. What does this tell us about Margaret’s moral compass? How does this guide the decisions she makes for herself and her children?

13. Lady Margaret Pole was beatified by the Catholic Church as a martyr in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII; her feast day is celebrated on May 28. In The King’s Curse, Margaret is portrayed as devout to the church and the old ways and is outraged when Henry VIII allows Cromwell to shut down England’s abbeys, priories, and monasteries. How does Margaret’s religious devotion influence her family’s involvement with the Pilgrimage of Grace? How do you think Margaret reconciles her disagreement with the king over religious issues, but outward loyalty to the throne?
(Questions provided by the publisher.)

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Kingdomtide 
Rye Curtis, 2020
Little Brown & Co.
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316420105


Summary
The sole survivor of a plane crash, seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip is lost and alone in the unforgiving wilderness of Montana's rugged Bitterroot Range, exposed to the elements with no tools beyond her wits and ingenuity.

Intertwined with her story is Debra Lewis, a park ranger struggling with addiction and a recent divorce, who is galvanized by her new mission to find and rescue Cloris.

As Cloris wanders mountain forests and valleys, subsisting on whatever she can scavenge, her hold on life ever more precarious, Ranger Lewis and her motley group of oddball rescuers follow the trail of clues she's left behind.

Days stretch into weeks, and hope begins to fade. But with nearly everyone else giving up, Ranger Lewis stays true until the end.

Dramatic and morally complex, Kingdomtide is a story of the decency and surprising resilience of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances.

In powerful, exquisite prose, debut novelist Rye Curtis delivers an inspiring account of two unforgettable characters whose heroism reminds us that survival is only the beginning. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Rye Curtis is originally from Amarillo, Texas. He is a graduate of Columbia University and now lives in Queens in New York City. Kingdomtide is his first novel (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
A startling reversal to the typical survival story.… Abounds in homespun sensory detail.… Rye Curtis complicates the expected adventure-novel payoff.… Cloris's narration grows increasingly vulnerable, surprising, and profound. The wonder of her ordeal has detached her from ordinary cares yet made her ravenously curious about the big, unanswerable questions.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


Rye Curtis's debut novel, Kingdomtide, is that rare genre-fluid story that is lovable both because of and despite its surfeit of eccentric, over-the-top characters and moments. Some are gritty and dark, others light and wise; together they create an impressive first book and a highly original tale of adventure and perseverance.
Los Angeles Times


A heart-pounding tale.… Riveting and surprising.… Kindness helps steer this heartbreaking tale in a heartwarming direction…. Rye Curtis keeps us turning pages as Cloris confronts bobcats, hypothermia, starvation, icy inundation, and a strange mountain lion who walks backwards.… [A] transportive read… [and] stirring debut.
Heller McAlpin - NPR


Harrowing…. In beautiful prose this horrifying and brutal work of art bounces between Cloris's and Debra's narratives. Together, these unforgettable women create a unique literary novel full of suspense and twists…. The entire cast of characters is layered and raw…. Underneath this gritty and dark tale is the message that sometimes heroism and kindness emerge from those we despise and fear the most,
Sunday Times (UK)


Vivid… an enthralling debut.
Guardian (UK)


[I]ntense…. Seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip's grueling attempt to survive and escape is depicted with vivid urgency…. Her gritty, nightmarish story, as well as her strong voice and personality, will make her a reader favorite…. This story of survival will keep readers quickly turning the pages.
Publishers Weekly


[D]eep and surprising…. Cloris’ survival narration is exciting, with devastating vistas and a mysterious savior in the form of a possible fugitive, but her musings on her past life and life in general are some of the book’s very best moments…. Gloriously unexpected.
Booklist


A bitterly unhappy forest ranger finds a purpose in her search for an old woman who might have survived disaster in this darkly humorous debut novel.… A captivating survival story alternates with a less satisfying look at a midlife crisis in this promising first novel.
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 Kingmaker's Daughter (Cousins' War, 4)
Philippa Gregory, 2012
Simon & Schuster
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451626070


Summary
In The Kingmaker’s Daughter, #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory presents a novel of conspiracy and a fight to the death for love and power at the court of Edward IV of England.

The Kingmaker’s Daughter is the gripping story of the daughters of the man known as the “Kingmaker,” Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick: the most powerful magnate in fifteenth-century England. Without a son and heir, he uses his daughters Anne and Isabel as pawns in his political games, and they grow up to be influential players in their own right.

In this novel, her first sister story since The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory explores the lives of two fascinating young women.

At the court of Edward IV and his beautiful queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne grows from a delightful child to become ever more fearful and desperate when her father makes war on his former friends. Married at age fourteen, she is soon left widowed and fatherless, her mother in sanctuary and her sister married to the enemy.

Anne manages her own escape by marrying Richard, Duke of Gloucester, but her choice will set her on a collision course with the overwhelming power of the royal family and will cost the lives of those she loves most in the world, including her precious only son, Prince Edward. Ultimately, the kingmaker’s daughter will achieve her father’s greatest ambition. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1954
• Where—Nairobi, Kenya
• Raised—Bristol, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Sussex University; Ph.D., Edinburgh University
• Currently—lives in the North York Moors, Yorkshire, England


Philippa Gregory is a British historical novelist, writing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Early life and academic career
Philippa Gregory was in Nairobi, Kenya, the second daughter of Elaine (Wedd) and Arthur Percy Gregory, a radio operator and navigator for East African Airways. When she was two years old, her family moved to Bristol, England.

She was a "rebel" at Colston's Girls' School where she obtained a B grade in English and two E grades in History and Geography at A-level. She then went to journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year as an apprentice with the Portsmouth News before she managed to gain a place on an English literature degree course at the University of Sussex, where she switched to a history course.

She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.

Private life
Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing a PhD in 18th-century literature and living in a cottage on the Pennine Way with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter, Victoria. They divorced before the book was published.

Following the success of Wideacre and the publication of The Favoured Child, she moved south to near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the Wideacre trilogy was set. Here she married her second husband Paul Carter, with whom she has a son. She divorced for a second time and married Anthony Mason, whom she had first met during her time in Hartlepool.

Gregory now lives on a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm in the North York Moors national park, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening.

Writing
She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of the slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.

Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. She has also written contemporary fiction—Perfectly Correct; Mrs Hartley And The Growth Centre; The Little House; and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.

Some of her novels have won awards and have been adapted into television dramas. The most successful of her novels has been The Other Boleyn Girl, published in 2002 and adapted for BBC television in 2003 with Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May and Jared Harris. In the year of its publication, The Other Boleyn Girl also won the Romantic Novel of the Year and has subsequently spawned sequels—The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Other Queen. Miramax bought the film rights to The Other Boleyn Girl and produced a film of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and co-starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry Tudor, Juno Temple as Jane Parker, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn. It was filmed in England and generally released in 2008.

Gregory has also published a series of books about the Plantagenets, the ruling houses that preceded the Tudors, and the Wars of the Roses. Her first book The White Queen (2009), centres on the life of Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. The Red Queen (2010) is about Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. The Lady of the Rivers (2011) is the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, first married to John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry the Fifth. The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012) is the story of Anne Neville, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the wife of Richard III. The next book, The White Princess (2013), centres on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII.

Controversy
In her novel The Other Boleyn Girl, her portrayal of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn drew criticism. The novel depicts Anne as cold and ruthless, as well as heavily implying that the accusations that she committed adultery and incest with her brother were true, despite it being widely accepted that she was innocent of the charges. Novelist Robin Maxwell refused on principle to write a blurb for this book, describing its characterisation of Anne as "vicious, unsupportable." Historian David Starkey, appearing alongside Gregory in a documentary about Anne Boleyn, described her work as "good Mills and Boon" (a publisher of romance novels), adding that: "We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous." Susan Bordo criticized Gregory's claims to historical accuracy as "self-deceptive and self-promoting chutzpah", and notes that it is not so much the many inaccuracies in her work as "Gregory’s insistence on her meticulous adherence to history that most aggravates the scholars."

Media
Gregory is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, with short stories, features and reviews. She is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team. She won the 29 December 2008 edition of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC1, taking Elizabeth Woodville as her specialist subject.

Charity work
Gregory also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia. Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book A Respectable Trade.

Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.

In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in batik and pottery and is working with larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)

Book Reviews
The bonds of sisterhood infuse Gregory’s latest in the Cousin’s War series (after The Lady of the Rivers). The stakes are high as Anne and Isabel Neville, daughters of the earl of Warwick (“The Kingmaker”), vie for their father’s favor and a chance at the throne. The earl has long mentored the young King Edward and Edward’s brothers George and Richard in hopes of marrying his daughters into royalty. But when Edward weds the commoner Elizabeth Woodville, the Kingmaker arranges a secret marriage between Isabel and George, and launches an uprising that will result in the earl’s death, leaving Isabel entangled in a dangerous political web and Anne—having recently married—already a widow. However, Richard—a tough soldier who honors family obligations while his brothers sell out—soon comes to Anne’s rescue. In addition to Gregory handling a complicated history, she convincingly details women’s lives in the 1400s and the competitive love between sisters. By the book’s end, Anne and Richard have ascended the throne, but the War of the Roses has yet to be won, setting the stage for a sequel showdown.
Publishers Weekly


In the next entry (after The Lady of the Rivers) in Gregory's historical series about the War of the Roses...the Earl of Warwick, who put Edward of York on the throne after battling the Lancasters....uses his daughters as pawns in the fluid political situation [of the royal court].... Verdict: Gregory delivers another vivid and satisfying novel of court intrigue, revenge, and superstition. Gregory's many fans as well as readers who enjoy lush, evocative writing, vividly drawn characters, and fascinating history told from a woman's point of view will love her latest work. —Kristen Stewart, Pearland Lib., Brazoria Cty. Lib. Syst., TX
Library Journal


The latest of Gregory's Cousins' War series debunks—mostly—the disparaging myths surrounding Richard III and his marriage to Anne Neville. Anne and her sister Isabel are both used without hesitation as political bargaining chips by their father, Richard, Earl of Warwick. True to his sobriquet, "Kingmaker," Warwick engineered the downfall of the Lancastrian King Henry VI...and supplanted him with Edward IV.... The chief threat to the realm is not Richard but Queen Elizabeth: A reputed witch with a grudge against Warwick's daughters (Warwick killed her father and brother), she will not be happy until Isabel, Anne and their progeny (and if necessary her brothers-in-law) are dead. Although their fates are known, Gregory creates suspense by raising intriguing questions about whether her characters will transcend their historical reputations.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1.Anne, only eight years old when the novel begins, grows up over the course of the book’s twenty-year span. In what major ways does her voice change from the beginning of the novel to the end? At what point in the novel do you feel she makes a real transition from a young girl to a woman, and why?

2.Consider the major turning points in Anne and Isabel’s relationship. How does their relationship progress as they grow up, marry, become mothers, and vie for power? At what point are they closest, and at what point are they the most distant? How do their views of each other change?

3.If The Kingmaker’s Daughter was narrated by Isabel instead of Anne, in what major ways do you think the tone of the novel would change? How might the main characters be portrayed differently from Isabel’s point of view?

4.Anne’s feelings toward Elizabeth Woodville grow colder as the novel progresses. Consider the below quotations from the beginning of the book, and discuss: What might the Queen Anne presented in the novel’s final pages have to say about her earlier words?

1. She is breathtaking: the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. At once I understand why the king stopped his army at the first sight of her, and married her within weeks.
2. We don’t like the queen.
3. I cannot see the queen as my enemy, because I cannot rid myself of the sense that she is in the right and we are in the wrong.

5.“You can go very high and you can sink very low, but you can rarely turn the wheel at your own bidding." The tarot card the Wheel of Fortune is a theme that runs throughout the novel. Discuss the Wheel of Fortune and its implications for each of the main characters. Does fortune favor any character in particular? Do you feel that the characters are at the mercy of fortune, or do they make or choose their own fates?

6.Isabel is forever changed when she gives birth to a stillborn baby boy in a storm at sea. Anne notes that many people blame the tragedy on witchcraft, or an evil curse. Do you think Isabel agrees with their assessment? Who do you think Isabel, in her heart, blames for the death of her son: Her father? Herself? Anne? Who do you think is ultimately to blame, and why?

7.It is clear that the men in the novel play a large part in shaping the destiny of the women around them—but what major decisions do the women in the novel make for themselves? Which female character do you feel is the most in control of herself and her path? Consider that character’s status in the novel; do you think her power, or lack of it, at court contributes to the power she holds over her own life?

8.What role do the mothers in the novel play? Discuss how they are viewed and treated by their children, their daughters- and sons-in-law, and their husbands; do you think they are deserving of the treatment they receive? Also consider what it means to be a mother during the time period in which the novel takes place; what are a mother’s main responsibilities, and which mother in the novel do you think fulfills her responsibilities most successfully?

9.Anne learns how to be a queen from both Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville. What virtues do each of these queens teach her, whether directly or indirectly, and how does she employ those virtues when she finally becomes the Queen of England? Ultimately, which queen do you feel had the stronger impact on Anne’s regal style?

10.“I see Richard’s warmth toward her and I wonder again, what is courting and what is charade?” Consider the relationship that develops between Richard and young Elizabeth. How much of it do you think is truly a calculated political move by Richard to discredit her betrothal to Henry Tudor, as he protests, and how much of it is for his own pleasure? Further, how does his relationship with Elizabeth change his feelings for Anne? By the end of the novel, how has their love changed?

11.Anne and Isabel’s father, the powerful and ruthless Earl of Warwick, is known throughout England as a powerful Kingmaker—yet, he is not the only “kingmaker” in the novel. Which other characters might you consider to be a maker of kings, and why? Which kingmaker do you feel is the most successful?

12.Consider the different Kings and Queens who take the throne during the events of the novel. Who are feared by those around them? Who are liked? Who are respected? Of these three values—fear, love, and respect—which do you feel is the most important for a royal family to command from their subjects, and why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Kiss Quotient 
Helen Hoang, 2018
Berkley Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451490803


Summary
A heartwarming and refreshing debut novel that proves one thing: there's not enough data in the world to predict what will make your heart tick.

Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe.

She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan.

The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but crave all of the other things he's making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Helen Hoang is that shy person who never talks. Until she does. And the worst things fly out of her mouth. She read her first romance novel in eighth grade and has been addicted ever since.

In 2016, she was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in line with what was previously known as Asperger's Syndrome. Her journey inspired her 2018 novel, The Kiss Quotient. In 2019 she published The Bride Test.

She currently lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, two kids, and pet fish. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Hoang writes Stella with insight and empathy, especially when Stella's actions are inscrutable to the people around her. Stella's aware of that disconnect, too, and her frustration is a sharp sadness in an otherwise gentle, frothy book.
Jaime Greene - New York Times Book Review


[A]fter months of fanfare, and I'm happy to report [The Kiss Quotient] absolutely lives up to the buzz. It's a heartening, fun, and all-consuming story in which we fall in love with both an endearing on-the-spectrum econometrician and the sexy biracial male escort she hires to teach her everything about modern dating and sex.
Kamrun Nessa - NPR


Hoang’s witty debut proves that feelings are greater than numbers, no matter how you add things up.
People


With a deft hand, Hoang crafts an honest and thoughtful look at the challenges Stella’s neuroatypicality poses while never losing sight of who Stella is as an individual, especially as her relationship with Michael evolves into something far beyond the scientific.
Harper’s Bazaar


Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient is an absolute delight—charming, sexy, and centered on a protagonist you love rooting for.
Buzzfeed


(Starred review) Hoang knocks it out of the park with this stellar debut…. The diverse cast and exceptional writing take this romance to the next level, and readers who see themselves in Stella will be ecstatic.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) This title sits firmly in the erotic romance category, but the couple's slow build (and sizzling sexual chemistry) is certainly worth the wait. Verdict: A compulsively readable erotic romance that is equal parts sugar and spice. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


[The] novel features two uncommon protagonists: a woman with autism… and a biracial man. Inspired by personal experience, Hoang depicts Stella with empathy and honesty.… [A] refreshing take on the classic romance story — Aleksandra Walker
Booklist

Discussion Questions
 1. Prior to reading this book, how would you have imagined an autistic woman? How does Stella compare to this vision?

2. Stella was surprised when she heard her coworker Philip James had been asked out by their new intern. When it comes to heterosexual relationships, do you think men should be the initiators? What does it say about a woman if she asks out a man?

3. Does it surprise you to see an autistic person exploring a sexual relationship? If so, why?

4. With regards to autism, people are divided between using person-first language (i.e. “person with autism”) and identity-first language (i.e. “autistic person”). One of the main arguments for person-first language is that it separates a person from their mental disorders. Many autistic people, on the other hand, prefer identity-first language because they believe autism is an intrinsic part of who they are and have no wish for a “cure.” Which do you think is right? Do you think it can depend on each person’s individual circumstances and preferences? How did you feel when Stella tried to make herself fresh and fantastic? Why did you feel that way?

5. What do you think of a man with Michael’s Friday night profession? How does that compare to your impression of a woman with that profession? If gender makes a difference, why is that?

6. How does Michael’s daytime profession affect his attractiveness?

7. Throughout the book, Michael worries he’s inherited his father’s “badness,” that it was passed down in his blood. Do you think this is illogical? Are you able to empathize with him? If so, how?

8. Is love alone enough? Can people with different cultures, education levels, and wealth be together in the long run? How can they make it work?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Kitchen Daughter
Jael McHenry, 2011
Simon & Schuster
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451648508


Summary
After the unexpected death of her parents, painfully shy and sheltered 26-year-old Ginny Selvaggio seeks comfort in cooking from family recipes.

But the rich, peppery scent of her Nonna’s soup draws an unexpected visitor into the kitchen: the ghost of Nonna herself, dead for twenty years, who appears with a cryptic warning (“do no let her…”) before vanishing like steam from a cooling dish. A haunted kitchen isn’t Ginny’s only challenge. Her domineering sister, Amanda, (aka “Demanda”) insists on selling their parents’ house, the only home Ginny has ever known.

As she packs up her parents’ belongings, Ginny finds evidence of family secrets she isn’t sure how to unravel. She knows how to turn milk into cheese and cream into butter, but she doesn’t know why her mother hid a letter in the bedroom chimney, or the identity of the woman in her father’s photographs.

The more she learns, the more she realizes the keys to these riddles lie with the dead, and there’s only one way to get answers: cook from dead people’s recipes, raise their ghosts, and ask them. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Michigan and Iowa, US
• Education—M.F.A., American University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Jael McHenry is a talented and enthusiastic amateur cook who grew up in Michigan and Iowa before moving from city to city along the East Coast: Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and now New York, where she blogs about food and cooking at the Simmer blog.

She is a monthly pop culture columnist and Editor-in-Chief of Intrepid Media, online at intrepidmedia.com. Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. The Kitchen Daughter is her first novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
An Asperger's-afflicted woman finds the keys to life and her family history in the kitchen after her parents die in McHenry's inspired if uneven debut. Ginny Selvaggio has lived a sheltered life: unable to maintain eye contact, make friends, or finish college due to her undiagnosed condition, the 26-year-old lives in her parents' home, surfing the Internet and perfecting recipes. But after her parents die, Ginny and her sister, Amanda, disagree about what to do with the family home—Amanda wants to sell, Ginny doesn't. As they bicker about what to do with the house and the problems caused by Ginny's awkwardness, Ginny comforts herself by cooking and soon learns that the dishes she prepares can conjure spirits. The ghosts, including her grandmother, leave clues about possible family secrets, as do a box of photographs Ginny discovers tucked away. McHenry's idea of writing an Asperger's narrator works well for the most part, but the supernatural touches undermine her admirable efforts and add a silly element to what is otherwise an intelligent and moving account of an intriguing heroine's belated battle to find herself.
Publishers Weekly


This fresh, sharp story has as many layers as a good pate a choux.
Oprah Magazine


When Ginny's parents die unexpectedly, she is left on her own for the first time in her 26-year-old life. Unable to cope, Ginny turns her focus to cooking various recipes from the family collection. When the ghosts of the recipe's creators start to appear, seemingly called forth by the rich aromas of Ginny's cooking, does it mean she's going crazy, or is it just her private way of seeking advice and comfort? Ginny's been considered painfully shy and awkward since childhood, but it turns out she's gone undiagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Her well-meaning parents protected and did everything they could for her, but now that they are gone, her sister wants her finally to get the help she needs. The question is, does she really need help? Verdict: McHenry's debut novel is a sensitive and realistic portrait of someone living with Asperger's. Readers looking for good family-themed women's fiction will enjoy this novel, and the magical element of the cooking ghosts will appeal to fans of Sarah Addison Allen.—Rebecca Vnuk, Forest Park, IL.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. Ginny undergoes a great transformation through the course of the novel. Compare the early version of Ginny with the woman she is by the end. Do you feel she has changed? In what ways?

2. "Food has power. Nonna knew that. Ma did too. I know it now. And though it can’t save me, it might help me, in some way." (p. 45) Do you agree with Ginny that food has power? What did food and the kitchen do for Ginny? Is there something you turn to such as cooking, cleaning, or organizing as a means of coping with your emotions? Or is there a place you go to (as Ginny goes to the kitchen) that makes you feel safe?

3. Many times throughout the story, Amanda appears domineering and high-handed. But do you think Ginny is also quick to judge her sister? Did you relate more to one or the other? Why do you think Amanda feels she has to assume the role of the older sister?

4. Ginny observes, “They say you learn by doing, but you don’t have to. If you only learn from your own experience, you’re limited.” (p. 38) If Ginny had applied this advice outside of the kitchen, do you think she might have had an easier time relating to her sister? Do you agree with her observation, or do you think avoiding mistakes others have made is a different way of limiting yourself?

5. Discussing Elena’s death, David remarks that it might have been better if he had never met her. He says, “I wouldn’t have ever loved her, and that would’ve been my loss, but how bad is a loss you don’t know about? You can’t mourn all the people you could’ve loved but didn’t. You mourn the ones you loved and lost.” (p. 245) Do you agree with his statement? Why or why not?

6. Gert warns Ginny not to summon the spirit of Elena, but Ginny doesn’t listen. Would you have done the same? Why or why not? If you were in David’s shoes, would you want to see the spirit of someone you loved? If Elena had appeared the first time Ginny cooked her dish, do you feel things might have ended differently?

7. Do you think Ginny asked the right questions of the spirits she summoned? What would you have asked if you were in her place?

8. How did you feel about the way Amanda tricked Ginny into going to see Dr. Stewart? Do you think Ginny would have gone to see someone eventually, if Amanda hadn’t forced her? Is it a situation where the end justifies the means? Why do you think communication between the two sisters was so difficult?

9. Along with the kitchen, Ginny often turns to the Normal Book to calm herself. She tells David, "See? Normal means a lot of things to a lot of people. You’re normal. Don’t worry. It’s okay." (p. 269) Do you agree with her? Do you think normal is a term that has a single definition, or not? Do you think we try too hard to label people as one thing or another?

10. The theme of appearance, in opposition to reality, is central to the book. What are some of the obvious, and not so obvious, examples of this idea? What does Ginny come to understand about the way things appear versus the way they truly are?

11. Ginny’s father hid a very important secret from his family. Do you feel he was right to keep both his and Ginny’s condition a secret from Ginny and Amanda? Do you think by trying to protect her, he ultimately did her a greater disservice?

12. The title of the novel is The Kitchen Daughter. Discuss the significance in relation to the story. What does the kitchen teach Ginny? How does trust, both in and out of the kitchen, play a part in Ginny’s shifting perspectives?

Book Club Extras

1. Ginny has certain recipes that specifically conjure certain family members. Prepare and bring a dish special to you to the meeting—if the scent could bring a ghost back, who would it be? What’s the story behind the dish?

2. Check out author Jael McHenry’s Simmer blog at simmerblog.typepad.com. Pick a recipe or two to try after you’ve finished discussing the book!

3. Compare this novel to other novels that share themes of food and self-discovery such as Julie and Julia or Under the Tuscan Sun. How are they similar? How are they different? If The Kitchen Daughter was made into a movie, who would you cast?

4. Research Asperger’s Syndrome and autism and have each member present an interesting fact. Are you surprised by what you learn?

5. Do you have an item that is to you what the Normal Book is to Ginny? Have each member bring their “Normal Book” to the bookclub and discuss!
(Questions and "Extras" issued by publisher.)

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The Kitchen God's Wife 
Amy Tan, 1991
Penguin Group
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143038108


Summary
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years.

Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past — including the terible truth even Helen does not know.

And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.

The Kitchen God's Wife is "a beautiful book" (Los Angeles Times) from the author of bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement, and the new memoir, Where the Past Begins. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Also named—En-Mai Tan
• Birth—February 15, 1952
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., San Jose State University
• Currently—San Francisco, California


Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer, many of whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989) brought her fame and has remained one of her most popular works. It was adapted to film in 1993.

Early yeaars
Tan is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her father was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who traveled to the US to escape the Chinese Revolution. Although she was born in Oakland, California, her family moved a number of times throughout her childhood.

When she was fifteen, her father and older brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other. Tan subsequently moved with her mother and younger brother, John Jr., to Switzerland, where she finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa in Montreux.

It was during this period that Tan learned about her mother's previous marriage in China, where she had four children (a son who died in toddlerhood and three daughters). Her mother had left her husband and children behind in Shanghai — an incident that became the basis for Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club. In 1987, she and her mother traveled to China to meet her three half-sisters for the first time.

Tan enrolled at Linfield College in Oregon, a Baptist college of her mother's choosing. After she dropped out to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California, she and her mother stopped speaking for six months. Tan ended up marrying the young man in 1974 and subsequently earned both her B.A. and M.A. in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. She began her doctoral studies in linguistics at University of California-Santa Cruz and Berkeley, but abandoned them in 1976.

Career
While in school, Tan worked odd jobs — serving as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker. Eventually, she started writing freelance for businesses, working on projects for AT&T, IBM, Bank of America, and Pacific Bell, writing under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms.

In 1985, she turned to fiction, publishing her first story in 1986 in a small literary journal. It was later reprinted in Seventeen magazine and Grazia. On her return from the China trip with her mmother, where she had met her half-sisters, Tan learned her agent had signed a contract for a book of short stories, only three of which were written. That book eventually became The Joy Luck Club and launchd Tan's literary career.

Extras
In addition to her novels (see below), Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot encouraging children to write.

Tan is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band consisting of published writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Matt Groening, Dave Barry and Stephen King, among others. In 1994 she co-wrote, with the other band members, Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude.

In 1998, Tan contracted Lyme disease, which went undiagnosed for a few years. As a result, she suffers from epileptic seizures due to brain lesions. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment, and wrote about her life with Lyme disease in a 2013 op-ed piece in the New York Times.

Tan is still married to the guy she ran off with from Linfield College and married in 1974. He is Louis DeMattei, a lawyer, and the two live in San Francisco.

Books
1989 - The Joy Luck Club
1991 - The Kitchen God's Wife
1995 - The Hundred Secret Senses
2001 - The Bonesetter's Daughter
2003 - The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (Essays)
2005 - Saving Fish from Drowning
2013 - The Valley of Amazement
2017 - Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Remarkable…mesmerizing…compelling.… An entire world unfolds in Tolstoyan tide of event and detail.… Give yourself over to the world Ms. Tan creates for you.
New York Times Book Review


A beautiful book.… [W]hat fascinates in The Kitchen God's Wife is not only the insistent storytelling but the details of Chinese life and tradition; not only how people lived but how their sensibility shines through, most notably in their speech. Amy Tan has a command with language in which event and concrete perception jump into palpable metaphor, and images from the daily world act like spiritual agents.
Los Angeles Times

Tan's mesmerizing second novel, again a story that a Chinese emigre mother tells her daughter, received a PW boxed review, spent 18 weeks on PW 's hardcover bestseller list and was a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection in cloth.
Publishers Weekly


[TKGW] shows Tan's growth as a writer.… Tan is a gifted natural storyteller. The rhythms of Winnie's story are spellbinding and true, without the contrivance common in many modern novels. Highly recommended.  —Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Library Journal


[P]owerful…absorbing…. Some YAs may find the beginning a bit slow, but this beautifully written, heartrending, sometimes violent story with strong characterzation will captivate their interest to the very last page. —Nancy Bard, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Journal

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Kitchen God's Wife … then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe the relationship between Pearl and Winnie?

2. Follow-up to Question 1: Pearl thinks of "the enormous distance that separates" her from her mother, preventing them from sharing "the most important matters" of their lives. She asks, "How did this happen?" By the novel's end, can she answer that question? Can you answer it?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: What role does the secret box play in keeping mother and daughter at bay? How do the misunderstandings continue to pile up over the years?

4. Talk about the corrosive effects of secrets. Consider that keeping secrets is ironic: withoholding information is meant to protect either the secret-keeper or someone who might be hurt or angered by the knowledge — yet it frequently ends up harming both parties. What makes secrets so incidious? Think of the secrets you have keep ... or were once kept from you.

5. What is Helen's role in the novel? What is her relationship with Winnie and with Pearl? Consider that she is a link between past and present and between mother and daughter. Why does Helen decide to reveal Winnie's secrets? Is she right to so?

6. What is the symbolic significance of cleaning and sweeping in the novel, in particular when Helen tells Winnie that she is going to reveal Winnie's secrets?

7. What affect did the departure of her mother have on Winnie (then called Jiang Weili) in both the immediate aftermath and for decades later?

8. Follow-up to Question 7: Talk about the symbolic/psychological significance of Winnie's attempt to clean her mother's portrait, only to wipe off half of her mother's face. How does that act of erasure parallel Winnie's memory of her mother?

9. In what way does Winnie's history — as well as the idiomatic language and quirkiness of the characters — resemble the old folktale of the Kitchen God's Wife …and why might Amy Tan have decided to use it as the novel's title?

10. Straddling two cultures is an important motif in Tan's novel. How are both Winnie and Pearl affected by "foreign" influences — one in China and the other, years later, in America?

(Questions adapted, in part, from Sparknotes.com. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution to both Sparknotes and LitLovers. Thanks.)

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The Kitchen House
Kathleen Grissom, 2010
Simon & Schuster
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439153666


Summary
Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house.

Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.

Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.

The Kitchen House is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Annaheim, Saskatchewan, Canada
• Education—nursing school
• Currently—lives in rural Virginia


In her words
Born Kathleen Doepker, I was privileged as a child to be raised in Annaheim, Saskatchewan, a hamlet on the plains of Canada. Although we lived in a small, tightly knit Roman Catholic community, I was fortunate to have parents who were open to other religions and cultures. Since television was not a luxury our household could afford, books were the windows that expanded my world

Soon after Sister Colette, my first grade teacher, introduced me to Dick, Jane, and Sally, I began to read on my own. I was a fanciful child and became so influenced by books that while I was reading Five Little Peppers And How They Grew I ate only cold boiled potatoes (the truth is this lasted only for a day) as I suffered with them through their hardships. After reading Anne Of Green Gables I was convinced that I, too, was adopted, until my mother told me to stop the foolishness and to look in the mirror. I had her nose. She was right. I limped desperately during Red Shoes For Nancy until my sister, Judy, told me to cut it out, people would think that something was wrong with me. Wanting to more closely experience Helen Keller’s tribulations, at every opportunity I walked with closed eyes until I solidly whacked my head on a doorframe. Enid Blynton’s "Famous Five" series had me looking for adventure around every corner, and when in class Rudyard Kipling’s, Kim, was read aloud, I couldn’t wait to leave for far-off lands.

Throughout my high school years Simon Lizee, a poet of merit, was our principal. He taught us literature and it was he who encouraged me to write.

Upon graduating from high school, as I saw it then, I had four choices. I could marry (no), become a secretary (no), become a teacher (no) become a nurse (yes). After I graduated from nursing school, I left for Montreal and there worked on staff at the Royal Vic Hospital. Eventually I married and came down to the United States. Throughout, I read voraciously and I wrote, often sending my work back to Mr. Lizee in Saskatchewan, who took the time to continue to instruct me.

It wasn’t until after I gave birth to my daughter, Erin, that I finally worked up enough courage to submit a short story to Myrna Blyth, who, I believe at that time was an editor at Family Circle. She sent back a lovely rejection note, telling me that this story was not one that she could use, but could I send others. I took that note to mean that she did not like my writing, but was being kind, and I foolishly submitted nothing further. 

In time, I divorced and remarried, relocated to Manhattan, and there worked as an Ad Executive for a graphics company. I did not stop reading, nor writing, and over the next years took various classes in creative writing. After four years in the city, we decided to try life on a small farm in New Jersey.

When our collection of animals grew to include twenty-five Cashmere goats, two horses, three dogs, and two cats, we knew that it was time to relocate to a larger farm in rural Virginia. There we found twenty-seven acres and a large brick house, circa 1830, that once served as a stagecoach stop.

But with the move came a glitch. For the first year my husband’s transfer didn’t happen as planned, and although he joined me every weekend, I was left on the new farm to manage on my own. It was an exciting yet frightening time, and I began to journal the experience. I joined a writers' group, and the Piedmont Literary Society, and when I met Eleanor Dolan, a gifted poet, she generously agreed to mentor me in my writing.

In the following years, Charles and I established an herb farm, a tearoom, and a gift shop that we filled to the barn rafters with work from local artisans. As we restored our old plantation home, I began to research the history of our home and the land that surrounded it.

Then I discovered the notation "Negro Hill" on an old map. Unable to determine the story of its origin, local historians suggested that it most likely represented a tragedy. To this day I am uncertain why the notation captured me so, but fascinated, I gradually set aside everything else to pursue the research and writing of the story that is now The Kitchen House.

Presently, I am researching and writing about the true life story of Crow Mary, a Native woman who carried a Colt revolver on her studded belt and wasn’t afraid to use it! Can you imagine the fun I am having? (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Grissom’s unsentimental debut twists the conventions of the antebellum novel just enough to give readers an involving new perspective on what would otherwise be fairly stock material. Lavinia, an orphaned seven-year-old white indentured servant, arrives in 1791 to work in the kitchen house at Tall Oaks, a Tidewater, Va., tobacco plantation owned by Capt. James Pyke. Belle, the captain’s illegitimate half-white daughter who runs the kitchen house, shares narration duties, and the two distinctly different voices chronicle a troublesome 20 years: Lavinia becomes close to the slaves working the kitchen house, but she can’t fully fit in because of her race. At 17, she marries Marshall, the captain’s brutish son turned inept plantation master, and as Lavinia ingratiates herself into the family and the big house, racial tensions boil over into lynching, rape, arson, and murder. The plantation’s social order’s emphasis on violence, love, power, and corruption provides a trove of tension and grit, while the many nefarious doings will keep readers hooked to the twisted, yet hopeful, conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


Irish orphan finds a new family among slaves in Grissom's pulse-quickening debut. Lavinia is only six in 1791, when her parents die aboard ship and the captain, James Pyke, brings her to work as an indentured servant at Tall Oaks, his Virginia plantation. Pyke's illegitimate daughter Belle, chief cook (and alternate narrator with Lavinia), takes reluctant charge of the little white girl. Belle and the other house slaves, including Mama Mae and Papa George, their son Ben, grizzled Uncle Jacob and youngsters Beattie and Fanny, soon embrace Lavinia as their own. Otherwise, life at Tall Oaks is grim. Pyke's wife Martha sinks deeper into laudanum addiction during the captain's long absences. Brutal, drunken overseer Rankin starves and beats the field slaves. The Pykes' 11-year-old son Marshall "accidentally" causes his young sister Sally's death, and Ben is horribly mutilated by Rankin. When Martha, distraught over Sally, ignores her infant son Campbell, Lavinia bonds with the baby, as well as with Sukey, daughter of Campbell's black wet nurse Dory. Captain Pyke's trip to Philadelphia to find a husband for Belle proves disastrous; Dory and Campbell die of yellow fever, and Pyke contracts a chronic infection that will eventually kill him. Marshall is sent to boarding school, but returns from time to time to wreak havoc, which includes raping Belle, whom he doesn't know is his half-sister. After the captain dies, through a convoluted convergence of events, Lavinia marries Marshall and at 17 becomes the mistress of Tall Oaks. At first her savior, Marshall is soon Lavinia's jailer. Kindly neighboring farmer Will rescues several Tall Oaks slaves, among them Ben and Belle, who, unbeknownst to all, was emancipated by the captain years ago. As Rankin and Marshall outdo each other in infamy, the stage is set for a breathless but excruciatingly attenuated denouement. Melodramatic for sure, but the author manages to avoid stereotypes while maintaining a brisk pace.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story through two narrators? How are Lavinia's observations and judgments different from Belle's? Does this story belong to one more than the other? If you could choose another character to narrate the novel, who would it be?

2. One of the novel's themes is history repeating itself. Another theme is isolation. Select scenes from The Kitchen House that depict each theme and discuss. Are there scenes in which the two themes intersect?

3. "Mae knows that her eldest daughter consorts with my husband. . . Almost from the beginning, I suspected their secrets" (page 107). Why does the captain keep Belle's true identity a secret from his wife and children? Do you think the truth would have been a relief to his family or torn them further apart? At what point does keeping this secret turn tragic?

4. Discuss the significance of birds and bird nests in the novel. What or who do they symbolize? What other symbols support the novel?

5. "When I saw their hunger I was struck with a deep familiarity and turned away, my mind anxious to keep at bay memories it was not yet ready to recall" (page 24). Consider Lavinia's history. Do you think the captain saved her life by bringing her to America as an indentured servant? Or do you think it was a fate worse than the one she would have faced in Ireland? Discuss the difference between slavery and indentured servitude.

6. Marshall is a complicated character. At times, he is kind and protective; other times, he is a violent monster. What is the secret that Marshall is forced to keep? Is he to blame for what happened to Sally? Why do you think Marshall was loyal to Rankin, who was a conspirator with Mr. Waters?

7. "I grew convinced that if she saw me, she would become well again" (page 188). Why does Lavinia feel that her presence would help Miss Martha? Describe their relationship. If Lavinia is nurtured by Mama and Belle, why does she need Miss Martha's attention? Is the relationship one-sided, or does Miss Martha care for Lavinia in return?

8. "Fortunately, making myself amenable was not foreign to me, as I had lived this way for much of my life" (page 233). Do you think this attribute of Lavinia saves or endangers her life? Give examples for both.

9. Describe the relationship between Ben's wife, Lucy, and Belle. How does it evolve throughout the novel? Is it difficult for you to understand their friendship? Why or why not?

10. "I was as enslaved as all the others" (page 300). Do you think this statement by Lavinia is fair? Is her position equivalent to those of the slaves? What freedom does she have that the slaves do not? What burdens does her race put upon her?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Kitchens of the Great Midwest:  A Novel
J. Ryan Stradal, 2015
Penguin
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525429142


Summary
A young woman with a once-in-a-generation palate becomes the iconic chef behind the country’s most coveted dinner reservation, is the summer’s most hotly-anticipated debut.
 
