Cataloochee 
Wayne Caldwell, 2007
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812973730


Summary
Against the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post-Civil War saga of three generations of families—their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.

Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.

Never one to pass on opportunity, Ezra Banks, an ambitious young man seeking some land of his own, arrives in Cataloochee in the 1880s. His first order of business is to marry a Carter girl, Hannah, the daughter of the valley’s largest landowner. From there Ezra’s brood grows, as do those of the Carters and the Wrights. With hard work and determination, the burgeouning community transforms wilderness into home, to be passed on through generations.

But the idyll is not to last, nor to be inherited: The government takes steps to relocate folks to make room for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and tragedy will touch one of the clans in a single, unimaginable act. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Asheville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A.,
   Appalachian State; University; Ph.D., Duke University
• Currently—lives near Asheville, North Carolina


Wayne Caldwell was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and Duke University. He has taught at North Carolina Central University and at Union College in Schenectady, New York.  

Caldwell began writing fiction in the late 1990s. He has published four short stories and a poem, and won two short story prizes. Cataloochee, his first novel, brings to life a community’s historic struggles and close kinships over a span of six decades. Full of humor, darkness, beauty, and wisdom, Cataloochee is a classic novel of place and family

Caldwell lives near Asheville with his wife, Mary. They have two sons. (Adapted from the publisher and from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Ramsey Library Special Collections.)

Book Reviews
In these days of strip malls and clogged highways, you can appreciate the government’s decision [to form the Great Smoky Mountains National Park]. But thanks to Caldwell’s skillful evocation, you’ll also be touched by the sense of loss that the people of this valley feel.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Caldwell fully captures the sense of the people, the time and the place as he writes of a vanished community and way of life.
The Denver Post


A vast, old-fashioned Southern tale...Caldwell writes with lyricism, precision, a hint of the Gothic, and a sweet underlying humor that together make his long story crackle and move. He captures the physical look and the rich language of this breathtaking mountainous country, and puts before us vivid new versions of an American type—hard, stoic, at home in isolation, courageous, pious, and strong—that is still an essential component of how we see ourselves. Every moment of the story feels both generous and true.
Oprah Magazine


The first time Ezra Banks sees the promised land called Cataloochee is when he runs away at age 14 and joins the Confederate army. So begins first-time novelist Caldwell's rambling account of life in the western mountains of North Carolina from 1864 to 1928. Land-poor Ezra returns to Cataloochee in 1880, marries Hannah Carter of the land-rich Carter family, takes over some of her father's property and goes on to raise a family and acquire more land, making him one of the wealthiest men in Cataloochee. But cantankerous Ezra is mean as a snake when he's drunk (and only slightly less when sober), earning him the community's enmity. The diffuse narrative moseys from one folksy yarn to the next about the fates of various members of the Carter/Banks clan. Late in the novel, conflict arrives in the form of the government's appropriation of Cataloochee to make way for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Then, Ezra, 78 and as irascible as ever, is shot to death, and his eldest son, Zeb, is charged with his murder. The ensuing trial is as singular as Cataloochee itself. A meandering and diverting collection of tangential yarns, Caldwell's debut will find a spot on many readers' shelves near Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Set in the reclusive mountains of North Carolina, Caldwell's rootsy first novel follows the small triumphs and tragedies of three families from the Civil War to 1928, when the area was absorbed into the new Smoky Mountains National Park. Keeping track of four generations of Carters, Banks, and Wrights, with their bountiful legions of offspring, would be a chore if not for Caldwell's deft touch, indelibly detailing characters even if their particular branch of the family tree only rustles free to offer a momentary glimpse into the loves, lives, and deaths of these hardscrabble folk. That the central conflict of the novel—a patricide—does not arise until well near the end speaks to the strength of the rest of this sprawling saga, wherein moments of inspired tenderness abut moments of unspeakable vileness, where friend and foe alike are worked deep into the folds of kith and kin. Throughout, Caldwell's prose weathers the bountiful yet perilous land with the measured resolve of an old folk balladeer, without resorting to sentiment or stereotype. Greil Marcus coined the term "old, weird America" in reference to the sometimes eerie, always peculiar Appalachian songs recorded by Harry Smith; this, then, is a novel about the folk who lived out their songs in that older, weirder America.—Ian Chipman
Booklist


Though Wayne Caldwell didn’t start writing until he turned 50, the debut novelist is now working on the sequel to his historical novel Cataloochee, which enters on fearsome patriarch Ezra Banks and portrays 60 years of a real-life community that once existed in rural North Carolina. The book features incredibly true-to-life, well-drawn characters, the “kind of people,” that “the reader misses when the last page is turned." "I hope people get a sense that we have lost this place and enjoy my re-creation,” says the author. “I became interested in Cataloochee the first time I went there. It was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. I wrote a short story about my grandfather, which won a prize, and that started me forward.” To boost the book’s authenticity, the author revisited the setting with a Cataloochee native. “My cousin Raymond Caldwell was born there and had vivid memories of living there,” he says. “We would go hiking, and he could point out the cedar tree that used to be in someone’s front yard.” Caldwell also collected family stories and country lore to spin into his narrative. “I spent a lot of time with older folks like my wife’s great-uncle and those informed the book greatly,” he says. The sequel will follow the diaspora of Cataloochee’s denizens as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park comes into being in the 1930s.
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 you started.

1. Wayne Caldwell has said that he admires William Faulkner and Mark Twain, two authors whose works are "deadly serious" yet still contain a "bunch of belly laughs. Caldwell goes on to say, "I see no reason for a novel to be grim for 300 pages." What episodes strike you as particularly funny. What does the inclusion of humor add to Cataloochee?

2. One of the central concerns of the work is the loss of Eden: how civilization intrudes into an idyllic, close-knit, isolated community. In what way does Cataloochee call into question the idea of progress? Are we to feel sadness for the loss of a uniquely American way of life? This story took place in the two previous centuries. Is there a corollary "loss of eden" taking place in the 21st century?

3. Talk about how the different generations in Cataloochee viewed the government's relocation project and creation of a national park? Is the benefit we might feel today for the park worth the sense of loss felt by residents 80 years ago?

3. In the very first chapter, Ezra hears a Baptist preacher read from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 12, wherein God says to the rich man who wishs to store up his wealth,

Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall these things be, which thou has provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

How does this message echo throughout the book, especially, as regards Ezra?

4. The characters in this book often invite others to "pull up a chair and set awhile." Some readers have suggested that the invitation is for us, as well—that Caldwell has the ability to pull readers into the lives of all the characters. Do you feel that way, and if so, how does Caldwell, as a writer, accomplish that? If you don't feel invited in, why not?

5. The book begins, in the prologue, with the sound of six shots, heralding the death of Ezra. What else do those shots herald, metaphoriclly speaking? Also, of course, discuss Jeb's trial and outcome.

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

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Catch-22 
Peter Heller, 1961
Simon & Schuster
540 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451626650


Summary
Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer.

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him.

But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

As revealing today as when it was first published, this brilliant novel expresses the concerns of an entire generation in its black comedy. World War II flier John Yossarian decides that his only mission each time he goes up is to return—alive! (From the publisher.)

More
Yossarian is a paranoid American bombardier stationed off the Italian coast during World War II who believes that everyone is out to kill him. Fearing he will be killed during a bombing run, Yossarian takes desperate measures to avoid flying, such as checking himself into a hospital with a fake liver condition and moving the bomb line on the map of Italy, which postpones the bombing mission to Bologna.

Author Bio
• Birth—May 1, 1923
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Died—December 12, 1999
• Where—East Hamton, New York
• Education—University of Southern California, New York University;
   M.A., Columbia University


Joseph Heller was an American satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. The title of one of his works, Catch-22, entered the English language to refer to a vicious circle wherein an absurd, no-win choice, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is an impossibility, and regardless of choice, a same negative outcome is a certainty.

Although he is remembered primarily for Catch-22, his other works center on the lives of various members of the middle class and remain examples of modern satire.

Early years
Joseph Heller was born in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller, from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; as a teenager, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to the New York Daily News, which rejected it. At least one scholar suggests that Heller knew that he wanted to become a writer, after recalling that he received a children's version of the Iliad when he was ten.

After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. His unit was the 488th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force. Heller later remembered the war as "fun in the beginning.... You got the feeling that there was something glorious about it."

On his return home he "felt like a hero.... People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane and I flew sixty missions even though I tell them that the missions were largely milk runs."  ("Milk runs" were combat missions, but mostly uneventful due to a lack of intense opposition from enemy anti-aircraft artillery or fighters).

After the war, Heller studied English at the University of Southern California and NYU on the G.I. Bill. In 1949, he received his M.A. in English from Columbia University. Following his graduation, he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at St Catherine's College, Oxford (1949–50) and, after returning home, he taught composition at Pennsylvania State University for two years (1950–52). He also taught fiction and dramatic writing at Yale.

He then briefly worked for Time Inc., before taking a job as a copywriter at a small advertising agency where he worked alongside future novelist Mary Higgins Clark. He was first published in 1948, when The Atlantic ran one of his short stories. The story nearly won the "Atlantic First."

He was married to Shirley Held from 1945 to 1981. They had two children.

Catch-22
While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines

It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, [Yossarian] fell madly in love with him.

Within the next day, he began to envision the story that could result from this beginning, and invented the characters, the plot, and the tone that the story would eventually take. Within a week, he had finished the first chapter and sent it to his agent. He did not do any more writing for the next year, as he planned the rest of the story. The initial chapter was published in 1955 as "Catch-18" in Issue 7 of New World Writing.

Although he originally did not intend the story to be longer than a novelette, Heller was able to add enough substance to the plot that he felt it could become his first novel. When he was one-third done with the work, his agent whose assistant, Candida Donadio, liked it and sent it to publishers. Heller was not particularly attached to the work, and decided that he would not finish it if publishers were not interested. The work was soon purchased by Simon and Schuster, who gave him US $750 and promised him an additional $750 when the full manuscript was delivered. Heller missed his deadline by four to five years but, after eight years of thought, delivered the novel to his publisher.

The finished novel describes the wartime experiences of Army Air Corps Captain John Yossarian. Yossarian devises multiple strategies to avoid combat missions, but the military bureaucracy is always able to find a way to make him stay. As Heller observed,

Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts—and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?

Heller has also commented that "peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it."

Just before publication, the novel's title was changed to Catch-22 to avoid confusion with Leon Uris' new novel, Mila 18. The novel was published in hardback in 1961 to mixed reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "the best American novel in years" while other critics derided it as "disorganized, unreadable, and crass." It sold only 30,000 copies in the US hardback in its first year of publication. Reaction was very different in the UK, where, within one week of its publication, the novel was number one on the bestseller lists.

Once it was released in paperback in October 1962, however, Catch-22 caught the imaginations of many baby boomers, who identified with the novel's anti-war sentiments. The book went on to sell 10 million copies in the United States. The novel's title became a buzzword for a dilemma with no easy way out. Now considered a classic, the book was listed at number 7 on Modern Library's list of the top 100 novels of the century.

The movie rights to the novel were purchased in 1962, and, combined with his royalties, made Heller a millionaire. The film, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Alan Arkin, Jon Voight, Bob Newhart, Paula Prentiss, and Orson Welles, was released in 1970.

Other works
Shortly after Catch-22 was published, Heller thought of an idea for his next novel, which would become Something Happened, but did not act on it for two years. In the meantime he focused on scripts, completing the final screenplay for the movie adaptation of Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl, as well as a television comedy script that eventually aired as part of McHale's Navy.

In 1969, Heller wrote a play called We Bombed in New Haven. It delivered an anti-war message while discussing the Vietnam War. It was originally produced by the Repertory Company of the Yale Drama School, with Stacy Keach in the starring role. After a slight revision, it was published by Alfred A. Knopf and then debuted on Broadway, starring Jason Robards.

Something Happened, was finally published in 1974. Critics were enthusiastic about the book, and both its hardcover and paperback editions reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Heller wrote another five novels, each of which took him several years to complete. One of them, Closing Time, revisited many of the characters from Catch-22 as they adjusted to post-war New York. All of the novels sold respectably well, but could not duplicate the success of his debut. Told by an interviewer that he had never produced anything else as good as Catch-22, Heller famously responded, "Who has?"

Heller maintained that he did not "have a philosophy of life, or a need to organize its progression. My books are not constructed to "say anything." Only when he was almost one-third finished with the novel would he gain a clear vision of what it should be about. At that point, with the idea solidified, he would rewrite all that he had finished and then continue to the end of the story. The finished version of the novel would often not begin or end with the sentences he had originally envisioned, although he usually tried to include the original opening sentence somewhere in the text.

Teaching
In the 1970s Heller taught creative writing at the City College of New York. After the publication of Catch-22, Heller resumed a part-time academic career as a teacher of creative writing at Yale University and at the University of Pennsylvania.

Illness
In December, 1981, Heller was diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that was to leave him temporarily paralyzed. He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Mount Sinai Medical Hospital for a month and was transferred in January (1982 to the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. His illness and recovery are recounted at great length in the autobiographical No Laughing Matter, which contains alternating chapters by Heller and his good friend Speed Vogel. The book reveals the assistance and companionship Heller received from a number of his good friends—Mel Brooks, Mario Puzo, Dustin Hoffman and George Mandel among them.

Heller eventually made a substantial recovery. He later married Valerie Humphries, one of the nurses who helped him become well again.

Later years
In 1991 Heller returned to St. Catherine's at Oxford as a visiting Fellow for a term and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the college. In 1998, he released a memoir, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here, in which he relived his childhood as the son of a deliveryman and offered some details about the inspirations for Catch-22.

He died of a heart attack at his home in East Hampton, on Long Island, in December, 1999, shortly after the completion of his final novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. On hearing of Heller's death, his friend Kurt Vonnegut said, "Oh, God, how terrible. This is a calamity for American literature."

Catch-22 controversy
In April 1998, Lewis Pollock wrote to The Sunday Times regarding "the amazing similarity of characters, personality traits, eccentricities, physical descriptions, personnel injuries and incidents" in Catch-22 and The Sky is a Lonely Place (Face of a Hero in the U.S.), published in 1951 by Louis Falstein. Falstein's novel was available two years before Heller wrote the first chapter of Catch-22 (1953) while he was a student at Oxford. The Times stated:

Both have central characters who are using their wits to escape the aerial carnage; both are haunted by an omnipresent injured airman, invisible inside a white body cast.

Stating he had never read Falstein's novel, or heard of him, Heller said: "My book came out in 1961.... I find it funny that nobody else has noticed any similarities, including Falstein himself, who died just last year." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/4/2014.)

Book Reviews
Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense.
Harper Lee


One of the most bitterly funny works in the language.... Explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant.
New Republic


To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one.
Stephen King - Entertainment Weekly


Below its hilarity, so wild that it hurts, Catch-22 is the strongest repudiation of our civilization, in fiction, to come out of World War II.... [T]his novel is not merely the best American novel to come out of World War II; it is the best American novel that has come out of anywhere in years.
Nelson Algren - Nation


It’s the rock and roll of novels.... There’s no book like it.... Surprisingly powerful
Norman Mailer - Esquire


One of the greatest anti-war books ever written.
Vanity Fair

Discussion Questions
1. A complex, chaotic structure makes the novel difficult to follow. How might this structure parallel, represent, and/or elevate themes in the story? How does Heller piece together the chronology of events?

The Catcher in the Rye 
J.D. Salinger, 1951
Little, Brown & Co.
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316769488

Summary 
The Catcher in the Rye covers 48 hours in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, who has just flunked out of his expensive boarding school in eastern Pennsylvania. This makes the fourth school from which he's been expelled from. Holden heads to New York City, his home, and puts himself up in the Edmont Hotel. Over the next two days, through a series of encounters, Holden experiences the cynicism and phoniness of adult life— his narrative voice capturing the essence of teenage angst and alienation. The novel begins:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.

(From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 01, 1919
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Died—January 27, 2010
• Where—Cornish, New Hampshire
• Education—Valley Forge Military Academy; attended New
  York University, Ursinus College, Columbia University


Jerome David Salinger established his reputation on the basis of a single novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), whose principal character, Holden Caulfield, epitomized the growing pains of a generation of high school and college students. The public attention that followed the success of the book led Salinger to move from New York to the remote hills of Cornish, New Hampshire, where he lived until his death in 2010.

Before that he had published only a few short stories; one of them, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," which appeared in The New Yorker in 1949, introduced readers to Seymour Glass, a character who subsequently figured in Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Salinger's only other published books. Of his 35 published short stories, those which Salinger wishes to preserve are collected in Nine Stories (1953). (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Mr. Salinger's rendering of teen-age speech is wonderful: the unconscious humor, the repetitions, the slang and profanity, the emphasis, all are just right. Holden's mercurial changes of mood, his stubborn refusal to admit his own sensitiveness and emotions, his cheerful disregard of what is sometimes known as reality are typically and heart breakingly adolescent. 

In New York Holden's nightmarish efforts to escape from himself by liquor, sex, night clubs, movies, sociability—anything and everything--are fruitless. Misadventure piles on misadventure, but he bears it all with a grim cheerfulness and stubborn courage. He is finally saved as a result of his meeting with his little sister Phoebe, like Holden a wonderful creation. She is the single person who supplies and just in time—the affection that Holden needs.
   
Certainly you'll look a long time before you'll meet another youngster like Holden Caulfield, as likable and, in spite of his failings, as sound. And though he's still not out of the woods entirely, there at the end, still we think he's going to turn out all right.
Nash K. Burger - New York Times

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 get your discussion started for The Catcher in the Rye:

1. Discuss Holden's observations about the carousel's gold ring at the end of the novel. What is the significance of the ring? What do his observations reveal about his state of maturity? In what way has his character changed—or developed—by the end of the story? (See LitCourse 5 on characterization.)

2. Do Holden's encounters with adult hypocrisy ring true to you? Or are they more a reflection of his own deteriorating mental stability? Or both?

3. Holden seems to be reaching out for genuine intimacy in his encounters. Is he himself capable of intimacy? Are any of the other characters capable of providing it? In fact, what is intimacy—sexual and/or non-sexual?

4. What role does Phoebe play in the novel?

5. What is the significance of the title—especially the fact that Holden gets Robert Burns's poem wrong?

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

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Catching Air 
Sarah Pekkanen, 2014
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451673531


Summary
Two married couples pursue a dream to open a bed-and-breakfast in small-town Vermont.

A chance to run a B&B in snowy, remote Vermont—it’s an offer Kira Danner can’t resist after six soul-crushing years of working as a lawyer in Florida. As Kira and her husband, Peter, step into a brand new life, she quells her fears about living with the B&B’s co-owners: Peter’s sexy, irresponsible brother Rand, and Rand’s wife, Alyssa...who is essentially a stranger.

For her part, Alyssa sees taking over the B&B as the latest in a string of adventures. Plus, a quiet place might help her recover from the news that she can’t bear children. But the idyllic town proves to be anything but serene: Within weeks, the sisters-in-law are scrambling to prepare for their first big booking—a winter wedding—and soon a shy, mysterious woman comes to work for them.

Dawn Zukoski is hiding something; that much is clear. But what the sisters-in-law don't realize is that Dawn is also hiding from someone…

Relatable and dynamic, Catching Air delves deeply into the vital relationships that give shape to women’s lives. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Bethesda, Maryland
• Education—University of Wisconsin; University of Maryland
• Currently—lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland


Sarah Pekkanen was born in New York City, arriving so quickly that doctors had no time to give her mother painkillers. This was the last time Sarah ever arrived for anything earlier than expected. Her mother still harbors a slight grudge.

Sarah’s family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, where Sarah, along with a co-author, wrote a book entitled “Miscellaneous Tales and Poems.” Shockingly, publishers did not leap upon this literary masterpiece. Sarah sent a sternly-worded letter to publishers asking them to respond to her manuscript. Sarah no longer favors Raggedy Ann stationery, although she is sure it impressed top New York publishers.

Sarah’s parents were hauled into her elementary school to see first-hand the shocking condition of her desk. Sarah’s parents stared, open-mouthed, at the crumpled pieces of paper, broken pencils, and old notebooks crowding Sarah’s desk. Sarah’s organization skills have since improved. Slightly.

After college, Sarah began work as a journalist, covering Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, Sarah could not understand the thick drawls of the U.S. Senators from Alabama, resulting in many unintentional misquotes. Sarah was groped by one octogenarian politician, sumo-bumped off a subway car by Ted Kennedy, and unsuccessfully sued by the chief of staff to a corrupt U.S. Congresswoman. Sarah also worked briefly as an on-air correspondent for e! Entertainment Network, until the e! producers realized that Capitol Hill wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what one might call sexy.

Sarah married Glenn Reynolds, completing her rebellion against her father, who told her never to become a writer or marry a lawyer.

Sarah took a job at Gannett New Service/USAToday, covering Capitol Hill. Sarah was assigned to cover the White House Correspondents Dinner and rode in the Presidential motorcade to the dinner. Sarah convinced a White House aide to let her stick her head out of the limousine moon-roof during the ride and wave to onlookers. Later, her triumph was tempered by the fact that bouncers would not allow her into the Vanity Fair after-party. Sarah attempted entry three times in case the bouncers were just kidding.

Sarah took a job writing features for the Baltimore Sun, and interviewed the actor who played Greg Brady. She refrained from asking if he really made out with Marcia, but just barely.

Sarah and Glenn’s son Jackson was born. He arrived too quickly for Sarah to receive painkillers, and Sarah was pretty sure she saw her mother smirking. When Glenn put a loving hand on Sarah’s shoulder during the throes of labor, Sarah decided the most expedient way to get Glenn to remove his hand was to bite it, hard. She was proved right.

Twenty months later, Sarah and Glenn’s son Will was born. Three weeks later, Sarah and Glenn moved into a new home and renovated the kitchen. Two weeks later, Glenn caught pneumonia and simultaneously started a new job. Ten days after the kitchen renovation was complete, the kitchen caught on fire, and Sarah, Glenn and family moved to a hotel while renovation began anew. Sarah and Glenn decided to work on their "timing" issues.

Having left her journalism job to chase around the ever-active Jack and Will, Sarah started writing a column for Bethesda Magazine and began work on a novel. She did not write it on Raggedy Ann stationery.

Her first book, The Opposite of Me, came out in 2010 and her second, Skiping, a Beat in 2011. Those were followed by These Girls in 2012, The Best of Me in 2013, and Catching Air in 2014.

Sarah gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Dylan, and  gets a little weepy every time she contemplates her good luck. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Ultimately, Pekkanen shows that relationships of any kind take work, expression of love, and the willingness to take risks in order to save them.
New York Journal of Books


Pekkanen weaves a satisfying tale of the nuances of marriage and duty and how small kindnesses can reestablish the bonds of family after an estrangement.
People


Smart and soulful, Pekkanen explores the place where self and sisterhood intersect.
Redbook


When Kira and her husband, Peter, decide to join his brother, Rand, and his wife, Alyssa, in Vermont to help run their new bed-and-breakfast, it’s a big departure from their previously planned-out lives.... Pekkanen writes novels that offer thoughtful examinations of how the past shapes adult relationships and of the differences between men and women. Many of the interwoven story lines are finely wrought, and the book as a whole is compelling. —Aleksandra Walker
Booklist


The author explores issues that couples and friends face today—nothing and nobody is perfect, and life has hardships that must be endured. Verdict: Once again, Pekkanen delivers relatable characters and story lines, showcasing the strength and perseverance required to make relationships work. [A]n entertaining and emotional read. —Erin Holt, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN
Library Journal


Pekkanen...returns to comfortable terrain by focusing on two couples running a Vermont bed-and-breakfast.... Although this novel shares some of the same qualities as Pekkanen's other successes, Dawn's subplot feels like a strained jolt of danger into an otherwise cohesive, if thinly plotted, family drama. A likable, if lesser, effort from Pekkanen.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. In what ways do Alyssa and Kira discover that they are more alike than they believed they were?