When Lars Thorvald’s wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine—and a dashing sommelier—he’s left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He’s determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter—starting with pureed pork shoulder.

As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota. From Scandinavian lutefisk to hydroponic chocolate habaneros, each ingredient represents one part of Eva’s journey as she becomes the star chef behind a legendary and secretive pop-up supper club, culminating in an opulent and emotional feast that’s a testament to her spirit and resilience.
 
Each chapter in J. Ryan Stradal’s startlingly original debut tells the story of a single dish and character, at once capturing the zeitgeist of the Midwest, the rise of foodie culture, and delving into the ways food creates community and a sense of identity.

By turns quirky, hilarious, and vividly sensory, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is an unexpected mother-daughter story about the bittersweet nature of life—its missed opportunities and its joyful surprises. It marks the entry of a brilliant new talent. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1975
• Raised—Hastings, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


J. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest (2015) and national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota (2020).

His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Granta, Rumpus, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places. His debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the American Booksellers Association Indie's Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association award for fiction, and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for debut fiction.

Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[An] appealing first novel…[and] colorful, character-driven story…. When he isn't writing, Stradal works as a producer for a number of reality television series, including Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch, a profession he credits for honing "an instinct for the necessary." Here he uses this skill to construct a narrative that keeps readers turning the pages too fast to realize just how ingenious they are.
Dawn Drzal - New York Times Book Review


A tender coming-of-age story with a mix of finely rendered pathos and humor.
Washington Post


The author's gentle skewering of foodie snobs (from county fair doyennes to the vegan/gluten-free/soy-free police) is spot on, and the blend of humor, warmth, and longing that he uses to portray family relationships make the book insightful and endearing. Savor it page by page.
Oprah.com


Garrison Keillor’s got nothing on [J. Ryan Stradal]!
NPR, Here and Now


Stradal’s debut novel tackles foodie culture with all the finesse of a pastry chef…Reading Kitchens is all pleasure.
LA Magazine

[A] captivating debut novel...as surprising and satisfying as a great meal.
Tampa Bay Times


[Kitchens of the Great Midwest is] the first novel about the emergence and current state of foodie culture… Fundamentally, [it’s] about what happens when opposing personalities coexist: those who bake with real butter versus those who don’t, those who obsess over heirloom tomatoes alongside those who don’t even know what they are. It uses these categories as a way to look at one of the most confusing, liberating truths there is, which is that often the people we think we’re the least like are the ones we end up needing the most.
Book Forum


Stradal’s first novel is a refreshing and brisk read, with a sophisticated sense of such glories of foodie culture as open-pollinated heirloom corn, pan-seared Walleye and Caesar Cardini’s original Caesar Salad.
BBC.com


Stradal’s debut novel centers on Eva Thorvald, the daughter of a chef and an aspiring sommelier, who has food in her DNA.... Eva’s story unfolds more like a short story collection than a novel as each vignette, told from the point of view of a different character, reveals another facet of her personality....a compelling, deliciously flawed character.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Renowned chef Eva Thorvald commands $10,000 per couple for exclusive, destination dinner parties that leave guests swooning. But...[w]hat made her into the sensitive, beloved genius she is today?... Stradal is a confident first novelist, crafting characters who are singular, sometimes unlikable but always human. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal


The reader sees Eva through the eyes of her father, her boyfriend, a rival, a cousin, and more. Piecing together Eva's life...fleshes out her world and makes the ending feel especially rewarding. Delightful details,... [A] promising debut that features triumph, heartbreak, and even recipes.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. From an early age, Eva is obsessed with food and cooking. What influences shape her interest?

2. How would you characterize the Midwest as Stradal paints it in this book? What makes the setting unique and important for this particular story?

3. Stradal structures the novel as a collection of smaller vignettes from many different points of view. What are the advantages of this narrative style?

4. Throughout the novel, characters and stories intersect in unexpected ways. Which of these connections surprised you most? Which seem most important to Eva’s story?

5. Food takes center stage in this book. How does it bring people together and how does it keep them apart?

6. At times, Stradal seems to poke fun at foodie culture. Which scenes or exchanges between characters struck you as a strong commentary on this foodie evolution?

7. Eva Thorvald is the heroine of the novel, but in some ways she is still quite mysterious. What is it about her that draws people to her?

8. From Lars to Eva to Pat, Stradal’s characters have their own prejudices about food and the way it should be made. What are some of their ideas, and which ones do you agree or disagree with?

9. Cindy has always claimed she would never be a good mother. Why does she insist on this and do you believe her?

10. The recipes prepared in Eva’s feast serve as a walk through her memory. How do foods or recipes play a role in your own memory or life story?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini, 2003
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594631931  


Summary
I sat on a bench near a willow tree and watched a pair of kites soaring in the sky. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought, "There is a way to be good again.

Amir and Hassan are childhood friends in the alleys and orchards of Kabul in the sunny days before the invasion of the Soviet army and Afghanistan’s decent into fanaticism. Both motherless, they grow up as close as brothers, but their fates, they know, are to be different. Amir’s father is a wealthy merchant; Hassan’s father is his manservant. Amir belongs to the ruling caste of Pashtuns, Hassan to the despised Hazaras.

This fragile idyll is broken by the mounting ethnic, religious, and political tensions that begin to tear Afghanistan apart. An unspeakable assault on Hassan by a gang of local boys tears the friends apart; Amir has witnessed his friend’s torment, but is too afraid to intercede. Plunged into self-loathing, Amir conspires to have Hassan and his father turned out of the household.

When the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father flee to San Francisco, leaving Hassan and his father to a pitiless fate. Only years later will Amir have an opportunity to redeem himself by returning to Afghanistan to begin to repay the debt long owed to the man who should have been his brother.

Compelling, heartrending, and etched with details of a history never before told in fiction, The Kite Runner is a story of the ways in which we’re damned by our moral failures, and of the extravagant cost of redemption. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—March 04, 1965
• Where—Kabul, Afghanistan
• Education—B.S., Santa Clara University; M.D., University
  of California, San Diego School of Medicine
• Currently—lives in northern California

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and History at a large high school in Kabul. In 1970, the Foreign Ministry sent his family to Tehran, where his father worked for the Afghan embassy. They lived in Tehran until 1973, at which point they returned to Kabul.

In July of 1973, on the night Hosseini’s youngest brother was born, the Afghan king, Zahir Shah, was overthrown in a bloodless coup by the king’s cousin, Daoud Khan. At the time, Hosseini was in fourth grade and was already drawn to poetry and prose; he read a great deal of Persian poetry as well as Farsi translations of novels ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series.

In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry once again relocated the Hosseini family, this time to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States. In September of 1980, Hosseini’s family moved to San Jose, California. They lived on welfare and food stamps for a short while, as they had lost all of their property in Afghanistan. His father took multiple jobs and managed to get his family off welfare.

Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California-San Diego’s School of Medicine, where he earned a Medical Degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and began practicing Internal Medicine in 1996. His first love, however, has always been writing.

In 2003, Hosseini published The Kite Runner, which became a runaway bestseller and film in 2007. He followed up with his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2007, also a bestseller. His third novel, And the Mountians Echoed, was published in 2013.

Hosseini has vivid, and fond, memories of peaceful pre-Soviet era Afghanistan, as well as of his personal experiences with Afghan Hazaras. One Hazara in particular was a thirty-year-old man named Hossein Khan, who worked for the Hosseinis when they were living in Iran. When Hosseini was in the third grade, he taught Khan to read and write. Though his relationship with Hossein Khan was brief and rather formal, Hosseini always remembered the fondness that developed between them.

In 2006, Hosseini was named a goodwill envoy to the UNHCR, The United Nations Refugee Agency. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:

• During his years in the U.S., Hosseini has soaked in more than his share of American culture. He professes to be a fan of such U.S. institutions as the music of Bruce Springsteen and football. Still, he admits that he simply cannot appreciate baseball, saying, "I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S."

• When it comes to chickens, Hosseini is a chicken. "I'm terrified of chickens," the writer confesses. "Absolutely petrified. This intense and irrational fear is, I believe, caused by the memory of a black hen we owned in Kabul when I was a child. She used to peck her own chicks to death as soon as the eggs hatched."

• When Hosseini isn't writing or tending to one of his patients, he enjoys games of no-limits Texas hold 'em poker with his brother and friends.

• When asked what book most influenced him, here is what he had to say:

I remember reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an "Aha!" moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter. For some reason, I identified with the disenfranchised farm workers in that novel—I suppose in one sense, they reminded me of my own country's traumatized people. And indeed, when I went back to Afghanistan in 2003, I met people with tremendous pride and dignity under some very bleak conditions; I suspect I met a few Ma Joads and Tom Joads in Kabul.

Book Reviews 
This is a top book club read, many claiming it as one of their favorites. And for good reason.... The first third of the book shows us a world of enchantment. We see Afghanistan in the 1960's and early '70’s, a long-lost land of brilliant skies and lushly cultivated gardens. Once the storyline moves to the U.S., the book takes a more prosaic turn.
A LitLovers LitPick  (July '07)

In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence — forces that continue to threaten them even today.
Edward Hower - The New York Times

Intimate account of family and friendship, betrayal and salvation that requires no atlas or translation to engage and enlighten us.
The Washington Post

Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab. Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official.

The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut, from the portrait of the sensitive, insecure Amir to the multilayered development of his father, Baba, whose sacrifices and scandalous behavior are fully revealed only when Amir returns to Afghanistan and learns the true nature of his relationship to Hassan. Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium. (June 2) Forecast: It is rare that a book is at once so timely and of such high literary quality. Though Afghanistan is now on the media back burner, its fate is still of major interest and may become even more so as the U.S.'s nation-building efforts are scrutinized.
Publishers Weekly

This painful, moving, remarkable debut novel depicts the childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of a deeply flawed protagonist. Growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan, Amir feels unloved by his widowed father, who seems to care more for Hassan, the son of their Hazara servant, Ali. Amir and Hassan are close but not quite friends. On what should have been the best day of his young life, when he wins a kite-flying contest and finally some respect from his father, Amir betrays Hassan and becomes haunted by guilt. Amir comes to California when the Soviets invade his country but returns years later to rescue Hassan's orphaned son from the Taliban and redeem himself. Hosseini, a physician in the San Francisco area, has a wonderful gift for developing distinctive characters and creating a strong sense of place. While far from polished, his narration offers a profound sincerity that might have been missing with a professional reader. A sad and violent yet beautiful and unforgettable story; highly recommended for all collections, especially those with interests in the American immigrant experience. —Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr.
Library Journal

Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past. Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the "sociopath" Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef.

And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from aTaliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending. Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. The novel begins with Amir's memory of peering down an alley, looking for Hassan who is kite running for him. As Amir peers into the alley, he witnesses a tragedy. The novel ends with Amir kite running for Hassan's son, Sohrab, as he begins a new life with Amir in America. Why do you think the author chooses to frame the novel with these scenes? Refer to the following passage: "Afghans like to say: Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end...crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis [nomads]." How is this significant to the framing of the novel?

2. The strong underlying force of this novel is the relationship between Amir and Hassan. Discuss their friendship. Why is Amir afraid to be Hassan's true friend? Why does Amir constantly test Hassan's loyalty? Why does he resent Hassan? After the kite running tournament, why does Amir no longer want to be Hassan's friend?

3. Early in Amir and Hassan's friendship, they often visit a pomegranate tree where they spend hours reading and playing. "One summer day, I used one of Ali's kitchen knives to carve our names on it: 'Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul.' Those words made it formal: the tree was ours." In a letter to Amir later in the story, Hassan mentions that "the tree hasn't borne fruit in years." Discuss the significance of this tree.

4. We begin to understand early in the novel that Amir is constantly vying for Baba's attention and often feels like an outsider in his father's life, as seen in the following passage: "He'd close the door, leave me to wonder why it was always grown-ups time with him. I'd sit by the door, knees drawn to my chest. Sometimes I sat there for an hour, sometimes two, listening to their laughter, their chatter." Discuss Amir's relationship with Baba.

5. After Amir wins the kite running tournament, his relationship with Baba undergoes significant change. However, while they form a bond of friendship, Amir is still unhappy. What causes this unhappiness and how has Baba contributed to Amir's state of mind? Eventually, the relationship between the two returns to the way it was before the tournament, and Amir laments "we actually deceived ourselves into thinking that a toy made of tissue paper, glue, and bamboo could somehow close the chasm between us." Discuss the significance of this passage.

6. As Amir remembers an Afghan celebration in which a sheep must be sacrificed, he talks about seeing the sheep's eyes moments before its death. "I don't know why I watch this yearly ritual in our backyard; my nightmares persist long after the bloodstains on the grass have faded. But I always watch, I watch because of that look of acceptance in the animal's eyes. Absurdly, I imagine the animal understands. I imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher purpose." Why do you think Amir recalls this memory when he witnesses Hassan's tragedy in the alleyway? Amir recollects the memory again toward the end of the novel when he sees Sohrab in the home of the Taliban. Discuss the image in the context of the novel.

7. America acts as a place for Amir to bury his memories and a place for Baba to mourn his. In America, there are "homes that made Baba's house in Wazir Akbar Khan look like a servant's hut." What is ironic about this statement? What is the function of irony in this novel?

8. What is the significance of the irony in the first story that Amir writes? After hearing Amir's story, Hassan asks, "Why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn't he have just smelled an onion?" How is his reaction to the story a metaphor for Amir's life? How does this story epitomize the difference in character between Hassan and Amir?

9. Why is Baba disappointed by Amir's decision to become a writer? During their argument about his career path, Amir thinks to himself: "I would stand my ground, I decided. I didn't want to sacrifice for Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself." What has Amir sacrificed for Baba? How has Amir "damned himself"?

10. Compare and contrast the relationships of Soraya and Amir and their fathers. How have their upbringings contributed to these relationships?

11. Discuss how the ever-changing politics of Afghanistan affect each of the characters in the novel.

12. On Amir's trip back to Afghanistan, he stays at the home of his driver, Farid. Upon leaving he remarks: "Earlier that morning, when I was certain no one was looking, I did something I had done twenty-six years earlier: I planted a fistful of crumpled money under the mattress." Why is this moment so important in Amir's journey?

13. Throughout the story, Baba worries because Amir never stands up for himself. When does this change?

14. Amir's confrontation with Assef in Wazir Akar Khan marks an important turning point in the novel. Why does the author have Amir, Assef, and Sohrab all come together in this way? What is this the significance of the scar that Amir develops as a result of the confrontation? Why is it important in Amir's journey toward forgiveness and acceptance?

15. While in the hospital in Peshawar, Amir has a dream in which he sees his father wrestling a bear: "They role over a patch of grass, man and beast...they fall to the ground with a loud thud and Baba is sitting on the bear's chest, his fingers digging in its snout. He looks up at me, and I see. He's me. I am wrestling the bear." Why is this dream so important at this point in the story? What does this dream finally help Amir realize?

16. Amir and Hassan have a favorite story. Does the story have the same meaning for both men? Why does Hassan name his son after one of the characters in the story?

17. Baba and Amir know that they are very different people. Often it disappoints both of them that Amir is not the son that Baba has hoped for. When Amir finds out that Baba has lied to him about Hassan, he realizes that "as it turned out, Baba and I were more alike than I'd never known." How does this make Amir feel about his father? How is this both a negative and positive realization?

18. When Amir and Baba move to the States their relationship changes, and Amir begins to view his father as a more complex man. Discuss the changes in their relationship. Do you see the changes in Baba as tragic or positive?

19. Discuss the difference between Baba and Ali and between Amir and Hassan. Are Baba's and Amir's betrayals and similarities in their relationships of their servants (if you consider Baba's act a betrayal) similar or different? Do you think that such betrayals are inevitable in the master/servant relationship, or do you feel that they are due to flaws in Baba's and Amir's characters, or are they the outcome of circumstances and characters?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Knit the Season (Friday Night Knitting Club #3)
Kate Jacobs
Penguin Group USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425236765

In Brief
Knit the Season is a loving, moving, laugh-out-loud celebration of special times with friends and family.

The story begins a year after the end of Knit Two, with Dakota Walker's trip to spend the Christmas holidays with her Gran in Scotland—accompanied by her father, her grandparents, and her mother's best friend, Catherine. Together, they share a trove of happy memories about Christmases past with Dakota's mom, Georgia Walker—from Georgia's childhood to her blissful time as a doting new mom. From Thanksgiving through Hanukkah and Christmas to New Year's, Knit the Season is a novel about the richness of family bonds and the joys of friendship. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Born—N/A
• Raised—near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—B.A., Carleton University (Ottowa); M.A., New
   York University
• Currently—lives near Los Angeles, California, USA

Kate Jacobs is the New York Times bestselling author of Comfort Food, Knit Two, and The Friday Night Knitting Club, which has over 1 million copies in print.

Kate grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia, in the scenic and delightfully named town of Hope (pop. 6,184). It’s an area filled with friends and family and Kate loves to visit. Back then, of course, it was tremendously boring, as only home can be to a teenager. As a result, Kate begged her parents to send her to boarding school in Victoria, BC. From there she traded in her navy blazer to earn a Bachelor’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. Next, in a fit of optimism/courage/naivete—take your pick—she followed it up with a move to bustling New York City (pop. 8,143,197).

The plan? Breaking into magazine publishing. First she received a Master’s degree at NYU and worked at a handful of unpaid internships, then got a spot as an assistant to the Books & Fiction Editor at Redbook magazine. It was here that Kate answered multiple phones, read a ton of slush (getting to know some wonderful writers-to-be), and began to experience the impact of sharing women’s stories. Around this time, Kate settled into an apartment complex that housed about as many people as her entire hometown in Canada: It seemed that she wasn’t just a small-town girl anymore.

Professionally, Kate made it a priority to explore content that resonated with women: She was an editor at Working Woman and Family Life and was later a freelance writer and editor at the website for Lifetime Television. Personally, as a newcomer to New York, she learned the power of building a surrogate family and stitching together friendship connections that will endure. Exploring the richness of women’s relationships is a key focus of her novels.

After a decade of Manhattan living, Kate moved to sunny Southern California with her husband. (And discovered that she likes suburban living just fine, thank you very much.)

She relished the idea of her very own home office but found herself setting up the laptop on the dining table, just as she’d done in New York, and writing late at night in her pajamas.

A firm believer in the creative power of free time, Kate loves to recharge by tackling knitting projects that she can finish quickly (all the better to feel that sense of accomplishment). She’s also a fan of taking naps, especially when she’s on deadline, snuggling under a favorite green-and-yellow afghan knitted by her grandmother decades ago. Her beloved liver-and-white English Springer Spaniel, Baxter, often snoozes alongside. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
In this holiday special, friends brought together by a Manhattan knitting shop continue to gather for their weekly knitting sessions, this time focusing on Dakota, the young daughter of the shop's original owner. Dakota is running the shop and attending culinary school, intending to revamp the shop as a knitting café. Feeling overwhelmed, she decides to visit her grandmother in Scotland to gain some perspective and learns a lot about her late mother in the process.
Library Journal

Bland and predictable third installment of the Friday Night Knitting Club series (Knit Two, 2008, etc.). Georgia, founder and proprietor of Walker & Daughter yarn shop, died in the first novel, leaving daughter Dakota to be raised by formerly absentee father James and the knitting club stalwarts. Now 21-year-old Dakota is in culinary school and dreams of turning Walker & Daughter (run by Peri, when she's not designing handbags) into a knitting cafe. While making plans for this transition, Dakota wants everything to stay the same, but everything is changing. Octogenarian Anita is finally marrying her boyfriend, despite her wormy son Nathan's attempts to break them up. Darwin and Lucie are even more involved with their children. Catherine is going to marry Marco and maybe move to Italy. Peri has been asked by a couture label to move to Paris and run their knit division. And James has finally met a woman he's serious about. This is all too much for Dakota, who deeply feels Georgia's absence and associates change with loss. Maybe Christmas abroad will cheer her up. She relinquishes an important internship to travel with James, Georgia's parents and brother to visit her great-grandmother on a farm in Scotland. There Dakota learns important life lessons: Family is important, time is precious, unpleasant memories can be good and other homilies more appropriate to YA lit. Jacobs' prose is pleasant, and she smoothly juggles all the story lines, but there's just not much going on here. Numerous mentions of woolen goods neither improve the plotting nor make the characters more endearing. A quick stroll through familiar emotional territory rather than the epic voyage of self-discovery the author seems to have intended.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Knit the Season:

1. What picture of Georgia Walker emerges from the reveries and flashbacks of the characters in this latest installment of the Friday Night Knitting Club series? What does Dakota come to learn about her mother? If you've read The FNKC and Knit Two, what more do you learn about Georgia? What new information is filled in for you?

2. In what ways has Georgia influenced her friends' lives and and how does her spirit continue to knit them together?

3. Relationships (family, friends, and lovers) are at the heart of this novel, as they are in FNKC and Knit Two. If you've read the first two, how have those relationships developed? What new (or old) stresses affect the characters? Catherine, for instance, and Anita and her son? If this is the first book you've read in the series...then talk about the relationships and their stress points as they exist now.

4. Darwin and Lucie, two of the series' more interesting characters, are somewhat relegated to the sidelines in this third book. Would you like to have seen more of them? What is fraying the edges of their friendship?

5. Talk about Dakota's career goals and the competing demands she feels? How does Peri's decision to make a move complicate things for Dakota?

6. Knit the Season, in many ways, is a coming-of-age story for Dakota. What anxieties must she overcome? What does she come to understand by the book's conclusion? What does she learn about herself and the choices she faces regarding career and family?

7. What do you believe is the central message found in Knit the Season?

8. How does this third book stack up against the others in the series? How important is it to have read the first two? If this is your first foray into Jacobs' Friday Night Knitting Club series, does this book make you want to read the previous two?

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

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Knit Two (Friday Night Knitting Club #2)
Kate Jacobs, 2008
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425229927

In Brief
The sequel to the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller, The Friday Night Knitting Club.

At the Manhattan knitting store founded by Georgia Walker, the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club—including Georgia's daughter Dakota, now a college freshman—continue to rely on each other for help, even as they struggle with new challenges: for Catherine, finding love after divorce; for Darwin, the hope for a family; for Lucie, being both a single mom and a caregiver for her elderly mother; and for seventy something Anita, a proposal of marriage from her sweetheart, Marty, that provokes the objections of her grown children.

As the club's projects—an afghan, baby booties, a wedding coat—are pieced together, so is their understanding of the patterns underlying the stresses and joys of being a mother, wife, daughter, and friend. Because it isn't the difficulty of the garment that makes you a great knitter: it's the care and attention you bring to the craft-as well as how you adapt to surprises. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio

• Born—N/A
• Raised—near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—B.A., Carleton University (Ottowa); M.A., New
   York University
• Currently—lives near Los Angeles, California, USA

Kate Jacobs is the New York Times bestselling author of Comfort Food, Knit Two, and The Friday Night Knitting Club, which has over 1 million copies in print.

Kate grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia, in the scenic and delightfully named town of Hope (pop. 6,184). It’s an area filled with friends and family and Kate loves to visit. Back then, of course, it was tremendously boring, as only home can be to a teenager. As a result, Kate begged her parents to send her to boarding school in Victoria, BC. From there she traded in her navy blazer to earn a Bachelor’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. Next, in a fit of optimism/courage/naivete—take your pick—she followed it up with a move to bustling New York City (pop. 8,143,197).

The plan? Breaking into magazine publishing. First she received a Master’s degree at NYU and worked at a handful of unpaid internships, then got a spot as an assistant to the Books & Fiction Editor at Redbook magazine. It was here that Kate answered multiple phones, read a ton of slush (getting to know some wonderful writers-to-be), and began to experience the impact of sharing women’s stories. Around this time, Kate settled into an apartment complex that housed about as many people as her entire hometown in Canada: It seemed that she wasn’t just a small-town girl anymore.

Professionally, Kate made it a priority to explore content that resonated with women: She was an editor at Working Woman and Family Life and was later a freelance writer and editor at the website for Lifetime Television. Personally, as a newcomer to New York, she learned the power of building a surrogate family and stitching together friendship connections that will endure. Exploring the richness of women’s relationships is a key focus of her novels.

After a decade of Manhattan living, Kate moved to sunny Southern California with her husband. (And discovered that she likes suburban living just fine, thank you very much.)

She relished the idea of her very own home office but found herself setting up the laptop on the dining table, just as she’d done in New York, and writing late at night in her pajamas.

A firm believer in the creative power of free time, Kate loves to recharge by tackling knitting projects that she can finish quickly (all the better to feel that sense of accomplishment). She’s also a fan of taking naps, especially when she’s on deadline, snuggling under a favorite green-and-yellow afghan knitted by her grandmother decades ago. Her beloved liver-and-white English Springer Spaniel, Baxter, often snoozes alongside. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Continuing the warm-and-fuzzy saga begun in her popular The Friday Night Knitting Club, Jacobs stitches together another winning tale of the New York City knitting circle, more a sisterhood than a hobby group (the irascible Darwin Chiu can't even really knit). In this installment—and it does feel like an installment—readers catch up five years after the unexpected, book-capping death of club leader (and knitting shop owner) Georgia Walker. Georgia's 18-year-old Dakota is at NYU, discovering her first love, while her father James and Georgia's best friend Catherine are still coming to terms. The rest of the cast runs a wide gamut of ages and experience, but is easier to follow this time around, as Jacobs is more comfortable giving them more space and backstory. Pregnant, whip-smart professor Darwin and her husband, Dan, are welcoming twins; video director and single mom Lucie is coping with a hyperactive 5-year-old and a failing parent; Georgia's old mentor, the wise Anita, begins questioning her own motives; and everyone's stories cross paths in satisfying, organic ways. A trip to Italy provides some forward motion, and pays off in a charming denouementthat nevertheless pushes a familiar it's-the-journey-not-the-destination message; still, this sequel is as comforting, enveloping and warm as a well-crafted afghan.
Publishers Weekly

Jacobs's sequel delves into the lives of characters first introduced in the popular The Friday Night Knitting Club. Five years after Georgia has died of ovarian cancer, her daughter Dakota and various members of Georgia's knitting club still occasionally meet at her knit shop. On the surface, the story is about what has happened to these women who formed deep bonds of friendship while learning to knit. Yet it really investigates grief and how each of the characters learns to come to terms with the loss of Georgia. Readers might find some of the events a tad un-realistic and the individual plotlines for each character a touch predictable as they develop and intertwine. Still, the novel's humor and pathos manage to make the women and especially Dakota very real and enjoyable to know. Knitting is not completely forgotten, as readers are left with a sense of how the craft has calmed these souls as they journey through their individual stories of acceptance and personal growth. Fans of Debbie Macomber's "Blossom Street" series (The Shop on Blossom Street, A Good Yarn, Back on Blossom Street, and Twenty Wishes) will find much to enjoy here.
Margaret Hanes - Library Journal

Jacobs’ follow-up to the popular novel The Friday Night Knitting Club (2007) opens five years after Georgia Walker’s tragic death from ovarian cancer. Her daughter, Dakota, is now a freshman at NYU, and Georgia’s former employee, Peri, is running Georgia’s yarn shop.... Reading Jacobs’ second knitting novel is as warming and cheering as visiting old friends. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. "The desire to keep everything as it had once been—to freeze time—remained very strong among the group of friends." In what ways did the ladies of the Friday Night Knitting Club manage to keep things as they were? Have the changes made after Georgia's death been a positive or a negative for the members of the club?

2. "Having children had never been a question when Anita was young; it was simply the expected order of things. Marriage meant babies and babies meant marriage. Still, it was nice that things were different [now]. Could be different. Anita believed in having options. On the other hand, sometimes it was hard to know which end was up these days." Which part of being a single mother does Anita feel is "nice" and which makes things seem like "it was hard to know which end was up these days?" Is that a statement about the stigma of unwed motherhood? Or about the hectic pace of single mothers' lives? Or both?

3. In her haze of exhaustion and stress, Lucie agonizes: "When was it going to make sense? When was she going to wake up and not feel tired? When was it going to feel all right?" Is she typical of women today? Is Lucie's experience as a single mom more stressful than Anita's, where "the expected order of things" made all the decisions for her?

4. Catherine always feels out of step with the other members of the club, and at one point reflects: "She wasn’t like the others. It was the one reason why she never really fit in. They were all quite…typical. And she, well, she was different." Is she really? Why? What, if anything, makes the other members of the group "typical" compared to Catherine?

5. Lucie is forced to defend herself when her brother accuses her of being selfish and not seeing how much help her mother needs: "There's no rule that a daughter has to do more than a son, and there's sure as hell no rule that single people should give up their lives so married people get a break." Is this true? Do you think Lucie's brothers are being unreasonable? Is Lucie being punished for her life choices or simply being forced to acknowledge that she's being pulled in different directions? How would you have reacted to that conversation?

6. Did Lucie make the right decision in not telling Will that he was Ginger's father? Darwin advised her to "think long and hard before you throw a nuclear bomb into his happy family life." Would you have thrown the bomb? Should Lucie have?

7. How would this story have been different if Anita had not been reunited with Sarah in Rome?

8. When she reaches out to K.C., Catherine tells her: "I’m still trying to define myself. I embraced my independence but somehow everything is just all about me. I am totally self-focused." Do you think Catherine has "defined herself" by the end of the book?

9. Discussion of grief and loss runs through both Knit Two and The Friday Night Knitting Club. As Anita says "We grieve loss. It's not always about death." What are Anita, Dakota, Catherine, Darwin, Lucie and K.C. grieving for? Are the men of the book—James, Marty and Nathan—also experiencing grief or loss?

10. After the flood at Walker and Daughter, Dakota and Peri decide to rebuild. Is this the right decision? How would their lives have changed—perhaps for the better—if they had not rebuilt the store Georgia founded?

11. In her acknowledgments, author Kate Jacobs says "Like the members of the club, I am fortunate to be surrounded by smart, independent women who come through for me whenever I need a helping hand." What's the "club" that fills that role in your life?
(Questions from author's website.)

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The Knockout Queen 
Rufi Thorpe, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525656784


Summary
A dazzling and darkly comic novel of love, violence, and friendship in the California suburbs.

Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore⁠—beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer father and a swimming pool in her backyard.

Michael⁠⁠—with a ponytail down his back and a septum piercing⁠—lives with his aunt in the cramped stucco cottage next door.

When Bunny catches Michael smoking in her yard, he discovers that her life is not as perfect as it seems. At six foot three, Bunny towers over their classmates. Even as she dreams of standing out and competing in the Olympics, she is desperate to fit in, to seem normal, and to get a boyfriend, all while hiding her father's escalating alcoholism.

Michael has secrets of his own. At home and at school Michael pretends to be straight, but at night he tries to understand himself by meeting men online for anonymous encounters that both thrill and scare him.

When Michael falls in love for the first time, a vicious strain of gossip circulates and a terrible, brutal act becomes the defining feature of both his and Bunny's futures⁠⁠—and of their friendship.

With storytelling as intoxicating as it is intelligent, Rufi Thorpe has created a tragic and unflinching portrait of identity, a fascinating examination of our struggles to exist in our bodies, and an excruciatingly beautiful story of two humans aching for connection. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—?
• Raised—Corona del Mar, California, USA
• Education—B.A., New School; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives outside of Los Angeles, California


Rufi Thorpe is an American writer, the author of three novels: The Knockout Queen (2020),  Dear Fang, with Love (2016), and The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014), which was long listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.

Thorpe received her B.A. from the New School in New York City and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in 2009. Raised in Corona del Mar, the setting of her first novel, she married and returned to California where she currently lives outisde of Los Angeles with her husband and sons. (Adaoted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[F]ull of verve and… vibrant… . Thorpe inverts the more common tale of an impoverished sufferer who is momentarily saved or mourned by a richer, more stable friend. The result is revelatory.… Thorpe writes convincingly about the intricacies of teenage hierarchy and the endless varieties of torture that the young can inflict on one other.
Los Angeles Times


[An] electric portrait of adolescence.
Time


Through Michael’s clear-eyed gaze, Rufi Thorpe unfurls a coming-of-age tale that feels both fresh and familiar: a shrewd exploration of all the ways people find to pass on the hurt and anger they’ve been given and a tender, furious ode to the connections that somehow still endure, despite everything.
Entertainment Weekly


Thorpe’s fierce third novel observes the development of and challenges to an intense friendship between two outcasts at a Southern California high school…. Deeply realized and complex. The result cannily dissects the power and limits of adolescent friendship.
Publishers Weekly


Thorpe's coming-of-age tale set against a backdrop filled with hate and violence will captivate readers with its brutal honesty and unbreakable bonds of friendship. Recommended for fans of Emma Straub and Jami Attenberg. —Laura Jones, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis
Library Journal


Thorpe… writes with savage poignancy as she explores identity, adolescent friendship, and the insatiable longing for intimacy. Her novel is devastatingly honest, her characters vulnerable, and her readers will be spellbound.
Booklist


(Starred review) [A]n arrestingly original, darkly comic meditation on moral ambiguity.… There are no victims here and no heroes… , and the result is a novel both nauseatingly brutal and radically kind. Brilliantly off-kilter and vibrating with life.
Kirkus Reviews


(Starred review) With charismatic characters and a surprising and devastating storyline, The Knockout Queen is a moody and mordantly funny contemplation of the rigors of growing up that will leave readers reeling.
BookPage

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE KNOCKOUT QUEEN … then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe Bunny Lampert? What about her background and status defies the truth of her underlying life?
 
2. The same goes for Michael: how would you describe him? Do you feel differently about Michael by the end of the book? Has he grown, learned, changed?

3. (Follow-up to Question 2) How disturbing, if at all, do you find Michael's sex life? What do you think about his love for Anthony, more than three times Michael's age.

4. Ray Lampert becomes a third partner in Bunny and Michael's friendship. How would you describe him? Talk about the way he affects their relationship.

5. Even at 6-feet 3-inches and 200 pounds, Michael describes Bunny as outwardly happy and sure of herself. But he goes on to say that people find this "displeasing in a young woman." Why? What does he mean? Why would people take issue with Bunny? What does it say about gender roles and societal expectations?

6. Michael writes that "being true to yourself, even if it makes everyone hate you, even if it makes people want to kill you, is the most radical form of liberty." Talk about Michael's observation and what it means—not just for the characters in this novel, but for all of us as well.

7. One of the major themes of The Knockout Queen is shame. How does shame play out in the novel? What is it's toxic affect.

8. Many…if not most…if not all of us feel a sense of shame. Why is personal shame so prevalent? Talk about shame in your own life, if you carry that emotion. A frequent and rather glib piece of advice, which is meant kindly, is that we must learn to love ourselves. How does one do that? What are the steps one can take?

9. In what ways are Bunny and Michael flawed, sometimes, to the point of losing readers' sympathy? Do you care about one of the two more than the other? Finally, do you see Bunny as a tragic character, flaws and all?

10. The author writes powerfully about the world of teenagers, their hierarchies, and the cruelty they inflict on one another, particularly those who don't fit in. Does Trope overdo it? Or do you think her portrayal accurate? Why are adolescents sometimes so mean?

11. How does Thorpe depict the artifice of California life? Consider Anne Marie and her lollipops, perhaps the long rows of pristinely trimmed hedges in front of North Shore's homes, or say, Ray Lampert's billboards.

12. How might the story have differed had it been from Bunny's point of view?

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

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Knowledge Waits 
James Goddard, 2015
Zitebooks.com
164 pp.
ASIN: B00USKXA54


Summary
This novel takes a satirical look at education in the UK. It is set in a nameless private school for boys and is largely narrated by the disaffected staff of the school, most of whom are heartily sick of their jobs and their lives. It does, however, also touch upon the sadder and more poignant aspects of their lives.
 
The climax of the novel is a staff meeting to launch yet another new initiative; this meeting is to be chaired by the hapless Malcolm Davies who quite rightly fears the reactions of such staff members as the foul-mouthed Gerry McMullen and the irascible and pedantic Mike Redfern. 

Author Bio
• Birth—15 January 1955
• Where—Franham, Surrey, UK
• Education—M.A., Oxford Brookes
• Currently—Swindon, Wiltshire


Having taught in the UK for over thirty years James Goddard has written an educational comedy which draws heavily on much of what he perceives as wrong with education in England today. This is his first novel but it will not be his last.
 
James currently teaches part-time in a college of further education but also has much experience as a senior examiner at Advanced level; he has also run and spoken at several national training courses for teachers and students.
 
Despite the creeping years he still plays football at least twice a week and regularly runs half marathons. (From the author.)
 
For more on the author, visit Zitebooks.
Follow "Jim" on Facebook (where you'll see him stroking a tiger).

Book Reviews
The focus is firmly on the staff and they leap from the page not merely as human beings but as a deftly drawn collection of personality defects and neuroses.... Although it can be classified as a school story, this is no Goodbye Mr Chips. There is no saccharine sentimentality and barely a moment of teachers being the inspiring leaders the recruitment ads promise they'll become.... This book is well worth the price of admission.
Barrie Hudson - Swindon Advertiser

Discussion Questions
1. Who do you think are the real villains of this novel?

2. Did you sympathise at all with any of the characters?
 
3. Does Malcolm Davies deserve any sympathy?
 
4. In what ways does the novel achieve its comic effects?
 
5. Is the author too cynical/bitter in what he says about education?
 
6. Should there perhaps be greater focus on the school's pupils?
 
7. Are you bothered that there are so few female vopices in the novel?
 
8. Is the shift from multi-first person narrators to a third person narrator at the end a successful one?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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The Known World
Edward P. Jones, 2003
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061159176


Summary
Winner, 2004 Pulitzer Prize

The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline.

But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—October 5, 1950
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—B.A., College of the Holy Cross; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Awards—PEN-Hemingway Foundation Award, 1992; Pulitzer Prize, 2004
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.

Edward P. Jones, the New York Times bestselling author, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for The Known World; he also received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004. His first collection of short stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was short-listed for the National Book Award. He has taught fiction writing at a range of universities, including Princeton. He lives in Washington, D.C.

More
Edward P. Jones grew up in Washington, D.C., where his mother worked as a dishwasher and hotel maid to support Jones and his brother and sister. Though she couldn't read or write herself, Jones's mother encouraged her son to study, and eventually a Jesuit priest who knew Jones suggested he apply for a scholarship at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. There, Jones discovered the odd fact that in the antebellum South, there had been free black people who owned black slaves.

"It was a shock that there were black people who would take part in a system like that," he later told a Boston Globe interviewer. "Why didn't they know better?" That question stayed with Jones for more than 20 years and would eventually inspire his first novel, The Known World.

After graduating from Holy Cross with a degree in English, Jones moved back to Washington, D.C., and began writing short stories, aiming to create a portrait of his city in the mode of James Joyce's Dubliners. He attended writing seminars, then earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Virginia, but he felt that neither writing nor teaching was a reliable enough source of income. He took a day job as a business writer for an Arlington, Virgina, nonprofit, and held it for almost 19 years — during which he published his first short-story collection, Lost in the City, which was nominated for a National Book Award. He also began planning his first novel, composing and revising chapters entirely in his head. Jones had just taken a five-week vacation to start writing the book when he found out he was being laid off, so he lived on severance pay and unemployment during the few months it took him to finish his first draft.

The Known World was published in 2003, 11 years after Lost in the City. "With hard-won wisdom and hugely effective understatement, Mr. Jones explores the unsettling, contradiction-prone world of a Virginia slaveholder who happens to be black," wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times Book Review. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post Book World called the book "the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years."

Though some reviewers have praised the author's impressive research, Jones insists he made almost everything up. During the 10 years he spent thinking about his novel, he accumulated shelves full of books about slavery, but ultimately he read none of them, choosing instead to write the book that had already taken shape in his mind. The depth and detail of Jones's fictional Manchester County has been compared with William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County; Martha Woodroof of National Public Radio also noted similarities to Dickens, in that Jones spins "a densely populated, sprawling story built around a morally bankrupt institution."

Despite all the attention he's earned, Jones seems unwilling to assume the role of celebrity writer. "If you write a story today, and you get up tomorrow and start another story, all the expertise that you put into the first story doesn't transfer over automatically to the second story," he explained in an online chat on Washingtonpost.com . "You're always starting at the bottom of the mountain. So you're always becoming a writer. You're never really arriving."

Extras
• Unable to find a full-time job after college, Jones was on the verge of borrowing $15 from his sister for a bus ticket to Brooklyn, where she lived, when he got word that Essence magazine was publishing his first story for $400. A job at the American Association for the Advancement of Science enabled him to stay in Washington, D.C., where he continued writing the stories for his collection Lost in the City.

• Jones has never owned a car, commuting instead by public transportation. "I don't want to own something that you can't take into your apartment at night," he explained in an interview with the Washington Post.

• When asked in a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview what book had influenced his career as writer, here is his response:

I don't believe that there is any particular book that influenced any "career" I might have. There are books that have meant something to me, like Who Killed Stella Pomeroy. This was the first real book that I ever read. I had long been reading funny (comic) books and books of fairy and folk tales; the latter had all been illustrated with at least one drawing or painting. But Stella was the first without any pictures, only the words of the author. I read it when I was 13, and what struck me was that after years and years of reading funny books and folk tales with pictures, I was reading a book and was able to create a world — this one was Britain in the 1920s and/or 1930s — based simply on the author writing that it was so — the landscape, the people and their words, the mystery situation.  (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews 
At the end of Edward P. Jones's stunning new antebellum novel, an artist recreates the book's plantation setting as "a map of life made with every kind of life man has ever thought to represent himself." One of the characters says, "It is what God sees when He looks down." and family, all in a most unusual setting. With hard-won wisdom and hugely effective understatement, Mr. Jones explores the unsettling, contradiction-prone world of a Virginia slaveholder who happens to be black.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

The bizarre world of American slavery has been the subject of much fiction, some of it uncommonly good, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to William Faulkner to Toni Morrison. This extraordinary novel — the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years — takes as its subject one of the most peculiar anomalies of that endlessly provocative and troubling subject: In the antebellum South, where whites systematically enslaved blacks, there were free blacks who themselves owned black slaves.
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post

On a small plantation in Manchester County, Virginia, in the eighteen-fifties, a freed black man named Henry Townsend lives with his wife and the thirty-three slaves he has bought, some with the help of his former owner. This kaleidoscopic first novel depicts daily life for Henry and his friends (“members of a free Negro class that, while not having the power of some whites, had been brought up to believe that they were rulers waiting in the wings”); for the plantation’s slaves, one of whom believes that he, too, will be transformed into an owner after Henry’s death; and for the county’s white inhabitants, who coexist uneasily with their slaves and their emancipated black neighbors. Jones has written a book of tremendous moral intricacy: no relationship here is left unaltered by the bonds of ownership, and liberty eludes most of Manchester County’s residents, not just its slaves.
The New Yorker

In a crabbed, powerful follow-up to his National Book Award-nominated short story collection (Lost in the City), Jones explores an oft-neglected chapter of American history, the world of blacks who owned blacks in the antebellum South. His fictional examination of this unusual phenomenon starts with the dying 31-year-old Henry Townsend, a former slave-now master of 33 slaves of his own and more than 50 acres of land in Manchester County, Va.—worried about the fate of his holdings upon his early death. As a slave in his youth, Henry makes himself indispensable to his master, William Robbins. Even after Henry's parents purchase the family's freedom, Henry retains his allegiance to Robbins, who patronizes him when he sets up shop as a shoemaker and helps him buy his first slaves and his plantation. Jones's thorough knowledge of the legal and social intricacies of slaveholding allows him to paint a complex, often startling picture of life in the region. His richest characterizations-of Robbins and Henry-are particularly revealing. Though he is a cruel master to his slaves, Robbins is desperately in love with a black woman and feels as much fondness for Henry as for his own children; Henry, meanwhile, reads Milton, but beats his slaves as readily as Robbins does. Henry's wife, Caldonia, is not as disciplined as her husband, and when he dies, his worst fears are realized: the plantation falls into chaos. Jones's prose can be rather static and his phrasings ponderous, but his narrative achieves crushing momentum through sheer accumulation of detail, unusual historical insight and generous character writing. Agent, Eric Simonoff. (Sept.) Forecast: This is a new tack for Jones, whose collection Lost in the City was set in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s and '70s. Amistad is sending the novel off with a bang-a 10-city author tour, a 20-city national radio campaign-and it should attract considerable review attention
Publishers Weekly

This ambitious first novel by National Book Award nominee Jones (Lost in the City: Stories) looks at slavery from an unusual angle. Henry Townsend is a former slave who was purchased and freed by his own father. Through hard work, he has acquired 50 acres of farmland in Virginia. Given the slave-based agricultural economy, Townsend believes that the logical (and legal) way to work the land is with slaves, and, eventually, he owns more than 30. Although he is less brutal than his neighbors, most of his slaves dream of escaping north. When they try, Townsend must pay the white patrollers to return them or be seen as irresponsible. But as rumors of bloody slave rebellions spread through the South, unscrupulous bounty hunters begin to round up free blacks, Native Americans, and white orphans along with the escapees. By focusing on an African American slaveholder, Jones forcefully demonstrates how institutionalized slavery jeopardized all levels of civilized society so that no one was really free. A fascinating look at a painful theme, this book is an ideal choice for book clubs. Highly recommended. —Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles, CA
Library Journal

Slave-owning by free blacks in antebellum America is the astonishingly rich subject of this impressively researched, challenging novel debut by Faulkner Award-winning Jones (stories: Lost in the City, 1992). Set mostly in the period 1830-50, many nested and interrelated stories revolve around the death of black Virginia farmer and slaveholder Henry Townsend, himself a former slave who had purchased his own freedom, as was—and did—his father Augustus, a gifted woodcarver. Jones's flexible narrative moves from the travail of Augustus and his wife Mildred through Henry's conflicted life as both servant and master, to survey as well the lives of Armstrong slaves, from their early years on to many decades after Henry's passing. The first hundred pages are daunting, as the reader struggles to sort out initially quickly glimpsed characters and absorb Jones's handling of historical background information (which virtually never feels obtrusive or oppressive, thanks to his eloquent prose and palpable high seriousness). The story steadily gathers overpowering momentum, as we learn more about such vibrant figures as Henry's introspective spouse Caldonia, his wily overseer Moses, the long-suffering mutilated slave Elias and his crippled wife Celeste, the brutal "patrollers" charged with hunting down runaways (one of whom, duplicitous Harvey Travis, is a villain for the ages), and county sheriff John Skiffington, a decent man who nevertheless cannot shrug off "responsibilities" with which his culture has provisioned, and burdened, him. The particulars and consequences of the "right" of humans to own other humans are dramatized with unprecedented ingenuity and intensity, in a harrowing tale that scarcely ever raises its voice-even during a prolonged climax when two searches produce bitter results and presage the vanishing of a "known world" unable to isolate itself from the shaping power of time and change. This will mean a great deal to a great many people. It should be a major prize contender, and it won't be forgotten.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. The Known World seamlessly weaves the lives of the freed and the enslaved, whites, blacks, and Indians, and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.

2. Why is the character of Moses significant to the novel? How would you characterize his relationship with Henry and Caldonia Townsend? What about with his wife and child?

3. What is the significance of the title, The Known World? What "known world" is charted in John Skiffington's map in the jail? What world is charted in "The Creation" described by Calvin in his letter to his sister Caldonia? What role does the land and its borders play in this book?

4. Who is William Robbins and how does he impact the lives of blacks on neighboring plantations? Did you find his relationships with Henry, Augustus, and Mildred Townsend, and Philomena, Dora, and Louis compelling?

5. What is the significance of the Augustus Townsend character? In what ways is Augustus a victim of attitudes about slavery in the South? In what ways is he a victor? How did you respond to his captivity and its outcome?

6. How would you characterize Jebediah Dickinson? What explains his sudden appearance at the Elston farm? When Fern says of Jebediah: "With him there...I feel as if I belong to him, that I am his property," what does she mean?

7. Were relationships between parents and children notably different during the era of slavery than in the present day? Consider Caldonia, Calvin, and Maude; William Robbins, Patience, and Dora; and Augustus, Mildred, and Henry in your evaluations.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Kommandant's Girl 
Pam Jenoff, 2007
Mira Books
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778323426


Summary
Nineteen-year-old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days Emma's husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city's decrepit, moldering Jewish ghetto.

But, then, in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Krakow to live with Jacob's Catholic cousin, Krysia, Emma takes on a new identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile.

Emma's already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who hires her to work as his assistant. Urged by the resistance to use her position to access details of the Nazi occupation, Emma must compromise her safety—and her marriage vows—in order to help Jacob's cause.

As the atrocities of war intensify, so does Emma's relationship with the Kommandant, building to a climax that will risk not only her double life, but also the lives of those she loves. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., George Washington University; M.A., Cambridge University; J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey


Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. She attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge University in England.

Upon receiving her master's in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor.

Following her work at the Pentagon, Pam moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.

Pam left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for several years as a labor and employment attorney both at a firm and in-house in Philadelphia and now teaches law school at Rutgers.

Pam is the author of The Kommandant's Girl, which was an international bestseller and nominated for a Quill award, as well as The Diplomat's Wife, The Ambassador's Daughter, Almost Home, A Hidden Affair and The Things We Cherished.

She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.)  With luminous simplicity, Jenoff's breathtaking debut chronicles the life of a young Jewish bride during the Nazi occupation of Krakow, Poland, in WWII.... [A] handsome Nazi is so impressed by [Emma's] German language skills (and her beauty) that he asks her to become his personal assistant.... [T]he chemistry between them presents challenges that test her loyalties to Jacob and her heart. This is historical romance at its finest.
Publishers Weekly


During a dinner party, Emma/Anna is introduced to Nazi Kommadant Richwalder.... [and] becomes intimate with the enemy to gather information. In her moving first novel, Jenoff offers an insightful portrait of people forced into an untenable situation and succeeds in humanizing the unfathomable as well as the heroic. —Patty Engleman
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. Did you find Emma's choices believable? Which ones? Why?

2. Do you think the ends that Emma's was seeking justified the means of her choices and actions?

3. How did Emma's character change/evolve throughout the story?

4. What was the most difficult challenge faced by Emma in the ook?

5. What role does Krysia play in the story? Lukasz?

6. Do you agree with Emma's decision to keep the paternity of her unborn child a secret from her husband? Why or why not?

7. Emma kept secrets from both of the men in her life—the Kommandant and Jacob. Do you think real intimacy is possible in such  circumstances?

8. What is it that you think Emma really wanted?

9. How do you think Marta felt about Emma?

10. Where do you think Emma winds up one month after the end of the book? One year? Five years?

11. Who is your favorite character in the book and why?

12. What is the central theme of the book and how did you feel about it?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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La Cucina
Lily Prior, 2001
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060953690


Summary
Since childhood, Rosa Fiore—daughter of a sultry Sicilian matriarch and her hapless husband—found solace in her family's kitchen. La Cucina, the heart of the family's lush estate, was a place where generations of Fiore women prepared sumptuous feasts and where the drama of extended family life was played out around the age-old table.

When Rosa was a teenager, her own cooking became the stuff of legend in this small community that takes pride in the bounty of its landscape and the eccentricity of its inhabitants. Rosa's infatuation with culinary arts was rivaled only by her passion for a young man, Bartolomeo, who, unfortunately, belonged to another. After their love affair ended in tragedy, Rosa retreated first into her kitchen and then into solitude, as a librarian in Palermo. There she stayed for decades, growing corpulent on her succulent dishes, resigned to a loveless life.

Then, one day, she meets the mysterious chef, known only is I'Inglese, whose research on the heritage of Sicilian cuisine leads him to Rosa's library, and into her heart. They share one sublime summer of discovery, during which I'lnglese awakens the power of Rosa's sensuality, and together they reach new heights of culinary passion. When I'Inglese suddenly vanishes, Rosa returns home to the farm to grieve for the loss of her second love. In the comfort of familiar surroundings, among her, growing family, she discovers the truth about her loved ones and finds her life transformed once more by the magic of her cherished Cucina.

Exuberant and touching, La Cucina is a magical evocation of lifes mysterious seasons and the treasures found in each one. It celebrates family, food, passion, and the eternal rapture of romance. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Lily Prior is the author of La Cucina, Ardor, and Nectar and she divides her time between London and Italy. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Succulent saga...with a sensuous tone, a folkloric narrative style and a most original set of characters, La Cucina could well satisfy the hungriest of appetites.
People


Sumptuously appointed, celebratory and sensuous, this debut novel is a mouth-watering blend of commedia dell'arte and Greek tragedy. Prior cooks up a cinematic yarn full of characters so rich you'll fear they're fattening, but readers will be sure to splurge on this saucy tale chock full of sex, recipes and murder. Born in 1915, Rosa Fiore grows up on the family farm in the Sicilian village of Castiglione with six older brothers and her younger Siamese twin siblings, Guera and Pace (war and peace). Her childhood is punctuated by her parents' frequent lovemaking and the "disappearances" orchestrated by the local Mafiosi. Rosa spends most of her time in what is really the core of the family, la cucina, the kitchen, which is the outlet for all Rosa's passions except one, her lover, Bartollomeo. After he is murdered when she is 18, she flees to the big city of Palermo. There she becomes a librarian, abstaining from the pleasures of cooking and love for 25 years. One day, a mysterious Englishman named Randolph Hunt comes into the library, claiming to be researching the regional cuisine of Rosa's youth. She calls him simply l'Inglese. Reawakening her dormant spirit, l'Inglese initiates Rosa into the world of sexual and gastronomic abandon. But along with love comes risk of pain. When l'Inglese mysteriously "disappears," can the Mafia be involved? Ironic humor, fantastical subplot twists, attention to touching detail in setting and tone and a delightful gift for characterization make this sexy black comedy an award-winning recipe for pleasure. The combination of sex and food will undoubtedly invite comparisons with Like Water for Chocolate and 8U Weeks. Add a dash of Goodfellas, and there's something for everyone.
Publishers Weekly


Rosa Fiore, a middle-aged, overweight Italian librarian in Palermo, spends a quarter of a century furiously, exquisitely cooking away memories of the tragic murder of her first and only lover, Bartollomeo, whose throat was slit by his own father. Rosa's self-imposed exile, far from home, is filled with recipes so delicious she drives her neighbors wild. Rosa's dormant passion explodes in the arms of a mysterious stranger, l'Inglese, who enters her library to do research and immediately professes uncontrollable desire for Rosa's body and for her cooking knowledge. Thus begins a summer of gourmet meals and noisy sex. When l'Inglese disappears, Rosa's tortured daydreams of past frolicking lead to a house fire and her near death. Her slow recuperation begins when she is rescued by her long-estranged family, who bring her home. Reminiscent of Laura Esquivel and John Irving, mixed with a healthy dollop of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Prior's debut is clever, untamed, funny, and at times shocking. For larger fiction collections. —Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal


Librarian readers will probably tire of the cliched description of Rosa: an overweight, undersexed spinster, chided by her staff and revolting to her patrons. However, the food she cooks is fabulous. —Bonnie Smothers
Booklist


[A] lonely, middle-aged librarian...experiences a sexual reawakening intimately linked to her sensual kitchen skills.... One day a mysterious stranger with thinning hair, a small mustache, and bad teeth arrives at the library to do culinary research... The two embark on an affair of torrid lovemaking.... But Rosa's new happiness ends abruptly when [her lover] vanishes.... Happily, though, a rosy—if inexplicable—ending lies in store for plucky Rosa. Less a banquet of the senses than a junk-food gorge.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. During the twenty-five years she is in Palermo, Rosa receives only two letters from her mother. How would you describe their relationship, both before Rosa journeys to Palermo and after she returns home?

2. After Bartolomeo's death, Rosa retreats into la cucina for solace and then leaves for Palermo. Why do you think she chose to leave Castiglione and her family? Why does she not return for such a long period of time?

3. Rosa and l'Inglese are instantly attracted to one another. What is it that l'Inglese sees in Rosa that she does not see in herself?

4. Compare Rosa's love for and relationship with Bartolomeo to that of l'Inglese. How does each relationship alter Rosa's life and what does she learn from each one?

5. Rosa knows next to nothing about l'Inglese's background or his personal life. What exactly is their relationship based on? In one instance she replies to l'Inglese, "'Yes, I trust you,' I said, although I was not entirely convinced that I did" (pg. 165). What do you think this means?

6. Shortly before l'Inglese disappears, Rosa says, "For the first time in my life I was completely happy. I had the feeling that if I were to die tomorrow I would be satisfied with my life; I had known what it was to experience life and to experience love" (pg. 167). Does she still believe this after l'Inglese disappears?

7. "I mourned for l'Inglese, for the time we had had together, and for myself: for my true self, which I had become with him, quite suddenly, in a blaze of color like a butterfly, and which I would never be again (pg. 186)." Do you think Rosa is selling herself short by believing that she could only be her "true self" when she was with l'Inglese? When she returns home, Rosa learns some surprising things about her loved ones, but what does she learn about herself?

8. How does the Sicilian setting contribute to the story? Can you imagine the novel having been set in another location, even another part of Italy?

9. Discuss la cucina and how it plays out in the story. What is your favorite moment in the story that you think best reflects the essence of la cucina?

10. Discuss the ending of the novel. Does l'Inglese indeed return, or is Rosa having a daydream? What, in your opinion, is the novel really about?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Labor Day
Joyce Maynard, 2009
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061843419


Summary
With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Henry—lonely, friendless, not too good at sports—spends most of his time watching television, reading, and daydreaming about the soft skin and budding bodies of his female classmates. For company Henry has his long-divorced mother, Adele—a onetime dancer whose summer project was to teach him how to foxtrot; his hamster, Joe; and awkward Saturday-night outings to Friendly's with his estranged father and new stepfamily. As much as he tries, Henry knows that even with his jokes and his "Husband for a Day" coupon, he still can't make his emotionally fragile mother happy. Adele has a secret that makes it hard for her to leave their house, and seems to possess an irreparably broken heart.

But all that changes on the Thursday before Labor Day, when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank approaches Henry and asks for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life's most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect piecrust, the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting others—especially those we love—above ourselves. And the knowledge that real love is worth waiting for.

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's Atonement and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy—and the man he later becomes—looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single long, hot, life-altering weekend. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 5, 1953
• Raised—Durham, New Hampshire, USA
• Education—Yale University (no degree)
• Currently—lives in Mill Valley, California

Daphne Joyce Maynard is an American author known for writing with candor about her life, as well as for her works of fiction and hundreds of essays and newspaper columns, often about parenting and family. The 1998 publication of her memoir, At Home in the World, made her the object of intense criticism among some members of the literary world for having revealed the story of the relationship she had with author J. D. Salinger when he was 53 and she was 18.

Early life
Maynard grew up in Durham, New Hampshire, daughter of the Canadian painter Max Maynard and writer Fredelle Maynard. Her mother was Jewish (daughter of Russian-born immigrants) and her father was Christian. She attended the Oyster River School District and Phillips Exeter Academy. She won early recognition for her writing from The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, winning student writing prizes in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, and 1971.

While in her teens, she wrote regularly for Seventeen magazine. She entered Yale University in 1971 and sent a collection of her writings to the editors of the New York Times Magazine. They asked her to write an article for them, which was published as "An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life" in the magazine's April 23, 1972 issue.

J.D. Salinger
The Times Magazine  article prompted a letter from J. D. Salinger, then 53 years old, who complimented her writing and warned her of the dangers of publicity.They exchanged 25 letters, and Maynard dropped out of Yale the summer after her freshman year to live with Salinger in Cornish, New Hampshire.

Maynard spent ten months living in Salinger's Cornish home, during which time she completed work on her first book, Looking Back, a memoir that was published in 1973, in which she adhered to Salinger's request that she not mention his role in her life. Her relationship with Salinger ended abruptly just prior to the book's publication. According to Maynard's memoir, he cut off the relationship suddenly while on a family vacation with her and with his two children; she was devastated and begged him to take her back.

For many years, Maynard chose not to discuss her affair with Salinger in any of her writings, but she broke her silence in At Home In the World, a 1999 memoir. The same year, Maynard put up for auction the letters Salinger had written to her. In the ensuing controversy over her decision, Maynard claimed that she was forced to auction the letters for financial reasons, including the need to pay her children's college fees; she would have preferred to donate them to Beinecke Library. Software developer Peter Norton bought the letters for $156,500 and announced his intention to return them to Salinger.

In September, 2013, Maynard wrote a New York Times opinion piece following the release of a documentary film on Salinger. She criticizes the film's hands-off attitude toward Salinger's numerous relationships with teenage girls.

Now comes the word...[that] Salinger was also carrying on relationships with young women 15, and in my case, 35 years younger than he. "Salinger" touches—though politely—on the story of just five of these young women (most under 20 when he sought them out), but the pattern was wider: letters I’ve received...revealed to me that there were more than a dozen.

Mid-career
Maynard never returned to college. In 1973, she used the proceeds from her first book to purchase a house on a large piece of land in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, where she lived alone for over two years. From 1973 until 1975, she contributed commentaries to a series called “Spectrum,” broadcast on CBS radio and television, frequently debating the conservative voices of Phyllis Schlafly and James J. Kilpatrick.

In 1975, Maynard joined the staff of the New York Times, where she worked as a general assignment reporter also contributing feature stories. She left the Times in 1977 when she married Steve Bethel and returned to New Hampshire, where the couple had three children.

From 1984 to 1990, Maynard wrote the weekly syndicated column “Domestic Affairs,” in which she wrote candidly about marriage, parenthood and family life. She also served as a book reviewer and a columnist for Mademoiselle and Harrowsmith magazines. She published her first novel, Baby Love, and two children’s books illustrated by her son Bethel. In 1986 she co-led the opposition to the construction of the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste dump in her home state of New Hampshire, a campaign she described in a New York Times cover story in April ,1986.

When Maynard’s own marriage ended in 1989—an event she explored in print—many newspapers dropped the “Domestic Affairs” column, though it was reinstated in a number of markets in response to reader protest. After her divorce, Maynard and her children moved to the city of Keene, New Hampshire.

Mature works
Maynard gained widespread commercial acceptance in 1992 with the publication of her novel To Die For which drew several elements from the real-life Pamela Smart murder case. It was adapted into a 1995 film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck and directed by Gus Van Sant. In the late 1990s, Maynard became one of the first authors to communicate daily with her readership by making use of the Internet and an online discussion forum, The Domestic Affairs Message Board (DAMB).

Maynard has subsequently published in several genres. Both The Usual Rules (2003) and The Cloud Chamber (2005) are young adult titles. Internal Combustion (2006), was her first in the true crime genre. Although nonfiction, it had thematic similarities to the fictionalized crime in To Die For, dealing with the case of Michigan resident Nancy Seaman, convicted of killing her husband in 2004. Labor Day, an adult literary novel, was published in 2009 and is presently being adapted for a film to be directed by Jason Reitman. Maynard's most recent novels are The Good Daughters, published in 2010, and After Her, in 2013.

Maynard and her sister Rona (also a writer and the retired editor of Chatelaine) collaborated in 2007 on an examination of their sisterhood. Rona Maynard's memoir My Mother's Daughter was published in the fall of 2007.
Recent years

Maynard has lived in Mill Valley, California, since 1996. She was an adjunct professor at the University of Southern Maine and now runs writing workshops at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.

In February 2010, Maynard adopted two Ethiopian girls, Almaz (10) and Birtukan, but in the spring of 2011, she announced to friends and family that she no longer felt she could care for the girls. She sent the girls to live with a family in Wyoming and, citing their privacy, removed all references to them from her website. On July 6, 2013, she married a lawyer, Jim Barringer. (Adapted fom Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/15/13.)

 Book Reviews
The book is narrated two decades [after the events in the book] by Henry, unsuccessfully pretending he’s 13 again, which makes him a two-time loser. If Labor Day is supposed to be a feel-good story, why did I feel so bad while reading it? Because it’s less likely and more saccharine than the escaped con’s lovingly described peach pie.
Tom LeClair - New York Times

It is a testament to Maynard's skill that she makes this ominous setup into a convincing and poignant coming-of-age tale. As she has revealed in her memoirs and five previous novels, Maynard has had her own share of unsuitable attachments. She understands the deep yearnings that drive people to impulsive decisions and sometimes reckless behavior.
Carolyn Preston - Washington Post

Labor Day is suffused with tenderness, dreaminess and love.... First and foremost a page-turner.... [it] puts back together the world that it detroys.... You definitely need to get a box of tissues.
Newsday

The novel is an extended meditation on the nature of love, grief and loneliness.... Maynard has created an ensemble of characters that will sneak into your heart, and warm it while it breaks.
St. Petersburg Times

But apart from being a successful thriller, this book is a fascinating portrait of what causes a family to founder, and how much it can cost to put it back on the right path.
National Public Radio (NPR.org)

The story is moving and fast-moving, affirming Maynard's reputation as a master storyteller and showing her to be a passionate humanist with a gifted ear and heart.... Maynard illuminates the human experience.
People

In her sixth novel, Maynard (To Die For) tells the story of a long weekend and its repercussions through the eyes of a then 13-year-old boy, Henry, who lives with his divorced mother, Adele. On Labor Day weekend, Henry manages to coax his mother, who rarely goes out, into a trip to PriceMart, where they run into Frank, who intimidates them into giving him a ride. Frank, it turns out, is an escaped convict looking for a place to hide. He holds Adele and Henry hostage in their home, an experience that changes all of them forever, whether it's Frank tying Adele to the kitchen chair with her silk scarves and lovingly feeding her or teaching the awkward, unathletic Henry how to throw a baseball. The bizarre situation encompasses Henry's budding adolescence, the awakening of his sexuality and his fear of being abandoned by his mother and Frank, who are falling in love and planning to run away together. Maynard's prose is beautiful and her characters winningly complicated, with no neat tie-ups in the end. A sometimes painful tale, but captivating and surprisingly moving.
Publishers Weekly

The summer Henry turned 13, he had many questions about sex, "but it was clear my mother was not the person to discuss this with." A dancer, pretty like Ginger from Gilligan's Island, Adele had withdrawn from the world after her divorce from Henry's dad. Mother and son lead a lonely life together, subsisting on stacks of Cap'n Andy frozen fish dinners while Adele half-heartedly tries to sell vitamins by phone. Adele rarely leaves home, except when pressed to get Henry some last-minute back-to-school clothes. It's at Pricemart that the wounded pair meets Frank, a man with much to teach them about true love, baseball, and the best way to make a ripe peach pie. Verdict: There's a catch, of course—Frank's just escaped from prison, and there's a full-fledged manhunt underway. This coming-of-age story is gentle, unexpected, and simply told.
Christine Perkins - Library Journal

A pubescent boy learns about sorrow and regret during one blisteringly hot holiday weekend. Shifts of tone mark the progression of Maynard's latest (Internal Combustion, 2006, etc.). In an unlikely opening, 13-year-old Henry and his mother Adele agree to take home Frank, the bleeding man they meet while shopping at Pricemart. Frank turns out to be an escaped convict—a murderer in fact—yet he is unthreatening and domesticated, soon rustling up the best chili they have ever eaten. Adele, a romantic, has been left slightly unhinged and agoraphobic by her divorce; she and Frank quickly develop a sensual attraction observed by Henry, who is grappling with teenage angst over his sexuality. As the adults become lovers and Frank starts to teach Henry how to catch a baseball, the novel becomes a semi-comic exploration of what constitutes the ideal American family. But then Frank describes the circumstances of his conviction, an implausible chronicle of deception and coincidence that considerably darkens the novel's mood. Henry fears his mother is about to abandon him and shares his anxiety with his anorexic new girlfriend Eleanor, but he is wrong: The plan is for all three to flee to Canada, a plan that Eleanor will stymie. Narrated by the adult Henry 18 years later, the story shows how a boy digests, then uses the lessons learned that hot weekend. Redemption is eventually offered to all parties. Maynard expertly tugs heartstrings in a tidy tale.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. As reported by Henry, his mother Adele displays a number of behaviors that could be interpreted as crazy. How do you explain her son's steadiness and competence? Do you consider Adele to be a bad mother?

2. When you were first introduced to the character of Frank (p. 5), what was your feeling about him? As you learned more about Frank over the course of the story, did your impression of him change? If so, what details and actions can you identify that caused you to alter your opinion of him?

3. Were you surprised that Adele was willing to bring Frank to her home? Why do you think she did?

4. Henry's father and his wife, Marjorie, live a much more steady and "normal" life than the one Henry shares with Adele. Why do you think Henry remains so loyal to his mother, concealing aspects of her behavior that would no doubt alarm his father?

5. Were you surprised to discover than Frank is a good baker? What does his baking ability tell you about him? Why do you think the author chose to offer such a detailed description of Frank's pie-making technique?

6. The novel is set at a time during which a number of transitions are taking place in the lives of the main characters. What transition if Henry going through? Adele? Frank? How is that feeling of transition echoed in the time period in which the story is framed (the end of summer and the beginning of the school year)?

7. Henry often refers to a "normal family," a "regular family," a "family." What does the concept of family mean to Henry? What does the term "normal family" mean to you?

8. What was your first impression of the character of Eleanor? Did this impression change as you got to know her better? Why do you think Eleanor behaves as she does?

9. How does Eleanor go about instilling fear and doubts about Frank in Henry? Why do you think she does this? What is she hoping to accomplish?

10. In Chapter 18 Henry comments that seeing his mother happy with Frank "took me off the hook." At the same time, he appears to be threatened by the possibility that the intimacy she has discovered with Frank will cause her to abandon him. How does Henry go about reconciling these two conflicting responses to the love affair he witnesses, and how much of what takes place occurs as a result of this conflict?

11. How do you think the events of that Labor Day weekend changed Henry? How might his life have gone if Frank had not shown up?

12. Why do you think Adele relinquishes custody of Henry? Why does he decide to return to her?

13. Were you surprised by what Henry says and does when he encounters Eleanor again, a year later, walking her dog? What do you think has caused Eleanor to become the person she is? Why is her dog named Jim?

14. What does Henry's father mean when he observes that Adele "was in love with love"?

15. Frank's experience with Adele and Henry cost him eighteen years of his life, and yet he expresses gratitude for having met them. How can this be? Do you believe the kind of love that existed between Adele and Frank can truly exist?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

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The Labyrinth of the Spirits  (Cemetery of Lost Books series 4)
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 2018
HarperCollins
816 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062668691


Summary
The internationally acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author returns to the magnificent universe he constructed in his bestselling novels The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, and The Prisoner of Heaven in this riveting series finale—a heart-pounding thriller and nail-biting work of suspense which introduces a sexy, seductive new heroine whose investigation shines a light on the dark history of Franco’s Spain.

In this unforgettable final volume of Ruiz Zafón’s cycle of novels set in the universe of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, beautiful and enigmatic Alicia Gris, with the help of the Sempere family, uncovers one of the most shocking conspiracies in all Spanish history.

Nine-year-old Alicia lost her parents during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (the fascists) savagely bombed Barcelona in 1938.

Twenty years later, she still carries the emotional and physical scars of that violent and terrifying time. Weary of her work as an investigator for Spain’s secret police in Madrid, a job she has held for more than a decade, the twenty-nine-year old plans to move on.

At the insistence of her boss, Leandro Montalvo, she remains to solve one last case: the mysterious disappearance of Spain’s Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls.

With her partner, the intimidating policeman Juan Manuel Vargas, Alicia discovers a possible clue—a rare book by the author Victor Mataix hidden in Valls’ office in his Madrid mansion. Valls was the director of the notorious Montjuic Prison in Barcelona during World War II where several writers were imprisoned, including David Martín and Victor Mataix.

Traveling to Barcelona on the trail of these writers, Alicia and Vargas meet with several booksellers, including Juan Sempere, who knew her parents.

As Alicia and Vargas come closer to finding Valls, they uncover a tangled web of kidnappings and murders tied to the Franco regime, whose corruption is more widespread and horrifying than anyone imagined.

Alicia’s courageous and uncompromising search for the truth puts her life in peril. Only with the help of a circle of devoted friends will she emerge from the dark labyrinths of Barcelona and its history into the light of the future.

In this haunting new novel, Carlos Ruiz Zafon proves yet again that he is a masterful storyteller and pays homage to the world of books, to his ingenious creation of the Cemetery of Forgotten, and to that magical bridge between literature and our lives. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 25, 1964 
• Where—Barcelona, Spain
• Awards—Edebe Children's Literary Award, Best Novel, 1993
• Currently—lives in Barcelona and Los Angeles, California, USA

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a Spanish novelist. His first novel, El Príncipe de la Niebla (The Prince of Mist, 1993), earned the Edebe literary prize for young adult fiction. He is also the author of three more young adult novels, El Palacio de la Medianoche (1994), Las Luces de Septiembre (1995) and Marina (1999). The English version of El Príncipe de la Niebla was published in 2010.

In 2001 he published the novel La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind), his first "adult" novel, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Since its publication, La Sombra del Viento has garnered critical acclaim around the world and has won many international awards. His next novel, El Juego del Angel, was published in April 2008. The English edition, The Angel's Game, is translated by Lucia Graves, daughter of the poet Robert Graves. It is a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind, also set in Barcelona, but during the 1920s and 1930s. It follows (and is narrated by) David Martin, a young writer who is approached by a mysterious figure to write a book. Ruiz Zafon intends it to be included in a four book series along with The Shadow of the Wind. The Third book in the cycle, El Prisionero del Cielo, appeared in 2011, and was published in English in 2012 as The Prisoner of Heaven.

Ruiz Zafon's works have been published in 45 countries and have been translated into more than 50 different languages. According to these figures, Ruiz Zafon is the most successful contemporary Spanish writer (along with Javier Sierra and Juan Gomez-Jurado). Influences on Ruiz Zafon's work have included 19th century classics, crime fiction, noir authors and contemporary writers.

Apart from books, another large influence comes in the form of films and screenwriting. He says in interviews that he finds it easier to visualize scenes in his books in a cinematic way, which lends itself to the lush worlds and curious characters he creates. (From Wikipedia.)

Extras
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:

• In my tender youth I worked as a musician (composer, arranger and keyboard player/synthesizer programmer, record producer, etc.) and I've also labored for seven long years in the advertising jungle as a cynical mercenary, first as a copywriter, then a creative director (whatever that means) and also producing/directing TV commercials and polluting the world with artifacts glorifying Visa, Audi, Sony, Volkswagen, American Express, and many other evil entities. In 1992, when the lease on my soul was about to expire, I quit to become what I always wanted to do, be a full-time writer. Since then, I've published five novels and also have worked occasionally as a screenwriter.

• I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I'm also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know more weird stuff about 19th-century Manhattan than is probably healthy.

• There are two things that I cannot live without: music and books. Caffeine isn't dignified enough to qualify.

• When asked what authors most influenced his career as a writer, here is his response:

Charles Dickens and all of the 19th-century giants. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review) [A] gripping and moving thriller set in Franco’s Spain…. Fans of complex and literate mysteries featuring detectives with integrity working under oppressive and corrupt regimes will be well satisfied.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) At approximately 800 pages, this book is a commitment, but it is one well worth making. Complex characters, rich language, and intrigue make it a story to be savored. —Terry Lucas, Shelter Island P.L., NY
Library Journal


Gothic, operatic, and in many ways old-fashioned, this is a story about storytelling and survival, with the horrors of Francoist Spain present on every page. Compelling.… [T]his is for readers who savor each word and scene.
Booklist


(Starred review) Ruiz Zafón brings his sprawling Cemetery of Forgotten Books tetralogy to a close that throws in everything but the kitchen sink, but that somehow works.… A satisfying conclusion to a grand epic.
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 Lace Makers of Glenmara
Heather Barbieri, 2009
HarperCollins
268 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061772467


Summary
An enchanting, romantic tale of friendship and love, loss and redemption set in Ireland, in which a young American woman helps a group of lace makers change their lives—and, ultimately, her own.

"You can always start again," Kate Robinson's mother once told her, "all it takes is a new thread." In the wake of heartbreak and loss, the struggling 26-year-old fashion designer flees to Ireland, desperate to break old patterns. Before she knows it she finds herself on the west coast, in the Gaelic village of Glenmara.

Kate quickly develops a bond with members of the local lace making society, including the recently widowed Bernie; Aileen, estranged from her husband and teenage daughter; Moira, caught in an abusive relationship; Oona, bearing the scars of breast cancer; and Colleen, who worries about her fisherman husband, lost at sea. And outside this newfound circle is Sullivan Deane, an enigmatic man trying to overcome tragedy of his own.

Under Glenmara's spell, Kate finds the inspiration that has eluded her, and soon she and the lace makers are helping each other create a line of exquisite lingerie—and face long-denied desires and fears. But not everyone welcomes Kate, and a series of unexpected events soon threatens to unravel everything the women have worked for. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Pacific Northwest, USA
• Education—University of Washington
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington

Heather Barbieri is half-Irish. Her paternal ancestors left counties Donegal and Tipperary after The Great Famine and worked in the coal mines of Eastern Pennsylvania before settling in Butte, Montana. Her impeccably dressed maternal grandmother was a descendant of a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and instilled an avid interest in fashion in her granddaughters.