2. How are Rand and Peter contrasted throughout the novel? What are their different approaches to running the bed-and- breakfast?

3. For Dawn, following her heart rather than her head leads her into a disastrous outcome. Have you ever found yourself in a difficult situation because you were blinded by love?

4. Alyssa recalls a friend who went from weighing 350 pounds to running several marathons a year: "She hadn’t changed her habits; her habits had changed her." What’s the meaning behind this distinction? What are some of the new habits that these characters develop because they are running the B-and-B?

5. Even though Kira, Dawn, and Alyssa are all grown women, how are their childhood experiences—particularly, the degree to which they felt safe and cared for—impacting them throughout the novel? Particularly for Kira and Alyssa, how are these experiences shaping how they think about becoming mothers themselves?

6. In thinking about her marriage to Rand, Alyssa notes, "Their relationship had never been truly tested." Given that they regularly moved and traveled—and likely faced financial uncertainty as a result—did this analysis surprise you? What kinds of life events do you think really test a romantic relationship?

7. How do each woman’s memories of her mother drive her forward, or inspire her?

8. Kira becomes frustrated when she feels she’s bearing the weight of planning the wedding and the daily management of the inn without Peter equally contributing; Alyssa starts to panic when she realizes that perhaps she never really ensured that Rand also wanted a child as much as she did. To what degree is each woman responsible for the situations they find themselves in, and to what extent should they expect their husbands to behave differently?

9. Alyssa says that she was worried she’d "feel confined by bed rest" but that surprisingly, "all her traveling was what had prepared her for it." What are some other seemingly polar opposite experiences that end up being mutually beneficial?

10. Consider where we leave Rand at the novel’s conclusion. What do you think will happen to his and Alyssa’s marriage? Do you think men are less likely than women to change their patterns of behavior?

11. Kira disappears from the B-and-B and confronts two men when she arrives in Florida. What kind of power has each man held over her sense of self since she and Peter moved to Vermont, and why is it essential for her to find closure with each of them?

12. Consider the different types of relationships that are depicted in the novel—romantic bonds, blood relations, in-laws, and friends—and discuss the expectations and "norms" associated with each.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Catching Rain 
Sharon Duerst, 2014
White Spring
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780985537821


Summary
Mia Casinelli is captivated by Mexico - a life long-lost and a mysterious woman in her dreams. She sees a future in the smile of a stranger there, but what to do about Gerald back in Oregon?

How can she build a new life with only words and inklings to lead the way?

This book is the sequel to Mending Stones (2012).

Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—the state of Idaho, USA
• Raised—the state of Oregon
• Education—B.S., University of Oregon
• Currently—lives in Bend, Oregon


When not writing or walking or tackling creative challenges, Sharon Duerst enjoys family and friends and many opportunities to appreciate the beauty of nature. After growing up in Idaho and the Columbia River Gorge, Sharon finished college in the Willamette Valley, and started her career in education and long-term care on the Oregon Coast. Now living on the high desert of Central Oregon, with wide spaces of time and landscape to explore, she finds great inspiration in natural environments. (From the author.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
The following reviews were posted on Goodreads.

I had my coffee and started reading, ate lunch while reading and didn’t stop until reaching the beautiful ending! I laughed…I cried…I rejoiced in how Mia changed her life! I loved this story! It reminded me how important it is to take risks in life and move toward what is wanted— even if not knowing at all where it will lead. Following intuition can be life altering! I feel the characters are friends, and I wonder what is next in their lives! I don’t want to let them go! — Jet McCann

I loved the depth of the story, and the characters! I couldn’t put it down until I finished reading! It was so good! Nothing left out! I loved the ending!! I’m amazed at the places the story went. I want to look up the attractions at the back of the book and plan a Catching Rain Itinerary! — Karen Martell

I could not put this book down! So easy to read…Really flowed. Great story line…Loved reading about the different locations. — Katrena Meyer

“A great book! The poetry is fascinating. I love the travel, and especially being able to relate to all the places in the Pacific Northwest. I also love a great love story, and I needed tissue at the end! — Connie Van Sickle

Catching Rain picks up where Mending Stone left off, tied up loose ends with enough tragedy and heartache, but ends beautifully—exactly where you would want it to! — Debbie Wiemeyer

Love the story—the mystery unfolding about who Mia is…Love the focus on intuition, and attention to dreams and images…Love the relationships…Love the locations…many of my favorite places…the Northwest…San Francisco…Mexico…What a lovely story! I loved reading this book! — Maria Carlos

Discussion Questions
1.  What part does intuition play in the plot?

2.  Do you see growth in Mia?

3.  How does the environment in Mexico influence Mia?

4.  What do you find surprising or shocking?

5.  Do you think Mia will continue writing? Or was it only part of her processing—a necessary step in her evolving thoughts and healing?

6.  Did you enjoy the travel features?

7.  What is your favorite part of the story?

8.  Who do you think is the wisest character?

9.  Who is your favorite character? Why?

10. Do you believe in fate? Divine intervention? Prayer?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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Catering to Nobody (Goldy Culinary Mystery series #1)
Diane Mott Davidson, 1992
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553584707


Summary
Catering a wake is not Goldy Schulz’s idea of fun. Yet the Colorado caterer throws herself into preparing a savory feast including Poached Salmon and Strawberry Shortcake Buffet designed to soothe forty mourners. And her culinary efforts seem to be exactly what the doctor ordered...until her ex-father-in-law gynecologist Fritz Korman is struck down and Goldy is accused of adding poison to the menu.

Now, with the Department of Health impounding her leftovers, her ex-husband proclaiming her guilt, and her business about to be shut down, Goldy knows she can’t wait for the police to serve up the answers. She’ll soon uncover more than one family skeleton and a veritable stew of unpalatable secrets—the kind that could make Goldy the main course in an unsavory killer’s next murder! (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 22, 1949
• Where—Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.A. Johns Hopkins
• Awards—Anthony Award from Bouchercon (World Mystery
   Convention)
• Currently—Evergreen, Colorado


Diane Mott Davidson is an American author of mystery novels that use the theme of food. Several recipes are included in each book, and each novel title is a play on a food or drink word.

Mott Davidson studied political science at Wellesley College and lived across the hall from Hillary Clinton. In a few of her novels (particularly, The Cereal Murders), she references a prestigious eastern women's college that her sleuth, Goldy Schulz, attended before transferring to a Colorado state university. In real life, Mott Davidson transferred from Wellesley and eventually graduated from Stanford University.

The main character in Mott Davidson's novels is Goldy Schulz, a small town caterer who also solves murder mysteries in her spare time. At the start of the series, Goldy is a recently divorced mother with a young son trying to make a living as a caterer in the fictional town of Aspen Meadows, CO. As the series progresses, new characters are introduced that change Goldy's professional and personal life. It has been noted that Aspen Meadows closely resembles a real Colorado town, Evergreen. Evergreen is where Mott Davidson currently resides with her family.

The series has now reached 15 books, with Fataly Flakey (2009) as the most recent. The first 12 books interwove recipes with the novel's text. When a dish is first described in the novel, the relevant recipe followed within the next few pages. Double Shot, the 12th novel, marked a change in the publishing of these recipes. In that book all recipes are compiled and printed at the end of the novel.

She was the guest of honor at the 2007 Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave in Manhattan, Kansas. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
Chef Goldy Schulz's life is a medley of murder, mayhem, and melted chocolate.
New York Post

Diane Mott Davidson's culinary mysteries can be hazardous to your waistline.
People

Davidson's debut is as embarrassing as a fallen souffle would be to her narrator, divorced culinary artist Goldy Korman of Goldilocks' Catering in Aspen Meadows, Colo. Goldy, in business to support herself and her 11-year-old son, Arch, caters the gathering after the funeral of Arch's teacher, at which her former father-in-law, gynecologist Fritz Korman, drinks from a poisoned cup. While the police make sure that Goldy is now "catering to nobody," she begins her own investigation to clear herself. As amorous detective Tom Schulz courts her, Goldy courts danger, seeking connections among the recovered Fritz, the teacher and nearly everyone else in the rustic town, including her teenage lodger, Patty Sue. The only rewards of the mystery are recipes for tasty dishes and the endearing Arch, who outwits the killer and is the sole credible character in the overstuffed cast.
Publishers Weekly

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 Catering to Nobody:

1. Talk about Goldy as a character. How would you describe her? Some readers find her strong or spunky, others see her as whiny and unlikable? What do you think of her as the book's heroine?

2. What do you make of the other characters? There's John Richard, "The Jerk"—Goldy's ex-husband. Is his abusive behavior and his string of affairs handled realistically? And what about Marla—what does she bring to the party?

3. What is the reason that Goldy initiates her own investigation into the attempted poisoning of her ex-father-in-law, Fritz Korman?

4. What does Goldy learn about Fritz...why do people seem to have grudges against him?

5. How does Goldy's son Arch cope with the death of his favorite teacher, Laura Smiley? Are his coping mechanisms typical of young people who experience the death of someone close? Did you find it odd that Goldy doesn't demand more from the school regarding Arch's black eyes?

6. Laura supposedly committed suicide, but when Goldy begins to examine Laura's life...she suspects something else was at play? What, in particular, prompts Goldy to doubt the official cause of death?

7. Talk about the red herrings—the techniques the author uses to lead readers astray, causing us to wrongly suspect various neighbors in Aspen Meadows? Were you taken in by the false clues?

8. What about the real clues? Does Davidson disguise them well enough? In other words, were you surprised—or were you able to figure out who the culprit was early on?

9. Does this book deliver...as a mystery? Did it hold your interest, did you find yourself quickly turning pages to learn what happened next? Were you satisfied, or surprised, by the ending? Was the writing fresh? Or did you find the writing cliched...and the ending predictable?

10. If you've read others in the Goldy series, how does this one stack up to the others? If this is the first Goldy book you've read, are you inspired to read more?

11. Talk about the recipes—have you tried them? Are you serving them at your book club meeting? Why does Davidson include them as part of her novel? What part do they play in the plot? Is there a symbolic significance to the use of recipes, the fact that an entire series is based around a catering business? Or are they just for fun?!

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

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Catherine House 
Elisabeth Thomas, 2020
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062905659 


Summary
A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students … and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.

Trust us, you belong here.

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents.

For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price.

Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktoria, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine.

For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison.

And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.

Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Elisabeth Thomas grew up in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, where she still lives and now writes. She graduated from Yale University and currently works as an archivist for a modern art museum. Catherine House is her first novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[A] delicious literary Gothic debut, Ines Murillo, a self-described ghost, is accepted into the mysterious, exclusive Catherine House, …so exclusive, and so romantic, that Ines just might be able to stop running from her dark past. When Ines discovers the truth about Catherine House, she must grapple with what she has long avoided: who she is and who she might become.
New York Times Book Review


At times, the narrative stretches a bit thin, repeating certain motifs as the characters roam the halls, entering one mysterious room after another. But the novel compensates for redundancy with some wonderfully horrific and truly shocking discoveries within these locked antechambers. There are shades of Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock as suspense builds in the winding corridors of the house and the twisting turns of the psyche. Moody and evocative as a fever dream, Catherine House is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step.
Washington Post


The strength of this debut novel relies on its refusal to adhere to any sort of genre conventions . . .  The book’s setting provides just as much fodder for thought and discussion as do its characters or plot. . . . While the book is easy to read—Thomas’s smart prose ensures that—the echoes of discomfort linger long after the last pages are turned.
Boston Globe


Thomas’s debut novel is a dark, delicious gothic read that hits all the right spots in the best way. If you want a book you can’t put down for even a second, this is it (10 Most Anticipated Books Of 2020).
Forbes


Elisabeth Thomas’s debut novel weaves a thrilling, compact story that builds dread slowly. . . . Thomas incorporates elements of science fiction as she begins to reveal the darkness at work on campus, but not before readers are eased in with some classic hallmarks of prep-school fiction.
Atlantic


Calling all The Secret History fans! This debut novel is set within the walls of an exclusive private college, but with a twist: Students seclude themselves for three years, completely removed from their previous lives.
Entertainment Weekly


[S]pellbinding…. Surreal imagery, spare characterization, and artful, hypnotic prose lend Thomas’s tale a delirious air, but at the book’s core lies a profound portrait of depression and adolescent turmoil. Fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History will devour this philosophical fever dream.
Publishers Weekly


[T]the tone of the story is dark and discomforting.…  Readers looking for a strong atmospheric setting in the gothic style will be drawn in by this psychological thriller. Less satisfying are the interesting if underdeveloped characters. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal


(Starred review) For fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a haunting, atmospheric reflection on the discovery of self and others. At times terrifying, always gorgeously captivating, Thomas’ debut is one not to be missed, and perhaps to be revisited frequently.
Booklist


[T]he reader only learns as much as Ines herself can see and process. In the end, we're shut out of the mysteries of Catherine House, too. A promising but uneven debut that walks the line between speculative fiction and ghost story.
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 CATHERINE HOUSE … then take off on your own:

1. What do you think of Ines Murillo when we first meet her, primarily during the first third of the book? Ines views Catherine House with a certain disdain. Why? And why is she there?

2. (Follow-up to Question 1) What is the past Ines is running from? How has that past shaped her? Does Ines change by the novel's end?

3. Institutions are not always what they seem. What were your first impressions of Catherine House—meant to be an exclusive school that has graduated some of the best and the brightest minds in the arts, sciences, and politics? When does your perspective begin to shift: at what point did you begin to suspect that the school is something other than what it claims to be?

4. How does Ines view the school—along with its demand that students are to give it their all. What does she observe about Catherine House that makes her skeptical?

5 Describe the strange rituals and traditions at Catherine House? Are they cult-like, benign, or something else? Why does the school choose the particular students it does? What do they want out of their students?

6. In the latter half of the book, we learn that the school is engaged in research into a substance called "plasma." What is plasma? The novel is rather vague about plasma, but discuss its nature and its effects as best you can? How would you describe Ines's first encounter with plasma?

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

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Caught 
Harlan Coben, 2010
Penguin Group USA
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451232700


Summary
From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a fast-paced, emotion-packed novel about guilt, grief, and our capacity to forgive.

Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate-and nationally televised-sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target.

Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.

In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben's trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can't trust her own instincts about this story—or the motives of the people around her. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 4, 1962
• Raised—Livingston, New Jersey, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards
• Currently—lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey

Harlan Coben is an American author of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past (such as murders, fatal accidents, etc.) and often have multiple plot twists. Both series of Coben's books are set in and around New York and New Jersey, and some of the supporting characters in the two series have appeared in both.

Coben was born to a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, but was raised and schooled in Livingston, New Jersey with childhood friend and future politician Chris Christie at Livingston High School. While studying political science at Amherst College, he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity with author Dan Brown. After Amherst, Coben worked in the travel industry, in a company owned by his grandfather. He now lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.

Career
Coben was in his senior year at college when he realized he wanted to write. His first book was accepted when he was twenty-six but after publishing two stand-alone thrillers in his twenties (Play Dead in 1990 and Miracle Cure in 1991) he decided on a change of direction and began a series of thrillers featuring his character Myron Bolitar. The novels of the popular series follow the tales of a former basketball player turned sports agent (Bolitar), who often finds himself investigating murders involving his clients.

Coben has won an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award a Smelly Award (for writing about New Jersey) and an Anthony Award, and is the first writer to have received all three. He is also the first writer in more than a decade to be invited to write fiction for the New York Times op-ed page. He wrote a short story entitled "The Key to my Father," which appeared June 15, 2003.

In 2001 he released his first stand-alone thriller since the creation of the Myron Bolitar series in 1995, Tell No One, which went on to be his best selling novel to date. Film director Guillaume Canet made the book into a French thriller, Ne le dis à personne in 2006. Coben followed Tell No One with six more stand-alone novels. His 2008 novel Hold Tight became his first book to debut at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Although this is another stand-alone novel, Coben commented on his official website that certain key characters from The Woods will make brief appearances. His 2009 novel, Long Lost, featured a return of Myron Bolitar and also debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Caught, also a stand-alone thriller was published in 2010. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Early in Caught, Harlan Coben’s crazily hyperactive new thriller, a wholesome teenage girl named Haley McWaid disappears from her happy New Jersey home.... Mr. Coben has the edge when it comes to popcorn pacing. His once-enveloping stories now move at a breakneck clip not unlike James Patterson’s, though at least Mr. Coben still writes chapters longer than three pages. Since anything and everything can happen in the berserk world of Caught, none of the suspense carries much weight, and no character has time to become particularly sympathetic.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


It may already be too late for this review to be written. I finished "Caught," the new thriller by that galloping bestseller-machine Harlan Coben, only 24 hours before sitting down at my computer, but already some details of its intricate plot are eluding my grasp. No doubt that's mostly my fault, but it may also have something to do with the brain-taxing plethora of secrets held and coverups performed by inhabitants of the New Jersey town where the action takes place.
Dennis Drabelle - Washington Post


It is possible for a life to go so badly wrong that it can never be right again?... The opening chapter of this excellent thriller is a salutary warning of how fragile civilised life can seem.... Coben resolves all this with twists and turns of plot that he has carefully prepared, but in the end what we take away from this book is less his ingenuity than his wisdom.
Roz Kaveney - Independent (UK)


Bestseller Coben (Hold Tight) has a knack for taking everyday nightmares and playing with life’s endless “what ifs,” as shown in this stand-alone thriller, a tightly choreographed dance of guilt and innocence, forgiveness and retribution. Frank Tremont, a world-weary, near-retirement investigator for New Jersey’s Essex County, has to face his failure to solve his last case—the disappearance of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, Dan Mercer stands accused of being a sexual predator thanks to the ambush journalism of Wendy Tynes, a tabloid TV reporter, who must cope with her husband’s death caused by a drunken driver as well as reckon with the possibility of Mercer’s innocence. When Tynes finds a link between a father of one of Mercer’s alleged victims and others felled by scandal, she could become a killer’s next victim. If the wealth of characters dilutes the suspense, Coben gives readers lots to think about when judging rights and wrongs.
Publishers Weekly


Teenager Haley McWaid doesn't come home one night, and when months go by without a word her parents assume the worst. Reporter Wendy Tynes conducts a sexual predator sting, working with the local police to capture men on camera and later televising the footage. Her latest suspect is community social worker Dan Mercer, and those who know him can't believe he's guilty. Tynes begins to question her instincts, but she carries on with her investigation, which reveals a shocking link between Mercer and the missing Haley, with aftershocks that will destroy a community. Verdict: Coben is in top form exposing the dark underside of modern suburbia. The story will chill readers, especially parents of teenagers. Complex and intricate, this is his best book since Promise Me. Don't escape, get Caught.
Library Journal


Along with his Myron Bolitar series, Coben's stand-alone novels have cemented his reputation as a solid writer and a relentless plotter of high-octane entertainment.... With his latest effort—though, admittedly, a generally slower-paced effort with weaker characterization than in other novels—Coben delivers solid entertainment. Again.
Booklist

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 Caught:

1. Is Harlan Coben able to juggle all the balls he's thrown into the air in this novel? Some critics have suggested there are there simply too many characters and mysteries to keep track of...or to cohere into a taut thriller. Do you agree or disagree? Were you able to follow all the twists and turns and stay on top of the storyline?

2. Talk about the way in which Coben juxtaposes ordinary, cozy domestic details with forces of evil in the larger society. Why? What might be his purpose as an author in using this narrative technique (which he does in many of his thrillers)?

3. Of the main characters, whom do you find most sympathetic—and why? Is it Wendy Tynes, Dan Mercer, Marcia McWaid...or others?

4. What do you think about Wendy's tactics of entrapment? Is she complicit in what happens to Dan—even if what happens is for a good cause?

5. What kind of pressures does Wendy, as a female, face at the TV station? How did you feel when she was fired from her job?

6. Talk about Wendy's coming to terms with the woman driver who killed her husband? What does she come to understand?

7. The book examines the role of TV, the Internet, and social media in creating public perception. What does the book suggest is the impact of all this high-speed communication on our lives, our identities, or the truth?

8. Of all the various plot strands and mysteries—a pedophile, an embezzling scheme, a college boys’ conspiracy, a missing girl, and a dead hooker—which was most intriguing or compelling? Were you ahead of the curve in figuring out how they all came together?

9. What about Jenna and her husband? What other course of action could they/should they have taken? What would have been the consequences?

10. Does this novel deliver? Does it offer a suspenseful plot and engaging characters? Was the ending a surprise...or predictable? Were all the loose ends tied up satisfactorily? Have you read other Coben books...if so, how does this one compare?

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

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Celestial Bodies 
Jokha Alharthi (Trans., Marilyn Booth), 2019 (U.S.)
Catapult Books
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781948226943


Summary
Winner, 2019 Man Booker International Prize

In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a reunion with the man she loves, who has emigrated to Canada.

These three women and their families, their losses and loves, unspool beautifully against a backdrop of a rapidly changing Oman, a country evolving from a traditional, slave-owning society into its complex present.

Through the sisters, we glimpse a society in all its degrees, from the very poorest of the local slave families to those making money through the advent of new wealth.

The first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English, Celestial Bodies marks the arrival in the United States of a major international writer. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 1978
• Where—Oman
• Education—Ph.D., University of Edinburgh
• Awards—Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Al Khoudh, Oman


Jokha Alharthi, an Omani writer and academic, is the 2019 recipient of the Man Booker International Prize for her novel, Celestial Bodies.

Alharthi was born and educated primarily in Oman. She traveled to the U.K. where she earned her doctorate in classical Arabic literature from Edinburgh University. Currently, she is an associate professor in the Arabic department at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman.

Alharthi has published three collections of short stories, three children's books, and three novels: Manamat, Sayyidat el-Qamar (Celestial Bodies), and Narinjah (Bitter Orange). She has also authored academic works.

The novel, Sayyidat el-Qamar, translated into English by Marilyn Booth and retitled Celestial Bodies, was published in the UK in 2018 and the US in 2019. The novel was the first work by an Arabic-language writer to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize (2019), and the first novel by an Omani woman to appear in English translation. 

In addition to English, Sayyidat el-Qamar (Celestial Bodies) has been translated into the following 20 languages: Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese (also, Brazilian Portuguese), Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/10/20.)