Barbieri’s first novel, Snow in July (2004, Soho Press), was selected as a Book Sense Pick, a Glamour magazine “Riveting Read,” and a Library Journal Notable First Novel. Before turning to writing fiction full-time, she was a magazine editor, journalist, and film critic.

She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and three children, and is currently working on her third novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Barbieri’s deft writing style is charmingly wry yet evocative, with details and descriptions both telling and vivid.... A sweet summertime yarn [that]...provides a lovely, leisurely escape to the bucolic charms of the Emerald Isle.
Karen Campbell - Boston Globe

Deal[s] with the reinvention of women's lives.... At a point in history when so many of us are struggling to make lemonade out of lemons, and in a summer season when a little literary lemonade is just the thing, [Lace Makers] encourage[s] and inspire[s].
The Seattle Times

Author Heather Barbieri examines with searching intelligence Kate's personal resilience and her quest for creative fulfillment.... Barbieri's rendering of the details of lacemaking seems impressively authentic. The novel features insights into human entanglements both current and from the past.
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Take a trip to an Irish village in Heather Barbieri's delightful novel The Lace Makers of Glenmara. While healing a broken heart, heroine Kate learns the secret of making lace in this unforgettable tale of love.
National Examiner

Devastating loss gives way to new life in Heather Barbieri's charming novel The Lace Makers of Glenmara, about a heartbroken American designer who discovers inspiration, comfort, and friendship in an intimate circle of lace makers from a quaint Irish village.
Parade

Barbieri (Snow in July) sets her latest in a small Irish town, Glenmara, where a heartbroken American tourist, Kate Robinson, finds her one-night stay extended with the help of some motherly role models. Kate's hostess, chronically grieving widow Bernie, draws the young Seattleite into a gossipy ring of lace makers. Kate, a former fashion designer, takes to them perfectly (one of several head-scratching coincidences), inspiring them to take on an empowering but controversial project. Although the focus is always on the positive, the narrative's strongest when exploring the less charming sides of Glenmara; rich sources of missed potential include the local priest, nicknamed Father Dominic Burn-in-Hell Byrne, and Bernie's irritable best friend Aileen, the only "lace society" member to regard Kate with anything but syrupy goodwill. The result is a sweet novel with few surprises. Even Kate's pivotal, inspirational idea-embellishing the ladies' undergarments with lace-suffers from murky logic (as do reactions from characters like Father Byrne). Still, Barbieri's world generates convincing warmth and emotion, making it worth a look for Friday Night Knitting Club fans between sequels.
Publishers Weekly

In her second novel (after Snow in July), Barbieri puts a graceful spin on the theme of a young woman influenced and aided by a group of older female friends. Kate has been deeply shaken by the collapse of her romance with longtime boyfriend Ethan. She takes her deceased mother's advice to heart and travels to Ireland, hoping to gain a fresh perspective on her life. Stranded by rainy weather, she finds herself in a little bed-and-breakfast owned by Bernie, an older woman with a heart of gold who is dealing with the recent death of her beloved husband. As Kate settles into the small village, several members of a local lace-making guild take her under their wings. Kate's background as a fashion designer and seamstress helps her form a strong bond with the diverse group of women. Verdict: A delicately handled romantic subplot featuring a somewhat shy and emotionally wounded Irishman named Sullivan rounds out a compelling and charming story line. Readers who have enjoyed the novels of Maeve Binchy and perhaps Rosamunde Pilcher will find this book equally entertaining. —Margaret Hanes, Warren P.L., MI
Library Journal

In the aftermath of a bad relationship and her mother's untimely death, a Seattle seamstress flees to her ancestral Ireland. Glenmara, the fictional setting of Barbieri's disappointing second novel (after Snow in July, 2004), is a decaying hamlet near the rocky Galway coast. Despite endemic poverty, the village boasts a lace-makers guild: craftswomen who eke out a few euros on tea towels and napkins sold at the village market, when they're not edging altar cloths gratis for curmudgeonly parish priest Father Byrne. Into this anachronistic world wanders Kate, a failed fashion designer who left Seattle for Ireland after her mother succumbed to cancer and her boyfriend dumped her for a model. Elder lace-maker Bernie, widowed and childless, opens her home to the waiflike American. The women demonstrate their delicate art to Kate and tell their stories. Oona is a breast-cancer survivor. Colleen, whose angelic singing voice marks her as a descendent of the mythical selkies (mermaids), fears the sea may claim her fisherman husband. Aileen is troubled by her teenage daughter's Goth phase. Moira lives in fear of her abusive spouse and lies about the origin of the bruises on her face. Kate is introduced to the craics (dances), where she bests Aileen at stepdancing, and to Sullivan, the town Lothario, whose black hair and piercing eyes telegraph that he's the one for her. The central conceit here, reminiscent of Joanne Harris's Chocolat (1999), is that a newcomer introduces a magical Macguffin. In this case, it's Kate's new line of lingerie trimmed with Glenmara lace, which not only revives guild members' marriages, but also challenge the forces of prudery and male oppression. The promising fracas generated by the "knicker wars"—Byrne denounces the guild from the pulpit—dissipates when the priest is conveniently downsized. Barbieri's amateurish prose, replete with comma splices and misplaced modifiers, is utterly unworthy of Yeats, Trevor, O'Brien and other masters whose names are dropped like wishful talismans throughout. Erin go Blah.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Women's friendships are central to The Lace Makers of Glenmara. Discuss the shifting alliances, confidences, and conflicts among Bernie, Kate, Aileen, Oona, Moira, and Colleen. Who is a good friend? Why?

2. Lace making has a major role in the novel. What role does the craft take in the women's lives? How does it shape them? Change them?

3. Many small towns experience a tension between the modern world and tradition values. How does this dynamic affect Glenmara?

4. What are the characters' attitudes toward faith and religion? How is Catholicism treated in the novel?

5. To what extent is Father Byrne a villain? Is it possible to sympathize with the motivations and feelings behind his actions?

6. How does Kate's personal history affect her life and the choices she makes in Glenmara?

7. Sibling relationships can be difficult. Discuss what binds Aileen and Moira together, and what drives them apart. How does their relationship change over the course of the novel?

8. What is at the root of the conflicts between Aileen and her daughter, Rosheen? Do they see each other differently by the end of the book? Why?

9. The Lace Makers of Glenmara has a rich cast of minor characters. How do they contribute to the texture of the novel?

10. A spectrum of romantic relationships are portrayed in the book. What keeps Moira in her marriage? What strains and joys are present in the other women's relationships? Who has the best marriage?

11. Who is the happiest character in the novel? The most discontented? Why?

12. What do you imagine happens next between Kate and Sullivan?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Lace Reader
Brunonia Barry, 2006
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061624773


Summary 
Look into the lace.... When the eyes begin to fill with tears and the patience is long exhausted, there will appear a glimpse of something not quite seen.... In this moment, an image will begin to form...in the space between what is real and what is only imagined.

Can you read your future in a piece of lace? All of the Whitney women can. But the last time Towner read, it killed her sister and nearly robbed Towner of her own sanity.

Vowing never to read lace again, her resolve is tested when faced with the mysterious, unsolvable disappearance of her beloved Great Aunt Eva, Salem's original Lace Reader.

Told from opposing and often unreliable perspectives, the story engages the reader's own beliefs. Should we listen to Towner, who may be losing her mind for the second time? Or should we believe John Rafferty, a no nonsense New York detective, who ran away from the city to a simpler place only to find himself inextricably involved in a psychic tug of war with all three generations of Whitney women?

Does either have the whole story? Or does the truth lie somewhere in the swirling pattern of the lace? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Born—1950
• Where— Massachusetts, USA
• Education—Green Mountain College; University of New Hampshire
• Awards— Baccante Award-Woman’s International Fiction Festival
• Currently—lives in Salem, Massachusetts

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brunonia Barry studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain college in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire and was one of the founding members of the Portland Stage Company. While still an undergraduate at UNH, Barry spent a year living in Dublin and auditing Trinity College classes on James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Barry’s love of theater led to a first job in Chicago where she ran promotional campaigns for Second City, Ivanhoe, and Studebaker theaters. After a brief stint in Manhattan, where she studied screenwriting at NYU, Barry relocated to California because she had landed an agent and had an original script optioned. Working on a variety of projects for several studios, she continued to study screenwriting and story structure with Hollywood icon Robert McKee, becoming one of the nine writers in his Development Group.

Brunonia’s love for writing and storytelling has taken her all across the country but after nearly a decade in Hollywood, Barry returned to Massachusetts where, along with her husband, she co-founded an innovative company that creates award-winning word, visual and logic puzzles. In recent years, she has written books for the "Beacon Street Girls", a fictional series for ‘tweens. Happily married, Barry lives with her husband and her only child that just happens to be a 12-year-old Golden Retriever named Byzantium. The Lace Reader was her first original novel.

Barry is the first American Writer to win the Woman’s International Fiction Festival’s 2009 Baccante Award (for The Lace Reader). Her second novel, The Map of True Places, was published in 2010. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
What is real in The Lace Reader? What is not? To her credit Ms. Barry makes this story blithe and creepy in equal measure.... And there is much suspense invested in where all the lacunae in Towner’s impressions will lead her.... There are clues planted everywhere.
New York Times


Brunonia Barry's first novel is a compendium of women's issues stitched into a murder mystery in modern-day Salem, Mass. Originally self-published, The Lace Reader later became the subject of a multi-million-dollar bidding war among New York publishers. Now it's being re-released as the first installment of a planned trilogy.... [Brunonia has] created a marvelously bizarre cast of characters (living and dead) in a uniquely colorful town, and there are enough riveting sections here to illustrate what she can do when she lets loose, grabs her broom and flies.
Ron Charles - Washington Post

A gorgeously written literary novel that’s a doozy of a thriller, capped with a jaw-dropping denouement that will leave even the most careful reader gasping.
Chicago Tribune


Barry’s modern-day story of Towner Whitney, who has the psychic gift to read the future in lace patterns, is complex but darker in subject matter.... The novel’s gripping and shocking conclusion is a testament to Barry’s creativity.
USA Today

In Barry's captivating debut, Towner Whitney, a dazed young woman descended from a long line of mind readers and fortune tellers, has survived numerous traumas and returned to her hometown of Salem, Mass., to recover. Any tranquility in her life is short-lived when her beloved great-aunt Eva drowns under circumstances suggesting foul play. Towner's suspicions are taken with a grain of salt given her history of hallucinatory visions and self-harm. The mystery enmeshes local cop John Rafferty, who had left the pressures of big city police work for a quieter life in Salem and now finds himself falling for the enigmatic Towner as he mourns Eva and delves into the history of the eccentric Whitney clan. Barry excels at capturing the feel of small town life, and balances action with close looks at the characters' inner worlds. Her pacing and use of different perspectives show tremendous skill and will keep readers captivated all the way through.
Publishers Weekly

In an ambitious debut, a wounded heroine returns home to confront ghosts and hallucinations, bereavements and beatings, a hellfire preacher with a witch-hunting flock and a murky family history with many missing pieces. It's been 15 years since Towner Whitney, descended from a long line of Salem eccentrics, fled the town, following her twin sister's death and her own incarceration in a psychiatric hospital where she received shock therapy after claiming to have killed vicious Cal Boynton, whose abuse left his wife brain-damaged and blind. Now, Towner's back, summoned by the disappearance of her great-aunt Eva, preeminent lace reader (it's a skill similar to reading tea leaves, but using the intricate hand-made fabric instead), whose body is soon found at sea. Eva's funeral is disrupted by the Calvinists, a fearsome religious group led by supposedly reformed Cal, currently suspected of further abuse or possibly worse by the local cop, Detective Rafferty, an ex-alcoholic from New York who starts to date Towner. Over-egged pudding doesn't even begin to describe the torrent of content and genres in Barry's first novel, which interweaves wise and half-crazed women, a gothic past involving a suicidal leap from a storm-tossed cliff and an occasionally thriller-ish present which includes Towner and a pregnant teen making a superhuman underwater escape from a burning building. Unusual and otherworldly, this is a blizzard of a story which surprisingly manages to pull together its historical, supernatural and psychiatric elements. A survivor's tale of redemption, reached via a long and winding road. 
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. For centuries, women have used lace as an adornment for their clothes and as a decoration for their homes. Just a small piece of lace on a sleeve could evoke a sense of luxury, beauty, and elegance. How does your family use lace today? Is it used every day or only on special occasions?

2. Have any pieces of lace been passed down to you or someone else in your family? If so, what feelings do you associate with these heirloom pieces of lace?

3. The author states that The Lace Reader is, at its core, about perception vs. reality. How does Rafferty's perception of Towner color his judgment of what she says and does? What about Rafferty's perception of Cal and his actions?

4. At the very start of The Lace Reader, Towner Whitney, the protagonist, tells the reader that she's a liar and that she's crazy. By the end of the book do you agree with her?

5. Eva reveals that she speaks in clichés so that her words do not influence the choices made by the recipients of her lace reading sessions. Do you think that's possible? Can a cliché be so over used that it loses its original meaning?

6. When May comments on the relationship between Rafferty and Towner, she states that they are too alike and predicts that "You won't just break apart. You'll send each other flying." Did you agree with that when you read it? And if so, in what ways are Towner and Rafferty alike?

7. The handmade lace industry of Ipswich quickly vanished when lace-making machines were introduced. At that same moment, the economic freedom of the women making the handmade lace also evaporated. Why do you think that these women didn't update their business, buy the machines, and own a significant portion of the new lace-making industry?

8. Do you think that May's revival of the craft of handmade lace with the abused women on Yellow Dog Island is purely symbolic or could it be, in some way, very practical?

9. What role does religion play in the novel? Is there a difference between spirituality and religion? Between faith and blind faith?

10. Towner has a special bond with the dogs of Yellow Dog Island—do you agree that people and animals can relate to each other in extraordinary ways?

11. How do the excerpts from The Lace Reader's Guide and Towner's journal function in the novel? Does the written word carry more truth than the spoken? Did you use the clues in the Guide to help you understand the rest of the book?

12. How much does family history influence who a person becomes? Do you believe that certain traits or talents are genetic and can be inherited?

13. Is it possible that twins share a unique bond? How does being a twin affect Towner?

14. Can geography influence personality? For instance, May lives on an island, does this say something about her?

15. If you could learn to read lace and see things about your future, would you?
(Questions from the publisher.)

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The Lacuna
Barbara Kingsolver, 2009
HarperCollins
622 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060852580

Summary 
Winner, 2010 Orange Prize

In The Lacuna, her first novel in nine years, Barbara Kingsolver, tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds—an unforgettable protagonist whose search for identity will take readers to the heart of the twentieth century’s most tumultuous events.

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of one most provocative and important of her time. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 8, 1955
• Where—Annapolis, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., DePauw University; M.S., University of 
  Arizona
• Awards—Orange Prize
• Currently—lives on a farm in Virginia


Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields. While her family has deep roots in the region, she never imagined staying there herself. "The options were limited—grow up to be a farmer or a farmer's wife."

Kingsolver has always been a storyteller: "I used to beg my mother to let me tell her a bedtime story." As a child, she wrote stories and essays and, beginning at the age of eight, kept a journal religiously. Still, it never occurred to Kingsolver that she could become a professional writer. Growing up in a rural place, where work centered mainly on survival, writing didn't seem to be a practical career choice. Besides, the writers she read, she once explained, "were mostly old, dead men. It was inconceivable that I might grow up to be one of those myself..."

Kingsolver left Kentucky to attend DePauw University in Indiana, where she majored in biology. She also took one creative writing course, and became active in the last anti-Vietnam War protests. After graduating in 1977, Kingsolver lived and worked in widely scattered places. In the early eighties, she pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she received a Masters of Science degree. She also enrolled in a writing class taught by author Francine Prose, whose work Kingsolver admires.

Kingsolver's fiction is rich with the language and imagery of her native Kentucky. But when she first left home, she says, "I lost my accent.... [P]eople made terrible fun of me for the way I used to talk, so I gave it upslowly and became something else." During her years in school and two years spent living in Greece and France she supported herself in a variety of jobs: as an archaeologist, copy editor, X-ray technician, housecleaner, biological researcher and translator of medical documents.

After graduate school, a position as a science writer for the University of Arizona soon led her into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her numerous articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Nation, the New York Times, and Smithsonian, and many of them are included in the collection, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. In 1986 she won an Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing, and in 1995, after the publication of High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University.

Writing
Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a writer's discipline and broadening her "fictional possiblities." Describing herself as a shy person who would generally prefer to stay at home with her computer, she explains that "journalism forces me to meet and talk with people I would never run across otherwise."

From 1985 through 1987, Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by day, but she was writing fiction by night. Married to a chemist in 1985, she suffered from insomnia after becoming pregnant the following year. Instead of following her doctor's recommendation to scrub the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, Kingsolver sat in a closet and began to write The Bean Trees, a novel about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky (accent intact) and finds herself living in urban Tucson.

The Bean Trees, originally published in 1988 and reissued in a special ten-year anniversary edition in 1998, was enthusiastically received by critics. But, perhaps more important to Kingsolver, the novel was read with delight and, even, passion by ordinary readers. "A novel can educate to some extent," she told Publishers Weekly. "But first, a novel has to entertain—that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessiblity. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with—who may not often read anything but the Sears catalogue—to read my books."

For Kingsolver, writing is a form of political activism. When she was in her twenties she discovered Doris Lessing. "I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do, if I could ever do that."

The Bean Trees was followed by the collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989), the novels Animal Dreams (1990), and Pigs in Heaven (1993), and the bestselling High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never (1995). Kingsolver has also published a collection of poetry, Another America: Otra America (Seal Press, 1992, 1998), and a nonfiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of l983 (ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 1989, 1996). The Poisonwood Bible (1998) earned accolades at home and abroad, and was an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Barbara's Prodigal Summer (2000), is a novel set in a rural farming community in southern Appalachia. Small Wonder, April 2002, presents 23 wonderfully articulate essays. Here Barbara raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world.

Two additional books became best sellers. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle came in 2007, again to great acclaim. Non-fiction, the book recounts a year in the life of Kingsolver's family as they grew all their own food. The Lacuna, published two years later, is a fictional account of historical events in Mexico during the 1930, and moving into the U.S. during the McCarthy era of the 1950's.

Extras
• Barbara Kingsolver lives in Southern Applachia with her husband Steven Hopp, and her two daughters, Camille from a previous marriage, and Lily, who was born in 1996. When not writing or spending time with her family, Barbara gardens, cooks, hikes, and works as an environmental activist and human-rights advocate.

• Given that Barbara Kingsolver's work covers the psychic and geographical territories that she knows firsthand, readers often assume that her work is autobiographical. "There are little things that people who know me might recognize in my novels," she acknowledges. "But my work is not about me...."

• "If you want a slice of life, look out the window. An artist has to look out that window, isolate one or two suggestive things, and embroider them together with poetry and fabrication, to create a revelation. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread." (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews 
How can the experiences of a fictional loner merge with those of larger-than-life figures who played a pivotal role in world politics? And what can readers learn from their intersection? Those are the questions answered by this dazzling novel, which plunges into Shepherd's notebooks to dredge up not only the perceptions they conceal but also a history larger than his own, touching on everything from Trotskyism, Stalinism and the Red scare to racism, mass hysteria and the media's intrusion into personal and national affairs.... The Lacuna can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver's novel lies in its call to conscience and connection. She has mined Shepherd's richly imagined history to create a tableau vivant of epochs and people that time has transformed almost past recognition. Yet it's a tableau vivant whose story line resonates in the present day, albeit with different players. Through Shepherd's resurrected notebooks, Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence.
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times

The most mature and ambitious [novel] she's written during her celebrated 20-year career, but it's also [Kingsolver's] most demanding…a novel of capital-L Liberal ideas—workers' rights, sexual equality, artistic freedom.... Nevertheless, this rich novel is certainly bigger than its politics. It resurrects several dramatic events of the early 20th century that have fallen out of public consciousness, brings alive the forgotten details of everyday life in the 1940s, and illustrates how attitudes and prejudices are shaped by political opportunism and the rapacious media. But despite this large, colorful canvas, ultimately The Lacuna is a tender story about a thoughtful man who just wanted to enjoy that basic American right: the right to be left alone.
Ron Charles - Washington Post

A lavishly gifted writer.... Kingsolver [has a] wonderful ear for the quirks of human repartee. The Lacuna is richly spiked with period language.... This book grabs at the heartstrings.
Los Angeles Times

Kingsolver hasn't lost her touch...she delivers her signature blend of exotic locale, political backdrop and immediately engaging story line...teems with dark beauty.
People

Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after the The Poisonwood Bible), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). “Employed by the American imagination,” is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.
Publishers Weekly

Diego Rivera's mural in Mexico's Palacio Nationale was only half complete the day young Harrison Shepherd stood transfixed before it, but he would be forever captive to the extraordinary power of the imagination. A solitary child, a devourer of books, left to his own devices by a mother chasing unattainable men and a father pencil pushing for the government back in the States, Harrison observes and he writes. When a quirk of fate lands him in the home of Communist sympathizers Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Rivera's wife, Harrison becomes enmeshed in the turbulent history that will inform his life and work. Through the distinctive voices of Harrison and his insightful amanuensis, Violet Brown, Kingsolver paints a verbal panorama spanning three decades and two countries. World War I veterans protesting for benefits denied, the unleashing of the atomic bomb, the McCarthy hearings, censorship of the arts, and abuse by the press corps lend credence to the sentiment that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Verdict: As in The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver perfects the use of multiple points of view, even reprinting actual newspaper articles to blur the line between fact and fiction. This is her most ambitious, timely, and powerful novel yet. Well worth the wait.—Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL
Library Journal

Unapologetically political metafiction from Kingsolver about the small mistakes or gaps (lacunas) that change history. Set in leftist Mexico in the 1930s and the United States in the '40s and '50s, the novel is a compilation of diary entries, newspaper clippings (real and fictional), snippets of memoirs, letters and archivist's commentary, all concerning Harrison Shepherd. In 1929, Harrison's Mexican-born mother deserts his American father, a government bureaucrat, and drags 11-year-old Harrison back to Mexico to live with her rich lover on a remote island. There Harrison discovers his first lacuna, an underwater cave that leads to a secret pool. As his mother moves from man to man, Harrison learns to fend for himself. His disastrous two-year stint at boarding school back in America is marked by his awakening homosexuality (left vague thanks to the lacuna of a missing diary) and his witnessing of the Hoover administration's violent reaction to a riot of World War I homeless vets. In 1935, Harrison returns to Mexico, where he becomes first a lowly but beloved member of the Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo household, then secretary to Leon Trotsky until Trotsky's assassination. Kingsolver is at her best in the pages brimming with the seductive energy of '30s Mexico: its colors, tastes, smells, the high drama of Trotsky and Kahlo, but also the ordinary lives of peasants and the working poor. When Harrison returns to the States, however, the novel wilts. His character never evolves, and the dialogue grows increasingly polemic as his story becomes a case study of the postwar anticommunist witch-hunt. Harrison moves to Asheville, N.C., writes fabulously popular novels about ancient Mexico, hires as his secretary a widow whom the reader knows already as his archivist, and is then hounded out of the country by the House Un-American Activities Committee, with fateful results. A richly satisfying portrait of Mexico gives way to a preachy, padded and predictable chronicle of Red Scare America.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Lacuna:

1. What does Shepherd mean when he says, "The most important part of the story is the piece of it you don't know." And how does this oft stated remark relate to the book's title?

2. What is the significance of the book's title? What does it mean within the context of the novel?

3. Do Shepherd's diaries feel realistic to you? Does he sound like a 12-year old at the beginning...and later a mature man?

4. What prompts Harrison to begin his journals? Why does he write? What does he mean by referring to his notebook as "prisoner's plan for escape"?

5. Describe Shepherd, first as a 12-year-old and, later, as a mature adult. What kind of character is he? How does he change over the course of the novel?

6. How about Shepherd's mother? In what way does her profligate life affect how Shepherd decides to lead his own life?

7. Describe the Riviera/Kahlo household. How does Shepherd see Riviera's influence over Kahlo? Have you seen the movie Frieda? If so, does that film influence your reading of The Lacuana?

8. How does Kingsolver portray Leon Trotsky in this work? Were you aware of his background and the history of the Russian Revolution before you read the novel? If so, did your prior knowledge color your reading—or did your reading affect your knowledge?

9. Do you find the second-half of the novel, in the US, evocative of a time and place that no longer exists? If so, is that a good or bad thing? If not, what has remained the same? How does Kingsolver present those years?

10. What is Shepherd's relationship with his secretary, Violet Brown? What kind of character is she? Why does she want to preserve Shepherd's memory?

11. What role do the media play in this novel? Is it a fair or realistic portrait? What are the benefits of fame...and what are its costs?

12. Does this book enlighten you about the era of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings? Or do you feel this ground has been well tread by many others?

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

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A Ladder to the Sky 
John Boyne, 2018
Crown/Archetype Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984823014 


Summary
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame.

The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own.
 
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann.

He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful—but desperately lonely—older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.

Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high.

Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall.
 
Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 30, 1971
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Trinity College
• Awards—Curtis Brown Award; Irish Book Awards: People's
  Choice of the Year
• Currently—Dublin, Ireland


John Boyne is an Irish novelist, the author of 10 adult novels and five for younger readers. He is best known for his 2006 YA novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which sold 9 million copies and catapulted him to international fame. The book became a 2008 feature film. His novels are published in over 50 languages.

Background
Born in Dublin, Ireland, where he still lives, Boyne studied English literature at Trinity College and later creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. While at UEA, he won the Curtis Brown Prize and years later, in 2015, received a UEA Honary Doctorate of Letters.

In 1993 the Sunday Tribune published Boyne's first short story; the story was subsequently shortlisted for a Hennessy Award. In addition to his novels, Boyne regularly reviews for The Irish Times. He has also served as judge for a number of literary awards: Hennessy Literary Awards, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Green Carnation Prize, and Scotiabank Giller Prize, for which he served as the 2015 jury chair.

Awards
Boyne's own list of awards list is impressive: Hennessy Literary Hall of Fame Award for the body of his work; three Irish Book Awards (Children's Book of the Year, People's Choice Book of the Year, and Short Story of the Year); Que Leer Award Novel of the Year (Spain); and Gustave Heineman Peace Prize (Germany). (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 8/14/2017.)

Book Reviews
I’m embarrassed by how much I enjoyed John Boyne’s wicked new novel, A Ladder to the Sky. It’s an addictive Rubik’s Cube of vice that keeps turning up new patterns of depravity. By the time every facet clicks into place, the story feels utterly surprising yet completely inevitable.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Take Meg Wolitzer's novel (now also a film) called The Wife, about a brazen case of literary ghostwriting, and cross it with Patricia Highsmith's classic Ripley stories, about a suave psychopath, and you've got something of the crooked charisma of John Boyne's new novel, A Ladder to the Sky.… Maliciously witty, erudite and ingeniously constructed A Ladder to the Sky explores the cold outer limits of ambition.
NPR


A darkly funny novel that races like a beating heart.
People


Maurice Swift may not be much of a novelist, but he inhabits a literary tradition going to back to Patricia Highsmith. Boyne’s protagonist is Tom Ripley as literary climber.… Boyne’s novel is about high literature but has lower, juicier ambitions, at which it wildly succeeds.
Vulture


A taut and gripping novel… as craftily written as Swift himself.
Esquire


A Ladder to the Sky is clever, chilling and beautifully paced; a study of inner corrosion that Patricia Highsmith herself could not have done better.… wickedly astute.
Times (UK)


Maurice Swift is a literary Tom Ripley.… [A] first-class page turner.
Guardian (UK)


A deliciously dark tale of ambition, seduction and literary theft . . . compelling and terrifying . . . powerful and intensely unsettling …in Maurice Swift, Boyne has given us an unforgettable protagonist, dangerous and irresistible in equal measure. The result is an ingeniously conceived novel that confirms Boyne as one of the most assured writers of his generation.
Observer (UK)


Deliciously venomous.… A Ladder to the Sky is an entertaining, if deeply cynical portrait of the literary world.
BookPage


(Starred review) [E]evocative…. Boyne’s fast-paced, white-knuckle plot, accompanied by delightfully sardonic commentary on the ego, insecurities, and pitfalls of those involved in the literary world, makes for a truly engrossing experience.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Boyne expertly explores notions of originality and authorship through multiple first-person accounts of the despicable Swift. As a result, his latest novel is absorbing, horrifying, and recommended.
Library Journal


Well-crafted.…The novel unfolds in an extremely layered manner, but what Swift’s story slowly reveals says much about publishing, pride, deceit, and plagiarism—and worse, much worse.
Booklist


(Starred review) An all-consuming ambition to be a successful writer drives a young man down unusual paths to literary acclaim in this compelling character study…. Boyne's singular villain and well-sustained tension merit a good audience.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for A LADDER TO THE SKY ... then take off on your own:

1. What do you think of Maurice—how would you describe him? What is his underlying motivation, the force (or is it a need) that drives him? Have you ever met anyone with Maurice's qualities?

2. John Boyne cleverly hides the intentions behind Maurice's questioning of Erich about his years under the Nazis. At what point did you begin to suspect Maurice's duplicity?

3. Once he realizes what Maurice has done to him, Erich says, "I had, quite literally, been the author of my own misfortune." Do you think he's right? Is Erich, ultimately, the one responsible?

4. Follow-up to Question 3: Maurice maintains that he is not exploiting anyone; he believes that everyone gets what they want. What do you think: is Maurice's assessment clear-eyed, cynical, the mark of a realist … or a sociopath?

5. Gore Vidal is impervious to Maurice's charms; in fact, he sees through Maurice, realizing he's playing a game. What does Vidal see in Maurice that others do not?

6. Vidal, considers his visiting author friend "a hack with a modicum of talent." What do you make of his observation that the writer took care "never to offend the middle-aged ladies and closeted homosexuals who made up the bulk of his readership. His books were efficiently written but so painfully innocuous that even President Reagan had taken one on holiday"? Ouch! In fact, so many ouches in those two sentences. Care to critique them?

7. Boyne takes satirical aim at the literary world. What and/or whom specifically does he satirize—what is he attempting to reveal to his readers?

8. How would you describe Edith Camberley? What about the couple's marriage? In what way does Edith's own success affect Maurice? Edith has seen her husband close-up, yet she seems blind to his cruelty. What is it about her that makes her so malleable under his control?

9. Follow-up to Question 8: The author is masterful in building up a sense of menace within the marriage. How did you react to Maurice's plotting? Would "terrified" be a good word?

10. As you read A Ladder to the Sky, did you find yourself liking Maurice—almost against your will? If so, why?

11. Were you ready for the novel's twist? Were you surprised or did you see it coming (maybe a little of both)?

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

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LitClub:  The Ladies of Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia


LIKE SO MANY book clubs, this group began with a couple of friends who enjoyed reading. Let's do something a little more formal, they thought—and here they are!


When did you decide to become The Ladies of Atlanta?
It was back in 2012 when a couple of us started planning. We invited other ladies who liked to read, and it's continued to grow from there.

So how many members now?
We've got 14 in all. But we continue to invite new people in on a regular basis.

So let's talk about your books.
We're pretty new, so here's what we've read so far:
Power and Beauty
Trouble and Triumph
In Search of Satisfaction
Don't Say a Word
Incidents in the Life of a
   Slave Girl
Gods and Kings
Song of Redemption

As you can see, our book club selections reach across genre, authors and historical periods—fiction and nonfiction.

Your members are doing more reading on Kindles.
The Kindle has enriched our discussions and understanding of our readings. For example, during our meeting for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, we were able to do on-the-spot research—viewing photos of the author and her hometown in North Carolina, as well as verifying the existence of her slave holder.

You mentioned that you "tend to have lively conversations." What makes them so much fun?
When we disagree—those are the best. We might be discussing the evolution of a character or realistic themes of literature. The really intense discussions allow us to grow and help us see other view points.

Where do you meet?
Our meetings are held in various places around the metro area of Atlanta—in homes and restaurants. The venue is limited only by the creativity of the hostess.

The hostess has flexibility to plan the meal according to her taste. We have ordered meals and prepared meals; even when we meet in a restaurant, the venue is often chosen based on a theme relevant to the book.

Your group has a Facebook page, right?
Yes. We use it to post our book selections so members can check during the month and keep abreast of current events. Anyone interested can find us through Facebook's search using in "The Ladies Book Club of Atlanta"... or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

How do you choose your books?
We select our books by group vote at meetings. Books are suggested by members or by web sites such as Litlovers.

Generally, how would you describe your club and its members?
We are a group of women who have a shared love of reading, and we formed a book club to enjoy fellowship, break bread, socialize and discuss the chosen reading selections. We are diverse in background and experiences which gives us insight into various aspects of literature and enriches the discussions. We encourage new members to join—the only requirement is a commitment to participate actively in the group.

The Ladies' Man
Elinor Lipman, 1998
Knopf Doubleday
260 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375707315

Summary 
From the bestselling author of The Inn at Lake Devine ("Rivals her own best work for its understanding of the way smart, opinionated people stumble toward happiness"—Glamour) and Isabel's Bed ("It's Fannie Farmer for the soul...delivered in a delicious style that is both funny and elegant"—USA Today) comes a darkly romantic comedy of manners that confirms Elinor Lipman's appointment to the Jane Austen chair in modern American sensibility.

Thirty unmarried years have passed since the barely suitable Harvey Nash failed to show up at a grand Boston hotel for his own engagement party. Today, the near-bride, Adele Dobbin, and her two sisters, Lois and Kathleen, blame Harvey for what unkind relatives call their spinsterhood, and what potential beaus might characterize as a leery, united front. The doorbell rings one cold April night.

Harvey Nash, older, filled with regrets (sort of), more charming and arousable than ever, just in from the Coast, where he's reinvented himself as Nash Harvey, jingle composer and chronic bachelor, has returned to the scene of his first romantic crime. Despite the sisters' scars and grudges, despite his platinum tongue and roving eye, this old flame becomes an improbable catalyst for the untried and the long overdue.

The refined and level-headed Adele finds herself flirting with her boss—on public television. Entrepreneurial Kathleen is suddenly drinking cappuccino with Lorenz, the handsome doorman at the luxury high-rise where she owns a lingerie boutique. And Lois, the only sister to have embarked on the road to matrimony and, subsequently, divorce, revives her long-cherished notion that Harvey abandoned Adele rather than indulge his preference for another Dobbin.

Both comic and compassionate, The Ladies' Man has all of Lipman's trademark wit, wattage, and social mischief—with an extra bite. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 16, 1950
• Where—Lowell, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—A.B. Simmons College
• Awards—New England Books Award For Fiction
• Currently—lives in North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York, New York


Elinor Lipman is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, known for her humor and societal observations. In his review of her 2019 novel, Good Riddance, Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Lipman "has long been one of our wittiest chroniclers of modern-day romance."

The author was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston where she studied journalism. While at Simon, Lipman began her writing career, working as a college intern with the Lowell Sun. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, she wrote press releases for WGBH, Boston's public radio station.

Writing
Lipman turned to fiction writing in 1979; her first short story, "Catering," was published in Yankee Magazine. In 1987 she published a volume of stories, Into Love and Out Again, and in 1990 she came out with her first novel, Then She Found Me. Her second novel, The Inn at Lake Devine, appeared in 1998, earning Lipman the 2001 New England Book Award three years later.

Lipman's first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a 2008 feature film—directed by and starring Helen Hunt, along with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick.

In addition to her fiction, Lipman released a 2012 book of rhyming political tweets, Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. Two other books—a 10th novel, The View from Penthouse B, and a collection of essays, I Can't Complain: (all too) Personal Essays—were both published in 2013. The latter deals in part with the death of her husband at age 60. A knitting devotee, Lipman's poem, "I Bought This Pattern Book Last Spring," was included in the 2013 anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting.

Lipman was the Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College from 2011-12, and she continues to write the column, "I Might Complain," for Parade.com. Smith spends her time between North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.

Works
1988 - Into Love and Out Again: Stories
1990 - Then She Found Me
1992 - The Way Men Act
1995 - Isabel's Bed
1998 - The Inn at Lake Devine
1999 - The Ladies' Man
2001 - The Dearly Departed
2003 - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
2006 - My Latest Grievance
2009 - The Family Man
2012 - Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus
2013 - I Can't Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays
2013 - The View From Penthouse B
2017 - On Turpentine Lane
2019 - Good Riddance
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/27/2019.)

Book Reviews
I loved every page of this very funny, insightful, sophisticated yet good-natured book, but it took me a while to realize that it was a sex farce.... The Ladies' Man never suggests that all men are like Nash Harvey.... This book isn't even angry with its villain; it just shakes its head in amused amazement and, a little wiser, walks away.
Anita Gates - New York Times

The Dobbin sisters are not the Bennetts, and Harvey Nash is no Mr. Darcy, but Lipman's latest novel is Pride and Prejudice as it plays out in the bicoastal, aging-boomer '90s. The protagonists are three red-haired siblings and the man who dumped one of them at her 1967 engagement party are all in their 40s and 50s. Almost chaste and largely celibate, the Dobbins live together spinsterishly in a Boston suburb, until the womanizing cad who now calls himself Nash Harvey flies in from L.A. "on a mission...to apologize." Unforgiving Adele, the oldest and the one he dumped, works stoically in public TVAin marked contrast to Harvey's precarious livelihood writing commercial jingles. Difficult middle sister Lois, divorced from a cross-dressing patent attorney, for decades has believed mistakenly that the smoothly smarmy Harvey left town because of his feelings for her. She welcomes him back with barely concealed lust. The youngest, Kathleen, reacts angrily to his predatory insinuations, breaking a casserole dish on his head and inadvertently turning Nash into an unwelcome houseguest. Paths cross in sitcom fashion, especially since Cynthia John, Harvey's pickup on the red-eye from L.A., lives in the building that houses Kathleen's lingerie shop. The situation is provocative and promising, and at first Lipman seems poised to deliver a semiwhimsical search for identity a la Ann Tyler. She exhibits a gimlet eye for the nuances of social interaction and for the rituals of courtship both East and West Coast style, and as usual, her view of the battle of the sexes is frank and refreshing. But the narrative soon begins to read like the outline of a screenplay. Done in shots and heavy on (admittedly snappy) dialogue, it sacrifices depth of character and story for glib entertainment. Though certain scenes (Adele's perfunctory deflowering; the car crash in which Harvey's ex meets a New York playwright on the make) are witty and engaging, too many other encounters (Harvey's sojourn in the Dobbins' apartment; a cocktail party/jingle recital) are dictated less by credibility than by the need to be cute. It's satisfying that while Harvey faces his comeuppance and a palimony suit, the Dobbin sisters finally confront love and commitment. In the end, however, this book is more superficial than we have come to expect of Lipman's fiction.
Publishers Weekly

The Ladies' Man is three things: the title of Lipman's newest book; a description of the main male character, Nash Harvey; and the book's weakness. The basic premise of the book is that Nash Harvey, or Harvey Nash, has a crisis of conscience over an engagement he walked out on 30 years ago. He returns to Boston to see Adele Dobbin, his spurned fiance. Nash's visit teaches Adele and her two unmarried sisters a new lesson "about dignity being less important than love." Nash is a shallow smooth talker, seemingly addicted to lust and unfamiliar with love. The difficulty with the novel is that while Lipman (The Inn at Lake Devine, LJ 2/1/98) characterizes Nash so well, in doing so she creates a central character who is most unsympathetic. Furthermore, Lipman has Nash cut a romantic swath through the lives of other women during the course of the novel, creating a large cast of female characters, none of whom are fully developed. A book of moderate appeal. —Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ont.
Library Journal

A romantic comedy of errors by the novelist whose previous labors in this vineyard (Isabel's Bed, 1995, etc.) have established her as a master hand. Harvey Nash is the sort of fellow your mother warned you about. Genial, good-hearted, and sincere, he genuinely likes the company of women and is attentive to their moods and concerns. All the worse for the women who fall for him, then, since he's an incorrigible bachelor who can't commit himself—almost literally—on pain of law. Harvey left his native Boston quite abruptly on the evening of March 11, 1967—and it's no coincidence that that was the night his engagement to Adele Dobbin was to have been announced at a big party at the Copley Plaza. When he stopped running, Harvey found himself in California, where he settled in Los Angeles (as "Nash Harvey") and established a successful career in advertising. Almost 30 years later, he has a live-in girlfriend, Dina, who wants (very badly) to settle down and get pregnant. But, again, Harvey just can't see his way clear. So now he reverses course and heads back to Boston to look up Adele—but not before hooking up with Cynthia John, a sharp-eyed investor who sits next to him on the plane. In Boston, Adele is still unmarried and lives in a kind of bitch-goddess convent with Lois and Kathleen, her equally unattached sisters. She's understandably less than thrilled to find Harvey on her doorstep, but Lois (who always had a thing for him) tries to welcome him back into the fold. Meanwhile, Dina is cruising beaches and coffee-bars in search of an (unwitting) semen donor, and Harvey and Cynthia are having some drama of their own. The course of true love is seldom a straight line, true enough. But can it be a series of overlapping circles? Funny, dumb, good-natured, predictable, and slick: Lipman knows what she wants to do and does it very well.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Harvey Nash is certainly not the kind of man with whom most women would choose to become involved. Yet despite his oily loyalties, arrogance, and opportunism, he charms nearly all of the characters, to some degree, at some point in the novel. How does Harvey—now called Nash—make his way into Adele, Kathleen, and Lois' good graces? How does he maneuver his way into the arms of an intelligent, beautiful, and successful woman like Cynthia? What is it about this type of man that continues to be attractive to women and despite their better judgment they continue to succumb to his charm?

2. To what extent does the notion of good manners prevent the Dobbins from getting rid of Nash? To what extent are all three—on some level—curious about him?

3. How does fear threaten each female character's ability to act on her attraction to others? How does Nash confirm their fears? How does his behavior play a role in diffusing their fears?

4. How are the Dobbin sisters' loyalties to one another threatened by Nash's reasserting himself into their lives?

5. What role does Richard Dobbin play in the novel?

6. Perhaps one of the most hilarious scenes in The Ladies' Man is Cynthia's big party for Nash. How do the events leading up to the big night infuse each guest's entrance with tension? How does dialogue up the ante once the party begins?

7. How does Kathleen handle Cynthia's feelings for Nash? How does Kathleen and Cynthia's friendship effect the course of the novel?

8. Nash performs one notable and noble act in The Ladies' Man: he makes Marty Glazer jealous. What prompts this act of selflessness? Is it completely selfless? If not, how does his gesture endear him to us nonetheless?

9. How does Elinor Lipman keep us interested in so many different characters over the course of the novel? Were there characters you cared about more than others?

10. How do the characters in The Ladies' Man highlight different ways we approach—or shrink from—love today? What aspects of modern American culture make the pursuit of romance more difficult than in the past? What aspects make it easier?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey:  The Lost Legacy of Highcler Castle
The Countess of Carnarvon, 2013
Crown Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780770435622


Summary
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowes’s Emmy Award-winning PBS show, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon.

Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters, and photographs, the current Lady Carnarvon has written a transporting story of this fabled home on the brink of war.
 
Much like her Masterpiece Classic counterpart Lady Cora Crawley, Lady Almina was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Alfred de Rothschild, who married his daughter off at a young age, her dowry serving as the crucial link in the effort to preserve the Earl of Carnarvon's ancestral home. Throwing open the doors of Highclere Castle to tend to the wounded of World War I, Lady Almina distinguished herself as a brave and remarkable woman.
 
This rich tale contrasts the splendor of Edwardian life in a great house against the backdrop of the First World War and offers an inspiring and revealing picture of the woman at the center of the history of Highclere Castle. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1963
• Raised—Greater London, England, UK
• Education—University of St Andrews
• Currently—lives in Highclere Castle, Berkshire, England

Fiona Carnarvon is the eldest of six daughters born to Ronnie Aitken and Francis Farmer. Her father worked in London in banking and rescuing companies. His father had been a general in the army and came from a family of generals and landowners. "But the family lost everything, so my father went to work in the city,” says Lady Carnarvon.

Fiona studied English and German at the University of St Andrews before becoming a senior auditor at Coopers & Lybrand. In 1995 she established her own fashion label, Azur, which operated until 2004.

In 1996 she met her husband, George Herbert, at a charity dinner. The two shared a love of World War I poetry, and three years later they married. After his father died in 2001, "Geordie" became the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, and Fiona became the Countess of Carnarvon. The couple took over the tenureship of Highclere Castle, Berkshire, where they continue to live with their son, Edward.

The castle has provided the inspiration and setting for the television series Downton Abbey and, following the show’s popularity, Lady Carnarvon has written Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle (2011), a book about the history of the castle during the First World War and her husband’s great-grandmother. (Adapted from The Telegraph, 12/22/2011.)

See the article in the Weekly Review.

Book Reviews
Few viewers know that Downton’s American chatelaine, Cora Crawley, was inspired by the real-life fifth Countess of Carnarvon, Almina Wombwell. In this history, the current Countess of Carnarvon portrays her ancestress-by-marriage as a rich and lovely arriviste who married the fifth Earl of Carnarvon in 1895. She presided over Highclere Castle (where today’s series is filmed), and the book includes lustrous photographs of Lady Almina that look like Gainsboroughs
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times


The more interesting and entertaining book is Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle. Written by the castle's current countess, Lady Fiona Carnarvon, the Eighth Countess of Carnarvon and great-granddaughter-in-law of Lady Almina, the book is a fascinating look at the woman of the house who turned her castle into a hospital for wounded British soldiers returning from World War I. (It corresponds perfectly with this season's war story line on Downton Abbey.)
USA Today


If you can’t wait for the new season of Downton Abbey ...this one’s for you....a revealing portrait of the changing times.”
New York Post
 

[A] fascinating insight into how the seriously rich once lived.
Newsweek Daily Beast
 

The present Lady Carnarvon, who tapped the family archives for her comprehensive research, dramatically captures the estate during the pre-war and war years, and paints a compelling...portrait of Lady Almina.
Newark Star-Ledger

Discussion Questions
1. Lady Almina’s wealth contributed to her social success, but far more was required to achieve prestige in her husband’s circles. What special traits and wisdom did she possess?

2. How does Downton Abbey’s Lady Cora Crawley compare to Almina? Is Cora at a disadvantage because she is American, or did outsiders perhaps have the upper hand in Edwardian England?

3. When Lady Almina opened Highclere Castle to wounded military officers, she wanted to deliver more than first-rate medical treatment; she understood that a beautiful environment would enhance the healing process as well. What can twenty-first-century medicine learn from her?

4. The author describes heated Edwardian debates over taxing the wealthy, reforms to the House of Lords, immigration, and the National Insurance Bill—issues that remain controversial today. Lady Almina was a vocal conservative. If you had been a member of the landed gentry, would you have sided with the Liberals or the Tories? How did Aubrey balance his election as a conservative with his liberal beliefs?

5. What inspired Lord Carnarvon and Aubrey to immerse themselves in worlds far removed from the English countryside? What was at the root of Lord Carnarvon’s enthusiasm for Egyptian antiquities? What surprising details did the book provide about foreign affairs in the early twentieth century?

6. Were you enticed or dismayed by the role of aristocratic women from Almina’s generation? How did they gain power? How was their power limited by their husbands and by social custom? If you were the widow Almina, would you have remarried as she did?

7. As the author provided vivid descriptions of the wardrobes, interior decorations, and feasts that marked Highclere Castle, which aspects captured your imagination the most? Was Almina’s lavish spending a good investment?

8. How did you react to the parenting protocols of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras? Was it reasonable for children of the aristocracy, whose lives were woven with royalty, to be held to a higher standard of behavior? How were the expectations for raising Porchy different from those for raising Eve?

9. Discuss the solid marriage that Almina and Lord Carnarvon enjoyed. How were they able to make a good match despite the strict courtship methods they had to follow? What accounts for the way they balanced freedom and mutual support throughout their marriage?

10. Is nobility a burden or a blessing? How would you have fared at Highclere as a servant, or as an administrative aide such as Mary Weekes?

11. How do the woes of Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham compare to those of Lord Carnarvon? How does the history of Highclere enhance your appreciation for the show? What might Almina and Lord Carnarvon think of Downton Abbey?

12. The author notes that it was the economic fallout of the Second World War, combined with new tax structures, that made it impossible to maintain the opulence of previous generations at Highclere Castle. Why is it important to preserve the building and its history, if not the lifestyle, in contemporary times?

13. Discuss your own family legacies that are tied to this time period. How did status and class affect your ancestors? Did any of them serve in the Great War? Which of your family legacies—financial or otherwise—were formed a century ago?
(Discussion questions by the publisher.)

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Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence, 1928
~350 pp. (varies by publisher)

Summary
Lawrence's frank portrayal of an extramarital affair and the explicit sexual explorations of the central characters caused this controversial book to be banned as pornography until 1960. Eventually, the subject of a landmark obscenity trial, Lawrence's lyric and sensual last novel is now regarded as "our time's most significant romance." — New York Times.

This classic tale of love and discovery pits the paralyzed and callous Clifford Chatterley against his indecisive wife and her persuasive lover. (From the publishers and Barnes & Noble.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—September 11, 1885
• Where—Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England
• Death—March 2, 1930
• Where—Vence, France
• Education—Nottingham University College

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresenta-tion of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage."

At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. Lawrence is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature, although some feminists object to the attitudes toward women and sexuality found in his works.

Born as the fourth child of Arthur John Lawrence, a barely literate miner, and Lydia (née Beardsall), a former schoolmistress, Lawrence spent his formative years in the coal mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. His birthplace, in Eastwood, 8a Victoria Street, is now a museum.

His working class background and the tensions between his parents provided the raw material for a number of his early works—including the novel Sons and Lovers. Lawrence would return to this locality, which he was to call "the country of my heart," as a setting for much of his fiction.

Education & Early Career
The young Lawrence attended Beauvale Board School (now renamed Greasley Beauvale D. H. Lawrence Infant School in his honor) from 1891 until 1898, becoming the first local pupil to win a County Council scholarship to Nottingham High School in nearby Nottingham. There is a house in the Junior School named after him.

He left in 1901, working for three months as a junior clerk at Haywood's surgical appliances factory before a severe bout of pneumonia ended this career. While convalescing he often visited Haggs Farm, the home of the Chambers family and began a friendship with Jessie Chambers. An important aspect of this relationship with Jessie and other adolescent acquaintances was a shared love of books, an interest that lasted throughout Lawrence's life.

In the years 1902 to 1906 Lawrence served as a pupil teacher at the British School, Eastwood. He went on to become a full-time student and received a teaching certificate from University College Nottingham in 1908. During these early years he was working on his first poems, some short stories, and a draft of a novel, Laetitia, that was eventually to become The White Peacock. At the end of 1907 he won a short story competition in the Nottingham Guardian, the first time that he had gained any wider recognition for his literary talents.

In the autumn of 1908 the newly qualified Lawrence left his childhood home for London. While teaching in Davidson Road School in Croydon, he continued writing. Some of the early poetry, submitted by Jessie Chambers, came to the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of the influential The English Review. Hueffer then commissioned the story "Odour of Chrysanthemums" which, when published in that magazine, encouraged Heinemann, a London publisher, to ask Lawrence for more work.

Writer
His career as a professional author now began in earnest, although he taught for a further year. Shortly after the final proofs of his first published novel The White Peacock appeared in 1910, Lawrence's mother died. She had been ill with cancer. The young man was devastated and he was to describe the next few months as his "sick year." It is clear that Lawrence had an extremely close relationship with his mother and his grief following her death became a major turning point in his life, just as the death of Mrs. Morel forms a major turning point in his autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers, a work that draws upon much of the writer's provincial upbringing.

In November 1911, pneumonia struck once again. After recovering his health Lawrence decided to abandon teaching in order to become a full time author. He also broke off an engagement to Louie Burrows, an old friend from his days in Nottingham and Eastwood.

In March 1912 the author met Frieda Weekley (nee von Richthofen), with whom he was to share the rest of his life. She was six years older than her new lover, married and with three young children. She was then married to Lawrence's former modern languages professor from Nottingham University, Ernest Weekley. She eloped with Lawrence to her parents' home in Metz, a garrison town in Germany near the disputed border with France. Their stay here included Lawrence's first brush with militarism, when he was arrested and accused of being a British spy, before being released following an intervention from Weekley's father. After this encounter Lawrence left for a small hamlet to the south of Munich, where he was joined by Weekley for their "honeymoon," later memorialized in the series of love poems entitled Look! We Have Come Through (1917).

From Germany they walked southwards across the Alps to Italy, where Lawrence completed the final version of Sons and Lovers that, when published in 1913, was acknowledged to represent a vivid portrait of the realities of working class provincial life. It was in a cottage in Fiascherino on the Gulf of Spezia where he started writing the first draft of a work of fiction that was to be transformed into two of his better-known novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love. Eventually, Weekley obtained her divorce. The couple returned to England at the outbreak of World War I and were married on July 13, 1914.

Weekley's German parentage and Lawrence's open contempt for militarism meant that they were viewed with suspicion in wartime England and lived in near destitution. The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed after an investigation into its alleged obscenity in 1915. Later, they were even accused of spying and signaling to German submarines off of the coast of Cornwall where they lived at Zennor. During this period he finished a sequel to The Rainbow, entitled Women in Love. In it Lawrence explores the destructive features of contemporary civilization through the evolving relationships of four major characters as they reflect upon the value of the arts, politics, economics, sexual experience, friendship and marriage. This book is a bleak, bitter vision of humanity and proved impossible to publish in wartime conditions. It is now widely recognised as an English novel of great dramatic force and intellectual subtlety.

In late 1917, after constant harassment by the military authorities, Lawrence was forced to leave Cornwall at three days' notice under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). Until 1919 he was compelled by poverty to shift from address to address and barely survived a severe attack of influenza.

Travels, Exile & Later Years
After the traumatic experience of the war years, Lawrence began what he termed his 'savage pilgrimage', a time of voluntary exile. He abandoned England in November 1919, to return only twice for brief visits, and with his wife spent the remainder of his life travelling. This wanderlust took him to Australia, Italy, Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka), North America, Mexico and southern France.

During this voluntary exile, Lawrence continued his writing and became recognized as one of the finest travel writers in the English language. His novels included The Lost Girl (for which he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction), Aaron's Rod, and he experimented with shorter novels or novellas. During these years he produced a number of poems and short stories. His nonfiction books include two studies of Freudian psychoanalysis and Movements in European History, a school textbook that was published under a pseudonym, a reflection of his blighted reputation in England. In late February 1922 the Lawrences left Europe behind, travelling extensively in the Asian Pacific, eventually arriving in the U.S. in September 1922. They acquired property near Taos, New Mexico, now called the D. H. Lawrence Ranch, in 1924 in exchange for the manuscript of Sons and Lovers. He stayed in New Mexico for two years, where he published Studies in Classic American Literature, a set of critical essays begun in 1917, and later described by Edmund Wilson as "one of the few first-rate books that have ever been written on the subject."

A brief voyage to England at the end of 1923 was a failure and he soon returned to Taos, convinced that his life as an author now lay in America. However, in March 1925 he suffered a near fatal attack of malaria and tuberculosis while on a third visit to Mexico. Although he eventually recovered, the diagnosis of his condition obliged him to return once again to Europe. He was dangerously ill and poor health limited his ability to travel for the remainder of his life.

The Lawrences made their home in a villa in Northern Italy, living near to Florence while he wrote The Virgin and the Gipsy and the various versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The latter book, his last major novel, was initially published in private editions in Florence and Paris and reinforced his notoriety. Lawrence responded robustly to those who claimed to be offended, penning a large number of satirical poems, published under the title of "Pansies" and "Nettles", as well as a tract on Pornography and Obscenity.

During these final years Lawrence renewed a serious interest in oil painting. Official harassment persisted and an exhibition of some of these pictures at the Warren Gallery in London was raided by the British police in mid 1929 and a number of works were confiscated. Nine of the Lawrence oils have been on permanent display in the La Fonda Hotel in Taos since shortly after his death. They hang in a small office behind the hotel's front desk and are available for viewing.

Lawrence continued to write despite his failing health. In his last months he wrote numerous poems, reviews and essays, as well as a robust defence of his last novel against those who sought to suppress it. His last significant work was a reflection on the Book of Revelation, Apocalypse. After being discharged from a sanatorium, he died at the Villa Robermond in Vence, France due to complications from tuberculosis. Frieda Weekley returned to live on the ranch in Taos and later her third husband brought Lawrence's ashes to rest there in a small chapel set amid the mountains of New Mexico. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love.
Doris Lessing

Lawrence was concerned with one end: to reveal how love, how a relationship between a man and a woman can be most touching and beautiful, but only if it is unihibited and total.
Alfred Breit

On its purely physical side [Lawrence's philosophy] seems mere sensualism, and many, not looking any further, have called it such, or even worse. But this is to misunderstand Lawrence.... Lawrence places sex at the heart of life; without sex there would be no life. Hence it is spiritual as well as physical. And it pulsates throughout the universe.
Percy Hutchinson - New York Times Book Review (11/30/1930)

Discussion Questions 
1.  The critic Julian Moynahan argues that Lady Chatterley’s Lover dramatizes two opposed orientations toward life, two distinct modes of human awareness, the one abstract, cerebral, and unvital; the other concrete, physical, and organic.” Discuss.

2.  What is the role of the manor house, the industrial village, and the wood in the novel?

3.  Many critics have argued that while Lady Chatterley’s Lover presents a daring treatment of sexuality, it is an inferior work of art, though other critics have called it a novel of the first rank. (“Lady Chatterley’s Lover, ” F. R. Leavis writes, “is a bad novel, ” while Anaïs Nin, on the other hand, describes it as “artistically...[Lawrence’s] best novel.”) What do you think?

4.  In “Apropos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (a defense of the book that he published in 1930), Lawrence wrote that “the greatest need of man is the renewal forever of the complete rhythm of life and death, the rhythm of the sun’s year, the body’s year of a lifetime, and the greater year of the stars, the soul’s year of immortality.” How is the theme of resurrection played out in the novel?

5.  From the time it was banned from unexpurgated publication in the United States and Britain until the trials in the late 1950s and early 1960s that resulted in the lifting of the ban, and even more recently, critics have argued over whether Lady Chatterley’s Loveris obscene and vulgar. Lawrence argues in “Apropos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover” that “we shall never free the phallic reality [i. e., sex]...till we give it its own phallic language and use the obscene words”; his goal was to purify these words. Critics have disagreed as to whether he succeeded in this goal; Richard Aldington notes, for example, that the words are “incrusted with nastiness” and “cannot regain their purity” and Graham Hough argues that “the fact remains that the connotations of the obscene physical words are either facetious or vulgar.” Do you think the novel is obscene or vulgar, or do you think Lawrence succeeds in his mission?

6.  “The essential function of art is moral, ” Lawrence once wrote. “Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But moral.” Do you think this proposition informs the shape, structure, and meaning of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and if so, how?

7.  Critics have often complained that one of Lawrence’s weaknesses as a novelist is his characterization. So John Middleton Murry writes of Sons and Lovers that “we can discern no individuality whatever in the denizens of Mr. Lawrence’s world. We should have thought that we should have been able to distinguish between male and female at least. But no! Remove the names, remove the sedulous catalogues of unnecessary clothing...and man and woman are as indistinguishable as octopods in an aquarium tank.” And Edwin Muir comments generally that “we remember the scenes in his novels; we forget the names of his men and women. We should not know any of them if we met them in the street.” Do you think this applies in the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover? If so, do you think it is a fault or a virtue?

8.  How does nature imagery function in the novel?
(Questions issued by Random House—cover image, top-right.)

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Lady Clementine 
Marie Benedict, 2020
Sourcebooks
336pp.
ISBN-13: 9781492666905


Summary
From Marie Benedict, the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room! An incredible novel that focuses on one of the people who had the most influence during World War I and World War II: Clementine Churchill.

In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket.

This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband.

Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• AKA—Heather Terrell
• Birth—ca. 1968-69
• Raised—Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Boston College; J.D., Boston University
• Currently—lives in Sewickley, Pennsylvania


Marie Benedict, AKA Heather Terrell, writes both adult and young adult fiction. She is perhaps best known as Marie Benedict for her works of historical fiction: The Only Woman in the Room (2019), Carnegie's Maid (2018), and The Other Einstein (2016).

As Heather Terrell, she has written Brigid of Kildare (2010, based on the medieval life of Ireland's St. Brigid) and two suspense novels, The Map Thief (2008) and The Chrysalis (2007).

Her young adult books are also under Heather Terrell: the Books of Eva series (Relic, Boundary, and Chronicle), as well as the Fallen Angel series (Fallen Angel and Eternity).

Benedict/Terrill has been drawn to stories of strong women, especially unsung heroines, both real and fictional. A book lover from childhood, it was a gift from her aunt that sparked her imagination—Marion Zimmerman Bradley's tale about the women of the Arthurian legend, The Mists of Avalon. As she told Book Reporter:

This book opened my eyes to the hidden voices and truths lurking in history and legend—particularly the buried histories of women—and set me on an admittedly circuitous path toward a life of uncovering those unknown stories and memorializing them through fiction.

Before becoming an author Benedict/Terrill practiced law in New York City. She received her B.A. from Boston College and her J.D. from Boston University. She met her husband in 2002 while standing in the customs line after landing in Hong Kong. The two were married in 2002 and have since moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they live with their children. (Adapted from various online sources.)

Book Reviews
A true tale of Clementine's ferocity and ambition through political unrest and two world wars, the novel spotlights one of the most influential behind-the-scenes women of her time.
Parade


A fascinating fictionalized account of the consummate political wife.
People


Benedict gives us a novel based on the life of the woman who historians say quietly advised Winston Churchill throughout his career.
Glamour


Benedict…delivers a winning fictionalized biography of Clementine Churchill…. It’s an intriguing novel, and the focus on the heroic counsel of a woman that has national and international impacts will resonate in the present day.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) This outstanding story deserves wide readership. Fans of historical fiction, especially set around World War II; readers who appreciate strong, intelligent female leads; or those who just want to read a compelling page-turner will enjoy this gem of a novel. —Pamela O'Sullivan, Coll. at Brockport Lib., SUNY
Library Journal


Well-researched, illuminating account of a complex, intelligent woman.
Booklist


[A] fast-paced narrative.… The thrilling ride is marred only by repetitive scenes of an impassioned Winston lashing out at Clemmie, whose stern looks immediately remind her Pug to take better care of his Cat. A rousing tale of ambition and love.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Questions to help start a discussion for LADY CLEMENTINE … then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe Clementine? Talk about her childhood, her social position as an outsider, and her maternal insecurities.

2. Explore the influence Clementine had on her husband Winston throughout their marriage, especially during the vital years leading up to and including the Second World War. To what extent do you think Winston's success, and the Allied's, is due to Clementine's wise and steady guidance? Can you point to specific incidents in the book that stood out most vividly to you?

3. What traits in, or specific actions of, Clementine do you find most admirable, considering, that is, that you find her admirable? Are there aspects of her personality which you find less to admire than others?

4. How does Winston Churchill come across in this fictional account? Where you surprised at his frequent outbursts at Clementine?

5. What other books have you read, or films have you viewed, about the famous Churchill couple? How does this fictional account compare? What insights have you gained about the two after reading Lady Clementine?

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

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Lady Cop Makes Trouble  (Kopp Sisters Series, 2)
Amy Stewart, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544409941


Summary
The best-selling author of Girl Waits with Gun returns with another adventure featuring the fascinating, feisty, and unforgettable Kopp sisters.

After besting (and arresting) a ruthless silk factory owner and his gang of thugs in Girl Waits with Gun, Constance Kopp became one of the nation’s first deputy sheriffs. She's proven that she can’t be deterred, evaded, or outrun.

But when the wiles of a German-speaking con man threaten her position and her hopes for this new life, and endanger the honorable Sheriff Heath, Constance may not be able to make things right.
 
Lady Cop Makes Trouble sets Constance loose on the streets of New York City and New Jersey—tracking down victims, trailing leads, and making friends with girl reporters and lawyers at a hotel for women. Cheering her on, and goading her, are her sisters Norma and Fleurette—that is, when they aren't training pigeons for the war effort or fanning dreams of a life on the stage.
 
Based on a true story, Girl Waits with Gun introduced Constance Kopp and her charming and steadfast sisters to an army of enthusiastic readers. Those readers will be thrilled by this second installment—also ripped from the headlines—in the romping, wildly readable life of a woman forging her own path, tackling crime and nefarious criminals along the way. (From the publisher.)

This is the second novel in the series. Girl Waits with Gun (2015) is the first.

Author Bio
• Born—ca. 1968-69
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.S., M.S., University of Texas-Austin
• Awards—(See below)
• Currently—lives in Eureka, California


Amy Stewart is the author of eight books. Her debut novel Girl Waits With Gun, based on a true story, was published to wide acclaim in 2015. Lady Cop Makes Trouble, the second in the Kopp Sisters series, came out in 2016, also to favorable reviews.

She has also written six nonfiction books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world, including four New York Times bestsellers: The Drunken Botanist (2013), Wicked Bugs (2011), Wicked Plants (2009), and Flower Confidential (2009).

She lives in Eureka, California, with her husband Scott Brown, who is a rare book dealer. They own a bookstore called Eureka Books. The store is housed in a classic nineteenth-century Victorian building that Amy very much hopes is haunted.

Media
Since her first book was published in 2001, Stewart has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and Fresh Air, she’s been profiled in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and she’s been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, the PBS documentary The Botany of Desire, and—believe it or not—TLC’s Cake Boss.

Amy has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other newspapers and magazines. She is the co-founder of the popular blog GardenRant.

Honors & Awards
Amy’s books have been translated into twelve languages, and two of them—Wicked Plants and Wicked Bugs—have been adapted into national traveling exhibits that appear at botanical gardens and museums nationwide.

She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the American Horticulture Society’s Book Award, and an International Association of Culinary Professionals Food Writing Award. In 2012, she was invited to be the first Tin House Writer-in-Residence, a partnership with Portland State University, where she taught in the MFA program.

Lectures & Events
Amy travels the country as a highly sought-after public speaker whose spirited lectures have inspired and entertained audiences at college campuses such as Cornell and the University of Minnesota, corporate offices, including Google (where she served tequila and nearly broke the Internet), conferences and trade shows, botanical gardens, bookstores, and garden clubs nationwide. Go here to find out where she’s heading next. (Author bio from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Oh, how Constance Kopp longs for the badge that tells the world she is indeed a deputy sheriff. But the powers-that-be are slow to approve her appointment. You see, in 1915, women cannot yet vote and most municipalities require that deputies be voters. So Constance is often stuck serving as a jail matron. Her immediate supervisor, affable Sheriff Heath, does allow her to be involved in some investigations ranging throughout Hackensack, New Jersey, and New York City. 
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers


It’s "True Grit," New York style. Stewart delivers the second novel in her series based on the real-life antics of Constance Kopp, one of the few female deputy sheriffs who lived 100 years ago. With encouragement from her two sisters, Constance tracks a German con man through the streets of the Big Apple. The book’s title is inspired by several actual newspaper headlines of the time about the small number of women who worked in law enforcement.
New York Post


In this comic mystery set in 1915 and based on actual events, Constance Kopp, the first female deputy sheriff in Bergen County, N.J., is still packing a pistol and an attitude.... Stewart’s second volume...is a clever, suspenseful, and funny tale of a formidable woman facing crime, politics, social stigma, all while nailing evildoers..
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Constance and her sisters are every bit as enjoyable in this outing as their first. Stewart deftly combines the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of early 20th-century New York City with the story of three women who want to live life on their own terms. [S]upporting female characters...[are] a welcome touch to the series. —Sarah Cohn, Manhattan Coll. Lib., Bronx, NY
Library Journal


[W]ry situational humor and...unique, forceful character. Stewart adeptly introduces details of early twentieth-century life in Hackensack, New Jersey, a burgeoning city on the outskirts of New York, and timely concerns such as jail reform and women’s rights, rounding out this immensely satisfying mystery.
Booklist


[P]lot details are less compelling than our rooting interest in Constance out-detecting all the men (which she does) and in the evocative period atmosphere... of early-20th-century New York City.... Smart, atmospheric fun, with enough loose ends left dangling to assure fans there will be more entries in this enjoyable series.
Kirkus Reviews


Constance is based on a real woman who, just prior to World War I, became a deputy sheriff in New Jersey, one of the first of her kind in the country. And yes, she does make trouble.... Stewart crafts a heady brew of mystery and action in a fast-moving, craftily written novel that’s fueled by actual news headlines of the day.
BookPage

Discussion Questions
1. "Improbable as it may sound, I had, at last, found work that suited me," Constance says of her job as deputy sheriff (page 4). Do you think Mrs. Headison, the first other woman law enforcement officer Constance meets, would express the same sentiment? Why or why not?

2. In addition to her deputy sheriff duties, Constance serves Paterson as the jail matron. How do the expectations and requirements of this aspect of her job compare to those of her work as a deputy? How does each position speak to Constance’s strengths and weaknesses?

3. In this sequel, we get to see how Constance embraces her new role as deputy sheriff. How have the other Kopp sisters—Fleurette and Norma—come into their own, or changed, due to their battle with Henry Kaufman and his Black Handers from Girl Waits with Gun?

4. As she stakes out the home of an escaped convict’s brother, hoping to spot her quarry, Constance observes, "The shops looked like set pieces in a theater, waiting silently behind the curtain for the lights to come up and the actors to step out in their costumes and take the parts of shopkeepers and pushcart drivers" (page 97). What part is Constance playing at this point in the novel? How does the way she sees herself differ from the ways other characters see her, such as Sheriff Heath, Mrs. Heath, Norma and Fleurette?

5. In Girl Waits with Gun, we explored the lives of women in this time period through the lens of the Kopp sisters’ experiences. In Lady Cop Makes Trouble, we again delve into the lives of women, but this time the experience is much broader, taking us out into the world as Constance herself broadens her horizons. In an era where women have limited options, discuss how characters like Providencia Monafo, Mrs. Heath, Aunt Adele, and Constance deal with fears and disappointments: How do they each choose to cope?

6. Constance reminisces on page 192 about how hard her mother tried to keep her from escaping her world of domestic duties and isolated farm life. Constance similarly wants to keep Fleurette from escaping to the city, the theater, and all she fears that entails. Discuss the ways in which worldviews change between generations—especially those experiencing the kind of social change we see happening in this novel—and how this influences your opinion of Constance and Fleurette’s relationship. Do you think Constance’s concerns are well founded? How do you imagine young women like Fleurette and her friend Helen see these concerns?

7. "Deputies follow the orders given to them by the sheriff," says Sheriff Heath (page 240). Those who don’t, he asserts, are called outlaws. It’s true that Constance hasn’t received her badge and is not legally a deputy in this novel. But do you think Constance is an outlaw according to this definition? What power do titles and labels really have—can one still embody a role without "officially" owning its label? What other labels and titles are examined and challenged in this novel?

8. Sheriff Heath goes to great pains to keep Constance’s name out of the papers and keep her from public shame over losing von Matthesius. Do you think it’s reckless of her to pursue the man despite the sheriff’s direct orders to the contrary? "You only take orders from yourself," Heath admonishes (page 235). What would you have done in her place? What other "rules" does Constance break (or bend) in her life?

9. When they catch Reinhold, the messenger boy, he exclaims morosely, "Rudy told me to watch for police, but he didn’t say nothing about a lady" (p234). Many characters focus on women not being able to do what a man can do, but what about the reverse? Identify the advantages, both illustrated in this novel and in general, of having a female law enforcement officer.

10. Much changes once Constance captures von Matthesius. Describe the changes between her and her family. What else shifts for Constance and those around her? How might things have ended if Constance had not caught von Matthesius? How would his escape influence how you viewed Constance’s actions throughout the novel?

11. "The first line came with such tenderness that it seemed as if it was meant for each one of us," Constance thinks of the Christmas carol lyrics shared in the novel’s ending (page 302). Discuss how they apply to Constance and her fellow lawmen. Why do you think the author chose to end the novel with this poignant moment?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar
Suzanne Joinson, 2012
Bloomsbury USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608198115


Summary
It is 1923. Evangeline (Eva) English and her sister Lizzie are missionaries heading for the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar. Though Lizzie is on fire with her religious calling, Eva’s motives are not quite as noble, but with her green bicycle and a commission from a publisher to write A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, she is ready for adventure.

In present day London, a young woman, Frieda, returns from a long trip abroad to find a man sleeping outside her front door. She gives him a blanket and a pillow, and in the morning finds the bedding neatly folded and an exquisite drawing of a bird with a long feathery tail, some delicate Arabic writing, and a boat made out of a flock of seagulls on her wall. Tayeb, in flight from his Yemeni homeland, befriends Frieda and, when she learns she has inherited the contents of an apartment belonging to a dead woman she has never heard of, they embark on an unexpected journey together.

A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar explores the fault lines that appear when traditions from different parts of an increasingly globalized world crash into one other. Beautifully written, and peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, the novel interweaves the stories of Frieda and Eva, gradually revealing the links between them and the ways in which they each challenge and negotiate the restrictions of their societies as they make their hard-won way toward home. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar marks the debut of a wonderfully talented new writer. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
In 2006 I bought a box of letters from Deptford Market in London and wrote a short story, "Laila Ahmed," about my quest to find out who they belonged to. This story won a New Writing Ventures prize which gave me a year’s mentoring and enough money to buy a laptop. All of this contributed very well to helping me finish A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar. The moral of this story is: go to flea markets! And car boots...and don’t get me started on the buried stories to be found in second hand and thrift shops.

I live in a small, Sussex coastal town with my husband and two tiny children. We have embraced its English seaside charm, the pier, the blustery promenade and best of all, the rock pools.

I work part-time organising international literature projects for the British Council. I travel widely, and over the past ten years have travelled and worked across most countries in the Middle East and in China, Russia and Western and Eastern Europe. For several years I specialised in projects focusing on the Arabic speaking world. I am interested in international literature and... well, stories from anywhere in the world that grab me.

The rest of the time I write. My next book is inspired by the Art Deco Shoreham Airport in Sussex, and is about early female pilots, inter-war London and the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine. I combine working on this with studying for a Ph.D in Creative Writing. Writers I admire include Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys, Vladimir Nabokov, EM Forster, William Faulkner, TS Eliot, Lawrence Durrell, AS Byatt, Marilynne Robinson, Janice Galloway, Carson McCullers, Olivia Manning, Freya Stark, Graham Greene, Alice Oswald, Sinead Morrisey, H.D., Stevie Smith, Ann Quin, Sylvia Townsend Warner. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
The dramatic opening of Suzanne Joinson’s thrilling and densely plotted first novel offers only a suggestion of the tumult to come…. Joinson, who has herself traveled widely on behalf of the British council, controls her narrative with skill: this is an impressive debut, its prose as lucid and deep as a mountain lake. Joinson also has a gift for evoking finely calibrated shifts of feeling… [she] illuminates her narrative with a playfulness that borders on the Gothic…. Through Frieda and Eva and their companions, Joinson explores notions of freedom, rootlessness, dislocation – any writer’s reliable arsenal. But she makes these themes her own.
Sara Wheeler - New York Times Book Review


It takes less than a page for Suzanne Joinson to seize your attention…. there is so much here that is wonderful: the author’s crisp, uncluttered story-telling, her graceful prose, and her ability to inhabit the character of a young woman in 1924 and a contemporary young woman with equal depth and ease. It is an impressive first novel
Nan Goldberg - Boston Globe


Ms. Joinson layers her basic narrative with references to religious hypocrisy, cultural ignorance and sexual gamesmanship, throwing in for good measure Arabic ornithological mythology, bicycling tips for the novice female rider, and the dangers of cult worship. . . . Ms. Joinson succeeds in keeping us moving and takes us to places very far away before we reach the end of this immensely satisfying story.
Norman Powers - New York Journal of Books


Present and past meld into an exploration of conflicting traditions in an impressive debut that shifts smoothly between 1920s Turkestan and present-day England. In 1923, Evangeline (Eva) English accompanies her fragile sister, Lizzie, on a missionary trip to the ancient Chinese-ruled Muslim city of Kashgar under the supervision of the stern Millicent Frost, who suspects, accurately, that Eva, with her prized bicycle—a “glorious, green BSA Lady’s Roadster”—and passion for writing, is more interested in adventure than proselytizing. Surprisingly (and disappointingly), Eva’s story is lacking in cycling and exciting exploits. In the present day, well-traveled but stuffy researcher Frieda Blakeman is startled by the appearance of both a letter deeming her the next-of-kin of a recently deceased woman, and Tayeb, an illegal Yemeni immigrant who takes refuge outside her London apartment. Though Frieda and Tayeb’s growing bond and the unfolding revelations of the modern story are more compelling than Eva’s frustratingly limited experiences and the unpleasantly stereotyped Millicent, Joinson has created in Frieda’s unusual history and the parallel struggles of Tayeb and Eva as outsiders and observers an intriguing window into the difficulties of those who attempt to reach across cultural barriers.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) "I may as well start with the bones," observes Eva, who in 1923 is traveling with sister Lizzie and officious Miss Millicent Frost to the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, where they will serve as missionaries. Lizzie truly has a calling, but Eva is quite literally along for the ride; she's got her bicycle and is planning to write a travelog. The bones, "scalded, sun-bleached, like tiny flutes," lead them to a young woman in the throes of childbirth, whose subsequent death results in their house arrest by hostile Moslem locals considering charges of murder. Meanwhile, in contemporary London, the somewhat disaffected Frieda, raised by commune-dwelling parents, befriends a gentle Yemeni refugee she's found sleeping on her doorstep and puzzles out why she has inherited the contents of a flat whose occupant she doesn't know. Refreshingly, the two stories are equally absorbing (not always the case), and their connection comes as both surprising and obvious. Verdict: Beautifully written in language too taut, piercing, and smartly observed to be called lyrical, this atmospheric first novel immediately engages, nicely reminding us that odd twists of fate sometimes aren't that odd. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


This complex and involving historical novel examines the idea of home, the consequences of exile, the connection between mother and daughter, and the power dynamics of sexual relationships.
Booklist


Eva has accompanied her younger sister Lizzie, a talented photographer, and Lizzie's domineering religious mentor Millicent to Asia in 1923 without missionary zeal but in search of adventure. Traveling by bicycle, Eva keeps a notebook she hopes to turn into a book about the journey.... Shift to [present day] London and Frieda, a think-tank specialist on Islamic youth.... Slowly Frieda and Eva's connections are revealed. Each struggles to find her voice and independence despite social pressures. Each must define love for herself, even if it defies convention.... As often happens in novels that travel between past and present, the past sparkles while the present pales.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar:

1. Talk about the two main characters—Eva and Frieda. In what ways are they different from one another? Are there any similarities? How do both women use cycling? How does each attempt to achieve independence? Do you find one's story more interesting than the other's? If so, which one...and why?