Book Reviews
[A]n innovative reimagining of the family saga. Alharthi avoids the languid ease of chronology in favor of dozens of taut character studies, often no more than a page or two…. These vignettes are sharp-eyed, sharp-edged and carefully deployed in a multigenerational jigsaw that’s as evasive as it is evocative…. [T]his is a contemporary novel, insistent and alive… a treasure house.
Beejay Silcox - New York Times Book Review


The glimpses into a culture relatively little known in the West are fascinating.
Jane Housham - Guardian (UK)


A book to win over the head and the heart in equal measure . . . Its delicate artistry draws us into a richly imagined community — opening out to tackle profound questions of time and mortality and disturbing aspects of our shared history.… Celestial Bodies evokes the forces that constrain us and those that set us free.
Bettany Hughes, chair - 2019 Man Booker International Prize


The form’s remarkable adaptability is on brilliant display…. Celestial Bodies tells the subtle and quietly anguished story of several unhappy marriages.… Yet one of the book’s signal triumphs is that Alharthi has constructed her own novelistic form…. The novel moves back and forth between the generations very flexibly, often in the course of a single page or even paragraph, owing to Alharthi’s deft management of time shifts.… The leaps and swerves seem closer to poetry or fable or song than to the novel… at once intimate and historical.
James Wood - New Yorker


[B]reathtaking… Celestial Bodies… follows the lives of three sisters from a small village at a time of rapid social and economic change in Oman. The tale is replete with history, poetry, and philosophy, but also slavery, broken marriages, passion, and not-so-secret lovers.
Kim Gattas - Atlantic


(Starred review) Alharthi throws the reader into the midst of a tangled family drama…. The novel rewards readers willing to assemble the pieces of Alharthi’s puzzle into a whole, and is all the more satisfying for the complexity of its tale.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Readers will come to this novel… and will leave with a sense of original storytelling, rich characterization, and transparently bright language, expertly translated. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Althari’s unique structure demands vigilant participation as it is more jigsaw puzzle than linear narrative…. Pieced together, a robust village emerges, of alliances and betrayals, survival and murder, surrender and escape. Patient readers will be seductively, magnificently rewarded.
Booklist


(Starred review) [A] sweeping story of generational and societal change…. A richly layered, ambitious work that teems with human struggles and contradictions, providing fascinating insight into Omani history and society.
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 CELESTIAL BODIES … then take off on your own:

1. Celestial Bodies, set in a village outside of Muscat, Oman, depicts a culture unknown to most of us in the West. What have you learned, what surprised you, what angered, even shocked, you?

2. Outwardly, women have little, in any, power in Mideast society. But things are not always what they seem. Talk about the kind of subtle, invisible power that the women in Celestial Bodies wield outside the traditional norms.

3. Most of the chapters are told in the third person point-of-view, except for Abdallah, Mayya's husband, who speaks to us in his own voice. Why might Alharthi have made the decision to let Abdallah tell his own story?

4. Speaking of Abdallah and Mayya, when Abdallah asks his wife if she loves him, she responds, "It's the Egyptian films, have they eaten your brain?" What do you make of her response? What does she mean? How does Abdallah react?

5. How are the characters in this novel trapped by the past? Who is trying to escape the past? Who is trying to ignore, or paper over, the past?

6. In what way does the novel hint at currents of change coming to this very traditional society?

6. Much has been made of the book's structure with multiple points of view and shifting time frames. It's even been referred to as a puzzle with each chapter providing a single piece of the picture. Did you find the narrative choice difficult to follow? Why might Alharthi have chosen to write her novel using this fragmented technique?

7. The book's title, literally, means "ladies of the moon." How does this title (perhaps more so than Celestial Bodies) reflect the novel?

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

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Celine 
Peter Heller, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451493897


Summary
From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.

Working out of her jewel box of an apartment at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career of tracking down missing persons, and she has a better record at it than the FBI.

But when a young woman, Gabriela, asks for her help, a world of mystery and sorrow opens up. Gabriela's father was a photographer who went missing on the border of Montana and Wyoming. He was assumed to have died from a grizzly mauling, but his body was never found.

Now, as Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, investigating a trail gone cold, it becomes clear that they are being followed—that this is a case someone desperately wants to keep closed.

Inspired by the life of Heller’s own remarkable mother, a chic and iconoclastic private eye, Celine is a deeply personal novel, a wildly engrossing story of family, privilege, and childhood loss. Combining the exquisite plotting and gorgeous evocation of nature that have become his hallmarks, Peter Heller gives us his finest work to date. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 13, 1959
• Raised—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.F.A, Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Iowa Writers' Workshop's Michener Fellowship; National Outdoor's Book Award
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado


Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, and a contributing editor at Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure. He is an award winning adventure writer and the author of four books of literary nonfiction. The Dog Stars, his first novel, was published in 2012.

Heller was born and raised in New York. He attended high school in Vermont and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he became an outdoorsman and whitewater kayaker. He traveled the world as an expedition kayaker, writing about challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucuses, Central America and Peru.

At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry, he won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem "The Psalms of Malvine."  He has worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, logger, offshore fisherman, kayak instructor, river guide, and world class pizza deliverer. Some of these stories can be found in Set Free in China, Sojourns on the Edge. In the winter of 2002 he joined, on the ground team, the most ambitious whitewater expedition in history as it made its way through the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet. He chronicled what has been called "The Last Great Adventure Prize" for Outside, and in his book Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River.

The gorge—three times deeper than the Grand Canyon—is sacred to Buddhists, and is the inspiration for James Hilton’s Shangri La.  It is so deep there are tigers and leopards in the bottom and raging 25,000 foot peaks at the top, and so remote and difficult to traverse that a mythical waterfall, sought by explorers since Victorian times, was documented for the first time in 1998 by a team from National Geographic. The book won a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, was number three on Entertainment Weekly’s "Must List" of all pop culture, and a Denver Post review ranked it "up there with any adventure writing ever written."

In December, 2005, on assignment for National Geographic Adventure, he joined the crew of an eco-pirate ship belonging to the radical environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it sailed to Antarctica to hunt down and disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet.

The ship is all black, sails under a jolly Roger, and two days south of Tasmania the engineers came on deck and welded a big blade called the Can Opener to the bow—a weapon designed to gut the hulls of ships.  In The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals, Heller recounts fierce gales, forty foot seas, rammings, near-sinkings, and a committed crew’s clear-eyed willingness to die to save a whale.  The book was published in 2007.

In the fall of 2007 Heller was invited by the team who made the acclaimed film The Cove to accompany them in a clandestine filming mission into the guarded dolphin-killing cove in Taiji, Japan. Heller paddled into the inlet with four other surfers while a pod of pilot whales was being slaughtered. He was outfitted with a helmet cam, and the terrible footage can be seen in the movie. The Cove went on to win an Academy Award. Heller wrote about the experience for Men’s Journal.

Heller’s most recent memoir, about surfing from California down the coast of Mexico, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, was published in 2010. Can a man drop everything in the middle of his life, pick up a surfboard and, apprenticing himself to local masters, learn to ride a big, fast wave in six months? Can he learn to finally love and commit to someone else? Can he care for the oceans, which are in crisis? The answers are in. The book won a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, which called it a "powerful memoir…about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea." It also won the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature. (From the author's website.)

In 2012, Heller published his first novel, The Dog Stars, to wide acclaim. It received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist and was chosen as a "Best Book of the Month" by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Heller currently lives in Denver, Colorado.

Book Reviews
This is a mystery that needs to be savored; be prepared to treat yourself to prose that is lush but never overblown and to be transported to the various landscapes in America featured in the book. Heller betrays his painter’s roots in where his eye strays and where his focus is in his writing. Some readers may find his attention to setting detracts from the story being told; he draws the reader into realistic places as well as fully realized characters.  READ MORE 
Cara Kless - LitLovers


A terrific piece of fiction.… A pulpy, twisty plot.… Celine is tough, tired, and very funny—exactly the sort of person you want to spend 300 pages with. This may be hardboiled fiction, but it’s made with a free-range egg and served with a side of Jacques Pepin’s mustard sauce.
Craig Fehrman - Outside Magazine


Despite its intriguing premise, Heller’s third novel is a missing persons mystery that never quite finds its mark.… Heller, a gifted nature writer as well as novelist, handles certain set pieces well. But too often the novel seems lost in the wilderness.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Celine is a paradox, a Sarah Lawrence blue blood who is also a licensed PI…a quick draw and a crack shot.… Heller blends suspense with beautiful descriptive writing of both nature and civilization to create a winner. —Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY
Library Journal


(Starred review.) This captivating, tender, brainy, and funny tale of the mysterious powers of beauty and grief, nature and family will leave readers hoping that Heller is planning a National Park series featuring this stealthy, irrepressible duo.
Booklist


[T]he book's best moments come in its evocative descriptions of the American West in early autumn. Celine herself is a delight.… An imperfect but largely satisfying detective novel anchored by a charming and unforgettable heroine.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What tone does the opening scene of the book set for the rest of the story, in both establishing the atmosphere and its main themes and characters?

2. How did the interweaving of Celine’s backstory with that of Paul’s and his family’s create tension and momentum as you read?

3. Discuss the different, and even opposite, sides of Celine’s and Pete’s personalities—their hard-edged, more masculine sides and their softer, artistic, and sensitive sides. How do their careers allow both of those sides to prosper, and what does their unique relationship suggest about what they love about each other?

4. How does the couple balance out each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make for an effective partnership at home and in work? Does either of them seem more dominant in either space?

5. How does Celine’s complicated experience with motherhood motivate her work as a private investigator? Did you feel that that blurring of professional and personal lines enhanced or hindered her relationship with her clients—especially with Gabriela?

6. Celine imagines that for Gabriela home is a "space within the relative safety of her own skin." Celine may share this sensibility to some degree. Which of her actions, tendencies, and memories in the book are most reflective of this very private and self-protective mindset?

7. How does an urban versus a rural setting bring out different sides of different characters, especially Celine’s? Can you track a progression of what kinds of places they settle in depending on their moods and mindsets, or is their mood more affected by where they are at any given time?

8. What service does Celine offer her clients on a more psychological level, beyond her unearthing of the facts of certain mysteries in their lives? Do you think she absorbs their secrets and suffering, and, if so, how does that motivate her to continue to the next case, even at the age of sixty-eight?

9. How does Hank take up the work of emotional excavation and investigation on his mother, perhaps work she’s unable to do herself? What does this suggest about our abilities to confront our own pasts with clear eyes?

10. What do all of the characters’ secrets, revealed to us gradually throughout the book, have in common? How do the characters differ in the steps they have to take to discover their own truths?

11. Although Celine’s role as a mother is a paramount focus of the book, what did you also take away from reading about the complicated role of fathers in their children’s lives? Do you think that Celine or Hank has more in common with Gabriela in this sense?

12. When Celine considers Paul’s circumstances for disappearing and leaving Gabriela, she displays a great deal of compassion—something that’s key to why she’s a good investigator. How do you think she’s been able to channel that in spite of all that she experienced as a child?

13. The book makes the case that the world feels different after the 9/11 attacks, and also uses the grandeur of nature to indicate the smallness of humanity. Did you feel at the end of the book that ultimately humanity’s preservation was worth the effort despite these perspectives? What do those scales of comparison illustrate about how we understand our own power in the universe? Which characters are most accepting of that balance in the novel?

14. What sacrifices does Celine make for her clients, especially for Paul in regard to his involvement in the Chilean coup? Do you think they’re grateful for what she does?

15. Think about your own family and how you have dealt, individually and collectively, with secrets and difficult times. How would things have been different for your family if the losses Paul and Gabriela faced transpired for you? Could you empathize with either or both of them?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Cellist of Sarajevo 
Steven Galloway, 2008
Penguin Group USA
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594483653

Summary  
This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst.

One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope.

Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims.

In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—July, 1975
• Where—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—University of College of the Cariboo; University 
   of British Columbia
• Currently—New Westminster, Btitish Columbia


Steven Galloway, a Canadian author, was born in Vancouver and raised in Kamloops, both in British Columbia. He attended the University College of the Cariboo and the University of British Columbia. His debut novel, Finnie Walsh (2000), was nominated for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. His second novel, Ascension (2003), was nominated for the BC Book Prizes' Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and has been translated into numerous languages.

His third novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo (2008), was heralded as "the work of an expert" by the Guardian, and has become an international bestseller and sold in 20 countries. Galloway has taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia and taught and mentored creative writing in The Writer's Studio, at the writing and publishing program at Simon Fraser University. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
In this elegiac novel inspired by an actual event during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, Steven Galloway explores the brutality of war and the redemptive power of music. Crafted with unforgettable imagery and heartbreaking simplicity, his small book speaks forcefully to the triumph of the spirit in the face of overwhelming despair.
Washington Post


Canadian Galloway delivers a tense and haunting novel following four people trying to survive war-torn Sarajevo. After a mortar attack kills 22 people waiting in line to buy bread, an unnamed cellist vows to play at the point of impact for 22 days. Meanwhile, Arrow, a young woman sniper, picks off soldiers; Kenan makes a dangerous trek to get water for his family; and Dragan, who sent his wife and son out of the city at the start of the war, works at a bakery and trades bread in exchange for shelter. Arrow's assigned to protect the cellist, but when she's eventually ordered to commit a different kind of killing, she must decide who she is and why she kills. Dragan believes he can protect himself through isolation, but that changes when he runs into a friend of his wife's attempting to cross a street targeted by snipers. Kenan is repeatedly challenged by his fear and a cantankerous neighbor. All the while, the cellist continues to play. With wonderfully drawn characters and a stripped-down narrative, Galloway brings to life a distant conflict.
Publishers Weekly


A bread line in besieged Sarajevo. A mortar lobbed by Serb soldiers on the hill. Death for 22 people. A cellist sees it all and determines to honor the dead-and perhaps assuage his own pain-by playing Albinoni's Adagio on the spot for 22 days. And so Galloway opens his first novel, inspired by true events, weaving together four lives to tell the awful story of Sarajevo's devastation. Aside from the cellist, there's Kenan, who risks his life every few days to carry plastic canisters to the brewery and retrieve water for his family. Dragan, who got his family out before the bombs started falling, works at the bakery for, literally, his daily bread. Both must cower on street corners and watch those who risk crossing get shot or killed. Arrow, who uses an alias, is a sniper desperate to defend her city and just as desperate not to compromise her humanity by hating the men who rain death down on the city. In the end, each takes a stand, small or large, to assure that the "Sarajevo that [they want] to live is alive again." Galloway writes simply and affectingly, occasionally resorting to cliché and just as often hitting a sweet, clear note that makes the siege of Sarajevo very real.
Library Journal


Inspired by Vedran Smailovic, the cellist who, in 1992, played in a bombed-out Sarajevo square for 22 days in memory of the 22 people who were killed by a mortar attack, this is a novel about four people trying to maintain a semblance of their humanity in the besieged city.... [Galloway] effectively creates a fifth character in the city itself, capturing the details among the rubble and destruction that give added weight to his memorable novel. —Elliot Mandel
Booklist


Four people struggle to stay alive in war-torn Sarajevo, remembering the simple pleasures of their old routines as they settle into horrifying, desperate new ones. On a day during the brutal siege of Sarajevo—an occupation that ultimately lasted years and claimed tens of thousands of lives-a mortar attack kills 22 people waiting for bread as a once famous cellist watches from his window. In tribute, he decides to play his cello in the street for 22 days, which will likely get him killed, given the hordes of snipers waiting in the hills above the city. But Arrow, an angry young female sniper, is cryptically assigned to protect him. As she stalks his potential killers, she begins to confront her own rationale for murder. Meanwhile, two ordinary citizens try to survive another day in the hell that Sarajevo has become. Kenan, a young father, traverses the ravaged city in search of water for his family and, as a favor, for a neighbor. The only safe haven for clean drinking water is a brewery across town, and the trek is both difficult and dangerous. On the journey, Kenan passes the tragic remains of his old life, including the office building, now burnt down, where he used to work and the park, now unsafe, where he used to spend time with a friend. Meanwhile, Dragan, a middle-aged baker, runs into an old acquaintance as he goes searching for bread. The two literally dodge bullets as they make their way through the streets. As violence rages in a city whose vibrance now lives only in the memories of its dying residents, the cellist continues his beautiful act of defiance, playing on through the bullets. Indelible imagery and heartbreaking characters give authority to this chilling story and make human a crisis typically overlooked in literature.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What effect does the constant confrontation of war and occupation have on each narrator? Does suffering, violence and loss ever become normalized for them? What is it like to live in this kind of anarchy—especially when symbols of peace and power have been extinguished (the eternal flame from WWII, the Kosovo Olympic stadium now used as a burial ground)? And what does it mean to have the color, beauty, and vibrancy of music and flowers (left behind for the cellist) introduced?

2. How has life changed in the city since the arrival of the men on the hills? What resources, both physical and mental, are the four characters in the book using to help them survive? What is involved in day-to-day living? How would you fare under these same conditions—and what would be your greatest challenges?

3. Each chapter in the novel is told through the lens of one of the four main characters (including the cellist) in the story. How does this strategy color our reading? How might our experience be different if told in first person? If it were told in a more journalistic way?

4. How do each of the narrators (Arrow, Dragan, Kenan) view their fellow citizens? How do they each look upon their struggles, choices, and their attitudes? What makes them not give up on each other? Does Kenan’s classification of the “three types of people” (144) ring true to you?

5. Do you think the author intends for the reader to be sympathetic to Arrow’s life and career trajectory? What prevents (or encourages) us from fully engaging, trusting, relating to her? Do you think war forces everyone to compromise something in themselves—their attitude, their moral compass?

6. What are the goals of “the men on the hill”? What exactly is it they are trying to destroy? What do they come to represent for the main characters—and what separates them from Arrow?

7. In the beginning of the novel, Dragan is said to avoid his friends and coworkers because “the destruction of the living is too much for him,” Arrow assumes a new name to distance herself from her role as a sniper, and Kenan takes refuge in his new ritual of obtaining water for his family. How have the three used rituals as ways to cope with their fear of what is happening in the city? At the end of the book, do you feel that their experiences of the cellist’s performances have changed how they deal with the danger around them? In what way?

8. What force does music have upon the war torn state—and what powers does it have over the lives of the characters? (For Kenan, Arrow, and Dragan? For the cellist himself?) Do you find yourself relating to the power of the cellist’s performances? Are there parallel moments in your life where you also experienced such sudden awakening, or realization?

9. “Sarajevo was a great city for walking.” How does the mapping of the landscape—the physical and psychic layout of the city—affect the narrative? How does our intimacy with this map affect our experience of the story?

10. In one of his early chapters, Kenan is particularly disturbed by the interruption and shelled state of the tram’s service (“The war will not be over until the trams run again”) and the destruction of the National Library (“the most visible manifestation of a society he was proud of”)—representing for him basic civilization. What signs, services, and signals do you consider pillars of civilization?

11. Why do you think the sniper avoids taking his shot at the cellist—especially when he has such ample opportunity?

12. Why does Dragan take such drastic measures to prevent the dead man’s body from being filmed by the journalist? What does the author suggest through this as a lesson for the living? What are we to do to prevent the horror of war from becoming commonplace, something to tune our televisions out from?

13. Were you surprised by Arrow’s final act of protest? Do you think she was ultimately able to reclaim herself, her identity? Do you think she succeeded?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Centaur 
John Updike, 1963
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449912164


Summary  
Winner, National Book Award

In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he himself begins to lose touch with his life.

Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and his own relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur is one of John Updike's most brilliant and unusual novels. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1932
• Where—Reading, Pennsylvania, USA
• Death—January 27, 2009
• Where—Danvers, Massachusetts
• Education—A.B., Harvard University; also studied at the
   Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England
• Awards—National Book Award for The Centaur, 1964;
   Pulitzer Prizer, National Book Critics Circle Award, and
   National Book Award for Rabbit Is Rich, 1982; Pulitzer Prize
   and National Book Critics Circle Award for Rabbit at Rest,
   1990


With an uncommonly varied oeuvre that includes poetry, criticism, essays, short stories, and novels, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike has helped to change the face of late-20th-century American literature.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Updike graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1954. Following a year of study in England, he joined the staff of The New Yorker, establishing a relationship with the magazine that continues to this day. Since 1957, he has lived in two small towns in Massachusetts that have inspired the settings for several of his stories.

In 1958, Updike's first collection of poetry was published. A year later, he made his fiction debut with The Poorhouse Fair. But it was his second novel, 1960's Rabbit, Run, that forged his reputation and introduced one of the most memorable characters in American fiction. Former small-town basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom struck a responsive chord with readers and critics alike and catapulted Updike into the literary stratosphere.

Updike would revisit Angstrom in 1971, 1981, and 1990, chronicling his hapless protagonist's jittery journey into undistinguished middle age in three melancholy bestsellers: Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest. A concluding novella, "Rabbit Remembered," appears in the 2001 story collection Licks of Love.

Although autobiographical elements appear in the Rabbit books, Updike's true literary alter ego is not Harry Angstrom but Harry Bech, a famously unproductive Jewish-American writer who stars in his own story cycle. In between—indeed, far beyond—his successful series, Updike has gone on to produce an astonishingly diverse string of novels. In addition, his criticism and short fiction remain popular staples of distinguished literary publications.

Extras
• Updike first became entranced by reading when he was a young boy growing up on an isolated farm in Pennsylvania. Afflicted with psoriasis and a stammer, he escaped from his into mystery novels.

• He decided to attend Harvard University because he was a big fan of the school's humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon.

• Updike has basically won every major literary prize in America, including the Guggenheim Fellow, the Rosenthal Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the O. Henry Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award, the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and the National Medal of the Arts. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
A brilliant achievement...No one should need to be told that Updike has a mastery of the language matched in our time only by the finest poets.
Saturday Review

Unsurpassed...Natural, pertinent, fresh, subtle, and superbly written
Newsweek

Updike is one of the most exquisite masters of prose style produced by 20th century America. Yet, his novels have been faulted for lacking any sense of action or character development. It appears at times that his ability to spin lovely phrases of delicate beauty and nuance overwhelm his desire to tell a simple, important story in the lives of his characters. Updike's novels raise the question of whether beauty of expression, the lyrical telling of a captured moment of human time is, itself, enough to justify a great work of art.In contrast, his short stories are seen by many as masterful in every respect, both for their prose style that approaches poetic expression and for the stories they convey. Some critics believe that had Updike produced only short stories and poems, his role in American letters would be even more celebrated. But it is Updike's novels that have brought him the greatest fame and attention and which resulted in his appearance on the covers of TIME magazine two times during his career.
Wikipedia

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)

But also consider these LitLover talkiing points for The Centaur:

1. What contributes to George Caldwell's poor opinion of himself? Why does he feel he is about to die? Does George exasperate you or inspire sympathy?

2. What is Peter's view of his father? How does that view change during the course of the novel? How does their relationship develop? How are both father and son changed—or what do both come to learn—by the novel's end?

3. What role does the blizzard play in this work?

4. In what way is this story a retelling of the myth of Chiron? According to Greek mythology, a centaur was one of a race of creatures with the head, arms and trunk of a man and the body and legs of a horse. Chiron was considered the noblest of the centaurs. (if you don't have it in your library, dear reader, do pick up a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology. It's a must!)

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

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The Center of Everything 
Laura Moriarty, 2003
Hyperion Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780786888450


Summary
In Laura Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, 10-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself.

Offering an affecting portrayal of a troubled mother/daughter relationship, one in which the daughter is very often expected to play the role of the adult, the novel also gives readers a searing rendering of the claustrophobia of small town mid-western life, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl.