2. How would you describe the relationship between the two sisters, Eva and Lizzie?

3. Talk about Millicent Frost—what do you think of her? Is she a committed Christian and missionary? Is she evil? A hypocrite?

4. What about Tayeb—what do you think of him as a character? What is the significance of the bird he draws on the wall? Do his reflections enhance the story for you...or do you find them a distraction from the main storyline?

5. Millicent is held accountable for the death of the young woman who died during child birth. Talk about Millicent's actions—should she have assisted the woman? Was there a better alternative? Today, laws for helping strangers vary according to country, state or province. In some jurisdictions, a person who is uncertified in first aid can be held legally liable if mistakes are made during an attempt to assist a stranger. In other jurisdictions, laws protect people, certified or not, from liability as long as they respond in a rational manner. Research the difference between "Good Samaritan" and "Duty to Rescue" laws. What do you think of the laws?

6. Why do you think the two stories are told through different points of view—Eva's in the first person and Frieda's in the third? What is gained by the double perspective? Could Eva's story have been told in the third person rather than through journal entries? Might we, for instance, have learned more about Millicent's and Lizzie's natures using a third-person narrator? Or does the journal provide more immediacy than a third-person narrator would?

7. Talk about the different forms that love and intimacy take in this novel. Are some forms more "legitimate" than others...or does this novel suggest that all forms of intimacy are legitimate? How do you see intimacy?

8. Talk about the different religions encountered in this novel. What is the book's attitude toward religion? Does the novel see religion as a positive force...a power used to control...or what? Is there a difference between religions and the way in which they are practiced? Does the novel validate one religion over another?

9. How do both Eva and Frieda attempt to make sense of their parents' actions and/or views of love? In what way does the novel suggest that we are destined to repeat the mistakes of our parents? Do you believe most of us are so destined?

10. At what point did you figure out the identity of the mysterious dead woman? What clues lay along the way?

11. Talk about Kashgar. How would you describe the city and its culture? Is Joinson's portrayal adequate? What all is going on within the city? Do you find similarities between the events in 1923 and events in the 21st century?

12. Talk about the connection between women cyclists and the development of more comfortable women's attire.

13. What about the ending of the novel? Was it satisfying...or disappointing?

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

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The Lady Elizabeth
Alison Weir, 2008
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345495365


Summary
Following the tremendous success of her first novel, Innocent Traitor, acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author Alison Weir turns her masterly storytelling skills to the early life of young Elizabeth Tudor, who would grow up to become England’s most intriguing and powerful queen.

Before she is three, Elizabeth learns of the tragic fate that has befallen her mother, the enigmatic and seductive Anne Boleyn, and that she herself has been declared illegitimate, an injustice that will haunt her all her life. What comes next is a succession of stepmothers, bringing with them glimpses of love, fleeting security, tempestuous conflict, and tragedy. The death of her father puts the teenage Elizabeth in greater peril, leaving her at the mercy of ambitious and unscrupulous men. Like her mother two decades earlier, she is imprisoned in the Tower of London—and fears she will also meet her mother’s grisly end. Power-driven politics, private scandal and public gossip, a disputed succession, and the grievous example of her sister, “Bloody” Queen Mary, all cement Elizabeth’s resolve in matters of statecraft and love, and set the stage for her transformation into the iconic Virgin Queen.

Sweeping in scope, The Lady Elizabeth is a fascinating portrayal of a woman far ahead of her time—whose dangerous and dramatic path to the throne shapes her future greatness. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—Westminster, England, UK
• Education—North Western Polytechnic
• Currently—lives in Surrey, England


Alison Weir is a British writer of histories and historical novels, mostly in the form of biographies about British royalty. Her works on the Tudor period have made her a best-selling author—and the highest-selling female historian in the United Kingdom.

Weir has written biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Katherine Swynford, and the Princes in the Tower. Other focuses have included Henry VIII of England and his wives and children, Mary Boleyn, Elizabeth I, and Mary, Queen of Scots, and most recently Elizabeth of York (Henry VIII's mother). She has published historical overviews of the Wars of the Roses and royal weddings, as well as historical fiction novels on Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth I, and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Early life
Weir became interested in the field of history at the age of fourteen after reading a book about Catherine of Aragon. She was educated at City of London School for Girls and North Western Polytechnic and hoped to become a history teacher. But disillusioned with what she referred to as "trendy teaching methods," she abandoned teaching as a career.

In 1972 she married Rankin Weir in 1972 with whom she had two children in the early 1980s. Weir worked as a civil servant, and later as a housewife and mother to her children. Between 1991 and 1997, she ran a school for children with learning disabilities.

Nonfiction
In the 1970s, Weir spent four years researching and writing a nonfiction biography of the six wives of Henry VIII. Her work, deemed too long by publishers, was consequently rejected. A revised version of this biography would later be published in 1991 as The Six Wives of Henry VIII. In 1981, she wrote a book on Jane Seymour, which was again rejected by publishers—this time because it was too short.

Finally, in 1989, Weir became a published author with the publication of Britain's Royal Families, a compilation of genealogical information about the British Royal Family. She had spent the previous 22 years revising the book (eight times), finally deciding it might be "of interest to others." After organizing it into chronological order, The Bodley Head agreed to publish it.

It wasn't until the late 1990s, however, that Weir would begin writing full-time. While running the school for children with learning disabilities, she published the non-fiction works The Princes in the Tower (1992), Lancaster and York: The Wars of the Roses (1995), and Children of England: The Heirs of King Henry VIII (1996).

Eventually writing books as a full-time job, she produced Elizabeth the Queen (1998) (published in America as The Life of Elizabeth I), Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England (1999), Henry VIII: The King and His Court (2001), Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley (2003), and Isabella: She-Wolf of France, Queen of England (2005). Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess followed in 2007, The Lady in The Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn in 2009, and Traitors of the Tower in 2010. In 2011, she completed The Ring and the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings and Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings, the first full non-fiction biography of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn. In 2013, Weir published an historical biography of Henry VIII's mother, Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World.

Many of Weir's works deal with the Tudor period, which she considers...

the most dramatic period in our history, with vivid, strong personalities... The Tudor period is the first one for which we have a rich visual record, with the growth of portraiture, and detailed sources on the private lives of kings and queens. This was an age that witnessed a growth in diplomacy and the spread of the printed word.

Fiction
Weir wrote historical novels while a teenager, and her novel in the genre of historical fiction, Innocent Traitor, based on the life of Lady Jane Grey, was published in 2006. When researching Eleanor of Aquitaine, Weir realized that it would "be very liberating to write a novel in which I could write what I wanted while keeping to the facts." She decided to make Jane Grey her focus because she "didn't have a very long life and there wasn't a great deal of material."

Weir said she found the transition to fiction easy:

Every book is a learning curve, and you have to keep an open mind. I am sometimes asked to cut back on the historical facts in my novels, and there have been disagreements over whether they obstruct the narrative, but I do hold out for the history whenever I can.

Her second novel, The Lady Elizabeth (2008) deals with the life of Queen Elizabeth I before her ascent to the throne. Her third novel, The Captive Queen (2010) is about Eleanor of Aquitaine, also the focus of a non-fiction biography Weir had written in 1999.

Writing style
Weir's writings have been catagorized as "popular history," a genre that has attracted criticism from academia. According to one source on sound academic writing, it's purpose is...

to inform and entertain a large general audience. In popular history, dramatic storytelling often prevails over analysis, style over substance, simplicity over complexity, and grand generalization over careful qualification. (Hamilton College)

Weir, however, argues that...

History is not the sole preserve of academics, although I have the utmost respect for those historians who undertake new research and contribute something new to our knowledge. History belongs to us all, and it can be accessed by us all. And if writing it in a way that is accessible and entertaining, as well as conscientiously researched, can be described as popular, then, yes, I am a popular historian, and am proud and happy to be one.

Kathryn Hughes, writing in The Guardian, said of Weir's popular historian label, "To describe her as a popular historian would be to state a literal truth—her chunky explorations of Britain’s early modern past sell in the kind of multiples that others can only dream of."

Reviews of Weir's works have been mixed.

• The Independent said of The Lady in the Tower that "it is testament to Weir's artfulness and elegance as a writer that The Lady in the Tower remains fresh and suspenseful, even though the reader knows what's coming."
• On the other hand, Diarmaid MacCulloch, in a review of Henry VIII: King and Court, called it "a great pudding of a book, which will do no harm to those who choose to read it. Detail is here in plenty, but Tudor England is more than royal wardrobe lists, palaces and sexual intrigue."
• The Globe and Mail, reviewing the novel, The Captive Queen, said that she had "skillfully imagined royal lives" in previous works, "but her style here is marred by less than subtle characterizations and some seriously cheesy writing"
• Roger Boyle in The New York Times said of Elizabeth of York, "Weir tells Elizabeth's story well…she is a meticulous scholar. The everyday minutiae of life are painstakingly described…Most important, Weir sincerely admires her subject, doing honor to an almost forgotten queen."

Personal life
Weir now lives in Surrey with her husband and two sons. She has called "Mrs Ellen," a fictional character from her novel about Jane Grey, most like her own personality and commented that, "As I was writing the book, my maternal side was projected into this character."

Weir is a supporter of the renovation of Northampton Castle, proclaiming the estate a "historic site of prime importance. It would be tragic if it were to be lost forever. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/09/2013.)

Book Reviews
Weir lends her considerable historical knowledge to the early years of England's famous queen in this absorbing second novel. The tale chronicles the life of Elizabeth I from her early childhood to her coronation, through the final years of her father, Henry VIII, and the brief reigns of her siblings, Edward VI and Queen Mary. Renowned for her "mercurial temperament" and "formidable intelligence," in Weir's account Elizabeth spends her childhood shuttling between royal estates and preparing for life as a "great lady" after she is stripped of her position as successor to the British throne following the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn. As Elizabeth grows, her progressive views on women's roles, religion, and politics take shape-including her legendary vow never to marry, forged through observation of others' relationships as well as a painful first-hand brush with romance at age fourteen. Weir's Elizabeth is nuanced and enchanting, and the author lends a refreshing perspective to well-known characters and events in British history, such as the fates of her father's six wives and the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey, the subject of her first historical novel. History buffs will enjoy this entertaining look into the rarely explored early life of one of England's most fascinating characters.
Publishers Weekly

The experiences of Elizabeth I make for the ultimate royal bedtime story, and Weir's sophomore fiction offering (after last year's New York Times best-selling Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey) about the life of Elizabeth before she ascended to the throne is the finest of these to date. From the time of her mother's death when she was three to her inheritance of the throne in her twenties, danger always came at Elizabeth from some corner. Early in her life, she was stripped of her title of princess; later, she had to defend her virtue from the roving eyes and hands of her stepfather; and, finally, she had to navigate the deadly waters between her Protestant faith and her sister's fanatical Catholicism. Several times Elizabeth barely escaped alive; hers was not a life that could be borne by the average person. Weir successfully depicts this extraordinary young woman who beat the odds to become one of the world's greatest rulers, once again delivering a solid, gripping historical novel chock-full of detail. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.
Library Journal

This novel offers a glimpse at the motherless childhood and adolescence of the Virgin Queen. A straightforward chronological narrative, her story is told by an omniscient narrator and divided into three parts. "The King's Daughter" describes her early years, including her "demotion" from Princess to Lady at age three, after the beheading of her mother, Anne Boleyn. "The King's Sister" covers the time after Henry VIII's death, when Elizabeth's younger brother, King Edward, is on the throne. Imagining Elizabeth's adolescence, Weir writes convincingly of the struggles to focus on studies and stay true to her vow of celibacy when confronted with the overwhelming emotions of a teenage crush. The final section, "The Queen's Sister," relates the tale of political intrigue that finally led Elizabeth to succeed her sister Mary to the throne. Weir's writing is clear and engaging, and although readers know that the protagonist will eventually rule, the story remains suspenseful. The main characters are well drawn, and the historical figures are recognizable, although sometimes the multitude of minor figures becomes confusing. A genealogy at the novel's beginning, and vivid descriptions of the British Court, royal attire, and the Tower of London orient readers to the story's setting. Recurring political and religious repercussions of Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church also permeate the novel. The Lady Elizabeth will appeal to teens interested in British history and orphaned-princess stories. —Sondra VanderPloeg, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH
School Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. Alison Weir talks about balancing the duties of novelist and historian. What kind of obligation do you think a historical novelist has to the facts of history? Should a writer let facts stand in the way of telling a good story? Are there parts of The Lady Elizabeth where you felt that Weir erred on one side or the other?

2. How does Elizabeth’s girlhood determine the woman she grows up to be? What are some of the events that shape the kind of queen she will become?

3. Although Weir relies on unproven assertions in her portrayal of Elizabeth’s relationship with Thomas Seymour, some of the most shocking episodes, such as the scene where Elizabeth’s clothes are cut away, are recorded events. How could the two women charged with supervising Elizabeth, Kat Astley and Katherine Parr, allow these sorts of “games” to go on, and even participate in them? Do you think that this sort of abuse was a relic of less-civilized times, or is it something that could still happen today?

4. How do Elizabeth’s views on religion change over the course of the novel, and what contributes to those changes? Compare her religious beliefs with those of her society; is she typical of her times?

5. In the Tudor era, religion and politics were virtually synonymous. In twenty-first century America, religion has once again become bound up with politics, despite the constitutional separation of church and state. Does the Tudor experience, as detailed in The Lady Elizabeth, have any lessons for modern-day America?

6. In the accompanying interview, Weir writes about Edward VI: “Had he lived, I am convinced that he would have been as fanatical a Protestant as Mary Tudor was a Catholic, and that he would have been another autocratic king like his father.” Do you agree or disagree?

7. Do you share Weir’s sympathy for Henry VIII? Why or why not?

8. Torture plays a significant part in The Lady Elizabeth. The threat of it is omnipresent, and it is used almost as a matter of course by a government intent on eliciting the answers it requires from its citizens. How effective is torture for Henry’s government as a political strategy, regardless of any moral considerations? Compare the attitude toward torture in Tudor times and the current debate about the use of torture in the War on Terrorism. Are there significant differences?

9. In what ways can Elizabeth be seen as a kind of proto-feminist? Would she have viewed herself in the kinds of terms that contemporary feminists might?

10. Twice in the novel, Elizabeth encounters what she believes to be the ghost of her executed mother, Anne Boleyn. Does Weir want us to believe that she has really seen her mother’s spirit? What other explanations might there be?

11. How do Mary’s feelings toward Elizabeth change over the course of her life, especially once she becomes queen? Why do you think these changes occur?

12. Queen Mary is advised by many to imprison or even execute Elizabeth. Do you think that she is too lenient toward her younger sister? Does she allow her personal feelings to trump her duties as head of state? What would you have done in Mary’s position?

13. When Elizabeth learns of the plots against Mary, why doesn’t she alert her sister? Is she right to hold her tongue?

14. What lessons do you think Elizabeth learns from Henry and Mary about how to rule, and about how not to rule?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

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The Lady of the Rivers  (Cousins' War, 3)
Philippa Gregory, 2011
Simon & Schuster
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451664140


Summary
Philippa Gregory masterfully weaves passion, adventure, and witchcraft into the story of Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, who would survive two reigns and two wars to become the first lady at the rival courts of both Lancaster and York.

When Jacquetta is married to the Duke of Bedford, English regent of France, he introduces her to a mysterious world of learning and alchemy. Her only friend in the great household is the duke’s squire Richard Woodville, who is at her side when the duke’s death leaves her a wealthy young widow. The two become lovers and marry in secret, returning to England to serve at the court of the young King Henry VI, where Jacquetta becomes a close and loyal friend to his new queen.

The Woodvilles soon achieve a place at the very heart of the Lancaster court, though Jacquetta can sense the growing threat from the people of England and the danger of their royal York rivals. As Jacquetta fights for her king and her queen, she can see an extraordinary and unexpected future for her daughter Elizabeth: a change of fortune, the throne of England, and the white rose of York. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1954
• Where—Nairobi, Kenya
• Raised—Bristol, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Sussex University; Ph.D., Edinburgh University
• Currently—lives in the North York Moors, Yorkshire, England


Philippa Gregory is a British historical novelist, writing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Early life and academic career
Philippa Gregory was in Nairobi, Kenya, the second daughter of Elaine (Wedd) and Arthur Percy Gregory, a radio operator and navigator for East African Airways. When she was two years old, her family moved to Bristol, England.

She was a "rebel" at Colston's Girls' School where she obtained a B grade in English and two E grades in History and Geography at A-level. She then went to journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year as an apprentice with the Portsmouth News before she managed to gain a place on an English literature degree course at the University of Sussex, where she switched to a history course.

She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.

Private life
Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing a PhD in 18th-century literature and living in a cottage on the Pennine Way with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter, Victoria. They divorced before the book was published.

Following the success of Wideacre and the publication of The Favoured Child, she moved south to near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the Wideacre trilogy was set. Here she married her second husband Paul Carter, with whom she has a son. She divorced for a second time and married Anthony Mason, whom she had first met during her time in Hartlepool.

Gregory now lives on a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm in the North York Moors national park, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening.

Writing
She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of the slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.

Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. She has also written contemporary fiction—Perfectly Correct; Mrs Hartley And The Growth Centre; The Little House; and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.

Some of her novels have won awards and have been adapted into television dramas. The most successful of her novels has been The Other Boleyn Girl, published in 2002 and adapted for BBC television in 2003 with Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May and Jared Harris. In the year of its publication, The Other Boleyn Girl also won the Romantic Novel of the Year and has subsequently spawned sequels—The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Other Queen. Miramax bought the film rights to The Other Boleyn Girl and produced a film of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and co-starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry Tudor, Juno Temple as Jane Parker, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn. It was filmed in England and generally released in 2008.

Gregory has also published a series of books about the Plantagenets, the ruling houses that preceded the Tudors, and the Wars of the Roses. Her first book The White Queen (2009), centres on the life of Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. The Red Queen (2010) is about Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. The Lady of the Rivers (2011) is the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, first married to John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry the Fifth. The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012) is the story of Anne Neville, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the wife of Richard III. The next book, The White Princess (2013), centres on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII.

Controversy
In her novel The Other Boleyn Girl, her portrayal of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn drew criticism. The novel depicts Anne as cold and ruthless, as well as heavily implying that the accusations that she committed adultery and incest with her brother were true, despite it being widely accepted that she was innocent of the charges. Novelist Robin Maxwell refused on principle to write a blurb for this book, describing its characterisation of Anne as "vicious, unsupportable." Historian David Starkey, appearing alongside Gregory in a documentary about Anne Boleyn, described her work as "good Mills and Boon" (a publisher of romance novels), adding that: "We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous." Susan Bordo criticized Gregory's claims to historical accuracy as "self-deceptive and self-promoting chutzpah", and notes that it is not so much the many inaccuracies in her work as "Gregory’s insistence on her meticulous adherence to history that most aggravates the scholars."

Media
Gregory is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, with short stories, features and reviews. She is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team. She won the 29 December 2008 edition of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC1, taking Elizabeth Woodville as her specialist subject.

Charity work
Gregory also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia. Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book A Respectable Trade.

Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.

In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in batik and pottery and is working with larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)

Book Reviews
The best yet, a lively tale of witchcraft and romance set amid civil wars in England and France.
Associated Press


Wielding magic again in her latest War of the Roses novel (after The Red Queen), Gregory demonstrates the passion and skill that has made her the queen of English historical fiction. Her heroine-narrator, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, who possesses second sight, is but 14 when she witnesses the execution of Joan of Arc. Joan's persecutor, the duke of Bedford, marries Jacquetta the next year in a vain attempt to access her powers, but then leaves her a wealthy widow. Defying convention, Jacquetta chooses a new husband herself: the duke's handsome young squire, Richard Woodville, with whom she has a dozen children, including Elizabeth, the future queen. Richard serves at King Henry VI's court, and Jacquetta befriends his new queen. When the king's widowed mother weds Owen Tudor, tolerance spreads for women who defy convention. As in previous works, Gregory portrays spirited women at odds with powerful men, endowing distant historical events with drama, and figures long dead or invented with real-life flaws and grand emotions. She makes history (mostly accurate) come alive for readers (mostly women) by giving credence to persistent rumors that academic historians (mostly men) have brushed aside.
Publishers Weekly


The best writers of historical fiction imbue the past with the rich tapestry of life and depth, and Gregory is surely counted among their number. Her third offering in the "Cousins' War" series (after The White Queen and The Red Queen) is the story of Jacquetta, mother of the White Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Given first to a husband who desires only the magical powers she might possess, Jacquetta marries second for love, much below her station. Still, she manages to keep her family in the good graces of the ineffectual King Henry VI, placing them ultimately on the losing side of the Wars of the Roses. She and her husband hold on, however, finally settling in the country to raise their large brood and await the ascendancy of their daughter Elizabeth, who will bring the family to prominence again. Verdict: A worthy addition to this fascinating series, once again distinguished by excellent characterization, thorough research, and a deft touch with the written word. [With fellow historians David Baldwin and Michael Jones, Gregory is publishing in September a nonfiction account The Women of the Cousins' War: The Duchess, the Queen, and the King's Mother.—Ed.] —Pam O'Sullivan, SUNY Coll. at Brockport
Library Journal


A duchess endowed with second sight is caught up in the War of the Roses, in another installment of Gregory'sCousins' Warseries (The Red Queen, 2010).... Although the complexity of the historical and political events threatens to overwhelm Jacquetta's story, the suspenseful pace never flags, although it's clear that Jacquetta has allied herself—at least for now—with the losing side.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Jacquetta's first main influence is her great-aunt, Jehanne of Luxembourg, who tells her: 'A woman who seeks great power and wealth has to pay a great price.' Why do you think she says this to her niece? Was she right, and what sorts of power would she have been referring to? Do we see the women in the story exercising other kinds of power?

2. Joan of Arc is absolutely certain that her voices come from God. Jacquetta is much less sure where hers are from, saying, 'I never think of it as a gift coming from God or the Devil.' What sort of voices do you think they are hearing, and do their different beliefs affect the future of either character?

3.  As the story opens, England is ruled by the boy king, Henry VI, as his father has died following his famous conquests in France. Was Henry V an impossible act to follow? What kinds of pressure were there on the young Henry VI? And how might things have been different if his father had not died when he did?

4. 'The whole of France is ours by right,' says the Duke of Bedford. Would most people have thought that at the time and how does that idea seem to us nowadays? Why did England want lands in France? Jacquetta has a strong vision that 'it won't be him [Henry VI] who loses Calais'; what is the significance of this? Is this the author giving a nod to the actual (but far later) historical event of the loss of Calais?

5. The Duke of Bedford surrounds himself with alchemists and astrologers, in his search for the philosopher's stone. Do you think this makes him a man of science or superstition, and is Jacquetta just another scientific instrument?

 6.  How does this search for knowledge compare to the women's practice of witchcraft, for example Margery Jourdemayne and her planting by the stars? Jacquetta later says, 'Every woman is a mad ugly bad old witch somewhere in her heart'. What does she mean by this and do you agree?

7.  Both Jacquetta and Margaret d'Anjou leave their native country as very young women, never to see their mothers again. Compare the way they cope with this and in what ways it affects their later lives. What sort of mothers do they themselves turn out to be?

 8.  Henry V's judgements are often inconsistent, for example on his summer progress when nobody can be sure if they will be punished or pardoned. He and Margaret are also known for the lavish rewards heaped on their favourites. So was Jack Cade right to rebel? Should a subject always be loyal to the monarch?

 9.  When Jacquetta and Richard Woodville finally get together, she says, 'I have become a woman of earth and fire, and I am no longer a girl of water and air.' How has the author used imagery of the elements throughout the book?

10.  Even though Jacquetta realises Elizabeth has the Sight, she is reluctant to pass on the knowledge of how to use it to her daughter. Yet, she does so. Given the danger if they were discovered, should she have done this? And was she right to lie to Elizabeth on her wedding, when she felt there would be no real future for the marriage?

11.  Jacquetta and Richard are drawn together by their passionate love and dare to marry against the odds. But what keeps them together, through their many separations, the birth of so many children and the frequent turns in their fortunes and status? Do you think their relationship changes?

 12.  After the battle of Blore Heath, Jacquetta takes shelter with a blacksmith and his family, and realises 'these are the people that we should be fighting for'. What does this night on the flea-ridden mattress teach her? What do you make of the blacksmith's comment, 'It's a good day already, the best we've ever had'?

13.  Jacquetta fears that she has almost come full circle, and that she'll find herself in 'a country which was like that of my childhood, with one king in the north and one in the south, and everyone forced to choose which they thought was the true one and everyone knowing their enemy and waiting for revenge'. Do you think this comes true? And how did those early days prepare her to survive and even thrive with her family?

 14.  When Margaret abandons Jacquetta to potential danger, she tells her, 'They won't hurt you, Jacquetta. Everyone likes you.' Do you feel she's right?

 15.  The Lord Mayor of London sends for Jacquetta to act as an intermediary between the aldermen of the city and the queen. This is a recorded historical event, one of the rare times that Jacquetta is acting as a principal in a major event. How different is this to anything she's attempted before? And is Richard right when he says 'No other woman could have done it'?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

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978-1451664140

Lady President 
Linda Owen, 2014
Blue Ash Press/Bookbaby
310 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781490814001


Summary
African dictator Bantu Sibaba rules his new nation with an iron fist. Most of the countries in south and central Africa no longer exist, having been gobbled up by his troops. Regarded as a modern-day Stalin, he maintains power with bomb threats. Now he wants to rule the world. Only one person on earth can stop him: the female president of the United States.

President Stephanie Franklin knew Sibaba years ago, while she was in the Peace Corps. As she struggles to keep the peace between their two nations, Stephanie is surrounded by deception, revenge, greed, murder and corruption in Washington. An assassin shoots at her. She endures plots against her presidency and her life by a political enemy, a journalist, an unfaithful husband, and an envious identical twin.

Through it all, she is aided by the man who has silently loved her for over a decade. Even with Adam at her side, will she survive the attempts on her life long enough to save America from nuclear war?

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—San Marcos, Texas, USA
• Education—B.S., Southwest Texas University; M.Div., Perkins School of Theology
• Currently—lives in San Antonio, Texas


Linda Owen has had thousands of articles published. She is a regular writer on faith, retirement, travel, and general interest subjects for a variety of newspapers and magazines, both secular and Christian.

She received a Master of Divinity Degree from Perkins School of Theology (SMU) and served briefly as a pastor and a chaplain. Linda teaches a weekly Bible study and has written Bible Study Curriculum for the United Methodist Publishing House. For five years she edited a Christian magazine. She is also the author of Emergency Care, an inspirational suspense. She lives in San Antonio, TX, with her husband Ervin. (From the author.)

Visit the author's website.
See article on Linda.

Book Reviews
President Franklin is a woman of great compassion and integrity.... Owen skillfully shows how her Christian faith guides her decisions and provides her with the strength to face her personal and political crises.... Entertaining, romantic suspense with vivid characters and a fast-paced plot.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How did you feel about Stephanie? Is this the story of an incompetent president or a competent one? What makes you say that?

2. How many times did Stephanie “die”? Did the author surprise you repeatedly?

3. The author reports that the epilogue was not in the original draft. Examine the novel with it missing. Which makes the better book? Are you the kind of reader who needs a happy ending?

4. What happened in the beginning of the novel that fueled the plots to kill the president?

5. Describe the main characters—personality traits, motivations, inner qualities. Why do the characters do what they do? (Lowe, Adam, Stephanie, Samantha, Cheri).

6. Several characters change or evolve throughout the course of the story. Which one was your favorite? What events trigger the changes?

7. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way?

8. Discuss the book’s structure. Does the author use any narrative devices like flashbacks or multiple voices in telling the story?

9. Did the author lead you to a new understanding or awareness of God’s role in your life?

10. Do you believe in the healing power of God? Even if there is no healing miracle, where do you see God at work in the characters’ lives?

11. Do you think illness makes people closer to God or causes them to distance themselves from Him? What has been the pattern in your life?

12. Were you satisfied with Stephanie’s answers to Debra about God and her sinfulness? (See Chapter 46.) What else would you have told the doctor? Have you seen God working through human beings to accomplish His plan? When?

13. How do you feel about having a Christian president? Do you agree with Ken Chang’s statement that a leader’s faith is unimportant? (Chapter 26) Why do you feel that way? What are the Christian themes that thread the plot? What does the storyline reveal about love and war?

14. Do you believe that a Christian should be willing to sacrifice for others? Do you think sacrificing your life is only done by physical death?

15. How effectively does the author portray the presence of spirituality in the characters’ lives? Does the author succeed in presenting prayer in a way that feels relevant? Are there specific characters whose beliefs resonate with yours?

16. What made you want to read this book? Did it live up to your expectations? Why or why not?

17. What do you see as the major message of the novel? Would you recommend it to a friend?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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The Lager Queen of Minnesota 
J. Ryan Stradal, 2019
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399563058


Summary
A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest.

Two sisters, one farm.

A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living.

So she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself.

With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, and makes their company motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots. It's Blotz."

Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen's is as rigid as a steel keg. Yet one day, Helen will find she needs some help herself, and she could find a potential savior close to home. . . if it's not too late.

Meanwhile, Edith's granddaughter, Diana, grows up knowing that the real world requires a tougher constitution than her grandmother possesses. She earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up—will that change their fortunes forever, and perhaps reunite her splintered family?

Here we meet a cast of lovable, funny, quintessentially American characters eager to make their mark in a world that's often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we're surprised, moved, and delighted. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1975
• Raised—Hastings, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


J. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest (2015) and national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota (2020).

His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Granta, Rumpus, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places. His debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the American Booksellers Association Indie's Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association award for fiction, and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for debut fiction.

Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
I read J. Ryan Stradal’s Kitchens of the Great Midwest on a flight. I buckled my seatbelt, opened the book and when I looked up again, the flight attendant was asking if I needed assistance getting off the plane. I didn’t, but now you know the spell this author can cast. He does it again with The Lager Queen of Minnesota.
Elisabeth Egan - New York Times Book Review


[Its] generous spirit makes The Lager Queen of Minnesota a pleasure to read and the perfect pick-me-up on a hot summer day.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post


Wonderful…. Stradal’s gift for getting the reader to invest in these lives is particularly profound.
Chicago Tribune


Delightfully intoxicating….  [It] will make you smile with its droll humor, and its poignant moments will stop you to reread and confirm that they are really that good. In beer-geek slang, Stradal’s novel is "crushable" — easygoing, well-balanced, super-drinkable with tons of flavor…. [It]will make you go back for more.
USA Today


Everything about this book satisfies—from how the characters grow to how beer-making is described to Stradal's hilarious assessment of lagers vs. IPAs. You may never drink a beer in ignorance again.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


This charmer of a tale is a loving ode to the Midwest, the power of persistence and, perhaps above all, beer.… Warm, witty and—like any good craft beer—complex, the saga delivers a subtly feminist and wholly life-affirming message.
People


Complex female characters, tragedies, and descriptions…will awaken all your senses.… The Lager Queen of Minnesota …could cement J. Ryan Stradal as the King of Midwestern novels.
Entertainment Weekly


The fortunes and foibles of a brewery mirror the relationship between two sisters tussling over a family farm in this quirky, enchanting novel reminiscent of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres.
Oprah Magazine


Stradal follows up Kitchens of the Great Midwest with a refreshing story about women who know how to take charge… a testament to the setbacks and achievements that come with following one’s passion.… [S]ometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always winning novel.
Publishers Weekly


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Booklist


[T]his is an ultimately hopeful and heartwarming story… [as] these truly original characters overcome their challenges and take care of each other. An absolutely delightful read, perfect for a summer day with a good beer and a piece of pie.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
 1. At the center of the story is a family divided over an unfairly split inheritance. How do you feel about how each sister reacted to their father’s decision? Did this situation evoke memories of lopsided inheritances or contested wills in your own family?

2. Helen instantly loves beer on her first taste and soon comes to the conclusion that she wants to be a brewer. How would you characterize her ambition? Does her relationship with Orval feel honest or calculated?

3. When we first meet Diana, she is stealing tools from garages and selling them on the internet to make money. In spite of this, how does she become a sympathetic character? What actions does she make that reveal her kindness and generosity?

4. Edith likes to think of herself as a simple person—or does she? In what ways is she actually quite complicated? How does she reveal herself to be as calculating or focused as Helen?

5. Edith is convinced that her life would have been different had she received her half of the family farm. How would it have it been different? Consequently, how would Diana’s life have been different?

6. What do you think of the "education" Frank Schabert gives Diana about brewing? Do you agree with his methods?

7. Each of the sisters experience the loss of a beloved husband. How are they different in how they express their grief? How are they similar?

8. The relationships within the book, as in life, necessarily evolve and adapt as time passes. How do you feel about Diana and Clarissa’s friendship, and the reasons they grew apart?

9. If there was one more chapter after the final scene, what do you imagine might happen?

10. Who do you feel is the "lager queen of Minnesota," if anyone?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Lake House 
Kate Morton, 2015
Atria Books
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451649321


Summary
An intricately plotted, spellbinding new novel of heartstopping suspense and uncovered secrets.

Living on her family’s idyllic lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented sixteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure…

One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest child, eleven-month-old Theo, has vanished without a trace. What follows is a tragedy that tears the family apart in ways they never imagined.

Decades later, Alice is living in London, having enjoyed a long successful career as an author. Theo’s case has never been solved, though Alice still harbors a suspicion as to the culprit. Miles away, Sadie Sparrow, a young detective in the London police force, is staying at her grandfather’s house in Cornwall.

While out walking one day, she stumbles upon the old estate—now crumbling and covered with vines, clearly abandoned long ago. Her curiosity is sparked, setting off a series of events that will bring her and Alice together and reveal shocking truths about a past long gone...yet more present than ever.

A lush, atmospheric tale of intertwined destinies, this latest novel from a masterful storyteller is an enthralling, thoroughly satisfying read. (Fromthe publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Where—Berri, South Australia
• Education—B.A., and M.A., University of Queensland
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Australia


Kate Morton is the eldest of three sisters. Her family moved several times before settling on Tamborine Mountain where she attended a small country school. She enjoyed reading books from an early age, her favourites being those by Enid Blyton.

She completed a Licentiate in Speech and in Drama from Trinity College London and then a summer Shakespeare course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Later she earned first-class honours for her English Literature degree at the University of Queensland, during which time she wrote two full-length manuscripts (which are unpublished) before writing the story that would become the 2006 novel The House at Riverton.

Following this she obtained a scholarship and completed a Master's degree focussing on tragedy in Victorian literature. She is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program researching contemporary novels that marry elements of gothic and mystery fiction.

Kate Morton is married to Davin, a jazz musician and composer, and they have two sons.
Works & recognition

Works and recognition
Morton's novels have been published in 38 countries and have sold three million copies.

♦ The House at Riverton was a Sunday Times #1 bestseller in the UK in 2007 and a New York Times bestseller in 2008. It won General Fiction Book of the Year at the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards, and was nominated for Most Popular Book at the British Book Awards in 2008.

♦ Her second book, The Forgotten Garden, was a #1 bestseller in Australia and a Sunday Times #1 bestseller in the UK in 2008.

♦ In 2010, Morton's third novel, The Distant Hours, was released, followed by her fourth, The Secret Keeper, in 2012. He rmost recent novel, Lake House, came out in 2015. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/23/2015.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Bestselling storyteller Morton excels in this mystery set against the gothic backdrop of 1930s England.... Morton’s plotting is impeccable, and her finely wrought characters, brought together in the end by Sparrow’s investigation, are as surprised as readers will be by the astonishing conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


As the various skeins intersect, the story becomes unwieldy;...when such selective nondisclosure is carried to extremes, frustrated readers may be tempted to practice their skimming. An atmospheric but overlong history of family secrets and their tormented gatekeepers.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. The structure of this novel lies in recreating different time periods in Cornwall and London—in the early 1930s and in 2003. Do you feel that the author was successful in moving the reader between the historical and more contemporary times?

2. Thinking about the stories and histories in The Lake House, what themes were most interesting to you?

3. The Lake House is the English translation of Loeanneth, the house’s Cornish name. Have you read other novels in which a house features within the text as vital and alive, almost as if it is another character in its own right?

4. The main female characters, Sadie, Alice, and Eleanor are all strong women with flaws. Is this the way you saw them? Did their imperfections allow you to identify or sympathize with one more than another? If so, why do you think that was?

5. Sadie Sparrow’s job as a detective and Alice’s bestselling crime-writing career has allowed an interesting incursion of the crime genre into The Lake House’s gothic mystery genre. Were you aware of this in your reading?

6. Both World War I and II have tragic and far-reaching effects on the characters and narrative of The Lake House. Discuss.

7. Mysteries, twists, family secrets, carefully placed red herrings, and unexpected revelations are now compelling traditions in Kate Morton’s novels. What parts of the novel were key to your enjoyment of the story?

8. The author poses the often complex question of what moral obligation each character has to another within their particular stories. Were decisions made within the novel with which you disagreed? Or could you see yourself making similar decisions?

9. After Sadie stumbles upon Loeanneth, she’s drawn to it, returning daily and "no matter which way she headed out on her morning run, she always ended up in the overgrown garden." (p. 135) What is it about Loeanneth that intrigues Sadie? Why do you think she dives head first into solving the mysteries of the estate?

10. What did you think of Eleanor when you first encountered her? Did your feelings about her change? In what ways and why?

11. Many reviewers have praised Kate Morton’s writing, particularly the way she reveals family secrets. What family secrets were revealed in The Lake House? Did you find any particularly shocking? Which ones and why?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Lake of Dreams 
Kim Edwards, 2011
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670022175


Summary
With revelations that prove as captivating as the deceptions at the heart of her bestselling phenomenon The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards now gives us the story of a woman's homecoming, a family secret, and the old house that holds the key to the true legacy of a family.

At a crossroads in her life, Lucy Jarrett returns home from Japan, only to find herself haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade ago. Old longings stirred up by Keegan Fall, a local glass artist who was once her passionate first love, lead her into the unexpected. Late one night, as she paces the hallways of her family's rambling lakeside house, she discovers, locked in a window seat, a collection of objects that first appear to be useless curiosities, but soon reveal a deeper and more complex family past. As Lucy discovers and explores the traces of her lineage—from an heirloom tapestry and dusty political tracts to a web of allusions depicted in stained-glass windows throughout upstate New York—the family story she has always known is shattered, Lucy's quest for the truth reconfigures her family's history, links her to a unique slice of the suffragette movement, and yields dramatic insights that embolden her to live freely.

With surprises at every turn, brimming with vibrant detail, The Lake of Dreams is an arresting saga in which every element emerges as a carefully place piece of the puzzle that's sure to enthrall the millions of readers who loved The Memory Keeper's Daughter. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—N/A
• Reared—Skaneateles, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Colgate University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers'
   Workshop; M.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Nelson Algren Award, 1990; Pushcart Prize, 1995;
   Whiting Writers' Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Kim Edwards is the author of the short story collection The Secrets of a Fire King, which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and she has won both the Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky. (From the Hardcover edition.)

More
In the late ‘90s, Edwards was making a major splash on the literary scene. Her recently published short story collection would soon be pegged for a Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award, and would also be an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Around this charmed time, Edwards heard a story that would ultimately propel her toward a career as a bestselling novelist.

"A few months after my story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King, was published, one of the pastors of the Presbyterian church I'd recently joined said she had a story to give me," she explained in an interview on the Penguin Group USA web site. "It was just a few sentences, about a man who'd discovered late in life that his brother had been born with Down syndrome, placed in an institution at birth, and kept a secret from his family, even from his own mother, all his life. He'd died in that institution, unknown. I remember being struck by the story even as she told it, and thinking right away that it really would make a good novel. It was the secret at the center of the family that intrigued me. Still, in the very next heartbeat, I thought: Of course, I'll never write that book."

Despite Edwards's quick dismissal of the idea, it would not unhand her. She let several years slip by without going to work on the story, but she never forgot it. When she was invited to run a writing workshop for mentally disabled adults, the experience affected Edwards so profoundly that she started mulling over the pastor's story more seriously. It would be another year before Edwards actually began working on The Memory Keeper's Daughter, but once she did, she found that it came quickly and surprisingly well-developed.

In The Memory Keeper's Daughter, a man named David discovers that his newly born son is in fine health, but the child's twin sister is stricken with Down Syndrome. So, the distraught father, who harbors painful memories of his own sister's chronic illness, makes a quick but incredibly difficult decision: he asks the attending nurse to take his daughter to an institution where she might receive better care. Although he tells his wife that the child was stillborn, David's decision goes on to affect the lives of himself and his wife for the following 25 years.

Haunting, dramatic, and moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter went on to become a big seller and a critical favorite. The Library Journal hailed it as "an enthralling page-turner" and Kirkus Reviews declared that Edwards "excels at celebrating a quiet wholesomeness..."

Now that Edwards has broken into novel-writing in a big way, she is hard at work on her follow up to her smash debut. "I have begun a new novel, called The Dream Master," she says. "It's set in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York where I grew up, which is stunningly beautiful, and which remains in some real sense the landscape of my imagination. Like The Memory Keeper's Daughter, this new novel turns on the idea of a secret—that seems to be my preoccupation as a writer—though in this case the event occurred in the past and is a secret from the reader as well as from the characters, so structurally, and in its thematic concerns, the next book is an entirely new discovery." (From Barnes and Noble.)

Extras
From a 2007 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Although Edwards had been interested in writing ever since she was a little girl, she didn't actually write her first story "Cords" until she was in a fiction workshop while attending Colgate University.

• Among the many fans that Edwards has won with The Memory Keeper's Daughter is beloved novelist Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees), who said of Edwards's first novel, "I loved this riveting story with its intricate characters and beautiful language."

Her own words:
• My first job was in a nursing home—a terrible place in retrospect. It was in an old house, and the residents were so lonely. People rarely visited them. I only stayed there a couple of months, but it made a strong impression on me. Just before I left I went to get one woman for dinner, and discovered that she had died—a powerful experience when you're 17.

• Though my stories aren't autobiographical, I do sometimes use things from my life. ‘The Way It Felt to be Falling,' a story from my collection The Secrets of a Fire King, uses sky-diving as a metaphor. Like my character, I did jump out of the first plane I ever flew in. It was an amazing experience, but I've never had the urge to do it again.

• One of my greatest times of inspiration is when I'm traveling or living in a new country-there's a tremendous freedom that comes from being unfettered by your own, familiar culture, and by seeing the world from a different point of view.

• I love to swim, and I love being near water.

• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is what she said:

Well, there are so many. It's hard to choose. But I think I'd have to go with a very early influence, which was Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I read this book several times when I was quite young, and I was particularly drawn to the character of Jo, who of course was the writer, the story-teller. I'm sure it also was important to me, though perhaps not consciously so, that the novel was written by a woman. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Her latest novel, set in the Finger Lakes region of her native New York, is another tour de force tale that showcases her talent for engaging readers immediately and, her agile prose would argue, effortlessly.
Louisville Courier-Journal


Bestseller Edwards's much anticipated second novel may disappoint fans of her first, The Memory Keeper's Daughter. When Lucy Jarrett returns to her childhood home in Lake of Dreams, N.Y., she learns that her brother, Blake, who's gone into the family business, and his girlfriend hope to drain a controversial marsh to construct a high-end property. Meanwhile, Lucy, who remains haunted by her father's death in a fishing accident years earlier, reconnects with her first boyfriend, Keegan Fall, now a successful glass artist. But when she sees something familiar in the pattern of one of his pieces, and discovers a hidden note in her childhood home, Lucy finally digs into her family's mysterious past. Unfortunately, the lazy expository handling of information mutes the intrigue, and readers will see the reignited spark between Keegan and Lucy coming for miles. All loose ends eventually come together with formulaic ease to rock the family boat. Edwards is at her best when highlighting the strain between her characters.
Publishers Weekly


Lucy Jarrett returns to Lake of Dreams in upstate New York a decade after her father's mysterious death. She was only a teenager then, but she still has not absolved herself of her guilt over not going fishing with him the night he died. Her mother lives alone in a few rooms of their large family home, where Lucy discovers some old letters in a window seat. She grows determined to solve the mysteries surrounding her great-grandfather's suffragette sister, Rose, who was forced to give away an illegitimate daughter and who may have been the muse for a famous stained-glass artist. Lucy's high school boyfriend, Keegan Fall, a glass artist himself, also enters the picture. Lucy's domestic partner, Yoshi, is headed to Lake of Dreams from Japan, and Lucy's not sure if they have a future together. Many unresolved issues come to a head for Lucy in a few short weeks, and this somewhat strains credibility. Verdict: Edwards's runaway best seller, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which so engaged the hearts of many readers, is indisputably a hard act to follow. Lacking the melodramatic sizzle of its predecessor, this sophomore effort is a colorful but middling multilayered novel about family history, love, and redemption. —Keddy Ann Outlaw, formerly with Harris Cty. P.L., Houston, TX
Library Journal


Critics had conflicting opinions about Edwards’s highly anticipated second novel. Several found Lake of Dreams to be an enjoyable read, though even they acknowledged a preference for The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Others found the book overwhelmed with flaws.
Bookmarks Magazine


Edwards (The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, 2005) has created a memorable cast of easily recognizable characters. As Lucy’s investigation deepens, past and present join to reach a satisfying and thoughtful resolution. This is a powerful story about the influence of history, the importance of our beliefs, and the willingness to embrace them all. —Carol Gladstein
Booklist


Family secrets dominate this sluggish melodrama, a second novel that recalls the corrosive secret at the heart of Edwards's surprise bestseller The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005). Lucy Jarrett is front and center. When she was 17, she made what she felt was a fateful decision. She harshly dismissed her father's suggestion they go fishing on the lake; he went alone and accidentally drowned. Guilt-stricken, Lucy unceremoniously dumped her Native American boyfriend Keegan and left her hometown, the eponymous Lake of Dreams in upstate New York, to attend college out West. Then came a career as a hydrologist working for multi-nationals and a string of short-lived romances. Now, pushing 30 and unemployed, she's living with her latest lover, the Japanese engineer Yoshi, outside Tokyo. She flies home after hearing her mother has had an accident. It's minor, but Lucy is surrounded by change. Her mother has a new admirer; her uncle Art, who owns the family hardware store, is spearheading a contested lakeside development; and Keegan, married but separated, has a successful glassworks. How curious, then, that amid these upheavals, the jet-lagged Lucy should zero in on the past after discovering some hidden papers. She learns about her great-great-aunt Rose. Back in England in 1910, the 15-year-old had been seduced, impregnated and abandoned by the lord of the manor, that scoundrel. After traveling to America with her brother Joseph, she had been separated from her daughter after marching with suffragettes. All this Lucy learns from letters she has stolen from the Historical Society. Why Lucy should feel a life-changing connection to Rose is never clear; her problem is she's commitment-shy, as shown by her renewed interest in Keegan (forget about Yoshi). The rush of events near the end includes the discovery of an old will, an anguished confession about her dad's boating accident and Lucy's trashing of the family store; being the heroine, she gets a pass. It's all mush, but the feminist angle may keep the fans loyal.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. By virtue of her actions and beliefs, Rose was effectively excised from the Jarrett's family history. How unusual do you think it was for women to suffer this fate?

2. Is the name of the Jarrett family business, "Dream Master," hopeful or ominous?

3. Before she became pregnant, Rose longed to become a priest, and Lucy loved the church despite the fact that "God seemed as silent as my father, as angry as my uncle, as distant as the portrait of my great-grandfather in the hall" (p. 74). In your view, what have been some consequences of denying women the priesthood and leadership roles within the church? How has this situation changed in recent decades. How does it persist? Do you feel this should change further? If so, how? If not, why not?

4. "Just knowing she had existed opened new and uneasy possibilities within my understanding of the story I thought I'd always known by heart. And I felt responsible, too" (p. 142). Why is Lucy so driven to uncover the truth about Rose? Is there a family story to which you are deeply attached? If yes, what is it and why? What happens if you try to imagine that story from the perspective of the various people involved, including those on the fringes?

5. Have you, like Lucy, ever revisited romance with an old flame while you were involved with someone new? Did you tell your new partner about your lapse? Did the encounter ultimately strengthen or weaken your new relationship?

6. Although Rose does not intend to leave Iris, her spontaneous response to the march for suffrage makes her an outcast and puts her relationship with her daughter at risk. If you are a parent, is there a cause so important to you that you would risk losing your own child in order to support it? Was the victory that Rose helped win ultimately worth her sacrifice?

7. Do you think it was Lucy's great-grandfather, Joseph, or her grandfather, Joseph, Jr., who hid the will? Why didn't he destroy it instead?

8. When they're viewing the stained-glass panel of Jesus and the woman with the alabaster jar, the Reverend Suzi explains that she is not a fallen woman and that, in the Gospels, Jesus defends her. "Yet here we are, millennia later, and we don't tell her story. We don't even have her name" (p. 339). What do you imagine her story to be?

9. "Rose, I was sure, had acted out of love, yet for Iris her mother's absence had remained an unresolved sadness at the center of her life" (p. 354). Do you agree with Lucy about Rose's decision to keep her real identity a secret from Iris—even after the latter was estranged from Joseph and Cora? What has changed culturally to make such a choice seem startling today?

10. Does Lucy make the right decision in choosing to stay with Yoshi rather than renewing her love affair with Keegan? Is a romantic relationship with someone from another culture easier or more difficult to maintain?

11. Towards the end of The Lake of Dreams, Edwards writes, "the earthquakes had eased—the underwater island had finally formed" (p. 375). Discuss the ways in which Edwards employs images of the natural world throughout the novel.

12. For generations, most women have taken for granted the rights won them by the suffrage movement and the early pioneers of family planning. How did reading The Lake of Dreams alter your perception of these bygone women—especially now that birth control and abortion are, once again, hotly debated topics?
(Questions issued by publisher.) 

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The Lake Shore Limited
Sue Miller, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
287 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307264213

Summary
Four unforgettable characters beckon you into this spellbinding new novel from the author of last year's explosive New York Times best seller The Senator's Wife. First among them is Wilhelmina (Billy) Gertz, small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright. The novel centers around her play, The Lake Shore Limited, about the terrorist bombing of that train—and about a man waiting to hear the fate of his estranged wife who is traveling on it. How Billy comes to write the play out of her own painful conflicts and ambivalence, how it is then created anew by the actors and the director, how the performance itself touches and changes the other characters' lives—these form the vital core of a story that drives the novel compulsively forward.

There's not a wasted word in this tour de force about the dislocations wrought in our lives by accidents of fate and time, and about how we try to make peace with whom we make peace with. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 29, 1943
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts


Since her iconic first novel, The Good Mother in 1986, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters.

While not strictly speaking autobiographical, Miller's fiction is, nonetheless, shaped by her experiences. Born into an academic and ecclesiastical family, she grew up in Chicago's Hyde Park and went to college at Harvard. She was married at 20 and held down a series of odd jobs until her son Ben was born in 1968. She separated from her first husband in 1971, subsequently divorced, and for 13 years was a single parent in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working in day care, taking in roomers, and writing whenever she could.

In these early years, Miller's productivity was directly proportional to her ability to win grants and fellowships. An endowment in 1979 allowed her to enroll in the Creative Writing Program at Boston University. A few of her stories were accepted for publication, and she began teaching in the Boston area. Two additional grants in the 1980s enabled her to concentrate on writing fulltime. Published in 1986, her first novel became an international bestseller.

Since then, success has followed success. Two of Miller's books (The Good Mother and Inventing the Abbots) have been made into feature films; her 1990 novel Family Pictures was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Oprah Winfrey selected While I Was Gone for her popular Book Club; and in 2004, a first foray into nonfiction—the poignant, intensely personal memoir The Story of My Father—was widely praised for its narrative eloquence and character dramatization. The Senator's Wife was published in 2008, followed by The Lake Shore Limited in 2010 and The Arsonist in 2014.

Miller is a distinguished practitioner of "domestic fiction," a time-honored genre stretching back to Jane Austen, Henry James, and Leo Tolstoy and honed to perfection by such modern literary luminaries as John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, and Richard Ford.

A careful observer of quotidian detail, she stretches her novels across the canvas of home and hearth, creating extraordinary stories out of the quiet intimacies of marriage, family, and friendship. In an article written for the New York Times "Writers on Writing" series, she explains:

For me everyday life in the hands of a fine writer seems...charged with meaning. When I write, I want to bring a sense of that charge, that meaning, to what may fairly be called the domestic.

Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:

• I come from a long line of clergy. My father was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian church, though as I grew up, he was primarily an academic at several seminaries — the University of Chicago, and then Princeton. Both my grandfathers were also ministers, and their fathers too. It goes back farther than that in a more sporadic way.

• I spent a year working as a cocktail waitress in a seedy bar just outside New Haven, Connecticut. Think high heels, mesh tights, and the concentrated smell of nicotine. Think of the possible connections of this fact to the first fact, above.

• I like northern California, where we've had a second home we're selling—it's just too far away from Boston. I've had a garden there that has been a delight to create, as the plants are so different from those in New England, which is where I've done most of my gardening. I had to read up on them. I studied Italian gardens too—the weather is very Mediterranean. I like weeding—it's almost a form of meditation.

• I like little children. I loved working in daycare and talking to kids, learning how they form their ideas about the world's workings—always intriguing, often funny. I try to have little children in my life, always.

• I want to make time to take piano lessons again. I did it for a while as an adult and enjoyed it.

• I like to cook and to have people over. I love talking with people over good food and wine. Conversation — it's one of life's deepest pleasures.

• When asked what book most influenced her life, here is her response:

In terms of prose style or a particular way of telling a story or a story itself, there is no one book that I can select. At various times I've admired and been inspired by various books. But there is a book that made the notion of making a life in writing seem possible to me when I was about 22. It was called The Origin of the Brunists.

I opened the newspaper on a Sunday to the Book Review, and there it was, a rave, for this first novel, written by a man named Robert Coover—a man still writing, though he's more famous for later, more experimental works. The important thing about this to me, aside from the fact that the book turned out to be extraordinary and compelling (it's about a cult that springs up around the lone survivor of a coal mining disaster, Giovanni Bruno), was that I knew Robert Coover. He had rented a room in my family's house when I was growing up and while he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where my father taught.

Bob Coover, whose conversations with friends drifted up through the heating ducts from his basement room to mine. Bob Coover, a seemingly normal person, a person whose life I'd observed from my peculiar adolescent vantage for perhaps three years or so as he came and went. It was thrilling to me to understand that such a person, a person not unlike myself, a person not somehow marked as "special" as far as I could tell, could become a writer. If he could, well then, maybe I could. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
The Lake Shore Limited is perhaps best appreciated as an extended character study. In places the prose drags, and there’s too much filler detail, as if Miller weren’t sure how to move the story forward without a proper plot. Still, the novel is worth reading for the ruthlessness of its revelations. .
Ligaya Mishan - New York Times

Miller's exquisite new novel, The Lake Shore Limited, is so sophisticated and thoughtful that it should either help redeem the term "women's literature" or free her from it once and for all. Several times in these pages someone refers to the relentless psychological analysis found in Henry James's novels.... In fact, The Lake Shore Limited may be the closest thing we'll get to a James response to 9/11: no drama, no crisis, barely any action at all—just a deeply affecting examination of the thoughts and feelings of four people still moving in the shadow of that tragedy.
Ron Charles - Washington Post

Four people are bound together by the 9/11 death of a man in Miller's insightful latest. Leslie, older sister and stand-in mother to the late Gus, clings to the notion that Gus had found true love with his girlfriend, Billy, before he was killed. But the truth is more complicated: Billy, a playwright, has written a new play that explores the agonizing hours when a family gathers, not knowing the fate of their mother and wife who was aboard a train that has been bombed. The ambivalent reaction of the woman's husband has shades of Billy and Gus's relationship, particularly the limbo she's been in since he died. Rafe, the actor playing the ambivalent husband, processes his own grief and guilt about his terminally ill wife as he steps more and more into his character. Finally, there's Sam, an old friend Leslie now hopes to set up with Billy. While the plot doesn't have the suspense and zip of The Senator's Wife, Miller's take on post-9/11 America is fascinating and perfectly balanced with her writerly meditations on the destructiveness of trauma and loss, and the creation and experience of art.
Publishers Weekly

An ambitious exploration of the interaction between choice and random chance in human relationships, from Miller (The Senator's Wife, 2008, etc.). The book centers on four characters' reactions to the play that one of them has scripted about the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Leslie attends the play of the title with her doctor husband and their architect friend Sam, with whom she once shared vague romantic longings. Playwright Billy was Leslie's younger brother's live-in girlfriend when he died six years earlier on one of the 9/11 planes. Still grieving for Gus, Leslie assumes Billy feels the same sense of loss and is disturbed by Billy's play, which describes the ambivalence of the survivor. The play's hero is a man who learns that a bomb has gone off on the train on which his wife was traveling. Horrified to feel relief that his wife's death would free him to marry his lover, he sends the lover away, and the play ends with his ambiguous greeting to his wife when she returns. As Leslie struggles to understand what the play means about Billy and Gus's relationship, the actor Rafe, who is playing the lead, also finds the play hitting close to home. His wife is dying of ALS, and he is committed to her care. After he sleeps with Billy one night, he brings the loss and guilt he feels about his wife to his performance, the brilliance of which resuscitates his flagging career. Billy has written the play to clear the air. She had decided to leave Gus before he died, but Leslie sucked her into the role of grieving lover. Now Leslie throws Billy together with Sam. He is immediately smitten, but Billy resists. An architect whose first wife died of breast cancer and whose second marriage ended in divorce, Sam allows chance to take its course. Miller raises tantalizing questions about the ethics of love, but the actual drama involving her decent, troubled characters never rises above a simmer.

Discussion Questions
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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Lake Shore Limited:

1. How does Billy's play reveal her feelings toward Gus and her response to his death on 9/11? Is the play disrespectful to Gus's memory? What is she exploring in her play?

2. What is Leslie's response to her brother's death...and to Billy's play? What has she led herself to believe about Billy and Gus's relationship? What does she want for Billy...or what does she think she wants?

3. How does the play change Rafe? Was he wrong to have relations with Billy?

4. Why does Sam decide he wants nothing more to do with love?

5. Miller's novel explores the ways in which people respond to tragedy. The central characters of this novel have all experienced (or, in Rafe's case, are experiencing) the loss someone dear. How has each responded to personal loss? How should one respond to loss and grief? Is there a correct way—or does it differ according to person or circumstance?

5. In what way does this novel explore, as Ligaya Mishan in the New York Times puts it, "the failure of men and women to understand each other; the hunger for a different life."

6. Miller tells her story through four different characters' points of view. Do you enjoy this structural technique...or find it difficult?

6. Were you satisfied with the way the novel ended?

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

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Lake Success 
Gary Shteyngart, 2018
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812997415


Summary
The bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story returns with a biting, brilliant, emotionally resonant novel very much of our times.

Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets.

Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart.

Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema—a driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes with wealth—has her own demons to face.

How these two flawed characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is at the heart of this piercing exploration of the 0.1 Percent, a poignant tale of familial longing and an unsentimental ode to what really makes America great. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1972
• Where—Leningrad, USSR
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College (Ohio); M.F.A., Hunter College (NYC)
• Awards—Stephen Crane Award; National Jewish Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York

Gary Shteyngart (born Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart) is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR. Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.

Background
Shteyngart spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia; (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). He comes from a Jewish family and describes his family as typically Soviet. His father worked as an engineer in a LOMO camera factory; his mother was a pianist.

In 1979 when Gary was 7, the Shteyngart family immigrated to the United States, where he was brought up with no television in his family's New York City apartment and where English was not the household language. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14.

Later Shteyngart traveled to Prague, an experience that inspired his first novel, set in the fictitious European city of Prava. He is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City; Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics; and Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

Writing career
Shteyngart took a trip to Prague which inspired his first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), which is set in the fictitious European city of Prava. He has published two more novels: Absurdistan (2006) and Super Sad True Love Story (2010). His fourth book, Little Failure (2014), is a memoir recounting his family's emigration to the U.S. in 1979.

His other writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Granta, Travel and Leisure, and The New York Times.

Shteyngart's work has received numerous awards. The Russian Debutante's Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian. In 2002, he was named one of the five best new writers by Shout NY Magazine. Absurdistan was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Revieww and Time magazine, as well as a book of the year by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications. In June 2010, Shteyngart was named as one of The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers. Super Sad True Love Story won the 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature.

Personal
Shteyngart now lives in New York City. He has taught writing at Hunter College, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University. During the Fall of 2007, he also had a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany.

Shteyngart is married to Esther Won who is of Korean descent. In October 2013, they became parents to Johnny Won Shteyngart. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/14/2014.)

Book Reviews
Shteyngart, perhaps more than any American writer of his generation…is a natural. He is light, stinging, insolent and melancholy, to borrow the words the critic Kenneth Tynan kept on his writing desk to remind himself how to sound. The wit and the immigrant's sense of heartbreak…just seem to pour from him. The idea of riding along behind Shteyngart as he glides across America in the early age of Trump is a propitious one. He doesn't disappoint.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


[P]ungent…frisky and so intent on probing the dissonances …that grip this strange land getting stranger.… In Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart holds his adopted country up to the light, turns it, squints, turns it some more, and finds himself grimacing and laughing in almost equal measure.
Jonathan Miles - New York Times Book Review


[F]unny yet resoundingly mournful.…Shteyngart does slapstick as well as ever, but he stakes out new terrain in the expert way he develops his characters’ pathos…. There are some rough edges …but this is nevertheless a stylish, big-hearted novel.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Shteyngart’s latest is a hilarious, melancholic, and rapier-sharp tale for our times.
Library Journal


(Starred review) For all his caustic critique and propulsive plotting, Shteyngart is a writer of empathic imagination, ultimately steering this bristling, provocative, sharply comedic, yet richly compassionate novel toward enlightenment and redemption. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


(Starred review) As good as anything we’ve seen from this author: smart, relevant, fundamentally warm-hearted, hilarious of course, and it has a great ending.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for LAKE SUCCESS … then take off on your own:

1. In what way does Gary Shteyngart's Lake Success attempt to capture an era—our era—with its angst, class divisions, corruption, giddy optimism and bleak pessimism?

2. What do you think of Barry Cohen? In what way is he representative of our era? Barry is rife with contradictions: he is both greedy and generous, gregarious and introverted, confident and needy, a creature of Wall Street and a drifter. How do you seem him—is he on one side of these qualities or the other? Or can a person be both? Do you have sympathy for Barry? At first? Later in the novel? Or never?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: Speaking of contradictions, how does Barry's belief in his own generous nature rub up against his political beliefs?

4. Describe Seema. Do you find her a sympathetic character? What does she mean about feeling "guilty in front of all the people who would never know the fruits of the global order"?

5. Seema accuses Barry of lacking a soul. Is she right?

6. How does their child's autism diagnosis affect Barry and Seema? How do they cope, or not cope? What insights do we gain into the struggle of raising a beloved child with special needs?

7. Is Barry running from something … or running toward something? Does he know which?

8. What makes Barry, well… Barry? What do we come to learn about his past that has shaped his adult self?

9. Is there redemption for Barry? For Seema? Do you root for either one or both?
  
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Christopher Moore, 2002
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780380813810


In Brief  
We know all about Christ's birth, and even more about Christ's death. But until he really started getting the word of God out there, there's little recorded information about his life. What do we really know about the Messiah's formative years? Enter Christopher Moore's Biff, resurrected by the angel Raziel and held captive in a New York City hotel room until he records a new gospel.

Lamb is the story of Biff writing his and his buddy Jesus Christ's (aka Joshua's) story; it's the hilarious inside scoop on the could-be origins of hundreds of tales we recognize from the Bible and from popular culture. While negotiating the terrors, curiosities, and conveniences of modern life, Biff transcribes the untold story of his and Josh's youth. He describes the escapades of the Son of God — from his time as a stone-cutter's apprentice in Nazareth to his journeys to modern-day Afghanistan, China, and India in search of the magi who attended his birth; to his return to his homeland to gather his disciples and fulfill his destiny. Underlying it all is the story of his unconsummated love for an incomprehensibly beautiful woman named Mary the Magdalene.

Biff reveals the human side of the Son of God, and paints a vivid historical picture of what life might really have been like in Christ's time. Plus, it's really funny. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 5, 1958
• Where—Toledo, Ohio, USA
• Education—Ohio State Univ., Brooks Inst. of Photography
• Awards—Quill Award, 2005 and 2006
• Currently—Hawaii and San Francisco, California

A 100-year-old ex-seminarian and a demon set off together on a psychotic road trip...

Christ's wisecracking childhood pal is brought back from the dead to chronicle the Messiah's "missing years"...

A mild-mannered thrift shop owner takes a job harvesting souls for the Grim Reaper...

Whence come these wonderfully weird scenarios? From the fertile imagination of Christopher Moore, a cheerfully demented writer whose absurdist fiction has earned him comparisons to master satirists like Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams.

Ever since his ingenious debut, 1992's Practical Demonkeeping and his 2002 Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Moore has attracted an avid cult following. But, over the years, as his stories have become more multi-dimensional and his characters more morally complex, his fan base has expanded to include legions of enthusiastic general readers and appreciative critics.

Asked where his colorful characters come from, Moore points to his checkered job resume. Before becoming a writer, he worked at various times as a grocery clerk, an insurance broker, a waiter, a roofer, a photographer, and a DJ — experiences he has mined for a veritable rogue's gallery of unforgettable fictional creations. Moreover, to the delight of hardcore fans, characters from one novel often resurface in another. For example, the lovesick teen vampires introduced in 1995's Bloodsucking Fiends are revived (literally) for the 2007 sequel You Suck—which also incorporates plot points from 2006's A Dirty Job.

For a writer of satirical fantasy, Moore is a surprisingly scrupulous researcher. In pursuit of realistic details to ground his fiction, he has been known to immerse himself in marine biology, death rituals, Biblical scholarship, and Goth culture. He has been dubbed "the thinking man's Dave Barry" by none other than The Onion, a publication with a particular appreciation of smart humor.

As for story ideas, Moore elaborates on his website: "Usually [they come] from something I read. It could be a single sentence in a magazine article that kicks off a whole book. Ideas are cheap and easy. Telling a good story once you get an idea is hard." Perhaps. But, to judge from his continued presence on the bestseller lists, Chris Moore appears to have mastered the art.

Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:

• In researching his wild tales, Moore has done everything from taking excursions to the South Pacific to diving with whales. So what is left for the author to tackle? He says he'd like to try riding an elephant.

• One of the most memorably weird moments in Moore's body of work is no fictional invention. The scene in Bloodsucking Fiends where the late-night crew of a grocery store bowls with frozen turkeys is based on Moore's own experiences bowling with frozen turkeys while working the late shift at a grocery store.

• When asked what book influenced his career as a writer, he answered:

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. In Cannery Row, Steinbeck writes about very flawed people, but with great affection, and by doing so, shows us that it is our flaws that make us human, and that is what we share, that is our humanity. A friend of mine used to say, "He writes with the voice of a benevolent God." In the process, the book is also very funny. I think I saw that as a model, as a guide. I'd always written humor that was fairly edgy, but here was a guy writing with great power and gentle humor. I was moved and inspired."  (Author bio Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
A childhood pal of the savior is brought back from the dead to fill in the missing 30-year "gap" in the Gospels in Moore's latest, an over-the-top festival of sophomoric humor that stretches a very thin though entertaining conceit far past the breaking point. The action starts in modern America, specifically in a room at the Hyatt in St. Louis, where the angel who shepherds "Levi who is called Biff" has to put Christ's outrageous sidekick under de facto house arrest to get him to complete his task. Moore (Bloodsucking Fiends) gets style points for his wild imagination as Biff recalls his journey with Jesus dubbed Joshua here according to the Greek translation into and out of the clutches of Balthasar, then into a Buddhist monastery in China and finally off to India, where they dabble in the spiritual and erotic aspects of Hinduism. The author gets more serious in his climax, offering a relatively straightforward, heartfelt account of the Passion and Christ's final days that includes an intriguing spin on how the Resurrection might have happened. The Buddhist and Hindu subplots seem designed to point out the absurdity and excesses of religious customs, but none of the characters are especially memorable, and eventually both plot and characters give way to Biff's nightclub patter. As imaginative as some of this material is, the sacrilegious aspects are far less offensive than Moore's inability to rein in his relentless desire to titillate, and his penchant for ribald, frat-boy humor becomes more annoying as the book progresses. Moore has tapped into organized religion for laughs before, but this isn't one of his better efforts.
Publishers Weekly

(Adult/High School) An angel has resurrected Levi bar Alpheus, known as Biff, to tell this story of his life with Joshua, better known to the modern world as Jesus Christ. As youths, they travel to the East in search of the wise men who gave gifts to Joshua at his birth, because the young man has a problem: he knows he's the Messiah, but he doesn't know what to do about it. Along the way, he and Biff come in contact with the spirituality of the East, along with a smattering of martial arts, strange poisons, abominable snowmen, and more. The story concludes with their return to Israel and Biff's own explanation of the events that make up the traditional gospel narrative. Readers who might be offended by the author's casual treatment of Christian themes may also take umbrage at his treatment of Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and much else. However, the author manages to share a variety of the world's spiritual insights while creating interesting and vivid characters. The style is smooth, drawing readers into the story seamlessly except for the need to laugh out loud every page or two. The humor is good-natured, despite the fact that Biff claims to be the inventor of a practice known as "sarcasm." In an excellent afterword, the author explains the choices he made in writing the novel, which will fascinate would-be writers, as well as provide a rebuttal for the book's likely critics. —Paul Brink, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA
Library Journal

Absurd? Of course, and as in Moore's other books, the jokes, ranging from the sublime to the sophisticated to the utterly sophomoric, make the book. What Lamb lacks in theological sophistication it more than compensates with mirth. Although many will find something offensive in this novel...they will find it simply impossible not to laugh. —John Green
Booklist

An audacious and irreverent novel about Jesus' childhood seen through the eyes of his best pal. Moore (Blood Sucking Fiends, 1995, etc.) has penned an amusing tale guaranteed deeply to offend all right-thinking Christians. The conceit is this: In 2001, Jesus decides that someone should write the missing gospel of his childhood, and he selects Levi-called Biff-the wisecracking companion and alter ego of his youth. Biff is resurrected and locked in a hotel suite in St. Louis with the angel Raziel, who is there to insure that he gets the writing job done. Raziel quickly becomes hooked on TV soaps, while Biff, grumbling, sets to work. Jesus' childhood, it turns out, was like that of most Jewish kids of his day (Moore offers much rich historical detail here), except he was the Messiah. This makes him sweet-natured and incapable of cruelty, lying, or sin, all of which puts him at a distinct disadvantage in a world that's violent and lustful. Enter Biff, the street-smart friend who protects Jesus from his own naivete, observes his early attempts at miracles (restoring lizards, etc.), helps him to understand sin (by fornicating with a harlot while explaining it to Jesus in the next stall), and much more. Mary Magdalene (Maggie) is on the scene, lusting after Jesus and lusted after by Biff. Though Jesus is pretty sure he is the Messiah, he is also, like any kid learning a trade, not sure what he should (and should not) do as Messiah. He sets out on a loopy and sometimes-hilarious quest to discover his destiny (and test his powers), while Biff, thoroughly cynical and amoral, accompanies him. The style is a bizarre mix of serious and sometimes brutal historical fiction laced with black humor, wordplay, in-jokes, and sharp one-liners worthy of a good stand-up comedian. Sometimes it all works well, and sometimes the jokes seem strained. Interesting, original, not for every taste.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Did you find Lamb to be fairly true to the Bible as you know it? Did you learn anything from Lamb? Do you find reading the Bible enjoyable?

2. Early in the book, Biff writes about "little-boy love," describing it as "...the cleanest pain I've ever known. Love without desire, orconditions, or limits — a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once." Do you understand what he's saying? Have you ever experienced that kind of love?

3. Would Joshua have made it to maturity without Biff? Do you think Jesus had any human — not divine help in becoming who he was? Is Moore making a statement about historical facts in the Bible, or about the value of friendship in general?

4. Were you offended by this book in any way? There's so much here that Moore could almost be called an "equal opportunity offender." Did you find that some parts bothered you, while others didn't? Did he go too far, in any way? Not far enough?

5. At one point, Biff asks, "Are all women stronger and better than me?" and Josh answers, "Yes." Do you think Moore believes this? Do you think Christianity teaches this? From what you know about other world religions, how does the role of women differ in each?

6. Did you recognize any moments in your own development as you heard the story of Christ's? Do you relate to the character of Josh? Does this story of "Josh" make you feel any differently about Jesus as a human being?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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A Land More Kind Than Home
Wiley Cash, 2012
HarperCollns
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062088239


Summary
For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when you get caught spying on grown-ups.

Adventurous and precocious, Jess is protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to—an act that will have repercussions. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared.

He now knows that a new understanding can bring not only danger and evil—but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance.

Told by resonant and evocative characters, A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Where—Gastonia, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of North Carolina;
   Ph.D., University of Louisiana
• Currently—lives in Wilmington, North Carolina


Wiley Cash is from western North Carolina, a region that figures prominently in his fiction. A Land More Than Home, his first novel was published in 2012, followed by This Dark Road to Mercy in 2014.

Wiley holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (where he studied under author Ernest Gaines).

He has received grants and fellowships from the Asheville Area Arts Council, the Thomas Wolfe Society, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. His stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Roanoke Review and Carolina Quarterly, and his essays on Southern literature have appeared in American Literary Realism, South Carolina Review, and other publications.

Wiley lives with his wife and two daughters in Wilmington, North Carolina. He serves as the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and teaches in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA. (Adapted from previous and current bios on the author's website. Retrieved 10/4/2017.)