Evelyn must come to terms with the heartbreaking lesson of first love—that not all loves are meant to be—and determine who she is and who she wants to be. Stuck in the middle of Kansas, between best friends, and in the midst of her mother's love, Evelyn finds herself...in The Center of Everything. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 24, 1970
• Where—Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.S.W. and M.A., University of Kansas
• Currently—Lives in Lawrence, Kansas


Laura Moriarty received her master’s degree from the University of Kansas, and was awarded the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy. The Center of Everything is Moriarty's first novel. Her second, The Rest of her Life, was published in 2007, While I'm Falling in 2009, and The Chaperone in 2012. (From the publisher.)

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

• There are other Laura Moriartys I shouldn't be confused with: Laura Moriarty the poet, and Laura Moriarty the crime writer. If it helps, I'm Laura Eugenia Moriarty, though I've never used my middle name professionally.

• I got my first job when I was sixteen, cooking burgers at McDonald's. I've been a vegetarian since I was ten, so it was a little hard on me. I'm also technically inept and kind of dreamy, so I frustrated the guy who worked the toaster to the point where he threatened to strangle me on a daily basis. I kept that job for two years. I gave Evelyn a job at McDonald's too, and I made her similarly unsuccessful.

• Another job I was really bad at was tending bar. I was an exchange student at the University of Malta about ten years ago. I thought I wanted to go to medical school, so I signed up to take all these organic chemistry and physiology classes. In Malta. It was terrible. The Maltese students were into chemistry. I had a lab partner named Ester Carbone. There was a rumor my instructor had his house built in the shape of a benzene molecule. I couldn't keep up. I dropped out in February, and I needed money. Malta has pretty strict employment laws, and the only job I could get was an illegal one, working at a bar. I don't know anything about mixed drinks, and I don't speak Maltese. I think I was supposed to stand behind the bar be American and female and smile, but I ended up squinting at people a lot, so eventually, I was in the back, doing dishes. That was the year I started writing.

• The Center of Everything has a few autobiographical moments, but not many. I grew up with three sisters in Montana. When you say you're from Montana, people get this wistful look in their eyes. I think they've seen too many Brad Pitt movies. I saw A River Runs Through It, which is set in my hometown, Bozeman. That movie drove me nuts: I don't think anyone is even wearing coat in the whole movie. They can't keep filming up there in August and tricking everyone. Of course, now I live in Maine.

• I have tender hands, and the worst thing in the world, for me, is going to an event that requires a lot of hand shaking. Some people shake nicely, but some people have a death grip, and it's really painful. The thing is, you can't tell who's going to be a death gripper and who isn't. Big, strapping men have shaken my hand gently, but an elderly woman I met last month almost brought me to my knees. She was smiling the whole time. I went to a hand shaking event a month ago, and I went along with the shaking, because I didn't want to look rude or standoffish or freaky about germs. But hand shaking just kills me. I'm not sure what to do about it. I went back to Phillips Exeter a month ago, and a very polite student reintroduced himself to me and extended his hand to shake. I actually tried to high five him. He looked at me like I was a crazy person. My sister told me I should take a cue from Bob Dole and carry a pen in my right hand all the time, so I might try that.

• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:

It's difficult to pick just one, of course. But I will say that while I was writing The Center of Everything, I read Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, and it made a strong impression on me. I only knew about Sagan from watching the Nova Channel when I was a kid, but I happened upon an essay he'd written before he died. I was so impressed I went to the library and checked out some of his books. In The Demon Haunted World, Sagan stresses the importance of skepticism and rational reasoning when considering the mysteries of the universe.

It's easy for us today to see the insanity of the witchcraft trials, but Sagan gives a sympathetic account of how frightening the world must have seemed in those times, and how quickly our ability to reason can be dismissed in the face of fear and superstition. Today, Sagan points out, we have crop circles, alien abductions, and religious fundamentalism; the book has a great chapter called "The Baloney Detection Kit," an important tool for any open-minded skeptic. What I like most about Sagan is that he seems skeptical without coming across as cynical. He looks at the vastness of the universe and the intricacy of the natural world with so much wonder and awe, and he's able to translate it to a reader who isn't a scientist, such as myself. I also noticed how he refrains from making fun or putting down his opponents; there's such a generosity of spirit in his writing. I tried to put a bit of Sagan in Evelyn, the narrator of The Center of Everything. (Author interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Laura Moriarty's debut novel has the makings of something wearily familiar: the Midwestern mother-daughter coming-of-age story, featuring at least one episode in which Mom leaves home looking like a movie star but winds up collapsing in tears. Happily, Ms. Moriarty's artful, enveloping book is a lot more interesting than its genre initially suggests. It traces not only stormy adolescence, but also the essential stages of Evelyn's moral and intellectual evolution.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


It's not easy to build a novel around a personality, but Moriarty does it well.
Anne Stephenson - USA Today


Lively and endearing… complete tour of…conflicts between mother and daughter, as well as between the narrator's hopes and dreams.
Denver Post & Rocky Mountian News


Teriffic…. Moriarty has steady confidence…expertly wringing poignancy from…young lives…. A deeply satisfying novel
San Diego Union Tribune


For 10-year-old Evelyn Bucknow, there really is no place like home. On all the world maps she's ever seen, the United States has been smack dab in the middle, with Kansas in the middle of that. "I feel so lucky to live here, right in the center," she proclaims, in Moriarty's wonderfully down-to-earth debut. Dazzled by visions of Ronald Reagan on the television, the twinkle in his eye and his contention that "God put America between two oceans on purpose," Evelyn's youthful optimism is shaken by her young single mother Tina's inability to take control of her life. As Tina falls for her married boss, who gives her a car (his contribution to the trickle-down theory) but leaves her pregnant and shattered, Evelyn grows closer to her neighbor, a curly-haired scamp named Travis (who has eyes only for Evelyn's stunning friend, Deena) and her Bible-thumping grandmother, a regular listener to Jerry Falwell's radio show. As a teenager, she is influenced by a couple of liberal-minded teachers, one an emigre from New York and the other an introverted biology instructor intent on teaching evolution, but she never cuts her family ties. With renewed faith in her scatterbrained but endearing mother and with college on the horizon, she begins to find her place in the social and political spectrum and to appreciate the vastness of a world that just might extend beyond the Sunflower State. Moriarty deftly treads the line between adolescence and adulthood, and insecurity and self-assurance, offering a moving portrait of life in blue-collar middle America.
Publishers Weekly


Evelyn Bucknow's world has been quite small up till now. She and her mother live in Treeline Colonies, a collection of cramped apartments teetering on the edge of a highway in the middle of Kansas. Her grandmother visits every week, smelling of cigarettes and bearing gifts, including stories about God and Wichita, where she lives with her husband, the grandfather Evelyn has never met and the father her mother no longer speaks to. But she is getting older, and luckily she takes the reader along as she enters a widening world of new friends, cruel enemies, fresh pain, and Travis Rowley, "thief, breaker of locks, my own dark avenger and first true love." This world is a place of hard knocks and little self-pity, especially for the charming and prescient Evelyn. Moriarty builds an addictive and moving portrait of this poor, Midwestern girl in the Eighties, reminiscent of Dolores in Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone, so well realized that one forgets it is fiction and so infectious that one never wants to put it down, even after turning to the last page. Essential for fiction collections. —Rachel Collins
Library Journal


(Adult/High School) Evelyn Bucknow, 10 years old at the start of this novel, lives with her single mother. Struggling to make ends meet, Tina is a loving, if sometimes absentminded, parent. Won over by the seemingly kind attention of her married boss, she has an affair that leaves her pregnant and in dire financial straits when she is fired from her job. Evelyn narrates the story, and readers witness her growing maturity in the face of circumstances that are beyond her control. With dawning awareness and increasing resentment, she sees that her mother's poor choices are creating havoc in their lives. Evelyn is determined to avoid the same mistakes and use her intelligence to get out of the cycle of poverty that is so much a part of her youth. YAs will enjoy this engrossing novel and connect to the authentic and changing voice Moriarity gives Evelyn as she grows into adulthood. Her thoughts and feelings ring true to the angst and insecurity that are often associated with adolescence. Readers, along with the protagonist, feel sympathy and understanding for human failings. —Julie Dasso, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal


A pleasantly wry, spunky debut, set in the Reagan era, about a fatherless girl who uses her brains as the way out of her mother's hopeless welfare state. Ten-year-old Evelyn Bucknow, plain but brainy, has learned something about the inequities of the world from her less-than-privileged, conservative vantage point in Kerrville, Kansas. Her Vietnam vet grandfather has disowned Evelyn's mother, Tina, for her early sins and still considers her a "whore." Evelyn's grandmother, Eileen, is an Evangelical Reaganite who doesn't believe Tina will make it to heaven. And Evelyn's own fourth-grade classmates rub in her state of impecunious fatherlessness. Yet Evelyn is at the top of her class, winning the science prize over the town's rich girl because our heroine plays by the rules. And even when her first love and neighbor, handsome kleptomaniac Travis Rowley, falls ungratefully for Evelyn's beautiful new friend Deena, Evelyn resists the entrapments of failure that the welfare state seems to expect of her. Much as in another recent storyteller clashing with a dim-bulbed mom (Stephanie Rosenfeld's Massachusetts, California, Timbuktu, p. 638), Evelyn finds her wits sharpened by adversity and by her mother's ill planning-in this case, her getting pregnant by a kind but married boss, who skips town. Still, when it seems the new baby's retardation is the demonstration of God's just deserts, Evelyn finds strength—and Moriarty pumps literary vigor into her narrative—by reversing a reader's expectations. Evelyn's voice is a lone, steely cry against the chorus of small-town righteousness for which President Reagan's TV speeches form the background noise. And while Moriarty is no fancy prose stylist, shelistens carefully to the speech of her characters, and Evelyn and Tina's voices, especially, ring true without sounding dopey or sentimental. Among the plethora of first novels tracking preteen daughters of sorry single mothers, Moriarty's gutsy opener is hard not to like.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Who is narrating? What historic or other signposts are available to the reader so that the story can be located in time and place? To whom or what does the title refer?

2. What do you think of Evelyn, Tina, and Eileen? What about Tina's father? What kind of people are they? What do they look like? What is Sam's role in the family and in the story? Share your impressions of other characters that stand out, and why.

3. When do you learn the narrator's name? What is going on in the story when this occurs? What, if any, is the significance of the scene where the narrator's name is revealed? When do you learn the narrator's name? What is going on in the story when this occurs? What, if any, is the significance of the scene where the narrator's name is revealed?

4. How does Moriarty use language to reflect the experiences and thoughts of the characters? Examine and discuss whether or not Evelyn's thoughts and spoken words are reflective of a child's point of view, and why. Share some examples that you find effective and/or moving.

5. How do Evelyn's feelings about her mother affect your feelings about Tina? Explore whether or not you are sympathetic or disgusted by Tina, and why. At the end of Chapter 11, why does Evelyn not wipe her mother's kiss off of her forehead? Share some examples of how Moriarty brings out the mother/daughter relationship and whether or not you can relate to it, and why.

6. Why do you believe Tina doesn't speak to her father? How do you respond when you learn that he told the family that a "little horse" is coming to dinner? Discuss this scene, and its implications. Consider how such a small phrase can reveal so much.

7. The car that doesn't shift is one of the many symbols Moriarty uses. What is its symbolism? Share some of the other symbols used throughout the story and how they are utilized.

8. Discuss the whole school milieu that Moriarty evokes in The Center of Everything. What are the roles of friendship pins and particular pieces of clothing in the lives of grade-school kids? What are your memories and experiences of these years? Share whether or not you think Moriarty successfully conveys these school experiences, and why.

9. Discuss the use of religion as a recurring theme throughout the book. As a storytelling device, what purpose does it serve? Why would a man as "religious" as Tina's father shun his daughter and be so unforgiving? How does Eileen live her beliefs? How does religion affect Evelyn? What happens at the church meeting with the healer? Why do people believe in healers? Share whether or not Tina comes to believe in some sort of religion, and why.

10. Why does Moriarty use the struggle between evolution and creationism in the story? What makes it particularly useful here? Why do people have this debate? Examine whether or not the characters' positions ring true, and why. What would you say to those who have different beliefs than yours?

11. Do you believe Deena's pregnancy is motivated by Travis' change of plans? Should Evelyn have shared this Deena? What position does Evelyn put herself in by doing this?

12. How does the car accident that kills Traci affect Evelyn? What motivates Evelyn to initially keep Traci's belongings hidden? Examine the significance and possible symbolism of Evelyn hanging onto Traci's clothes and locket into high school, and what they represent to Evelyn after Traci's death.

13. Discuss the underlining theme throughout the novel of being chosen or not being chosen.

14. Discuss Moriarty's use of foreshadowing throughout The Center of Everything. How does it influence your reading?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Center of the World
Jacqueline Sheehan, 2015
Kensington Books
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781617738968


Summary
In this evocative and emotionally compelling novel, a mother and her adopted daughter each embark on a journey of self-discovery in the wake of a stunning revelation.

How do you keep a secret so huge that it could devastate everyone you care about?

For Kate Malloy, the answer is simple: one lie at a time. That’s how she has protected her daughter for more than a dozen years, shielding her from a terrible truth. Sofia, a fifteen-year-old soccer star living in New England, believes she was born in Mexico and legally adopted by Kate.

But a posthumous letter from her stepfather tells Sofia a different story—one of civil unrest and bloodshed, death-defying heroism and child-smuggling, harrowing sacrifice and desperate decisions.

Sofia’s trust in her mother is shattered. At last Kate must do what she knows is right—accompany Sofia back to Guatemala, the place where Kate found horror and heartache but also the greatest joy of her life.

As mother and daughter confront the damage done by years of dangerous yet necessary deceptions, they discover how much love, hope, and happiness may still remain—if they have the courage to face their past. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a fiction writer and essayist. She is a New Englander through and through, but spent twenty years living in the western states of Oregon, California, and New Mexico doing a variety of things, including house painting, freelance photography, newspaper writing, clerking in a health food store, and directing a traveling troupe of high school puppeteers.

Currently on the faculty of Writers in Progress and Grub Street in Massachusetts, she also offers international workshops on the combination of yoga and writing. She writes travel articles about lesser-known destinations and lives in Massachusetts.

Novels
Sheehan's books include Truth (2003), reissued as The Comet's Tale: A Novel About Sojurner Truth (2011); Now & Then (2009); two Peaks Island novels, Lost & Found (2007) and Picture This (2012); and, most recently, The Center of the World (2015). (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[A]n emotionally charged tale that explores the mother-daughter bond, set against the backdrop of the Guatemalan Civil War and complete with beautiful prose despite the atrocities.... Sheehan...expertly carries her narrative through war and peace, fear and security, and love and redemption.
Publishers Weekly


[A] breathtaking tale.... Sheehan's enthralling novel, through tales of grief and happiness, offers readers a strong sense of catharsis. The author smoothly captures the intricacies of cultural exchange with grace and intersection.... [A] captivating read. —Marian Mays, Butte-Silver Bow P.L., MT
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. After the massacre takes place, Kate Malloy reacts instantly to protect Sofia. What might have been an influence from her past that made her react so dramatically? The death of Kate’s mother is driving her decisions in other areas of her life. How does it resonate with Sophia?

2. Kate is a scientist and a graduate student who has little experience with children. Discuss her evolution of responding to Sofia as a mother while they are in Antigua.

3. There are complicated issues surrounding Kate’s decision to take Sofia out of Guatemala? Did she make the right choice? Was it right to pull the child out of her Mayan community? Was there any other choice that she could have made?

4. Times of war, disaster, and the constant state of heightened senses can throw people together in the illusion of love. Is this what happened to Kate and Will? Or did they fall in love so deeply, regardless of time? What other parallels pull the two of them together?

5.  Discuss how Will’s initial excitement about his job opportunity as a Language Specialist blinds him to the military forces at work in Guatemala?

6. What is Jenkins final revenge with Will? Discuss how a lifetime of war can create cruelty, as with Jenkins, or kindness and bravery, as in the case of Fernando.

7. Kate makes a choice to protect Sophia and Will. What price does she pay for lying about Sofia’s heritage and the circumstances of her adoption? How does it affect Sophia, Sam, and Kate?

8. How is it possible for Kate to remain in love with Will, and yet find another man to love and marry?

9. Kate is haunted by dreams about and visitations from Manuela, Sophia’s mother. Sophia has a deep inner knowledge that she a twin brother. How does the Mayan belief of ancestors relate to this story? Who are the ancestors who influence this story? Does your understanding of Martin’s motivations change over the course of the book?

10. Sam, Kate’s father, is a steady anchor for her, but he has also been scarred by war. How does he change from the experience of traveling to Guatemala?

11. Sophia is a soccer star at her Massachusetts high school. How do the threads of soccer bind Sophia to her homeland?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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A Certain Age 
Beatriz Williams, 2016
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062404954


Summary
The bestselling author of A Hundred Summers brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society, brimming with lush atmosphere, striking characters, and irresistible charm.

As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue and Southampton, Long Island, has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen in love with her young paramour, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War.

An intense and deeply honorable man, Octavian is devoted to the beautiful socialite of a certain age and wants to marry her. While times are changing and she does adore the Boy, divorce for a woman of Theresa’s wealth and social standing is out of the question, and there is no need; she has an understanding with Sylvo, her generous and well-respected philanderer husband.

But their relationship subtly shifts when her bachelor brother, Ox, decides to tie the knot with the sweet younger daughter of a newly wealthy inventor. Engaging a longstanding family tradition, Theresa enlists the Boy to act as her brother’s cavalier, presenting the family’s diamond rose ring to Ox’s intended, Miss Sophie Fortescue—and to check into the background of the little-known Fortescue family.

When Octavian meets Sophie, he falls under the spell of the pretty ingenue, even as he uncovers a shocking family secret. As the love triangle of Theresa, Octavian, and Sophie progresses, it transforms into a saga of divided loyalties, dangerous revelations, and surprising twists that will lead to a shocking transgression . . . and eventually force Theresa to make a bittersweet choice.

Full of the glamour, wit and delicious twists that are the hallmarks of Beatriz Williams’ fiction and alternating between Sophie’s spirited voice and Theresa’s vibrant timbre, A Certain Age is a beguiling reinterpretation of Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, set against the sweeping decadence of Gatsby’s New York. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.B.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Greenwich, Connecticut


A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons.

She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
[A]ll the makings of a juicy soap opera ripe with scandalous affairs, family loyalties and the secrets of the rich and fabulous. Set in the Roaring Twenties in the high-society circles of New York City, Williams’ story is a rousing, enjoyable read.
Diana Andro - Fort Worth Star-Telegram


[A]ll it took was a few pages and I was hooked. A Certain Age is about the twenties, an era that has never really attracted my interest. In Williams’ hands however this time becomes as fresh and entertaining as possible. Because of her skills, readers are welcomed into the world of clubs and clandestine relationships.... Williams knows exactly how to capture the excitement of these people and this time.
Jackie K. Cooper - Huffington Post


A tale of Manhattan society in the Jazz Age, spiced liberally with secrets and scandal.... Chapters oscillate in time, ending on cliffhangers that can be jarring, but this novel is mainly propelled by its period-perfect prose style. A certain age, acutely observed.
Kirkus Reviews

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

1. What do you think of Theresa Marshall? Is it possible to feel sympathy for her? In what way might you say she is product of her times, reflecting the era in which she lives?

2. Consider Sophie Fortescue. Yes, she is innocent, but how else would you describe her? How does Sophie represent the rise of a new kind of woman in the early 20th century?

3. How did World War I impact Octavian--although he survived virtually unscathed on the outside, what internal scars does he carry?

4. What do Theresa and Octavian see in one another? She is twice his age, calls him Boyo, never by his name, and manipulates and controls him. What do both gain (aside from the obvious) from the relationship?

5. Describe the era itself in which Beatriz Williams sets her story. Williams herself has said A Certain Age reflects the conflict between "old money and new, young and old, past and present"? How so? Consider, too, the changes wrought by new technologies. Do you see any parallels between then and now?

6. Talk about the attraction between Sophie and Octavian and, especially, the connection they share from the past.

7. Why does Williams lead with the scandal and the "trial of the century"? In other words, why do readers get the "reveal" so early in the story? How does the knowledge affect your reading of the book?

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

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Certain Girls 
Jennifer Weiner, 2008
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416561279


Summary
Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed. Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel—a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life—became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married and has settled into a life that's wonderfully predictable.

As preparations for her daughter Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception—the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Cannie's husband surprises her by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider their history, their future, and what it means to be truly happy.

Radiantly funny and tender, with Weiner's whip-smart dialogue and sharp observations of modern life, Certain Girls is an unforgettable story about love, loss, and the enduring bonds of family. (From the publisher.)

Weiner's debut novel, Good in Bed, was published in 2002; it's the "prequel" to Certain Girls.

Author Bio
• Birth—March 28, 1970
• Where—De Ridder, Louisiana, USA
• Raised—Simsbury, Connecticut
• Education—B.A., Princeton University
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


Jennifer Weiner is an American writer, television producer, and former journalist. She is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Background
Weiner was born in DeRidder, Louisiana, where her father was stationed as an army physician. The next year, her family (including a younger sister and two brothers) moved to Simsbury, Connecticut, where Weiner spent her childhood.

Weiner's parents divorced when she was 16, and her mother came out as a lesbian at age 55. Weiner has said that she was "one of only nine Jewish kids in her high school class of 400" at Simsbury High School. She entered Princeton University at the age of 17 and received her bachelor of arts summa cum laude in English in 1991, having studied with J. D. McClatchy, Ann Lauterbach, John McPhee, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates. Her first published story, "Tour of Duty," appeared in Seventeen magazine in 1992.

After graduating from college, Weiner joined the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania, where she managed the education beat and wrote a regular column called "Generation XIII" (referring to the 13th generation following the American Revolution), aka "Generation X." From there, she moved on to Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader, still penning her "Generation XIII" column, before finding a job with the Philadelphia Inquirer as a features reporter.

Novels and TV
Weiner continued to write for the Inquirer, freelancing on the side for Mademoiselle, Seventeen, and other publications, until after her first novel, Good in Bed, was published in 2001.

In 2005, her second novel, In Her Shoes (2002), was made into a feature film starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine by 20th Century Fox. Her sixth novel, Best Friends Forever, was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and made Publishers Weekly's list of the longest-running bestsellers of the year. To date, she is the author of 10 bestselling books, including nine novels and a collection of short stories, with a reported 11 million copies in print in 36 countries.

In addition to writing fiction, Weiner is a co-creator and executive producer of the (now-cancelled) ABC Family sitcom State of Georgia, and she is known for "live-tweeting" episodes of the reality dating shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. In 2011, Time magazine named her to its list of the Top 140 Twitter Feeds "shaping the conversation." She is a self-described feminist.

Personal
Weiner married attorney Adam Bonin in October of 2001. They have two children and separated amicably in 2010. As of 2014 she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with her partner Bill Syken.

Gender bias in the media
Weiner has been a vocal critic of what she sees as the male bias in the publishing industry and the media, alleging that books by male authors are better received than those written by women, that is, reviewed more often and more highly praised by critics. In 2010, she told Huffington Post,

I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book—in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.... I think it's irrefutable that when it comes to picking favorites—those lucky few writers who get the double reviews AND the fawning magazine profile AND the back-page essay space AND the op-ed...the Times tends to pick white guys.

In a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy, she said, "There are gatekeepers who say chick lit doesn’t deserve attention but then they review Stephen King." When Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom was published in 2010 to critical acclaim and extensive media coverage (including a cover story in Time), Weiner criticized what she saw as the ensuing "overcoverage," igniting a debate over whether the media's adulation of Franzen was an example of entrenched sexism within the literary establishment.

Though Weiner received some backlash from other female writers for her criticisms, a 2011 study by the organization VIDA bore out many of her claims, and Franzen himself, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, agreed with her:

To a considerable extent, I agree. When a male writer simply writes adequately about family, his book gets reviewed seriously, because: "Wow, a man has actually taken some interest in the emotional texture of daily life," whereas with a woman it’s liable to be labelled chick-lit. There is a long-standing gender imbalance in what goes into the canon, however you want to define the canon.

As for the label "chick lit", Weiner has expressed ambivalence towards it, embracing the genre it stands for while criticizing its use as a pejorative term for commercial women's fiction.

I’m not crazy about the label because I think it comes with a built-in assumption that you’ve written nothing more meaningful or substantial than a mouthful of cotton candy. As a result, critics react a certain way without ever reading the books.

In 2008, Weiner published a critique on her blog of a review by Curtis Sittenfeld of a Melissa Bank novel. Weiner deconstructs Sittenfeld's review, writing,

The more I think about the review, the more I think about the increasingly angry divide between ladies who write literature and chicks who write chick lit, the more it seems like a grown-up version of the smart versus pretty games of years ago; like so much jockeying for position in the cafeteria and mocking the girls who are nerdier/sluttier/stupider than you to make yourself feel more secure about your own place in the pecking order.

(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2014.)

Book Reviews
In the emotional core of the book, Weiner portrays with tear-jerking precision both the long, dark shadows of a painful childhood and the excruciatingly small window of blissful closeness that parents get to enjoy with their kids before they grow up and start to know better. Weiner, who in interviews talks about growing up Jewish in a non-Jewish Connecticut town, dealing with her own parents' divorce and being plus-size herself, is a self-professed outsider, and it's that nose-pressed-up-against-the-glass quality that gives her writing such a punch. It's what makes her wish-fulfillment, happy-ending plots forgivable, and it's what makes Certain Girls the kind of book that gets under your skin, reminding you what it felt like to listen to your friend snap her retainer in the dark during a sleepover when you were 13 and capturing exactly what it feels like now, watching your child grow away from you and praying that someday she comes back.
Laura Zigman - Washington Post


Weiner is a talented and accomplished novelist, with real stylistic flair, excellent and sometimes laugh-out loud wit, and good insight into her characters...Cannie has retained her wit and her sharp takes on the world she lives in, but she has evolved. Weiner's voice is smart and edgy, and her male characters are sharply drawn. She writes about issues, such as the dynamics of family life, that are of interest to all humans.
Philadelphia Inquirer


Weiner displays her signature wry voice and sap-free knack for capturing heartfelt moments; an unexpected plot twist gives her story emotional heft. Fans should find Girls a worthy successor.
People


In this smart-mouthed sequel to Good in Bed (a chick-lit classic), heroine Cannie is older but thinner, and in a terrible tussle with her soon-to-be-bat mitzvahed daughter.
Good Housekeeping


A daughter's journey through teen angst to realizations about family, acceptance, love, and the nature of truth.
Elle


F0llowing the story collection The Guy Not Taken, Weiner turns in a hilarious sequel to her 2001 bestselling first novel, Good in Bed, revisiting the memorable and feisty Candace "Cannie" Shapiro. Flashing forward 13 years, the novel follows Cannie as she navigates the adolescent rebellion of her about-to-be bat mitzvahed daughter, Joy, and juggles her writing career; her relationship with her physician husband, Peter Krushelevansky; her ongoing weight struggles; and the occasional impasse with Joy's biological father, Bruce Guberman. Joy, whose premature birth resulted in her wearing hearing aids, has her own amusing take on her mother's overinvolvement in her life as the novel, with some contrivance, alternates perspectives. As her bat mitzvah approaches, Joy tries to make contact with her long absent maternal grandfather and seeks more time with Bruce. In addition, unbeknownst to Joy, Peter has expressed a desire to have a baby with Cannie, which means looking for a surrogate mother. Throughout, Weiner offers her signature snappy observations: ("good looks function as a get-out-of-everything-free card") and spot-on insights into human nature, with a few twists thrown in for good measure. She expends some energy getting readers up to speed on Good, but readers already involved with Cannie will enjoy this, despite Joy's equally strong voice.
Publishers Weekly


Weiner's sequel to her New York Times bestselling Good in Bed takes place 13 years later and is told from the perspectives of the first book's protagonist, Cannie Shapiro, and Joy, her teenage daughter. Rachel Botchan and Julie Dretzin competently and professionally narrate these motherdaughter roles in alternating chapters, a format that can be confusing at times. As the book and author are both popular with public library patrons, the audio version, too, should be purchased to meet demand.
Mary Knapp - Library Journal


Clear your calendar and prepare to read: Cannie Shapiro (of Good in Bed) is back! Cannie, now 42, has been married to her "Doctor Peter" for more than ten years, and "baby" Joy is turning 13. In alternating chapters covering roughly a year, Cannie and Joy share the emotion-packed experiences of parenting and being a teen. (At some point, Weiner may have planned this as The Bat Mitzvah Diaries.) Added complications are Peter's desire for a baby via surrogate and Joy's classmates' discovery of the sexy novel Cannie published a decade ago, Big Girls Don't Cry(i.e., Good in Bed). Joy vacillates between loving and hating her mother and her complex family structure, while Cannie struggles to let her baby grow up; readers will laugh and cry for them both. Returning in this sequel, among others, is Cannie's best friend, Sam, still looking for the perfect mate (i.e., an unmarried Jewish male under 60). With six best sellers in seven years, Weiner is a talented writer who consistently delivers the goods. (Note: F-kis sprinkled judiciously throughout.) An essential read for fans and an essential buy for public libraries.
Rebecca Kelm - School Library Journal


Weiner's sequel to her debut novel (Good in Bed, 2001) revisits that book's heroine 13 years later. When readers first met Candace "Cannie" Shapiro, she was 28, overweight and single. Still feisty as ever, Candace is now wife to beloved Peter and mother to 13-year-old daughter Joy. The chapters alternate, sometimes jerkily, between Candace's and Joy's points of view. Joy, a typical teenager, is embarrassed by her mother, and Candace worries about her changing relationship with her daughter. Above all, Candace tries to protect Joy and herself from her painful past, very publicly chronicled in her accidental bestseller, Big Girls Don't Cry, a highly sexualized fictional account of Candace's life. After Joy reads the book, she questions who her true family is, and whether her mother ever wanted her. At times Weiner tries too hard to be witty, and Joy sounds too much like Candace. Still, the narrative is often heartfelt and funny, and, while the plot occasionally meanders, there are surprisingly raw emotional elements at play and some nifty plot twists. As the story unfolds, Joy goes looking for her maternal grandfather and Candace and Peter search for a surrogate for a second child—and Weiner proves she isn't afraid to tackle the complexities of love, fear and grief. A touching examination of both the comic and tragic moments that mark the mother-daughter relationship.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. In the opening of the novel, Cannie thankfully observes how her daughter, Joy, is so different from herself. Joy, Cannie thinks, will have a better adolescence than her mother did. And yet it is their differences that cause such conflict and grief in the Krushelevansky household. In what ways are Cannie and Joy different? In what ways are they similar? How much of these differences are specific to Cannie and Joy and how much are common to all mother-daughter pairs?

2. Cannie loves her daughter so deeply and so enjoys being a mother that it is somewhat surprising to see how negatively she reacts to Peter's request that they have a child together. Why do you think she reacts this way?

3. On page 68, Joy seems enraged by Cannie's repetition of a familiar story about Joy's childhood. But Cannie can't figure out what has upset her daughter so. Identify moments in the novel where Joy is upset with something Cannie says or does, and Cannie doesn't understand why. Do you think Joy is being unfair, or is it Cannie who is overreacting?

4. Cannie tries to steer Joy away from the fashion magazines her aunt Elle devours because she thinks they're a "bad influence." What does Joy think? Do you agree or disagree with Cannie, and why? How does the novel provide evidence to support one opinion over the other?

5. Joy is constantly smoothing her hair over her ears to hide her hearing aids, or taking them out altogether. What is she really trying to cover up? Is she ultimately successful? Why or why not?

6. The author uses both Cannie's and Joy's point of view in order to emphasize the disconnect between the worlds of adult women andteenage girls. How else does this generation gap manifest in the novel? Is it really just that Cannie is "clueless"? Are Shari and Elle really that dissimilar from Amber and her friends? What does this novel say about growing up and about the different "types" of women in the world?

7. Cannie struggles with two absent fathers—her own, with whom she hasn't had a real relationship in decades, and her ex-boyfriend Bruce, who not only abandons her when he discovers that she is pregnant, but who isn't always the most attentive or responsible parent now that he's back in Joy's life. And then there's Peter, who isn't anyone's biological father but plays a father's role nonetheless. Compare and contrast Bruce Guberman, Lawrence Shapiro, and Peter Krushelevansky and their relationships to their families.

8. Describe how various children in this novel view their parents—particularly their mothers. How do you feel about these characters? Do you find the perspective of the children very different from that of the adults? Do you sympathize more with one "side" or another? Why or why not?

9. Joy notes on page 196 that her father's new wife, Emily, is so tiny and timid that Joy can't imagine her doing anything mean to anyone. But appearances often belie the truth. How do the appearances of the characters in this novel contradict who they are or what they are going through? Cite specific examples.

10. Even though Cannie would be fine with Joy going to her cousin Tyler's bar mitzvah, Joy decides to attend on the sly. What does Joy hope will happen at the party? What does she learn about herself and about her family?

11. Why do you think Cannie struggles so with the idea of surrogacy? What issues is she struggling with? How do you feel about the idea of pregnancy as a business arrangement -- or "babysitting," as some of the surrogates claim? Do you think Cannie is right that these women are asking far too little for what they are giving up? Why or why not?

12. On page 236, the author relays two news stories. One is about a sorority that dumps twenty-three girls from its roster, all of whom were either overweight, unattractive, or minorities. The other is about a 325-pound girl who commits suicide after being teased by classmates about her weight; the girl's mother is subsequently charged with neglect. What statement do you think the author is making about America's obsession with weight? Do you think these two news stories speak to the same issue, or is there a difference between them? Explain your opinion.

13. As Joy and her classmates approach their bar and bat mitzvah dates, they struggle to shed their childhood and be perceived as adults by greater society, especially their peers and families. Identify the various elements of so-called adulthood that these children try on. What is it that finally shows Joy what it means to be a grown-up?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Chalice
Nancy Bilyeau, 2013
Simon & Schuster
485 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476708669


Summary
In the midst of England’s Reformation, a young novice will risk everything to defy the most powerful men of her era.

In 1538, England’s bloody power struggle between crown and cross threatens to tear the country apart. Novice Joanna Stafford has tasted the wrath of the royal court, discovered what lies within the king’s torture rooms, and escaped death at the hands of those desperate to possess the power of an ancient relic.

Even with all she has experienced, the quiet life is not for Joanna. Despite the possibilities of arrest and imprisonment, she becomes caught up in a shadowy international plot targeting Henry VIII himself. As the power plays turn vicious, Joanna realizes her role is more critical than she’d ever imagined. She must choose between those she loves most and assuming her part in a prophecy foretold by three seers. Repelled by violence, Joanna seizes a future with a man who loves her. But no matter how hard she tries, she cannot escape the spreading darkness of her destiny.

To learn the final, sinister piece of the prophecy, she flees across Europe with a corrupt spy sent by Spain. As she completes the puzzle in the dungeon of a twelfth-century Belgian fortress, Joanna realizes the life of Henry VIII as well as the future of Christendom are in her hands—hands that must someday hold the chalice that lies at the center of these deadly prophecies. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Born—N/A
• Raised—Livonia, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Crown (2012) and The Chalice (2013), is a writer and magazine editor who has worked on the staffs of InStyle, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Good Housekeeping. Her latest position is features editor of Du Jour magazine. A native of the Midwest, she graduated from the University of Michigan. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
( A Top Pick.) The novel is riveting, and provides fascinating insight into the lives of displaced nuns and priests during the tumultuous Tudor period. Bilyeau creates fully realized characters, with complex actions and emotions, driving the machinations of these historic personages.
RT Book Reviews


English history buffs and mystery fans alike will revel in Nancy Bilyeau's richly detailed sequel to The Crown.
Parade


I loved the story, the characters, and the rich detail of the novel, making you feel you are there with Joanna on every page. So much emotion and drama- as well as facts to keep you riveted from the first page. And surprise twists for even the most hard to please mystery fans! I loved it
Bonnie Sommerville - De Jour magazine


Bilyeau sends her plucky former novice back into the intrigue-laden court of Henry VIII.
Entertainment Weekly


Bilyeau paints a moving portrait of Catholicism during the Reformation and of reclusive, spiritual people adjusting to the world outside the cloister. This intriguing and suspenseful historical novel pairs well with C. J. Sansom’s Dissolution (2003) and has the insightful feminine perspective of Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s The Heretic’s Wife (2010).
Booklist


A historical novel set during the time of Henry VIII. It opens in Canterbury in 1528, when the heroine, Joanna Stafford, is only 17 and her mother, worried about her daughter's health, pretends to take her to benefit from healing waters there. In fact, it is her mother's desire to have her daughter meet a woman with the gift of prophecy, a woman who is the first to see the role Joanna is destined to play in the future of the ongoing conflict between the crown and the cross.... [S]he pays attention to the first of what will be three seers who reveal, in progressive parts, her ultimate destiny....  Joanna's interest in weaving tapestries is an appropriate analogy for this layered book of historical suspense.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What role does prophecy play in The Chalice? How does this idea of prophecy drive much of the book? What are your beliefs regarding seers and prophecies?

2. Why do you think Bilyeau uses a young novice like Joanna Stafford to carry out such important historic weight as to save Henry VIII or destroy him?

3. “Why must this burden fall upon me?” Joanna asks Edmund when they are in Blackfriars, and he answers, “It’s you. You are a woman unlike any other, Sister Joanna. I’ve tried to define this quality that sets you apart. I’ve never quite been able to.” Can you define it? How does Joanna’s character shape and affect the unfolding of the story? In what ways does Joanna’s character change over the course of the novel? In the end, how have the events of the novel changed her forever?

4. Who directs Gertrude Courtenay to find Joanna? Were you surprised by this revelation? How are Joanna and Gertrude’s lives bound up, beyond the fact of their relatedness by marriage? How do their fates become so entwined? And how does it tie back to Katherine of Aragon? Discuss, as well, how Gertrude and Joanna’s lives are directly impacted by the Boleyn family.

5. Joanna resists meeting the seers and hearing the prophecies, and yet Bilyeau writes, “We’d all been forced to abandon our dream. Yet now, because of what I’d revealed, a restoration was possible. Why didn’t I surge forward, snatching at my place in the prophecy, eager to bring back our way of life? But I couldn’t.” Why do you think she isn’t able to? What are the myriad ways in which Joanna resists her fate and why? Discuss the idea of free will versus fate, and fate versus destiny.

6. Geoffrey Scovill appears in several places to warn Joanna or to help her or to persuade her to be with him. He claims he wants only her happiness, and yet when it is time for Joanna to marry Edmund, he prevents it. What was your reaction to his behavior at that moment? Sometimes Joanna wants Geoffrey near her, yet at other times she pushes him away. What is your impression of their relationship? When they meet again in the cemetery, Scovill regrets that he didn’t appreciate his wife, Beatrice, more before her death. What do you think Scovill has learned about love and life? What do you think the future holds for Geoffrey and Joanna’s relationship?

7. When Joanna is alone in Blackfriars with Edmund Sommerville, Bilyeau writes, “I waited, with eyes shut. After I don’t know how long, his lips pressed against mine, but so gently I almost doubted it was happening. I had never felt a touch this tender. I ached for more from him.” How does Bilyeau handle the delicate issue of desire in a work about celibate religious men and women? How does Joanna deal with her own desire?

8. Just as Gardiner once used Joanna’s father to get her to look for the Athelstan crown, now when Jacquard Rolin threatens Edmund’s life to force Joanna to complete the prophecy. When she complies, what does this say about Joanna’s character? Her sense of loyalty? How might you respond in a similar situation?

9. When Joanna meets Ambassador Chapuys in Antwerp, she says, “I know that you and others look to me to put a stop to evil. But in so doing, I am creating evil…The man who spied for Gardiner in Hertfordshire and now Master Adams? God would not have it so – I know in my heart it’s not right.” What do you think about what Joanna says? How do you think Chapuys feels after she’s said this? Have you ever been confronted with such a dilemma in your life?

10. “Was I indeed a fool not to see that this was the plan from the beginning – for me to kill the king of England?” Bilyeau writes. “I’d hoped, and perhaps it was grossly unrealistic, that in the end I would commit some act, such as the abortive attempt to rescue the body of Thomas Becket, that would turn the tide of history…But how wrong I was, how tragically wrong. This, then, was the prophecy that I’d been intertwined with since I was seventeen. To be a murderess.” Were you surprised by this revelation as well? Were you hoping for a different sort of prophecy as Joanna was? What might it have been?

11. When Bishop Gardiner takes Joanna to see Gertrude in the Tower of London and Joanna asks her if she regrets she entered into conspiracy, given how much she has lost – her husband, her son, her homes and fortune – Gertrude hisses, “Never.” How do you feel about this? Do you find it hard to believe? What sort of a person is Gertrude? How would you feel in her situation?

12. Joanna asks Bishop Gardiner if he has written the article that forbids religious people from marrying with her in mind, and he says, “Did you really think that religious policy for the entire kingdom was written just to strike out at you? Revenge, perhaps, revenge on my part for your failure to secure the Athelstan crown or perhaps for your recent flouting of my will?” Joanna says nothing, and then he finishes by saying, “You have never been a consideration of that import. Not everyone is meant to play a significant part in the affairs of the world, Joanna.” Do you believe him? Does Joanna? What do you think is the truth?

13. In the beginning of The Chalice, John is a madman, running around Dartford spouting scripture about doom. In the end, he turns up at Joanna’s house in Dartford sane, well-dressed, and working as a wood collector. Do you think he is a symbol and/or metaphor for something in the novel? If so, discuss what it might be.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Chalk Man 
C.J. Tudor, 2018
Crown/Archetype
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524760984


Summary
A riveting and relentlessly compelling psychological suspense debut that weaves a mystery about a childhood game gone dangerously awry, and will keep readers guessing right up to the shocking ending

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get.

The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank … until one of them turns up dead.

That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest reader. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
C. J. Tudor, born as Caroline and called "Caz," lives in Nottingham, England, with her partner and young daughter. As told to Crime Fiction Lover, she always enjoyed writing but didn't settle into it until her mid-thirties.

Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, voice-over artist, and dog walker, which she says she was doing while working on her debut novel. She is now thrilled to be able to write full-time, and doesn’t miss chasing wet dogs through muddy fields all that much. The Chalk Man is her first novel. (Adapted from the publisher and crimefictionlover.com.)

Book Reviews
[G]astly events in the picturesque English town of Anderbury, with the nightmarish inevitability of the Grimmest of tales.…Though Tudor makes a couple of rookie missteps, including excessive plot twists … her storytelling prowess is undeniable.
Publishers Weekly


A band of preteens in a quaint English village in the late 1980s confront true evil and grapple with the lifelong consequences in this gripping debut mystery/thriller.… Taut plotting, smooth writing, and a compelling premise. —Kiera Parrott
Library Journal


[The] first-person narration alternates between past and present, taking full advantage of chapter-ending cliffhangers. A swift, cleverly plotted debut novel that ably captures the insular, slightly sinister feel of a small village.
Kirkus Reviews

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

GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chalk's Outline
J.J. Hensley, 2014
Bad Day Books
284 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781628278019


Summary
Three years ago, popular college professor Cyprus Keller (Resolve) planned a murder.

Two years ago, former Pittsburgh Homicide Detective Jackson Channing (Measure Twice) pulled himself together and got sober.

Today, Robert Chalk has a rifle, a plan, and a target.

When Cyprus Keller and his wife Kaitlyn relocated to rural Virginia, they did all they could to put the past behind them. However, the situation becomes uncomfortable when Jackson Channing appears in Keller's living room and begins questioning Keller about the past. The situation becomes unbearable when bullets start flying through the front window.

In a flash, it becomes apparent that Jackson Channing is not the only person who has an interest in Keller. If Channing wants to unravel Keller's past, he is going to have to make sure the professor has a future. To keep Keller safe and uncover the mystery of who wants him dead, Channing takes Keller and his wife to Pittsburgh, where it all started.

As a deadly chess game plays out in the city streets, Channing discovers Keller is a complicated man of secrets who is anything but a typical murder suspect. The two men team up in an effort to stop a dangerous assassin who intends on killing Keller, no matter the cost.

As Robert Chalk works his way through the plan he has outlined, he becomes consumed with the ultimate goal. No matter how many lives he has to take along the way, Cyprus Keller must die. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974-75
• Where—Huntington, West Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Pennsylvania State University; M.S., Columbia Southern University
• Awards—Suspense Magazine Best Debut; Authors on the Air, Top 10 of the Year
• Currently—lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania


J.J. Hensley spent three years as a police officer in Virginia before becoming a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He draws upon those experiences to write novels full of suspense and insight.

Hensley, who is originally from Huntington, WV, graduated from Penn State University with a B.S. in Administration of Justice and has a M.S. in Criminal Justice Administration from Columbia Southern University. The author lives with his family near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Hensley’s novel Resolve was named one of the Best Books of 2013 by Suspense Magazine and as a finalist for Best First Novel by the International Thriller Writers organization. His second book, Measure Twice, was released in 2014, and his third, Chalk's Outline, came out in 2016.

In addition to his three novels, Hensley writes short stories—"Vehemence" was published in 2014, and "Four Days Forever" appeared in the 2015 anthology, Legacy.

Hensley is a member of the International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow J.J. Hensley on Facebook.

Discussion Questions
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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Chance: A Novel 
Kem Nunn, 2014
Scribner
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743289245


Summary
From the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning author comes a suspenseful and mind-bending novel about Eldon Chance, a forensic neuropsychiatrist at the end of his rope.

A dark tale involving psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence—Chance is set amid the back streets of California’s Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean. Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin.

Into Dr. Chance’s blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. In time, Chance will fall into bed with her—or is it with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn’t quite sure—and thereby hangs his fascination with her.

Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named D, a self-styled, streetwise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow, and the doctor’s carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion.