Book Reviews
Nine-year-old Jess Hall [is] one of the narrators of Wiley Cash's mesmerizing first novel…and it's his voice that we carry away from this intensely felt and beautifully told story.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times

Mesmerizing...only Jess knows why his autistic older brother died on the very day he was taken into the church, and it’s his voice that we carry away from this intensely felt and beautifully told story.
New York Times Book Review

[C]ompelling…Like his fellow North Carolinian Ron Rash, Cash adeptly captures the rhythms of Appalachian speech…The story has elements of a thriller, but Cash is ultimately interested in how unscrupulous individuals can bend decent people to their own dark ends, often by invoking the name of God.
Steve Yarbrough—The Washington Post

Wiley Cash’s novel embeds a tender coming-of-age story within a suspense-filled thriller.... [A] clear-sighted, graceful debut.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

So beautifully written that you’ll be torn about how fast to read it. This is great, gothic Southern fiction.
NPR

Absorbing.... Cash uses well-placed flashbacks to flesh out his characters...and to illuminate a familiar truth of Southern lit: Many are the ways that fathers fail their sons.
Entertainment Weekly

A lyrical, poignant debut.... In the mode of John Hart, Tom Franklin, and early Pat Conroy, A Land More Kind Than Home explores the power of forgiveness [and] the strength of family bonds.
Florida Sun-Sentinel

A Land More Kind Than Home is a powerfully moving debut that reads as if Cormac McCarthy decided to rewrite Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Good old-fashioned storytelling.... With murder, religion, infidelity, domestic abuse, guns, whiskey and snake handling, Land is rich in unstable relationships and beautiful tragedy.
Ploughshares

Cash’s debut about a town gripped by a menacing preacher has the timeless qualities of the Old Testament...[a] very good book.
Daily Beast


Cash’s debut novel is a chilling descent into the world of religious frenzy in small town North Carolina. At the core of the book is a mysterious and demonic pastor, Carson Chambliss, an ex-con and born-again believer who uses snakes and poison to prove God’s love: he seduces the town with raucous church meetings where they dance, heal, and speak in tongues until one Sunday a mute child dies during evening service.... [T]he book is compelling, with an elegant structure and a keen eye for detail, matched with compassionate attention to character. The languid atmosphere seduces, and Cash’s fine first effort pulls the reader into a shadowy, tormented world where wolves prowl in the guise of sheep. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates.
Publishers Weekly


As lyrical, beautiful, and uncomplicated as the classic ballads of Appalachia, Cash's first novel is a tragic story of misplaced faith and love gone wrong.... [A]n autistic child becomes the victim of a special healing service, and the local sheriff launches an investigation. Told in three voices...the tragedy unfolds and compounds upon itself as the backgrounds of the major players are revealed and each reacts as conscience and faith demand. Verdict: ...Cash captures the reader's imagination...and maintains the wonder of the tale through to the coda of faith and affirmation. —Thomas Kilpatrick, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Library Journal


Up beyond Asheville, near where Gunter Mountain falls into Tennessee, evil has come to preach in a house of worship where venomous snakes and other poisons are sacraments. Cash's debut novel explores Faulkner-O'Connor country, a place where folks endure a hard life by clinging to God's truths echoing from hardscrabble churches.... As lean and spare as a mountain ballad, Cash's novel resonates perfectly, so much so that it could easily have been expanded to epic proportions. An evocative work about love, fate and redemption.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Think about the epigraph the author chose to open the book and from which the novel's title derives. What is the significance of this particular quote? How does it set the novel's tone and mood? Explain what the title—"a land more kind than home"—signifies.

2. The novel is told from three characters' perspectives. How does this add to the story and deepen it as it unfolds? How might it be different if it had been told from only one of the character's point of view?

3. Talk about Carson Chambliss. Describe his character. Why does he have such a magnetic hold on his congregation, and especially on Julie? Is Julie a good mother? Can you understand why she behaved the way she did? Do you think she understood the truth of her son, Stump's fate? Why is Addie so afraid of him?

4. How might the events of the story have unfolded differently if Jess had told his mother the truth about what she heard at the Sunday afternoon service?

5. Describe this small North Carolina town in which the story takes place. What is it like? How does its size and remoteness influence the lives of those who call it home? Sheriff Clem Barfield is not native to Madison County. How does this impact the way he sees this place and its people?

6. How can religion uplift a person's soul? How can it be corrupting influence? Julie considers herself to be a "good Christian woman." What do you think? Whether you are Christian or not, religious or not, what is your definition of a "good Christian?" Is anyone in the novel virtuous, and if so, in what way?

7. Why did Addie pull the children out of Chambliss's services? Did she have any other options?

8. When Jess asks his grandpa if Stump will be able to talk in heaven, Jimmy tells him, "Of course he will. We'll all be able to talk. And we'll be able to understand each other." What does his answer reveal about him and the world? What is he trying to teach Jess?

9. Think about Jimmy Hall. What kind of relationship does she have with his son? What about with Sheriff Barefield?

10. Can this novel be compared to a Shakespearean tragedy? If so, in what ways? Think about various stories and proverbs from the Bible. How are they reflected in the story?

11. What role does nature and the natural world play in the novel?

12. Addie believes that this place and its people will be saved in the wake of tragedy. Do you believe in salvation? What role does forgiveness play in this story? Do you think people can change for the better? What about Jimmy Hall? How do the novel's events impact his relationship with the sheriff and with his grandson, Jess?

13. Think about the novel's themes: revenge, faith, betrayal, goodness and evil, forgiveness and understanding. Choose a character and show how these themes are demonstrated through his or her life.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Land of Love and Drowning 
Tiphanie Yanique, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594488337


Summary
A major debut from an award-winning writer—an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands.

In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.

Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Uniquely imagined, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and the author’s own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evoke an entire world and way of life and love.

Following the Bradshaw family through sixty years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prizewinning young writer. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 20, 1978
• Where—St. Thomas, Virgin Islands
• Education—B.A., Tufts University; M.F.A. University of Houston
• Awards—Rona Jaffe Writers' Award; Pushcart Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands


Tiphanie Yanique is a Caribbean fiction writer, poet and essayist, whose debut novel Land of Love and Drowning was published in 2014.

Yanique's maternal roots are in the Virgin Islands and her paternal roots in Dominica. She was raised in the Hospital Ground neighborhood of St. Thomas by her grandmother, Beulah Smith Harrigan, a former children’s librarian. Her biological grandfather was Dr. Andre Galiber of St. Croix. All her grandparents are now deceased.

Education and teaching
In 2000, Yanique earned her undergraduate degree from Tufts University in Massachusetts. Shortly after graduating, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Literature in English and Creative Writing at The University of the West Indies for which she conducted research on Caribbean women writers, such as Merle Hodge and Erna Brodber in Trinidad and Tobago.

She went on to receive her Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of Houston in 2006, where she held a Cambor Fellowship. Later that year she served as the 2006-2007 Writer-in Residence/Parks Fellow at Rice University, teaching creative writing, fiction and nonfiction, and working as the faculty editor of The Rice Review literary magazine.

From 2007-2011, she taught undergraduate and graduate writing and teaching courses as an assistant professor of creative writing and Caribbean literature at Drew University in New Jersey—during which time she also worked as an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine (2007–08) and an associate editor of Post No Ills Magazine (2008–11), as well as the director of writing and curriculum at the Virgin Islands Summer Writers Program (2008-2011).

She is currently an assistant professor of writing at The New School in New York City, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate students.

Writing
Yanique’s debut collection How to Escape a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories (2010) received praise from the Caribbean Review of Books, Boston Globe, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other journals. Her children’s picture book I am the Virgin Islands (2012) was commissioned by the First Lady of the Virgin Islands as a gift to the children of the Virgin Islands. Yanique’s husband, photographer Moses Djeli, created the images for the book.

Her short fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, Best African American Fiction, Transition Magazine, American Short Fiction, London Magazine, Prism International, Callaloo, Boston Review, and other journals and anthologies.

Accolades
In 2011, Yanique won the BOCAS Fiction Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the National Book Foundation recognized her as one of their 5 under 35 honorees, an award that celebrates five young fiction writers selected by past National Book Award Winners and Finalists. She was one of the three writers awarded the 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award for fiction, along with Helen Phillips and Lori Ostlund.

She is also the winner of a 2008 Pushcart Prize for her short story the “The Bridge Stories” and the Kore Press Short Fiction Award for her short story “The Saving Work. She has also been awarded the 2006 Boston Review Fiction Prize for her short story “How to Escape from a Leper Colony.” She received The Academy of American Poets Prize in 2000 and has had residencies with Bread Loaf, Callaloo, Squaw Valley, and the Cropper Foundation for Caribbean Writers.

Personal
Tiphanie currently lives between Brooklyn, NY, and St. Thomas, VI, with her husband, son and daughter. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A debut novel about three generations of a Caribbean family. It reads lush and is graced with rotating narrators, each of whom has a distinct and powerful voice.
USA Today


The novel provides readers with beautiful, imaginative prose via a story set in the Virgin Islands.
Ebony


Spellbinding.
Elle


This hypnotic tale tracks a Virgin Islands family through three generations of blessings and curses. It starts in 1900, with a shipwreck that orphans two sisters and the half-brother they've just met, and then spinso out magic, mayhem, and passion.
Good Housekeeping


Sink or swim is the guiding theme in this fantastical, generational novel.
Marie Claire


A feat of tropical magical realism.
Vanity Fair


(Starred review.) [A]n epic multigenerational tale set in the U.S. Virgin Islands that traces the ambivalent history of its inhabitants during the course of the 20th century.... Through the voices and lives of its native people, Yanique offers an affecting narrative of the Virgin Islands that pulses with life, vitality, and a haunting evocation of place.
Publishers Weekly


In  the early 1900s, a ship sinks off the Virgin Islands just as they are being transferred from Danish to American rule, and two sisters and their half-brother are orphaned. Fortunately, each has a distinctive magical gift. A three-generation saga from an author born on St. Thomas, VI.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A debut novel traces the history of the U.S. Virgin Islands through the fate of a family marked by lust, magic and social change.... Bubbling with talent and ambition, this novel is a head-spinning Caribbean cocktail.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Land of Love and Drowning opens in 1917 on the cusp of St. Thomas’s transfer from Danish rule to American.  Why do you think Tiphanie Yanique has chosen to open her novel with this event?  What is the significance of the transfer of power?  What does “Americanness” mean to the characters?  How does it change who they are?  Does it also change how they relate to one another or how they relate to the Virgin Islands in general?

2. Think about the meaning of land and property in Land of Love and Drowning.  Who owns land?  Who owns property?  What does ownership mean to the different characters?  Does the idea of ownership change over the course of the book?

3. Anette and Eeona Bradshaw present two different ways of being a woman.  Where Anette gives in to her desires, Eeona represses hers.  Is there a reason they are so different in this way? How do you see these differences affecting the course of their lives?

4. While in the Army, Jacob Esau McKenzie has a jarring encounter with institutionalized racism, something that is somewhat unfamiliar to him.  How is the awareness of race connected with the idea of becoming American? Are there other lines of demarcation on St. Thomas besides race? A form of prejudice that Jacob would have found more familiar? Which of these perceived divisions are imposed by outsiders and which come from the Virgin Islanders themselves?

5. Think of the other islands mentioned in Land of Love and Drowning.  How are they different places from St. Thomas?  What is the importance of St. John and Anegada in the novel?

6. Beaches and access to them figures prominently throughout Land of Love and Drowning.  Think of the scenes that are set on the beach.  What does the beach represent in these moments?  The action of the last third of the focuses on public access to beaches.  Why is the privatization of the beaches so important?  What is lost when beaches are no longer accessible to everyone?

7. Imagine you are going to visit the Virgin Islands as a tourist. Would reading Land of Love and Drowning influence your opinion of the resorts there?

8. How is magic employed throughout Land of Love and Drowning? Who has access to magic and who doesn’t?  How do the characters use it?  Is there a changing relationship with magic over time?  What does it mean to be a witch? Does the term mean something different in the culture of these islands than it does in the United States or Europe? Who is considered a witch in the book?

9. The Bradshaw family curse is passed down through the generations.  What do you think Tiphanie Yanique intends to suggest in Land of Love and Drowning with this curse? How does it relate to the secrets that these family members keep from one another? From the Virgin Islands as a whole?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Land of Painted Caves: (Earth's Children series 6)
Jean M. Auel, 2011
Crown Publishing Group
768 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780517580516


Summary
It is summer in the land of the Zelandonii, and it is nearly time for the next Summer Meeting. Ayla finds it is time to strike a balance between being a mother to her daughter, Jonayla, and a loving mate to Jondalar, while pursuing the fascinating knowledge and power of the Zelandoni, lead by the charismatic First Among Those Who Served the Mother of the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave.

With The Land of Painted Caves, Auel gives fans the epic they've been waiting for, and she does not disappoint as she continues the story of Ayla and Jondalar and their little daughter Jonayla. Once again Jean Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived tens of thousands of years ago.

The terrain, dwelling places, longings, beliefs, creativity, and daily lives of her characters are as real to the reader as today's news. The Land of Painted Caves is a brilliant achievement by one of the world's most beloved authors. (From the author's website.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 18, 1936
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Portland State University; M.B.A,
   University of Oregon
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon

Jean Marie Untinen, of Finnish descent, married Ray Bernard Auel after high school, raised five children, and attended college at night while working for an electronics firm in Portland, Oregon. Shortly after earning her MBA in 1976, she was inspired by a story idea so powerful it effectively consumed her for the next few years. In a single creative burst, she conceived a sweeping epic set in prehistoric Europe and featuring a unique heroine: a young Cro-Magnon woman named Ayla, raised as a misfit in a society of inhospitable Neandertals. Auel quit her job, immersed herself in research, and began writing nearly nonstop.

At first, Auel imagined she had the makings of a single book. But when she completed her first draft (more than 450,000 words!), she realized that the story fell naturally into six parts, each one demanding a novel all its own. She worked feverishly on the first installment, revising parts of it as many as 20 and 30 times. Published in 1980, The Clan of the Cave Bear became an instant bestseller, marking the start of the thrilling, totally original Ice Age saga, Earth's Children.

The series owes much of its appeal to Auel's feminist protagonist Ayla, a preternaturally resourceful woman with all the skills and abilities of men but without their warlike qualities. She is the first to ride a horse, tame a wolf, and make fire from flint; she understands the healing power of herbs; and, as the novels progress, she develops mystical, even shamanic powers. Readers were understandably intrigued.

Although Auel writes speculative fiction, she receives high marks for historical accuracy. In the interest of creating an authentic Ice Age setting, her research has led her in interesting, unpredictable directions. She has read extensively, traveled to archeological sites around the world, and learned through various sources how to knapp flint, tan hides, construct snow caves, and prepare medicinal herbs. What emerges in her writing is a precise evocation of time and place that provides a realistic and enthralling backdrop to Ayla's adventures.

Extras
• Jean's last name is pronounced like "owl."

• Before becoming a bestselling novelist, Jean worked as a clerk, a circuit board designer, a credit manager, and a technical writer.

• Jean's extensive research into Ice Age Europe has taken her to prehistoric sites in France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Germany.

• When Jean first gazed at the Paleolithic paintings on the walls of Altamira's caves, she was so moved she began to cry.

• Jean's advice to aspiring writers of historical fiction: "Write what you love to learn about."   (From Barnes & Noble and Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
[T]here is real sweetness in the saga’s finale, when Ayla’s legacy to the world—both hers and ours—is made clear. Myriad things have changed in the last 30,000 years, but the endurance of human love is not one of them.
Washington Post


[A] convincing portrait of ancient life. And readers who fell in love with little Ayla will no doubt revel in her prehistoric womanhood.
People


Thirty thousand years in the making and 31 years in the writing, Auel's overlong and underplotted sixth and final volume in the Earth's Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear; etc.) finds Cro-Magnon Ayla; her mate, Jondalar; and their infant daughter, Jonayla, settling in with the clan of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonaii. Animal whisperer and medicine woman Ayla is an acolyte in training to become a full-fledged Zelandoni (shaman) of the clan, but all is not rosy in this Ice Age setting; there are wild animals to face and earthquakes to survive, as well as a hunter named Balderan, who has targeted Ayla for death, and a potential cave-wrecker named Marona. While gazing on an elaborate cave painting (presumably, the Lascaux caverns in France), Ayla has an epiphany and invents the concept of art appreciation, and after she overdoses on a hallucinogenic root, Ayla and Jondalar come to understand how much they mean to one another, thus giving birth to another concept—monogamy. Otherwise, not much of dramatic interest happens, and Ayla, for all her superwomanish ways, remains unfortunately flat. Nevertheless, readers who enjoyed the previous volumes will relish the opportunity to re-enter pre-history one last time.
Publishers Weekly


Auel's prehistoric series debuted to rave reviews and a movie deal in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear. Nine years after The Shelters of Stone, the final book will be released accompanied by a massive promotional blitz (including academic and library marketing). Ayla is the mate of Jondalar, the mother of Jonayla, their infant daughter, and an acolyte of the First of the Zelandonii, the spiritual leaders of the caves of her husband's people. But all is not well with Ayla. She is separated from her husband and daughter while training for her new position, which takes a terrible physical toll on her health, and her innovative ideas and unusual history create conflict among the people. Long, well-researched, sometimes repetitive descriptions of cave paintings, food gathering, hunting, family relationships, and religion will appeal to those with an interest in prehistory. Others may wish there was a bit more story and a bit less anthropology. Verdict: Though one must occasionally suspend disbelief that one young woman, no matter how intelligent, can really be responsible for introducing concepts such as animal husbandry, sign language, and the role of men in sexuality and conception, the book is compelling and will be in high demand by Auel's fans. —Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage P.L., AK
Library Journal


What began 30 years ago with Auel's best-seller The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980) comes to an end in the sixth installment.... There's not a lot of urgency in this final volume, but the millions of readers who have been with Ayla from the start will want to once again lose themselves in the rich prehistoric world Auel conjures and see how this internationally beloved series concludes. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist


(Starred review.) As with her other books, Auel spins her tale with credible dialogue, believable situations and considerable drama. More than that, she deftly creates a whole world, giving a sense of the origins of class, ethnic and cultural differences that alternately divide and fascinate us today. Among modern epic spinners, Auel has few peers.
KirKus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How did you find Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children ® Series? How long have you been reading the series? Have you shared the experience of reading these books with other people in your life?

2. The author’s research is acclaimed by experts, and she takes great pains to get the details correct. What does this authenticity contribute to The Land of Painted Caves? Do you feel that you have learned facts and aspects about ancient cultures you might not have otherwise known?

3. If you could ask Jean Auel anything, what would you ask her? If you have read the entire six-novel series, what questions do you feel were answered in this book? What questions do you still have?

4. How has Ayla’s tendency to think as a medicine woman shaped who she has become? What does her devotion to helping others who are hurt or ill say about her, and how does it affect how she is perceived in her home cave and along her travels?

5. The Sacred Cave is based on real caves and drawings. What does the ancient art tell us about the people who made it? What is the value of these caves to us today? In the novel, some who visit the caves are moved to participate; what do you think causes that impulse?

6. Ayla is a constant source of change and innovation for which she is both rewarded and punished. What difficulties does she face because of her tendency to challenge the status quo? What is the difference between Ayla, a woman, initiating change, versus a man introducing it? Do you think people today adapt differently to change?

7. When Balderan had to be punished for his crimes, did you agree with the decision of the Zelandonia (see chapter 25)? Ayla’s feelings about being directly involved are mixed, but the intended punishment was not carried out; what did you think about the mob’s reaction? Has justice evolved?

8. Sex is an important part of social interaction in The Land of Painted Caves and the earlier books in Auel’s Earth’s Children® series. How are our society’s thoughts about sex different or the same as the Zelandonii’s?

9. How does the tension between Ayla’s role as a wife and mother and her training to become one of the Zelandonia impact the events of the novel? Does this struggle resonate with you today? How? Why?

10. One of the themes in this book is jealousy. Jondalar confronts the most extreme jealousy of his life when Ayla turns to someone else, and Ayla experiences jealousy for the first time. What were some causes and results of jealousy between the characters in this novel? Why do the Zelandonii condemn jealousy and work so hard to eradicate it?

11. Ayla has had to deal with immense losses in her life, and a great sacrifice is required during her calling. What did you feel about her loss? What is the connection between losing her baby and learning the end of the Mother’s song?

12. What makes Ayla risk concocting the root brew she learned to make in The Clan of the Cave Bear again? What did she discover by using the roots to travel to the spirit world? Do you think her decision was inevitable?

13. How has Ayla’s and Jondalar’s relationship changed since they first met? How has it stayed the same? Does this reflect the rhythm of a modern relationship? If so, how, and if not, why? What remains their greatest challenge as a couple?

14. What are some of the implications of Ayla’s revelation that men and women are equally involved in creating children (distinct from the Neanderthal society’s belief that the individual’s totems vie for dominance and the Cro-Magnon society’s belief that the Mother chooses the man’s spirit to mix with the woman’s spirit when She blesses a woman)?

15. At the end of The Land of Painted Caves author Jean M. Auel has illuminated many aspects of her characters’ stories, begun thirty years ago in The Clan of the Cave Bear. What most surprised you? What most satisfied your? And do dedicated readers still have any questions?

16. Jean M. Auel has stated that when she ends this series, she will miss Ayla's character who she claims to know better than some of her friends. Other than Ayla, which character featured in The Land of Painted Caves will you miss most, or which character remains most clearly etched in your mind?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Land of Steady Habits 
Ted Thompson, 2014
Little, Brown
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316186568


Summary
Anders Hill, entering his early sixties and seemingly ensconced in the "land of steady habits"—a nickname for the affluent, morally strict hamlets of Connecticut that dot his commuter rail line—abandons his career and family for a new condo and a new life. Stripped of the comforts of his previous identity, Anders turns up at a holiday party full of his ex-wife's friends and is suprised to find that the very world he rejected may be one he needs.

Thus Anders embarks on a clumsy, hilarious, and heartbreaking journey to reconcile his past with his present. Like the early work of John Updike, Ted Thompson's first novel finely observes a man in deep conflict with his community.

With compassion for its characters and fresh insight into the American tradition of the "suburban narrative," The Land of Steady Habits introduces an auspicious talent. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981
• Raised—Westport, Connecticut, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Iow Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York


Ted Thompson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship. His work has appeared in Tin House and Best New American Voices, among other publications. He was born in Connecticut, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, and teaches fiction at the Sackett Street Writer's Workshop. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Ted Thompson's elegiac yet bighearted take on adult disillusionment earns its comparisons to suburbans bards such as Updike and Cheever
Wall Street Journal


[M]asterful...The opening paragraph in a novel is like the first shot in a movie: a good one tells you everything. And Ted Thompson's stunning debut cranes right into the thick of it.
Town & Country


Late-life divorce is the subject of Thompson’s acutely written first novel.... [T]he author proves to be as keen an observer of this social scene as his literary forebears, Cheever and Updike. Anders, Helene, their children, lovers and friends, might not be the most likable group of characters you’ll come across, but the author humanizes them in a way that makes their problems relatable.
Publishers Weekly


As a rebellious teen, Anders Hill rejects his father's plans for his future and succeeds on his own. In doing so, he finds himself in the land of steady habits, commuting to a finance job in Manhattan from a bedroom community in Connecticut.... [A] story replete with characters searching for something other than what they have.... [A] book by a young, upcoming writer. —Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Filled with heartache and humor, this assured, compassionate first novel channels the suburban angst of Updike and Cheever, updating the narrative of midlife dissatisfaction with a scathing dissection of America's imploding economy...with pitch-perfect prose and endearingly melancholy characters, Thompson offers up a heartbreaking vision of an ailing family and country.
Booklist


[T]he soul-crushing consequences of suburban prosperity is modernized here as a successful financier looks around his life and sees a wasteland. Southerner Anders Hill went to great lengths to avoid the upstanding conformity his father had planned for him, but at age 60, he's not sure what difference it's made.... [A] searing portrait of American wealth unraveling that is both dazzling and immeasurably sad.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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)

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

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Landline 
Rainbow Rowell, 2014
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250049377


Summary
A hilarious, heart-wrenching take on love, marriage, and magic phones.

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply—but that almost seems beside the point now.

Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her—Neal is always a little upset with Georgie—but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. . . .

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1973-74
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Currently—lives in Omaha


Rainbow Rowell is an American author of young adult and adult contemporary novels. Her first novel Attachments, published in 2011, is a contemporary romantic comedy about a company's IT guy who falls in love with a woman whose email he has been monitoring. Kirkus Reviews listed it as one of the outstanding debuts of 2011.

In 2013 Rowell published two young adult novels: Eleanor & Park and Fangirl. Both were chosen by the New York Times as being some of the best young adult fiction of the year. Eleanor & Park was also chosen by Amazon as one of the 10 best books of 2013, and as Goodreads' best young adult fiction of the year. DreamWorks and Carla Hacken are planning a movie, for which Rowell has been asked to write the screenplay.

Rowell completed the first draft of Fangirl for National Novel Writing Month in 2011. It was chosen as the inaugural selection for Tumblr's reblog book club. Landline, Rowell's fourth novel, a contemporary adult novel about a marriage in trouble, was released in 2014.

Controversy
Rowell's work also gained attention in 2013 when a parents' group at a Minnesota high school challenged Eleanor & Park, and Rowell herself was disinvited to a library event; however, a panel ultimately determined that the book could stay on library shelves. Rowell noted in an interview that the material that these parents were calling "profane" was what many kids in difficult situations realistically had to deal with, and that "when these people call Eleanor & Park an obscene story, I feel like they’re saying that rising above your situation isn’t possible."

The book has also come under fire from a multitude of social justice and Korean activist sources because of its fetishization of Korean bodies (particularly "feminine" masculinity), misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Asian diasporic and half-Asian experiences, and overt tones of white saviour complex.  (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/14/2014.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
This very direct, affecting book captures a sense of two people who once really needed each other and then, through the travails of marriage, work and parenthood, just lost their way. The magic phone becomes Ms. Rowell's way to rewrite It's a Wonderful Life…There's nothing sophisticated about Landline, nor is there any clutter. But there's the simple story of a woman suddenly able to imagine how important her husband has been to her, and how easily she managed to overlook him. What that film accomplished with an angel named Clarence, Ms. Rowell accomplishes with a quaint old means of communication, and for her narrative purposes, it really does the trick.
Janet Maslin - New York Times Book Review


Keen psychological insight, irrepressible humor and a supernatural twist: a woman can call her husband in the past.
Time


But a focus on the endings is the wrong one when you’re reading a book of Rowell’s. What matters most are the middles, which she packs with thoughtful dissections of how we live today, reflections upon the many ways in which we can love and connect as humans, and tacit reassurances of the validity of our feelings regardless of our particular experiences.
Slate.com


After the blazing successes of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl and Attachments, it’s become clear that Rowell is an absolute master of rendering emotionally authentic and absorbing stories...While the novel soars in its more poignant moments, Rowell injects the proper dose of humor to keep you laughing through your tears.
Romance Times


[A] magical plot device allows Georgie to investigate what drove her and Neal apart in flashbacks, and consider whether they were ever truly happy. Rowell is, as always, a fluent and enjoyable writer—the pages whip by. Still, something about the relationship between Georgie and Neal feels hollow, like it’s missing the complexity of adult love, despite the plot’s special effects.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) The New York Times best-selling author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl makes a leap back to the world of adult relationships we last saw in her Attachments.... While the topic might have changed, this is still Rowell—reading her work feels like listening to your hilariously insightful best friend tell her best stories. —Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal


A marriage in crisis, a magical intervention and a bittersweet choice.... [Rowell has] taken the romantic excitement of great contemporary teen literature and applied it to a more mature story.... Her characters are instantly lovable, and the story moves quickly and only a little predictably—the ending manages to surprise and satisfy all at once.... The realities of a grown-up relationship are leavened by the buoyancy and wonder of falling in love all over again.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What would you do if you found a magic phone that called into the past? Who would you call? Is there something in your life you’d try to fix?

2. Do you think Georgie is supposed to use the phone to fix her marriage? Is her marriage broken?

3. Was it fair of Neal to take the girls to Omaha for Christmas without Georgie? Do you think his frustration with her was justified?

4. Do you blame Georgie for not going to Omaha with her family? For being so passionate about her career? Would you feel differently if the roles were reversed and it was Neal putting his career first?

5. Georgie doesn’t want to be home alone in her empty house while Neal and the girls are gone. How does being back in her childhood home with her mom, sister, and stepdad affect the way Georgie feels and behaves? How do each of these characters help her work through her feelings for Neal?

6. Georgie can never get in touch with Neal on his cell phone. Do you have people in your life who—even in this age of ubiquitous cell phones—never pick up their phone or answer their texts? Do you resend it? Or do you wish you could be more like them?

7. In many ways Seth is a better match for Georgie. Do you think they should have ended up together? What is it about Neal that attracts Georgie? What is it about Georgie that Neal falls in love with? Do you think they are a good match?

8. Was it wrong for Seth to tell Georgie he loves her? Or should he have kept that to himself? Do you believe him?

9. Why do you think Rainbow chose to include pugs in this novel? How does the pug scene in the laundry room relate to Georgie’s own life? Does that scene affect what Georgie does next?

10. Do you think Georgie regrets her career choices? Do you think women today are asked to make harder choices when it comes to family and their careers than men are?

11. Are you old enough to remember talking on a landline? Or a rotary phone? What memories did this book bring back? What’s different about talking on a landline compared to a cell phone? How is that reflected in the story?

12. This is how Georgie describes marriage and love: It’s more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you  hope that that person is the one—and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you’re right.Do you think she’s right? Do you think Rainbow agrees with Georgie?

13. Neal says of love, "Maybe there’s no such thing as enough." What does he mean? And do you agree?

14. If Georgie is right, Neal already took part in all of their phone calls as a younger man. How did that affect his understanding of their marriage?

15. What do you think happens at the end of the story? Does Georgie continue to work with Seth on her new show? What would you do? What does she owe Neal in this situation? What does she owe herself?

16. Does this book have a happy ending?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Landscape of Lies
Peter Watson, 2005
Answers & Insights, Inc.
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781933397184

Summary
Isobel Sadler is dead broke, and the only thing left that might bring in any money is a stupendously bad painting that’s been in her family for generations. It’s so ugly she can’t imagine it would be worth much...until someone tries to steal it.

Mystified, she turns for advice to art dealer Michael Whiting, who identifies the painting as a 16th-century treasure map, pointing the way to a cache of priceless religious artifacts that were hidden by monks when Henry VIII was dissolving the monasteries. If he and Isobel can decipher the clues in the painting, Whiting reasons, her money troubles will be history. But if they can’t decode the painting quickly, Whiting and Isobel could be history themselves.

Even as they struggle to translate the arcane instructions — laced with references to everything from the Bible to Botticelli — a rival is dogging their trail, and he’ll stop at nothing, even murder, to get his hands on the medieval gold. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Where—England, UK
• Education—Universities of Durham, London, and Rome
• Where—CWA Gold Dagger (for Double Dealer)
• Currently—Cambridge, England

Peter Watson is an intellectual historian and author from London, England. He was educated at the University of Durham, University of London, and University of Rome.

He was the deputy editor of New Society, and was on the "Insight" team of the London Sunday Times for four years. He was also the New York correspondent of The Times, and has written for the New York Times, Sunday Times, The Observer, Punch, and The Spectator.

He has also been a television presenter for the arts. In 1997 he was appointed Research Associate, based in London and France, at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He has written thirteen books. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
When someone tries to steal a medieval painting long owned by her family, Isobel Sadler turns for help to London art gallery owner Michael Whiting. She is amazed to learn that the picture, titled Landscape of Lies , is a "puzzle map'' whose nine male figures each symbolize priceless silver relics that were squirreled away by monks when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. Isobel and Michael—who, naturally, fall in love—set out to find the treasure, but an obsessed academic who will stop at nothing, not even murder, stays a few steps ahead of them. Watson, who proved himself a master of the art-world thriller in The Caravaggio Conspiracy, has turned out an amiable entertainment that is more a self-indulgent exercise than a suspense novel. The path to the silver is strewn with red herrings and arcane clues involving Botticelli, the Bible, horticulture, classical lore and medieval iconography
Publishers Weekly

After foiling a determined burglar's attempt to steal an apparently valueless 16th-century painting, Isobel Sadler enlists the aid of art dealer Michael Whiting. Soon convinced the picture reveals the location of long-lost sacred treasures worth millions, the two compete with the mysterious, increasingly ruthless burglar to solve the painted puzzle first. As Michael and Isobel cross London and the countryside, art history, budding romance, and deepening suspense merge in a credible journey related with sustained literariness, refinement, and polish. A wonderful, charming offering from the author of The Caravaggio Conspiracy.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
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)

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The Language of Flowers
Vanessa Diffenbaugh, 2011
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345525550


Summary
A mesmerizing, moving, and elegantly written debut novel, The Language of Flowers beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.

Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 20, 1978
• Rasied—Chico, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Monterey, California.


Vanessa Diffenbaugh is the author of two novels: her bestselling debut, The Language of Flowers (2011), and the more recent We Never Asked for Wings (2015).

Vanessa was born in San Francisco and raised in Chico, California. After graduating from Stanford University, she worked in the non-profit sector, teaching art and technology to youth in low-income communities.

Following the success of The Language of Flowers, Vanessa co-founded Camellia Network, a non-profit whose mission is to connect every youth aging out of foster care to the critical resources, opportunities, and support they need to thrive in adulthood.

She currently lives in Monterey, California, with her husband and four children. (From the publisher.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
In this original and brilliant first novel, Diffenbaugh has united her fascination with the language of flowers—a long-forgotten and mysterious way of communication—with her firsthand knowledge of the travails of the foster-care system…This novel is both enchanting and cruel, full of beauty and anger. Diffenbaugh is a talented writer and a mesmerizing storyteller.
Brigitte Weeks - Washington Post


An unexpectedly beautiful book about an ugly subject: children who grow up without families, and what becomes of them in the absence of unconditional love...Jane Eyre for 2011.
San Francisco Chronicle


In a world where talk is cheap, debut author Vanessa Diffenbaugh has written a captivating novel in which a single sprig of rosemary speaks louder than words. …The Language of Flowers deftly weaves the sweetness of newfound love with the heartache of past mistakes in a novel that will certainly change how you choose your next bouquet.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune


Instantly enchanting.... [Diffenbaugh] is the best new writer of the yea
Elle


A fascinating debut…. Diffenbaugh clearly knows both the human heart and her plants, and she keeps us rooting for the damaged Victoria.
O Magazine


Diffenbaugh's affecting debut chronicles the first harrowing steps into adulthood taken by a deeply wounded soul who finds her only solace in an all-but-forgotten language....  Struggling against all and ultimately reborn, Victoria Jones is hard to love, but very easy to root for.
Publishers Weekly


Diffenbaugh weaves together the two narratives using the Victorian language of flowers that ultimately helps shape Victoria's future as she grapples with a painful decision from her past.... Victoria might be her own worst enemy, but her...desire to live beyond what she was thought capable of will sway readers toward her favor.... [S]olid and well-written. —Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll., Pepper Pike, OH
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. What potential do Elizabeth, Renata, and Grant see in Victoria that she has a hard time seeing in herself?

2. While Victoria has been hungry and malnourished often in her life, food ends up meaning more than just nourishment to her.  Why?

3. Victoria and Elizabeth both struggle with the idea of being part of a family.  What does it mean to you to be part of a family?  What defines family?

4. Why do you think Elizabeth waits so long before trying to patch things up with her long-lost sister Catherine?  What is the impetus for her to do so?

5. The first week after her daughter’s birth goes surprisingly well for Victoria.  What is it that makes Victoria feel unable to care for her child after the week ends?  And what is it that allows her to ultimately rejoin her family?

6. One of the major themes in The Language of Flowers is forgiveness and second chances – do you think Victoria deserves one after the things she did (both as a child and as an adult)?  What about Catherine?  And Elizabeth?

7. What did you think of the structure of the book – the alternating chapters of past and present?  In what ways did the two storylines parallel each other, and how did they diverge?

8. The novel touches on many different themes (love, family, forgiveness, second chances). Which do you think is the most important?  And what did you think was ultimately the lesson?

9. At the end of the novel, Victoria learns that moss grows without roots.  What does this mean, and why is it such a revelation for her?

10. Based on your reading of the novel, what are your impressions of the foster care system in America?  What could be improved?

11. Knowing what you now know about the language of the flowers, to whom would you send a bouquet and what would you want it to say?
(Questions issued by publisher. See The Language of Flowers website for interesting extras.)

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The Language of Secrets (Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak Novels, 2)
Ausma Zehanat Khan, 2016
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250055125


Summary
Detective Esa Khattak heads up Canada's Community Policing Section, which handles minority-sensitive cases across all levels of law enforcement.

Khattak is still under scrutiny for his last case, so he's surprised when INSET, Canada's national security team, calls him in on another politically sensitive issue.

For months, INSET has been investigating a local terrorist cell which is planning an attack on New Year's Day. INSET had an informant, Mohsin Dar, undercover inside the cell. But now, just weeks before the attack, Mohsin has been murdered at the group's training camp deep in the woods.

INSET wants Khattak to give the appearance of investigating Mohsin's death, and then to bury the lead. They can't risk exposing their operation, or Mohsin's role in it. But Khattak used to know Mohsin, and he knows he can't just let this murder slide.

So Khattak sends his partner, Detective Rachel Getty, undercover into the unsuspecting mosque which houses the terrorist cell. As Rachel tentatively reaches out into the unfamiliar world of Islam, and begins developing relationships with the people of the mosque and the terrorist cell within it, the potential reasons for Mohsin's murder only seem to multiply, from the political and ideological to the intensely personal.

The Unquiet Dead author Ausma Zehanat Khan once again dazzles in The Language of Secrets, a brilliant mystery woven into a profound and intimate story of humanity. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1970
• Where—UK
• Raised—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto; LL.B., LL. M., University of Ottawa
• Currently—lives Denver, Colorado, USA


Ausma Zehanat Khan is the author of the debut novel The Unquiet Dead published in 2014 to widespread critical acclaim, including a Publishers Weekly starred review, and reviews in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. The Unquiet Dead was also a January 2015 Indie Next pick. Her acclaimed second novel, The Language of Secrets, was published in 2016. She is also at work on a fantasy series, to be published in 2017.

A frequent lecturer and commentator, Ms. Khan holds a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law with a research specialization in military intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. Ms. Khan completed her LL.B. and LL.M. at the University of Ottawa, and her B.A. in English Literature & Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Formerly, she served as Editor in Chief of Muslim Girl magazine. The first magazine to address a target audience of young Muslim women, Muslim Girl re-shaped the conversation about Muslim women in North America. The magazine was the subject of two documentaries, and hundreds of national and international profiles and interviews, including CNN International, Current TV, and Al Jazeera "Everywoman".

Ms. Khan practiced immigration law in Toronto and has taught international human rights law at Northwestern University, as well as human rights and business law at York University. She is a long-time community activist and writer, and currently lives in Colorado with her husband. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Khan delivers an action-packed police procedural complemented by strong characters with believable motives.
Associated Press


Those prepared to slog through the blizzard of poetry used to convey clues will be rewarded by a gripping climax in the snowy wilderness of Ontario’s Algonquin Park.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Part of the search hinges on Khattak's knowledge of Arabic poetry, but this isn't a puzzle mystery; rather it is a novel of character and mores, and an exceptionally fine one. Verdict: A heartfelt novel for lovers of crime fiction and anyone interested in the complexities of living as a Muslim in the West today. —David Keymer, Modesto, CA
Library Journal


The cell members are afforded fully dimensional personalities and varied passions, ideals, and justifications for their actions; everyone has their reasons, Khan understands, and her nuanced exploration of those reasons elevates her second novel.... A smart, measured, immersive dive into a poorly understood, terrifyingly relevant subculture of violent extremism.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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)

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)

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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