Amid San Francisco’s fluid, ever-shifting fog, in the cool, gray city of love, Dr. Chance will at last be forced to live up to his name. Chance is a twisted, harrowing, and impossible-to-put-down head trip through the fun house of fate, mesmerizing until the very last page. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Raised—Pomona, California, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of California, Irvine
• Currently—lives in southern California


Kem Nunn is an American fiction novelist, surfer, magazine and television writer from California. His novels have been described as "surf-noir" for their dark themes, political overtones and surf settings. He is the author of five novels, including his seminal surf novel Tapping the Source and, more recently, Chance. According to the San Diego Union Tribune:

He remembers being mesmerized the first time he saw surfers while camping with his parents at Salt Creek near Dana Point.

Although Nunn was a skinny, not-so-athletic kid who didn't swim very well, the allure of being propelled by waves was irresistible. His first rides were on air mats and crude homemade surfboards. He merely dabbled with surfing as a youth. It wasn't until he was deep into his 20s that he became immersed in the surfer's life.

He drifted from his teens into his 20s, turning underachieving into an art decades before eternal slacking became fashionable with Generation X.

"My 20s were a lost decade. I didn't do much of anything," he said. 
—Terry Rodgers, San Diego Union Tribune, August 17, 2004

Nunn has collaborated with producer David Milch on the HBO Western drama series Deadwood. Milch and Nunn co-created the HBO series John from Cincinnati, a surfing series set in Imperial Beach, California which premiered in 2007.

Kem Nunn grew up in Pomona and Northern California. In addition to Tapping the Source (1984), he also wrote Dogs of Winter (1997), Unassigned Territory (1986), Pomona Queen (1992), Tijuana Straits (2004), and Chance (2014). He received an MFA in creative writing from UC Irvine. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/15/2014 .)

Book Reviews
Kem Nunn's crafty new novel…Chance takes place in the twilit world of noir, where people and things are never what they seem. But this book isn't a tragic noir like Vertigo or Out of the Past, whose cunning femme fatale Jaclyn/Jackie sometimes brings to mind. It's a farce, of an unusually violent and dark-spirited kind…Nunn, a connoisseur of slippery slopes, just gives his uptight protagonist a gentle shove and watches him go down, every bump and stumble duly noted with a sort of dry relish
Terrence Rafferty - New York Times Book Review


Is it too much to compare Kem Nunn to Raymond Chandler? Like Chandler, Nunn’s great subject is what lies beneath the surface, the desolation that infuses us at every turn.... The power of this disturbing and provocative novel is that it leaves us unmoored among the signposts of a morally ambiguous universe in which, even after we have finished reading, it is uncertain who has been feeding whom.
Los Angeles Times


Sentence by sentence Nunn achieves a muscular eloquence—I almost wrote elegance—unusual in what at first appears to be a genre novel. There hasn't been fiction this good about a San Francisco medical professional gone off the rails over a woman since Frank Norris' deluded dentist in the 1899 novel McTeague.
Alan Cheuse - San Francisco Chronicle


The book could be considered a pulp masterpiece. It has everything from a femme fatale to a dystopian setting where the California sun is blotted out by a black-ash fog from wildfires burning around the Bay. Chance is the kind of everyman whose bad choices are noir staples. But calling it pulp would undersell the sheer genius of the writing, which uses the convention of mystery-thrillers to create a psychological allegory of Freud’s construct, id, ego and superego at war with themselves.
Arizona Republic


(Starred review.) [A] brilliant and cerebral psychological thriller. The quiet, ordered life of Dr. Eldon Chance, a recently divorced Bay Area forensic neuropsychiatrist, begins to unravel when he makes a series of ill-fated decisions.... [A]surprising conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


Psychiatrist Eldon Chance, who makes his living providing testimony in court cases, is appalled to see the life he had so carefully constructed for himself break apart.... Nunn...excels at creating complicated, flawed characters with fascinating backstories. This gritty, twisted tale will be of prime interest to noir fans. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist


[G]ritty.... Nunn, a writer with a gift for subtlety and wordplay, spins a story that is both mesmerizing and a bit confusing. Readers will find Nunn's story well-written for the most part but not always engaging. Lovers of Nunn's previous novels may discover in Chance a less than creditable antihero.
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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Chances Are...
Richard Russo, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101947746


Summary
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a new revelation: a riveting story about the abiding yet complex power of friendship.

One beautiful September day, three men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties.

They couldn't have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age.

But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971: the disappearance of the woman each of them loved—Jacy Calloway.

Now, more than forty years later, as this new weekend unfolds, three lives are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present like a relentless squall of surprise and discovery.

Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are… also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family or any other community.

For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are… is a stunning demonstration of a highly acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable achievement. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 15, 1949
• Where—Johnstown, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., M.F. A. and Ph.D., University of Arizona
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Camden, Maine


Prizewinning author Richard Russo is regarded by many critics as the best writer about small-town America since Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis. "He doesn't over-sentimentalize [small towns]," said Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for NPR's "Fresh Air." Nor does he belittle the dreams and hardships of his working-class characters. "I come from a blue-collar family myself and I think he gets the class interactions; he just really nails class in his novels," said Corrigan.

When Russo left his own native small town in upstate New York, it was with hopes of becoming a college professor. But during his graduate studies, he began to have second thoughts about the academic life. While finishing up his doctorate, he took a creative writing class; and a new career path opened in front of him.

Russo's first novel set the tone for much of his later work. The story of an ailing industrial town and the interwoven lives of its inhabitants, Mohawk won critical praise for its witty, engaging style. In subsequent books, he has brought us a dazzling cast of characters, mostly working-class men and women who are struggling with the problems of everyday life (poor health, unemployment, mounting bills, failed marriages) in dilapidated, claustrophobic burghs that have—like their denizens—seen better days. In 2001, Russo received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, a brilliant, tragicomic set-piece that explores past and present relationships in a once-thriving Maine town whose textile mill and shirt factory have gone bust.

Russo's vision of America would be bleak, except for the wit and optimism he infuses into his stories. Even when his characters are less than lovable, they are funny, rueful, and unfailingly human. "There's a version of myself that I still see in a kind of alternative universe and it's some small town in upstate New York or someplace like that," Russo said in an interview. That ability to envision himself in the bars and diners of small-town America has served him well. "After the last sentence is read, the reader continues to see Russo's tender, messed-up people coming out of doorways, lurching through life," said the fiction writer Annie Proulx. "And keeps on seeing them because they are as real as we are."

Extras
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:

• In 1994, Russo's book Nobody's Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman and Bruce Willis. Newman also starred in the 1998 movie Twilight, for which Russo wrote the screenplay. Russo now divides his time between writing fiction and writing for the movies.

• When he wrote his first books, Russo was employed full-time as a college teacher and would stop at the local diner between classes to work on his novels. After the success of Nobody's Food (the book and movie), he was able to quit teaching—but he still likes to write in tight spots, such as the Camden Deli. It's "a less lonely way to write," he told USA Today. "I'm less self-conscious when it's not so quiet."

• When asked what his favorite books are, he offered this list:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens—All of Dickens, really. The breadth of his canvas, the importance he places on vivid minor characters, his understanding that comedy is serious business. And in the character of Pip, I learned, even before I understood I'd learned it, that we recognize ourselves in a character's weakness as much than his strength. When Pip is ashamed of Joe, the best man he knows, we see ourselves, and it's terrible, hard-won knowledge. 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain—Twain's great novel demonstrates that you can go to the very darkest places if you're armed with a sense of humor. His study of American bigotry, ignorance, arrogance, and violence remains so fresh today, alas, because human nature remains pretty constant. I understand the contemporary controversy, of course. Huck's discovery that Jim is a man is hardly a blinding revelation to black readers, but the idea that much of what we've been taught by people in authority is a crock should resonate with everybody. Especially these days.  

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald—Mostly, I suppose, because his concerns -- class, money, the invention of self -- are so central to the American experience. Fitzgerald understood that our most vivid dreams are often rooted in self-doubt and weakness. Many people imagine that we identify with strength and virtue. Fitzgerald knew better.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck—For the beauty of the book's omniscience. It's fine for writers to be humble. Most of us have a lot to be humble about. But it does you no good to be timid. Pretend to be God? Why not? (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Chances Are… is, at heart, less a mystery than an evocation of what happens when [its characters] discover that "the membrane separating sympathy from pity could be paper thin." … The cloud of remorse that hangs over [the novel] can be affecting precisely because these old friends have so much difficulty articulating their emotions. Will they be able to open up to whatever the future holds?
Alida Becker - New York Times Book Review


A cascade of charm…. Each [character is] so appealing that you hate to let him go, though you’ll quickly feel just as fond of the next one…. One of the great pleasures of Chances Are… stems from how gracefully Russo moves the story along two time frames, creating that uncanny sense of memories that feel simultaneously near and remote…. Russo is an undeniably endearing writer, and chances are this story will draw you back to the most consequential moments in your own life.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


[Russo’s] first novel in ten years hits the ball out of the park…. Along with his wry eye for irony and regret, [Russo] offers up a compelling mystery…. When the denouement comes, it’s a stunner. Nevertheless, all bombshells feel earned. If you’re on a hammock in the Vineyard or under a tent in Acadia, or slumped over the fire escape of your hot city apartment, chances are your chances are awfully good that you’ll lap up this gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.
Mameve Medwed - Boston Globe


Irresistible… with the complexities of human relationships, from first love to parenthood to aging [and] rich with humor.
Colette Bancroft - Tampa Bay Times


[Russo] mixes his signature themes—father-and-son relationships, unrequited love, small-town living, and the hiccups of aging—with stealthy clue-dropping in a slow-to-build mystery…. In the final stretch, surprising, long-kept secrets are revealed. This is vintage Russo.
Publishers Weekly


Pulitzer Prize winner Russo returns with a bittersweet tale of longtime friendship and lost love that has a surprising—and surprisingly satisfying—ending.
Library Journal


(Starred review) For his first stand-alone novel in 10 years, Russo has written a bewitching tale of male friendship with thriller elements…. This is vintage Russo with a cunning twist.
Booklist


(Starred review) No one understands men better than Russo, and no one is more eloquent in explaining how they think, suffer, and love.… [Chances Are…] blends everything we love about this author… in [his] distinctive, richly observed world and his inimitable ironic voice.
Kirkus Reviews


A surprising work that is as much a mystery as a meditation on secrets and friendship…. [A] moving portrait of aging men who discover the world's worst-kept secret:  You may not know the people you thought you were closest to.
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 CHANCES ARE … and then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe each of the three men—Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey—who show up on Martha's Vineyard for this reunion? Talk about the differences in their personalities and backgrounds. Given those differences, what drew them together, years ago, as friends? Of the three, do you have a particular favorite?

2. How has each man changed over the past 44 years, since they were last all together. Importantly, how have they not changed: in what sense do their past lives, even their relationships with their fathers, say, continue to shape them? As Faulkner famously quipped, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." How does that summation play out for Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey?

3. What was Jacy Calloway like? Discuss the revelations that eventually emerge about her life. What was her relationship with each of the younger men?

4. Lincoln wonders, "What would Jacy think if she could see them now?… Three goddamn old men." How, in fact, might she see them?

5. One of the book's themes is the way random events can set life on a seemingly irreversible path. As Russo writes, "yank out one thread from the fabric of human destiny, and everything unravels. Though it could also be said that things have a tendency to unravel regardless."  How do you see that observation occurring throughout Chances Are….

6. Follow-up to Question 5: What missed opportunities or moral failings, revealed early on in the lives of the characters, have continued to shape each of them and how they have lived their lives?

7. What is the prevailing attitude of the male characters in this book toward women? As Teddy says, "Men. We ignore women when they’re right and we start wars and generally screw things up." The retired policeman even admits, "We don’t do right by girls."

8. Were you caught off guard by the plot twist at the end? Did you see it coming... or not? Some critics have said they didn't even though, in a close re-read, the clues are all there. The Boston Globe, for instance, called the final reveal a "stunner" and a "bombshell," yet one that felt "earned." What were your expectations? 

9. How does the book's title, taken from a Johnny Mathis song, stand in for the book's theme?

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

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The Chaneysville Incident
David Bradley, 1981
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060916817


Summary
The legends say something happened in Chaneysville.

The Chaneysville Incident is the powerful story of one man's obsession with discovering what that "something" was—a quest that takes the brilliant and bitter young black historian John Washington back through the secrets and buried evil of his heritage. Returning home to care for and then bury his father's closest friend and his own guardian, Old Jack Crawley, he comes upon the scant records of his family's proud and tragic history, which he drives himself to reconstruct and accept.

This is the story of John's relationship with his family, the town, and the woman he loves; and also between the past and the present, between oppression and guilt, hate and violence, love and acceptance. From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1950
• Where—Bedford, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.A., University of London
• Awards—Academy Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters); PEN/Faulkner Award;
   O. Henry Award
• Currently—lives in San Diego, California


David Henry Bradley, Jr. is the author of South Street and The Chaneysville Incident, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1982.

The Chaneysville Incident, inspired in part by the real-life discovery of the graves of a group of runaway slaves on a farm near Chaneysville in Bedford County, PA, where Bradley was born, also earned Bradley a 1982 Academy Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His short story "You Remember the Pinmill" (winner of a 2014 O. Henry Award) was published in 2013 in Narrative magazine.

Since 1985, Bradley has worked primarily in creative nonfiction, with pieces in Esquire, Redbook, New York Times, Philadelphia Magazine, Pennsylvania Gazette, Nation and Dissent. His work has also appeared online in Obit, Narrative, and Brevity.

Bradley holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in United States Studies from the University of London. He was an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon. On June 12, 2011, he appeared 60 Minutes in a segment regarding the censored version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved June 10, 2015.)

Book Reviews
David Bradley's second book, The Chaneysville Incident, took ten years to complete. A deeply moving work set in the mountains of Pennsylvania, it received the PEN/Faulkner Award as the best novel of 1981. John Washington, the novel's hero, is a history professor and scholar...[who] uncovers the mystery of his father's suicide; learns the heroic truth of how his great-grandfather, an ex-slave, was killed when caught helping twelve runaways; discovers that his contempt for his mother is misplaced; and creates within himself a place of compassion where commitment to Judith can grow.... In beautiful and precise prose, Bradley tells the story of how...an intelligent reclamation of one's heritage can be a source of strength and peace.
Sacred Life

Discussion Questions
(These questions were kindly offered to LitLovers by Gail Golden, who developed them for The BFF Book Club. Thank you, Gail.)

1. In what year is the novel set in the first chapter?& How did you feel about the way that the stories unfolded as the book progressed? If this book had been written in 2015, how might the story between John and Judith have been different?

2. Why is it significant that John is an historian? How does that help to connect him to his father, Moses Washington, especially after Moses’s death?

3. What is the significance of coffee and toddies in this novel? How does the choice of drinks help the reader to understand the progress of Judith’s and John’s relationship?

4. Do we ever really know the actual names of the Town and the County? Are the names important? Why or why not?

5. John shows anger throughout the book. How do the foci of his anger change as the story progresses, or how does it become clearer to the reader the focus of the anger?

6. Share one of the vignettes that help us to understand why John felt so hostile toward the town in which he grew up.

7. Discuss the role of Old Jack Crawley in this story.

8. Compare the home of Old Jack and the one that Moses built for himself. Compare the two sides of the Hill on which the Blacks in the Town lived.

9. Describe the evolution of C. K. Washington which led up to the “incident.” Did that vignette help you to understand why Moses took his own life? Do you think that it helped John to understand?

10. If you had been one of the thirteen involved in the “incident,” would you have chosen the way that they did? Why do you think that John and Moses had such a hard time finding out about the “incident?”

11. What was the significance at the end of the book of John’s resealing the folio that Moses had left him? Why did he burn up all of his notes? He says that he is leaving the folio intact for anyone in the future who might look into it. Who might that be?

12. Did this book give you any new knowledge/revelations about slavery, the slave trade, runners, and/or the Underground Railroad? Has the book changed your previous notions about PA or any of the other states mentioned in the book?

13. Pick one minor character in the book and discuss him/her and how he/she fit into the centuries-old story told in the book.

14. Is there a particular episode in the novel that you would like to discuss?
(Questions prepared and submitted by Gail Golden of The BFF Book Club.)

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A Change in Altitude 
Anita Shreve, 2009
Little, Brown & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316020718


Summary
Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn't know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband.

A British couple invites the newlyweds to join on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, and they eagerly agree. But during their harrowing ascent, a horrific accident occurs. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how these events have transformed her and her marriage, perhaps forever.

A Change in Altitude illuminates the inner landscape of a couple, the irrevocable impact of tragedy, and the elusive nature of forgiveness. With stunning language and striking emotional intensity, Anita Shreve transports us to the exotic panoramas of Africa and into the core of our most intimate relationships. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Raised—Dedham, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A. Tufts University
• Awards—PEN/L.L. Winship Award; O. Henry Prize
• Currently—lives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts


Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of nearly 20 books—including two works of nonfiction and 17 of fiction. Her novels include, most recently, Stella Bain (2013), as well as The Weight of Water (1997), a finalist for England's Orange prize; The Pilot's Wife (1998), a selection of Oprah's Book Club; All He Even Wanted (2003), Body Surfing (2007); Testimony (2008); A Change in Altitude (2010). She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)

More
For many readers, the appeal of Anita Shreve’s novels is their ability to combine all of the escapist elements of a good beach read with the kind of thoughtful complexity not generally associated with romantic fiction. Shreve’s books are loaded with enough adultery, eroticism, and passion to make anyone keep flipping the pages, but the writer whom People magazine once dubbed a “master storyteller” is also concerned with the complexities of her characters’ motivations, relationships, and lives.

Shreve’s novels draw on her diverse experiences as a teacher and journalist: she began writing fiction while teaching high school, and was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975 for her story, "Past the Island, Drifting." She then spent several years working as a journalist in Africa, and later returned to the States to raise her children. In the 1980s, she wrote about women’s issues, which resulted in two nonfiction books—Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone—before breaking into mainstream fiction with Eden Close in 1989.

This interest in women’s lives—their struggles and success, families and friendships—informs all of Shreve’s fiction. The combination of her journalist’s eye for detail and her literary ear for the telling turn of phrase mean that Shreve can spin a story that is dense, atmospheric, and believable. Shreve incorporates the pull of the sea—the inexorable tides, the unpredictable surf—into her characters’ lives the way Willa Cather worked the beauty and wildness of the Midwestern plains into her fiction. In Fortune’s Rocks and The Weight of Water, the sea becomes a character itself, evocative and ultimately consuming. In Sea Glass, Shreve takes the metaphor as far as she can, where characters are tested again and again, only to emerge stronger by surviving the ravages of life.

A domestic sensualist, Shreve makes use of the emblems of household life to a high degree, letting a home tell its stories just as much as its inhabitants do, and even recycling the same house through different books and periods of time, giving it a sort of palimpsest effect, in which old stories burn through the newer ones, creating a historical montage. "A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell," she says. "I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house."

Shreve’s work is sometimes categorized as "women’s fiction," because of her focus on women’s sensibilties and plights. But her evocative and precise language and imagery take her beyond category fiction, and moderate the vein of sentimen-tality which threads through her books. Moreover, her kaleidoscopic view of history, her iron grip on the details and detritus of 19th-century life (which she sometimes inter-sperses with a 20th-century story), and her uncanny ability to replicate 19th-century dialogue without sounding fusty or fussy, make for novels that that are always absorbing and often riveting. If she has a flaw, it is that her imagery is sometimes too cinematic, but one can hardly fault her for that: after all, the call of Hollywood is surely as strong as the call of the sea for a writer as talented as Shreve. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Shreve, who worked in Kenya as a journalist early in her career, returns to that country in her slow latest, the story of a photojournalist and her doctor husband, whose temporary relocation abroad goes sour. The year-long research trip is an opportunity for Patrick, but leaves Margaret floundering in colonialist culture shock, feeling like “an actor in a play someone British had written for a previous generation.” When a climbing trip to Mt. Kenya goes fatally wrong, Margaret's role in the tragedy drives a quiet wedge between the couple. Compounding those stressors are multiple robberies and adulterous temptations, as well as Margaret's freelance work for a “controversial” newspaper. Written in a strangely emotionless third person, the novel is stuffed with travelogues and vignettes of privileged expatriate life, including the chestnut of Margaret feeling very guilty about being given a rug she admires. While some of these moments aren't bad, the scant dramatic tension and direct-to-video plot make this a slog.
Publishers Weekly


Margaret and Patrick are 28-year-old Bostonians living in Kenya in 1977. He's a doctor researching tropical diseases, while she dabbles in photography. They live in the guest house of Brits Arthur and Diana. An impulsive plan to climb to the top of Mount Kenya elicits varied responses from the group, which eventually will include a Swiss couple as well. While most see a challenge, if a mild one, Margaret is terrified, scrambling for a way to back out. Ultimately, tragedy strikes, and everyone, including Patrick, looks to Margaret as its cause. The country's race relations contribute to Margaret's feelings of remorse, pushing her to find a job and perhaps a new love. Verdict: The usual pinpoint precision of Shreve's (Testimony) prose is not in evidence here, as readers must work to discover the novel's time frame, and accusations of Margaret's complicity in the accident seem out of proportion, as does her sense of guilt. People who might consider an excursion to Mount Kenya will undoubtedly cancel their airfare and buy a new armchair instead. Fans will demand this one, though. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal


Shreve sends a young American couple up Mt. Kenya, with disastrous consequences for their marriage. Margaret and Patrick have been in Nairobi for three months. He came to pursue research in tropical diseases while offering his services as a doctor in free clinics; she was bored with her job at a Boston alternative weekly and hopes to find more interesting photography opportunities in Africa. Neither is an experienced climber, nor do they especially like their landlords, Arthur and Diana, who suggest the expedition. But they go along anyway, and it's athletic Diana who falls to her death. Is Margaret to blame because Diana was exasperated by her slowness and enraged by Arthur's attentions to the younger woman? Patrick thinks so and says so to his wife; their relationship is on shaky ground for the remainder of the story. It's not clear precisely what Shreve intends to convey in her tale. She unsparingly depicts the poverty and corruption of late-1970s Kenya and sends Margaret to work at a reforming newspaper whose editor is eventually arrested, but politics are not a central concern. Margaret, the point-of-view character, is a sensitive and thoughtful observer who can't seem to take hold of her life. Patrick will strike most readers as cold and judgmental from the start; it's hard to understand what Margaret ever saw in him, and her attraction to a reporter at the Kenya Morning Tribune isn't much more compelling. The second climb up Mt. Kenya, taken a year after the first, does not in the least meet Patrick's goal of expunging the "deadly silence" and "devastating mistrust" that have enveloped the couple, but it does restore Margaret's self-respect and make clearthe state of their marriage. Commendably tough-minded and unsentimental, but not very engaging.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. How would you interpret the novel’s title? Does the concept of altitude have significance in the story beyond its literal meaning?

2. During the drive to Mt. Kenya, Margaret and Patrick talk about whether photography detaches you from the present or helps you immerse yourself in it more fully (75). In your own life, do you find that taking photographs enriches experiences or prevents you from being fully in the moment?

3. When Diana brings Adhiambo to stay with Patrick and Margaret for the night, they disagree about how best to deal with the situation. Margaret seems more concerned about Adhiambo’s emotional well-being, while Patrick focuses on her physical state. In what way do their differing perspectives reflect other aspects of their characters? Do you think Adhiambo would have been better off if Margaret and Patrick had taken her to the hospital that night?

4. Throughout the novel, Margaret is struck by the way Kenyan characters use the phrase “Just all right” (67, 189, 246, 303). How would you interpret the meaning of this phrase? Why is it so surprising to Margaret?

5. How culpable is Margaret in what happens on the mountain? To what extent does the blame fall on others involved in the climb? Should a person be held responsible for the unintended consequences of her actions (124)?

6. Is Patrick right to confront Margaret about what happened on the mountain? Margaret argues that if he loves her and intends to stay with her, he should not have told her his opinion, while Patrick believes it is most important to be honest (125). What do you think is most important in a relationship, total honesty or sensitivity to the other’s feelings?

7. Why do you think Margaret feels so strongly about taking the photograph of the leopard? Are there parallels between this action and Diana’s behavior on the glacier? Have you ever put yourself in danger because of a momentary impulse? What do you think motivates actions of this kind?

8. What is your definition of infidelity? Does Margaret’s relationship with Rafiq constitute unfaithfulness to Patrick? Is there such a thing as emotional infidelity or is only physical cheating really cheating?

9. How much of a marriage’s success or failure do you think can be attributed to the love between husband and wife, and how much to external factors, such as jobs, finances, location, and other people? Patrick says, “I think couples need projects to keep them together” (271). Is he correct that a couple must put in effort to make their marriage work?

10. If the accident on the mountain had never occurred, do you think Margaret and Patrick’s relationship would have evolved differently? Would anything more have happened between Arthur and Margaret? Between Rafiq and Margaret?

11. Imagine Margaret and Patrick thirty years after the end of A Change in Altitude, looking back on their life in Africa. How do you think each of them would describe the trajectory of their relationship during this time?

12. Describe your response to the novel’s ending. Did you find it sad? Uplifting? Did you feel that things had worked out for the best?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Change of Heart 
Jodi Picoult, 2008
Simon & Schuster
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743496759


Summary
Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.

For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.

Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?

Once again, Jodi Picoult mesmerizes and enthralls readers with this story of redemption, justice, and love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1966
• Where—Nesconset (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.Ed., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Hanover, New Hampshire


Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has approximately 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.

Early life and education
Picoult was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island in New York State; when she was 13, her family moved to New Hampshire. Even as a child, Picoult had a penchant for writing stories: she wrote her first story— "The Lobster Which Misunderstood"—when she was five.

While still in college—she studied writing at Princeton University—Picoult published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. To pay the bills, after graduation she worked at a variety of jobs, including copy writing and editing textbooks; she even taught eighth-grade English and attained a Masters in Education from Harvard University.

In 1989, Picoult married Timothy Warren Van Leer, whom she met in college, and while pregnant with their first child, wrote her first book. Song of the Humpbacked Whale, her literary debut, came out in 1992. Two more children followed, as did a string of bestseller novels. All told, Picoult has more than 20 books to her name.

Writing
At an earlier time in her life, Picoult believed the tranquility of family life in small-town New England offered little fodder for writing; the truly interesting stuff of fiction happened elsewhere. Ironically, it is small-town life that has ended up providing the settings for Picoult's novels. Within the cozy surroundings of family and friends, Picoult weaves complex webs of relationships that strain, even tear apart, under stress. She excels at portraying ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Disoriented by some accident of chance, they stumble, whirl, and attempt to regain a footing in what was once their calm, ordered world.

Nor has Picoult ever shied from tackling difficult, controversial issues: school shooting, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teen suicide, and racism. She approaches painful topics with sympathy—and her characters with respect—while shining a light on individual struggles. Her legions of readers have loved and rewarded her for that compassion—and her novels have been consistent bestsellers.

Personal life
Picoult and her husband Timothy live in Hanover, New Hampshire. They have three children and a handful of pets. (Adapted from a 2003 Barnes and Noble interview and from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)

Book Reviews
Picoult is a rare writer who delivers book after book, a winning combination of the literary and the commercial.
Entertainment Weekly


Picoult moves the story along with lively debates about prisoner rights and religion, while plumbing the depths of mother-daughter relationships and examining the literal and metaphorical meanings of having heart. The point-of-view switches are abrupt, but this is a small flaw in an impressive book.
Publishers Weekly


Noted for her heart-wrenching stories and the complicated humanity of her characters, Picoult continues her successful foray into fiction.... Picoult tackles the most complicated personal and political issues with compassion and clarity, and her fans will want this one. Suitable for all public libraries
Colleen S. Harris - School Library Journal


A convicted murderer who may be a latter-day Messiah wants to donate his heart to the sister of one of his victims, in Picoult's frantic 15th. Picoult specializes in hot-button issues.... Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can't impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop plot.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. The author uses several famous quotations from some of the greatest thinkers in history, including Lewis Carroll, Voltaire, Woody Allen, Mother Teresa, Mark Twain, the Dalai Lama, Bono, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert Einstein. What effect do these philosophical tidbits have on the telling of this story? Which one resonated most with you?

2. Discuss the theme of belief in this novel. What does Shay believe, and who believes in him? Apply this same question to Maggie, Michael, and June. Did this story call any of their beliefs into question? Which ones?

3. When Shay is moved to the I-tier, some very strange things start happening—water turns to wine, Calloway's pet robin is brought back to life, a tiny piece of gum becomes enough for all to share. Some call these miracles while others call them hijinks. What do you make of these incidents? Were you convinced that Shay had divine powers, and if so, at what point did you make that conclusion?

4. Michael tells Maggie that "there's a big difference between mercy and salvation" (142). What is that difference? Which characters are pursuing mercy and which are pursuing salvation? Which, do you think, is granted in the end for each of the main characters?

5. Having lost a daughter and two husbands, June's life is fraught with grief. How do you see that grief shaping her character and informing the choices that she makes? Do you think she makes choices in order to reconcile the past or in hopes of a better future?

6. How do the three religions referenced in this book (Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism) imagine the presence or reappearance of the divine? Compare Michael's vision on p. 71 with Rabbi Bloom's explanation of the Jewish Midrash on p. 96 and Shay's depiction of heaven on p.106.

7. Consider the passage on p.165 where Maggie thinks "the penitentiary [Shay] was referring to was his own body." In what ways are some of the other characters in this book (Claire, Maggie, Lucius) imprisoned by their bodies?

8. Discuss June's questions on p. 184: "Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?" How do the characters answer this question?

9. June thinks that if Claire accepted a heart transplant from Shay Bourne and had to absorb the emotional pain of her father's and sister's murders, it would be "better to have no heart at all" (238). This statement eerily echoes Shay's own statement to June that her first daughter, Elizabeth, "was better off dead." How do you feel about the adults in this novel making such grave choices over the life of a child? Do you feel like they are being protective or presumptuous?

10. Why do you think Shay never puts up a real fight for his innocence? Do you believe he is resigned to his fate or is an active participant in choosing it? Has he made the ultimate sacrifice or is he just trying to make the most out of circumstances beyond his control?

11. Does Change of Heart have a hero? If so, who is it?

12. In Change of Heart, religion seems at times to bring characters together and at others to drive a wedge between them. Ultimately, do you think religion unites people or divides them?
(All questions issued by publisher.)

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Changing Spaces 
Nancy King, 2014
Plain View Press
260 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781891386435


Summary
What would you do if you woke up in your usual life, and by evening, the world as you'd known it was irrevocably changed?

Join runaway wife, Laura Feldman, as she hits the road after the love of her life—her husband of 40 years—suddenly wants a divorce to be with a younger woman. Along the bumpy road to reconnecting her disconnected self, this Midwestern wife finds a new life in the bold colors and close friendships of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Unbeknownst to her, Laura's husband is in hot pursuit while she gets a crash course in assertiveness and an unforgettable "makeover."

When her husband finally catches up with Laura, that's when the real fun begins. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.S., State University of New York;
   M.A., Universityof Delaware; Ph.D., Union
   Institute and University
• Currently—lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico


Nancy King, Ph.D is the award-winning author of several novels including Changing Spaces, The Stones Speak (which was optioned for a film), Morning Light, A Woman Walking, and the non-fiction Dancing with Wonder: Self-Discovery through Stories.

She frequently writes for the online travel journal, Your Life Is A Trip. Dr. King has extensive experience teaching in universities in Delaware and New Mexico (Honors Programs [Theatre, Creativity and World Literature], and currently conducts arts-based workshops internationally. She finds inspiration in weaving and hiking in the mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico where she makes her home. (From the publisher.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow Nancy King on Facebook.

Book Reviews
Location. Location. Location. Nancy King gets it right when she explores how a woman radically changes her life by changing her location. A plant can't thrive in any old soil; it has to be the right terrain. Changing Spaces is a reminder that one can leave the past behind, find new soil, and thrive in a different, and better, present and future. A page turner...You feel like the proverbial fly on the adobe wall when you see how Laura learns the power of female friendship.
Judith Fein, author (Life Is a Trip and The Spoon from Minkowitz)


Heartbreak turns to intrigue. A season of grief leads to a wig, a closet, a script, cookie recipes, new friendships, and a wide-open future.
Jeanne Murray Walker, author (Geography of Memory)


Nancy King guides Laura with a steady hand in this engaging tale of loss and empowerment to which many readers will surely relate.
Kate Buckley, author (Choices)


A deeply felt and powerfully experienced tale...”
Gwen Davis, author (The Pretenders)


Not since Marilyn French's 70s novel, The Women's Room, has there been such a groundbreaking novel...As Laura takes on Bed & Breakfast duties in Santa Fe, and frees her spirit in the natural beauty of New Mexico, we want her to succeed. But how will she solve that dilemma that was presented so succinctly in Muriel's Wedding when Muriel says, "I can change..." and her mean-girl friends sniff, "You'll still be YOU"? How Laura solves this dilemma is deliciously amusing as she learns how to take on a new "persona" through theater techniques that lead to fresh assertiveness.
Dancing in the Experience Lane Book Review Blog

Discussion Questions
1. On the morning Laura’s husband Zach plans to leave her, his contradictory behavior tips her off that something is amiss. What are the clues? If their roles were reversed, do you think Zach would have noticed Laura’s behavioral changes?

2. When Laura woke up, her husband made love to her, and that afternoon, he told her that he wanted a divorce. How did you react to this contradictory behavior?

3. How would you describe Zach’s actions and his point of view? Have you ever thought your mind was made up about a major life change, but then had second thoughts?

4. What do you think about Laura’s actions in the midst of her grief and confusion? In your experience, has acting on impulse had good results?

5. Who do you think has more post-divorce options: a man or a woman? If they are both in their sixties, would that fact affect their chances for happiness?

6. How would a different era have affected this story? Could Laura have made a similar life transition in the 1900s or the 1950s?

7. Were there any characters you disliked or felt sorry for?

8. When Laura meets Bountiful Sunshine, what is her reaction? Have you ever felt drawn to someone because of their style? How would you describe yourself?

9. Who and what empowers Laura along her journey?

10. What do you think this book is saying about friendships with women? Do you agree or disagree?

11. What was your reaction to Laura’s decision to help run the Bed & Breakfast?

12. Have you ever been to New Mexico or Santa Fe, or do you live there now? If yes, How accurate do you think the descriptions of terrain, people and culture are? If no, does this story make you want to go there?

13. Do you agree that changing location can bring about renewal and healing, or is it better to stay closer to your roots and familiar territory in times of trouble?

14. What do you think the author is saying about how men and women relate?

15. What do you think of Laura’s “makeover”? If you wanted to change something about yourself, what role model would you choose? Have you ever “tried out” another personality? If yes, how did it make you feel? How did people react?

16. What was your reaction when Zach shows up and encounters Laura’s “new” identity? Have you ever encountered an old friend whom you failed to  recognize?

17. Imagine the lives of the characters after the novel. How do they unfold?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Chaperone
Laura Moriarty, 2012
Penguin Group USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594487019


Summary
The Chaperoneis a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both.

Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever.

For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.

Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s,’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 24, 1970
• Where—Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.S.W. and M.A., University of Kansas
• Currently—Lives in Lawrence, Kansas


Laura Moriarty received her master’s degree from the University of Kansas, and was awarded the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy. She lives in Maine. (From the publisher.) The Center of Everything is Moriarty's first novel. Her second, The Rest of her Life, was published in 2007, While I'm Falling in 2009, and The Chaperone in 2012.

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

• There are other Laura Moriartys I shouldn't be confused with: Laura Moriarty the poet, and Laura Moriarty the crime writer. If it helps, I'm Laura Eugenia Moriarty, though I've never used my middle name professionally.

• I got my first job when I was sixteen, cooking burgers at McDonald's. I've been a vegetarian since I was ten, so it was a little hard on me. I'm also technically inept and kind of dreamy, so I frustrated the guy who worked the toaster to the point where he threatened to strangle me on a daily basis. I kept that job for two years. I gave Evelyn a job at McDonald's too, and I made her similarly unsuccessful.

• Another job I was really bad at was tending bar. I was an exchange student at the University of Malta about ten years ago. I thought I wanted to go to medical school, so I signed up to take all these organic chemistry and physiology classes. In Malta. It was terrible. The Maltese students were into chemistry. I had a lab partner named Ester Carbone. There was a rumor my instructor had his house built in the shape of a benzene molecule. I couldn't keep up. I dropped out in February, and I needed money. Malta has pretty strict employment laws, and the only job I could get was an illegal one, working at a bar. I don't know anything about mixed drinks, and I don't speak Maltese. I think I was supposed to stand behind the bar be American and female and smile, but I ended up squinting at people a lot, so eventually, I was in the back, doing dishes. That was the year I started writing.

• The Center of Everything has a few autobiographical moments, but not many. I grew up with three sisters in Montana. When you say you're from Montana, people get this wistful look in their eyes. I think they've seen too many Brad Pitt movies. I saw A River Runs Through It, which is set in my hometown, Bozeman. That movie drove me nuts: I don't think anyone is even wearing coat in the whole movie. They can't keep filming up there in August and tricking everyone. Of course, now I live in Maine.

• I have tender hands, and the worst thing in the world, for me, is going to an event that requires a lot of hand shaking. Some people shake nicely, but some people have a death grip, and it's really painful. The thing is, you can't tell who's going to be a death gripper and who isn't. Big, strapping men have shaken my hand gently, but an elderly woman I met last month almost brought me to my knees. She was smiling the whole time. I went to a hand shaking event a month ago, and I went along with the shaking, because I didn't want to look rude or standoffish or freaky about germs. But hand shaking just kills me. I'm not sure what to do about it. I went back to Phillips Exeter a month ago, and a very polite student reintroduced himself to me and extended his hand to shake. I actually tried to high five him. He looked at me like I was a crazy person. My sister told me I should take a cue from Bob Dole and carry a pen in my right hand all the time, so I might try that.

• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:

It's difficult to pick just one, of course. But I will say that while I was writing The Center of Everything, I read Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, and it made a strong impression on me. I only knew about Sagan from watching the Nova Channel when I was a kid, but I happened upon an essay he'd written before he died. I was so impressed I went to the library and checked out some of his books. In The Demon Haunted World, Sagan stresses the importance of skepticism and rational reasoning when considering the mysteries of the universe.

It's easy for us today to see the insanity of the witchcraft trials, but Sagan gives a sympathetic account of how frightening the world must have seemed in those times, and how quickly our ability to reason can be dismissed in the face of fear and superstition. Today, Sagan points out, we have crop circles, alien abductions, and religious fundamentalism; the book has a great chapter called "The Baloney Detection Kit," an important tool for any open-minded skeptic. What I like most about Sagan is that he seems skeptical without coming across as cynical. He looks at the vastness of the universe and the intricacy of the natural world with so much wonder and awe, and he's able to translate it to a reader who isn't a scientist, such as myself. I also noticed how he refrains from making fun or putting down his opponents; there's such a generosity of spirit in his writing. I tried to put a bit of Sagan in Evelyn, the narrator of The Center of Everything. (Author interview from Barnes & Noble.).

Book Reviews
Throughout The Chaperone, her fourth and best novel, Laura Moriarty mines first-rate fiction from the tension between a corrupting coastal media and the ideal of heart-of-America morality. . . . . Brooks's may be the novel's marquee name, but the story's heart is Cora's. With much sharpness but great empathy, Moriarty lays bare the settled mindset of this stolid, somewhat fearful woman—and the new experiences that shake that mindset up.
San Francisco Weekly


Film star Louise Brooks was a legend in her time, but the real lead of The Chaperone is Cora Carlise, Brooks' 36-year-old chaperone for her first visit to New York City in 1922. As Cora struggles to tame Louise's free spirit, she finds herself moving past the safety of her own personal boundaries. In this fictional account of Cora and Louise's off-and-on relationship, Laura Moriarty writes with grace and compassion about life's infinite possibilities for change and, ultimately, happiness.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


The Chaperone is the enthralling story of two women...and how their unlikely relationship changed their lives.... In this layered and inventive story, Moriarty raises profound questions about family, sexuality, history, and whether it is luck or will—or a sturdy combination of the two—that makes for a wonderful life.
Oprah Magazine


In her new novel, The Chaperone, Laura Morirty treats this golden age with an evocative look at the early life of silent-film icon Louise Brooks, who in 1922 leaves Wichita, Kansas, for New York City in the company of 36-year-old chaperone, Cora Carlisle... A mesmerizing take on women in this pivotal era.
Vogue


With her shiny black bob and milky skin, Louise Brooks epitomized silent-film glamour. But in Laura Moriarty's engaging new novel The Chaperone, Brooks is just a hyper-precocious and bratty 15-year-old, and our protagonist, 36-year-old Cora Carlisle, has the not-easy mission of keeping the teenager virtuous while on a trip from their native Kansas to New York City. After a battle of wills, there's a sudden change of destiny for both women, with surprising and poignant results.
Entertainment Weekly


With her bobbed black hair and strikingly red lipstick, Louise Brooks was a femme fatale in early Hollywood movies. In this latest novel from Moriarty (The Center of Everything), a teenage Louise heads to New York City in 1922 from her home in Wichita, chaperoned by proper Kansas matron Cora Carlisle. Once in New York, Louise is accepted by the renowned Denishawn School of Dancing and is on her way to fame. An innocent young adult she is not—hard as nails, she is both self-promoting and self-destructive. The real story here, however, is about Cora, a kind soul despite the shocks she has endured at several crucial times in her life. Cora's visit to New York gives her a new perspective and changes her life in unexpected ways. The novel, which spans the next six decades of Cora's life, also reminds us how dramatically American life changed over the 20th century. Verdict: Moriarty is a wonderful storyteller; it's hard to put this engaging novel down. Fans of the Jazz Age and sweeping historical fiction will likely feel the same way. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal


The challenges of historical fiction are plentiful—how to freely imagine a person who really lived, how to impart modern sensibility to a bygone era, how to do your research without exactly showing your research. And yet, when this feat is achieved artfully (we’re talking Loving Frank or Arthur and George artfully), it can transport a reader to another time and place. Laura Moriarty’s new novel, The Chaperone, falls into this category.
Bookpage


[Moriarty] imagines the life of the actual Wichita matron who accompanied future silent film star Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 as a favor to Brooks' parents. Although Louise Brooks was a larger-than-life personality whose memoir LuLu in Hollywood is held in high critical esteem, she's given short shrift by Moriarty, whose interest lies in Cora Carlisle.... Cora seems to represent the history of women's rights in the 20th century. An early suffragette, she applauds the end of prohibition and champions birth control and racial equality. She also gives Louise good advice during a rocky period in her career. Unlike the too-infrequently-seen Louise, the fictional characters seem less alive or important than the issues they represent.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Chaperone opens with Cora Carlisle waiting out a rainstorm in a car with a friend when she hears about Louise Brooks for the first time. What do we learn about Cora in this scene? What does it tell us about her and the world she lives in? Why does Laura Moriarty, the author, choose to open the novel this way? Why do you think she waits to introduce us to Brooks?

2. When we first meet Louise Brooks, she seems to be the complete opposite of Cora, but the two women form an unlikely bond anyway. Are they really so dissimilar? What does Cora learn from Louise? Do you think Louise learns anything from Cora?

3. When Cora arrives in New York, the city is worlds away from her life in Wichita. How much do you think Cora actually embraces New York? When she returns to Wichita, what does she bring back with her from New York? What parts of her stayed true to Wichita all along?

4. The limits of acceptable behavior for women were rapidly changing in the 1920s, and both Cora Carlisle and Louise Brooks, in their own ways, push against these boundaries. Discuss the different ways the two women try to change society’s expectations for women. Is one more successful than the other? What are the values involved in each woman’s approach?

5. Cora becomes frustrated with the hypocrisy of the women in her Wichita circle of friends and yet she herself chooses to keep details about her own life secret. Do you think she should be more open about her life choices? What are the risks for her if she were to be more open?

6. Cora Carlisle hopes to find the secret of her past in New York City but discovers that the truth doesn’t align with either her expectations or her memory of the past. Why do you think Laura Moriarty has chosen to leave Cora’s history ambiguous? What does this tell you about Cora? How has Cora’s attitude toward her past changed by the end of The Chaperone?

7. Cora narrates the events of the book from a perspective of many years later. What juxtapositions does this allow her? By placing Cora’s narration at a time of radical social change, what parallels is Moriarty making?

8, Think about Louise Brooks’s behavior. How much of it would be considered scandalous today? What values has society held on to? In what ways has society changed?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Charm Bracelet 
Viola Shipman, 2016
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250071330


Summary
Through an heirloom charm bracelet, three women will rediscover the importance of family and a passion for living as each charm changes their lives.

On her birthday each year, Lolly’s mother gave her a charm, along with the advice that there is nothing more important than keeping family memories alive, and so Lolly’s charm bracelet would be a constant reminder of that love.

Now seventy and starting to forget things, Lolly knows time is running out to reconnect with a daughter and granddaughter whose lives have become too busy for Lolly or her family stories.

But when Arden, Lolly’s daughter, receives an unexpected phone call about her mother, she and granddaughter Lauren rush home. Over the course of their visit, Lolly reveals the story behind each charm on her bracelet, and one by one the family stories help Lolly, Arden, and Lauren reconnect in a way that brings each woman closer to finding joy, love, and faith.

A compelling story of three women and a beautiful reminder of the preciousness of family, The Charm Bracelet is a keepsake you’ll cherish long after the final page. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• AKA—Wade Rouse
• Birth—1956
• Where—Granby, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., Drury University; M.S., Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in the state of Michigan


Viola Shipman is a penname for Wade Rouse, a popular, award-winning memoirist. Rouse chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, to honor the woman whose charm bracelet and family stories inspired him to write his debut novel, which is a tribute to all of our elders.

Writing as Wade Rouse, he has penned several memoirs, including America's Boy; At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream; Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler; and It's All Relative.

He has written two novels as Viola Shipman, The Hope Chest (2017) and The Charm Bracelet (2016), as well as a novella, Christmas Angels (2016, e-book only).

Wade's work has been selected multiple times as a Must-Read by NBC’s Today Show, featured on Chelsea Lately on E!, and been chosen three times by the nation's independent booksellers as an Indie Next Pick.

Rouse lives in Michigan and writes regularly for People and Coastal Living, among other places, and is a contributor to All Things Considered. To date, The Charm Bracelet has been translated into nine languages. (Adapted from the publisher and the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Readers will be charmed by the characters, most of all by kooky but wise Lolly, who teaches her stressed-out daughter and granddaughter lessons in life and love.
Good Housekeeping


Shipman’s debut novel unites three generations of women as they come together to heal the wounds of their pasts and forge a family.…Shipman compellingly depicts the bonds of family, revealing that the moments of trials and tribulation are part of lives filled with hope and faith.
Publishers Weekly


Shipman's charming story of finding peace in oneself, listening to your heart, and remembering all those who came before you will be welcomed by fans of Cecelia Ahern and Debbie Macomber. —Melissa Keegan, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL
Library Journal


[Shipman] pulls out all the emotional bells and whistles here; book reads like a fictionalized guide to living the good life…designed to warm the heart and fill the tear ducts. Smooth writing, unabashed sentimentality: if it sometimes feels a little forced or relentless, where's the harm?
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Charm Bracelet was written as a tribute to the author’s grandmothers—whose charm bracelets and lessons inspired the novel — as well as to all of our elders. Do you think we respect our elders—their lives, stories, and sacrifices — as much as we used to in the past? Why or why not? Talk about specific instances in the book where Lauren and Arden honored Lolly. Discuss instances in your life or the lives of others when elders haven’t been shown the respect they deserve.

2. The Charm Bracelet focuses on the lives and relationships of three generations of women in one family. Do you see parallels between Lolly, Arden, and Lauren and your own family? Discuss how the decisions and choices you’ve made — or those made by your mother, grandmother, or daughter — have affected your family, either positively or negatively.

3. Do you have a charm bracelet? Do you collect charms? Do you have charms from your family? Discuss where you got some of them and what they mean to you. Do you collect any other heirloom items? What are they and what stories do they tell/memories do they provide? What other collections do you have from your family (dishes, hope chest, recipes, etc.)? What do they mean to you? Will you pass them on to your daughters or granddaughters? And were any of these traditions that were started by your grandmother or a female family figure?

4. There are many examples of love that Lolly, Arden, and Lauren exemplify in The Charm Bracelet: Familial love, lost love, new love, love of place, love of work, and love of home. Discuss those. What is your greatest “love” and why? Do you have any love regrets?

5. The Charm Bracelet was inspired by the stories — the oral history — of the author’s grandmothers and family. In numerous passages, Lolly tells Arden to put down her phone, or for Lauren to stop texting and call a friend instead. In addition, Arden’s career seems to spotlight our societal thirst for celebrity gossip and instant news. In contrast, Lolly tells stories via the charms of the family’s history, generational tales that would be lost if she didn’t share them. Do you think we are losing our collective family “heirloom” histories (i.e., that of telling family stories, sharing our family heirlooms)? If so, what will be the consequences to future generations? If not, why? And what are you doing to preserve those traditions?

6. If there was one story or lesson from your life that you could share with a younger family member — a child, a grandchild, a niece or nephew, or a cousin — what would it be? What story or stories do you want to be sure to share and pass along in your life? And with whom?

7. If you had a chance to ask a grandparent or elder something about his or her life, what would it be?

8. Arden desires to be a writer, while Lauren wants to be a painter. Neither are easy, stable career paths. Have you ever given up pursuing a passion because “life” got in the way or because it didn’t seem logical? How did that impact you, and does it still? Do you think most of us are ruled by fear in our lives? Or is that “just life”? Talk about a job that you stayed at — but didn’t like — because you felt you had no other options.

9. The Charm Bracelet seeks to remind readers of what’s truly most important in life in these hectic — often troubling — times: Family, faith, friends, fun, and a passion for life and what you do. Do you think in our busy world today that we have forgotten what’s most important? Why or why not? And how do you and your family try to focus on reminding yourselves of those simple yet grand gifts (i.e., Sunday dinners, no cell phones at dinner, family trips to the same place, etc.)?

10. Has anyone in your family or life been diagnosed with dementia? Discuss how that has impacted them, you, and your life.

11. Do you and your family — and those in your book club — have a special place that you return to every year? Discuss what that place means to you.

12. There is a contrast in The Charm Bracelet that is drawn between life in an urban area and life in a more rural/resort area. What are the pros and cons of both?

13. Lolly, Arden, and Lauren are all strong, independent women and characters. Talk about some of the strong, independent women in your life and what they mean/have meant to you. And discuss how women are portrayed today not only in fiction but also in the media.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Charming Billy
Alice McDermott, 1998
Macmillan Picador
243 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312429423


Summary
Winner, 1998 National Book Award
Winner, 1999 American Book Award

Resonant with the voices of its voluble, bereaved characters and fueled by the twin engines of nostalgia and lost love, Alice McDermott's National Book Award-winning Charming Billy is the story of the life and tragic death of the much-loved Billy Lynch.

At the heart of McDermott's novel is the revelation that the torch Billy carried for his long-dead love is predicated upon a lie: Eva, the Irish girl Billy loved in his youth and long believed dead, is actually alive, married, and living in Ireland. (Unable to tell Billy that Eva had left him for another man, his cousin Dennis instead invented the face-saving story of her untimely death.)

Thus the central debate of the novel is set in motion: Was it the knowledge of Eva's betrayal or the discovery of Dennis's 30-year-old lie that killed Billy? Or was his death simply due to a genetic weakness for alcohol? Whatever the reason, observes Dennis's daughter (the narrator of the novel), of one thing there is no doubt: Billy had "ripped apart, plowed through, as alcoholics tend to do, the great deep, tightly woven fabric of affection that was some part of the emotional life, the life of love, of everyone in the room."

Fierce, witty, and haunting, Alice McDermott's poignant evocation of postwar Irish American immigrant life is a masterpiece about the unbreakable bonds of memory and desire. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1953
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York-Oswego;
   M.A., University of New Hampshire
• Awards—National Book Award; American Book Award
• Currently—lives in Bethesda, Maryland


Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

McDermott is Johns Hopkins University's Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities. Born in Brooklyn, New York, McDermott attended St. Boniface School in Elmont, New York, on Long Island (1967), Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead (1971), and the State University of New York at Oswego, receiving her BA in 1975. She received her MA from the University of New Hampshire in 1978.

She has taught at UCSD and American University, has been a writer-in-residence at Lynchburg College and Hollins College in Virginia, and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. Her short stories have appeared in Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker and Seventeen. She has also published articles in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Ms. McDermott lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband, a neuroscientist, and three children.

Works
• 1982—A Bigamist's Daughter
• 1987—That Night (finalist for National Book Award, Pen/Faulkner Award, and Pulitzer Prize)
• 1992—At Weddings and Wakes (finalist for Pulitzer Prize)
• 1998—Charming Billy (winner, National Book Award and American Book Award)
• 2002—Child of My Heart (nominated for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award)
• 2006—After This (finalist for Pulitzer Prize)
• 2013—Someone
• 2017—The Ninth Hour
(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/14/13.)

Book Reviews
Magical…Ms. McDermott's people, unlike so many character's in contemporary American fiction, are defined largely by their relationships to other family members, relationships that are delineated with unusual understanding of how emotional debts and gifts are handed down, generation to generation, and how that legacy creates a sense of continuity and continuance, a hedge against the erasures of time. In Charming Billy Ms. McDermott writes about such matters with wisdom and grace, refusing to sentimentalize her characters even as she forces us to recognize their decency and goodness. She has written a luminous and affecting novel.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Charming Billy is a remarkable and beautifully told novel, with overlays of prose and insight that are simply luminescent.
Gail Caldwell - Boston Sunday Globe


An astoundingly beautiful novel about the persistence of love, the perseverance of grief, and all-but-unbearable loneliness, as well as faith, loyalty and redemption.
Philadelphia Inquirer


Comes close to being a perfect miniature…It is an exceptionally good novel.
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post


You get no blarney from Alice McDermott's novels. What you get is Irish-American angst—straight up, no chaser. You get probing family archeology, burnished prose and minimalist, backward-arching plots as her characters sift through battered memories for faint signs of redemption.

McDermott's latest, Charming Billy, circles repeatedly and tantalizingly around the ghostly form of Billy Lynch, the late sentimentalist, chatty raconteur, writer of sweet letters and drunk extraordinaire whose wake is the occasion for a chorus of reminiscing relatives and friends. Set in New York City's outer boroughs and Long Island from the '40s through the '80s, the novel is an exquisite portrayal of dream and delusion, the limits of community and, most pointedly, the cruel narcissism behind the alcoholic's grin.

By the end, we still hardly know Billy, but we understand all too well the havoc he has wrought. Especially for his long-suffering wife, Maeve, and guilt-ridden cousin, Dennis, whose well-meant lie may have wounded (but not cursed) Billy's already-doomed soul. Pain is said to have driven him to drink, the pain of learning that Eva, the Irish girl he fell for just after World War II, had died of pneumonia. In fact she hadn't died but jilted him to marry her Irish boyfriend—and for years only Dennis knew. Maeve is Billy's plain consolation for losing pretty Eva, and Billy is a fitting partner for a daughter accustomed to tending to an alcoholic, widowed father.

As in Weddings and Wakes, McDermott's previous novel, an extended family serves as protagonist. The Lynches wring their hands, tell funny stories, debate whether alcoholism is a disease or a failure of will. Most of them are people of limited means who make do with boring jobs. To move from cramped apartment to modest house is a milestone only a few achieve. (A tiny vacation cottage in an unfashionable area of the Hamptons represents both what they feel entitled to and what is beyond reach.) And for believer and apostate alike, the Catholic Church provides the primary life-defining narrative.

McDermott fashions her story out of an accumulation of hints and evasions, secrets and lies. Emotions are closeted, muffled, purged. There are no explosive confrontations, no charged recriminations. Yet the drama is enormous, arising from the tension of what isn't said. Billy, an innocent who couldn't fathom that life is neither poetry nor prayer, is the silent center of a superbly crafted novel.
Dan Cryer - Salon


When Billy, the glue of a tight Irish community in New York, dies as a result of lifelong alcohol abuse, mourners gather around roast beef and green bean amandine to tell tales and ruminate on his struggle for happiness after he lost his first love, Eva. With carefully drawn character studies and gentle probing, McDermott, who won the National Book Award for this work, masterfully weaves a subtle but tenacious web of relationships to explore the devastation of alcoholism, the loss of innocence, the daily practice of love, and the redeeming unity of family and friendship.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. If Billy's wife had been beautiful, observes the narrator, "then the story of his life, or the story they would begin to re-create for him this afternoon, would have to take another turn" (p. 3). What is the accepted story of Billy's life as presented by the mourners assembled at the funeral lunch? Which aspects of that story turn out to be false?

2. Rosemary says that Billy's alcoholism was "a disease" (p. 19): Dan Lynch says that "maybe for some people it's a disease . . . Maybe for some it's a sadness they can't get rid of or a disappointment that won't go away . .. They're loyal to their own feelings" (pp. 20-21). Dennis says that "an alcoholic can always find a reason but never needs one" (p. 35). When it comes to Billy, which of them is right?

3. When Dennis decides to tell Billy that Eva is dead, he thinks, "Better he be brokenhearted than trailed all the rest of his life by a sense of his own foolishness" (p. 31). Does Dennis come to change his mind later in life, to regret having told a lie? What other lies does Dennis tell Billy, and what illusions does he allow Billy to entertain?

4. Dennis says, "When Billy sets his heart on something there's no changing him. He's loyal. He's got this faith--which is probably why he drinks" (pp. 35-36). Why does Dennis link drinking with faith? What does Dennis mean when he says Billy has faith? Is this faith connected with religious faith? "Redemption" is a favorite word of Billy's (p. 187). What does it mean to him? What does the narrator mean when she contrasts Billy's type of faith with Dennis's (p. 242)?

5. What does the demeanor of the priest who visits Maeve and the way the assembled mourners react tohim tell us about the author's attitude toward the Church and its dogmas about life and death? What are Billy's feelings toward these dogmas? What are Dennis's, and what about the narrator's?

6. Why does Billy love the sight of the large houses in East Hampton, and what does that say about his character and circumstances? What class attitudes are held in common by this large extended family? Kate feels she has escaped her working-class background. Has she really? In what ways has she taken on the characteristics of the upper middle class, and in what ways is she rooted in her origins?

7. Dennis says of Billy, "It's hard to be a liar and a believer yourself" (p. 36). What does he mean by this?

8. In what ways have the life experiences of Dennis's mother, Sheila, helped to form her character? What is her real opinion of both her husbands? When the narrator says that Sheila's first husband "had been, without question, Holy Father to the entire clan" (p. 97), what is she implying?

9. Dennis seems, on the surface, to be an easygoing and simple man. What events show him to be a far more complex and sophisticated person than he might appear? How would you describe Dennis? How does his character contrast with Billy's?

10. The narrator says that regarding Maeve's relationship with her elderly father, hers "was not an unusual case . . . It was, I suppose, the very image I'd fought against myself" (p. 132). But times have changed, "self-sacrifice having been recognized as a delusion by then, not a virtue. Self-consciousness more the vogue" (p. 132). In what other ways have manners and mores noticeably changed in the years between Dennis's youth and his daughter's?

11. Dorothy says that Billy was "maybe too sensitive for this world, if you know what I mean" (p. 168). Do you agree with her?

12. What does Billy's conversation with Eva at the Clonmel gas station tell the reader about Eva's character? Do you think that Billy gets the same message—in other words, does he leave Ireland with a realistic picture of who and what she is?

13. Why does Billy write the message "Beautiful friend" (p. 232) to Maeve after his return from Ireland? Does it mean that he has begun to love and appreciate her for herself, without the ideal of Eva to compare her with? If so, why does his drinking intensify?

14. Why do you think Dennis marries Maeve after Billy's death? Does this marriage come as a surprise to you?

15. In an interview about one of her earlier novels, Alice McDermott stated: "You don't look at the past just once, and you look at it with the knowledge of the present, which was the future. I like that going over, seeing an event through other events that have occurred since, seeing it again and seeing it in a different way, from a different perspective as time goes on" (Publishers Weekly, March 30, 1992). Is this an accurate way of describing McDermott's narrative technique in Charming Billy? Which, in your opinion, are the key events of the novel, and from how many different angles and points of view are they described?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Chasing Amanda
Melissa Foster, 2011
Solstice Publishing
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780615477527


Summary
Nine years ago, Molly Tanner witnessed a young girl’s abduction in the busy city of Philadelphia, shifting her occasional clairvoyance into overdrive. Two days later, the girl’s body was found, and Molly’s life fell apart.

Consumed by guilt for not acting upon her visions, and on the brink of losing her family, Molly escaped the torturous reminders in the city, fleeing to the safety of the close-knit rural community of Boyds, Maryland.

Molly’s life is back on track, her son has begun college, and she and her husband have finally rekindled their relationship. Their fresh start is shattered when a seven-year-old girl disappears from a local park near Molly’s home. Unable to turn her back on another child and troubled by memories of the past, Molly sets out to find her, jeopardizing the marriage she’d fought so hard to hold together.

While unearthing clues and struggling to decipher her visions, Molly discovers another side of Boyds, where the residents—and the land itself—hold potentially lethal secrets, and exposes another side of her husband, one that threatens to tear them apart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Melissa Foster is the award-winning author of three International bestselling novels, Megan's Way, Chasing Amanda, and Come Back to Me. She has also been published in Indie Chicks, an anthology.

She is the founder of the Women's Nest, a social and support community for women, and the World Literary Cafe (previously WoMen's Literary Cafe), a cross-promotional site for authors, reviewers, bloggers, and readers. Melissa is currently collaborating in the film production of Megan's Way.

Melissa hosts an annual Aspiring Authors contest for children, she's written for Calgary's Child magazine and Women Business Owners magazine, and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her family. Melissa's interests include her family, reading, writing, painting, friends, helping women see the positive side of life, and visiting Cape Cod. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A story of madness and mystery that drew me in from the first paragraph...a tale of love, retribution, hope and betrayal...a page turner that will leave you breathless.
Readers Round Table

Foster captures the terror and fear of an abducted child as well as the passion and resolve of the woman who is driven to rescue her before it's too late in this riveting, polished page-turner.
IndieReader.com

Chasing Amanda is a fine psychic thriller, highly recommended.
Midwest Book Review

"[Foster's] newest release captivated me...a subject that is every parent's nightmare. The story had me hooked and shocked. The characters are well written.
Jeanette Stingley - Bella Online

Secrets make this tale outstanding.
Hagerstown Magazine

Foster's writing reminds me of Ted Dekker. The suspense is so strong I'm waiting for the theme music to jump out and scare me as I turn the pages.
The Surrendered Scribe

Discussion Questions
1. Given what was at risk—her marriage, friends, sanity—if you were in Molly's position, would you have continued searching for Tracey? Would you have gone down the tunnels after Cole's ultimatum?

2. Pastor Lett carried with her the burden of living in a small town where her brother had been beaten. Do you think that would have had an impact on her relationship with congregation members, or do you see her as the type of person who would have been able to separate the two? Would you have been able to?

3. Cole was supportive to Molly in many ways, yet he was skeptical of her clairvoyant abilities—maybe rightfully so. How do you feel about the way he treated Molly throughout the book?

4. Tracey experienced Stockholm Syndrome, which became increasingly evident toward the end of the book. As a parent, would you have allowed your daughter to visit the woman who had abducted her given the non-malicious nature of the crime?

5. What are your thoughts on the Boyds Boys, and what should happen them now?

6. Erik was afraid of his ability to have visions, afraid of becoming like Molly had been after Amanda was killed, and yet he was compelled to follow them and try to find Tracey. What support would you offer your own child in that same situation?

7. Did this book make you think differently about parents/children that you see in public
places? Question reasons behind crying children (I hope so!)?
(Questions from author's website.)

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Chasing Windmills 
Catherine Ryan Hyde, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307472434


Summary
Letting go becomes the purest expression of love in this extraordinary novel by the bestselling author of Pay It Forward, Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Both Sebastian and Maria live in a world ruled by fear. Sebastian, a lonely seventeen-year-old, is suffocating under his dominant father’s control. In the ten years since his mother passed away, his father has kept him “safe” by barely allowing him out of their apartment. Sebastian’s secret late-night subway rides are rare acts of rebellion. another is a concealed friendship with his neighbor Delilah, who encourages him to question his father’s version of reality. Soon it becomes unclear whether even his mother’s death was a lie.

Maria, a young mother of two, is trying to keep peace at home despite her boyfriend’s abuse. When she loses her job, she avoids telling him by riding the subways during her usual late-night shift. She knows her sister, Stella, is right: She needs to “live in the truth” and let the chips fall where they may. But she still hasn’t been able to bringherself to do it. And soon he will expect her paycheck to arrive.

When Sebastian and Maria wind up on the same train, their eyes meet across the subway car, and these two strangers find a connection that neither can explain or ignore. Together they dream of a new future, agreeing to run away and find Sebastian’s grandmother in the Mojave Desert. But Maria doesn’t know Sebastian is only seventeen. And Sebastian doesn’t know Maria has children until the moment they leave. Ultimately, Maria brings one child, her daughter. Can she really leave her little boy behind? And, if not, what will it cost her to face her furious jilted abuser?

In this tremendously moving novel, Catherine Ryan Hyde shows us how two people trapped by life’s circumstances can break free and find a place in the world where love is genuine and selfless. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Buffalo, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Cambria, California


Catherine Ryan Hyde is an American novelist and short story writer, with more recent forays and notable success in transitioning from traditional publication towards the world of eBook publication. Her novels have enjoyed bestseller status in both the U.S. and U.K., and her short stories have won many awards and honors. Her book Pay It Forward was adapted into a top-of-the-charts movie, starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt.

Ryan-Hyde's literary works are generally optimistic explorations of ordinary people, characters who are troubled or down-on-their-luck or recovering from past difficulties or abuse. Many feature journeys that parallel some of Catherine's own travels, life in New York City, small towns, and 'cross country' travels and explore settings often in those areas and the American West and Southwest. Ryan-Hyde's Young writings and activities deal issues such as alcoholism, (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, TransGender) concerns, social service difficulties, etc. Catherine is also an avid hiker, kayaker, photographer, and is well known for being a very active blogger and interview-accessible author.

Early life

Catherine was born in a family of writers, and lived during her early life in the Buffalo, New York area, and briefly lived in New York City, an influence which has often recurs in her writing in the form of being a setting for part of or the whole story arc. She attributes her changeover from "the last kid picked" on the team towards becoming a writer to a favorite teacher, Lenny Horowitz, who later died of liver cancer.[1] After an accelerated graduation from high school at the age of 17, Catherine worked many jobs such as being a dog trainer, a tour guide at Hearst Castle, and working in a bakery prior to dedicating herself to become a full-time writer in the early 1980s.

After relocating cross country to the Los Angeles area, she currently lives and writes and blogs from her home and areas around Cambria, California.[2]
Early writing career: short stories and novels

Early successes came from writing short stories, at one point racking up more than 122 rejections before being first published,[3] and since then a total of more than 1500 rejections resulting in about 50 published stories.

During this time, Catherine also wrote her first novel(s) Walter's Purple Heart, her first published Novel Funeral for Horses, and an anthology of 18 short stories, Earthquake Weather . A self-described literary writer, her breakthrough novel Pay It Forward (novel) was released in 1999 (Pocket Books) and quickly became a national bestseller, and was later adapted into the film Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers), which was released in 2000.
Pay It Forward

According to published interviews,[4] the genesis of the idea for the novel came when Catherine's car caught fire in what she described as the "bad neighborhood" in which she lived, and two total strangers came to her assistance, then left before she could even thank them.

Since then Pay It Forward, has been translated into twenty languages for publication in more than thirty countries, and was chosen among the Best Books for Young Adults in 2001 by the American Library Association and continues to be among her most popular and requested works. The movie Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers) was released theatrically in 2000, and starred Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.

Pay It Forward, Young Reader's Edition was released on August 19, 2014. The new version tells the same story but was extensively revised to be more complimentary to lesson plans, summer reading lists, etc. for students at a middle school grade level, that is, for students at approximately the same age and maturity level as the novel's main protagonist, Trevor McKinney.
Other short stories and writings

Her work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ploughshares,[5] and Glimmer Train. Two of her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. She received second place in the 1998 Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Nearly a dozen of her stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Award, and The Pushcart Prize.
Online works

    Five Singing Gardeners and One Dead Stranger, nominated for Pushcart Prize
    "Hurricane Laura", Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 2000, pp.721-735

One of the more humorous things Ryan Hyde does involves is The Bet which is a yearly for-fun wager on the Kentucky Derby with other authors. Winners get to pick a creative but odd title for 2nd place, 2nd picks third, etc. through however many authors are entered. Some of these stories are published on Catherine and the other authors' blogs etc. This year Catherine chose California Chrome, who won, so she "escaped" having to write a story this year.
Current writing career

Since the success of Pay It Forward (novel), Catherine has gone on to publish a total of more than 24 novels, and many more short stories, including major YA works such as The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance, Becoming Chloe, and an LGBT /YA Novel Jumpstart the World, which garnered several nominations "shortlist" mentions for awards such as the "Best Read of the Year award at the British Book Awards and as a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2011.
Photography

Catherine has been posting digital versions of wildlife in and around Cambria and on many of her travels for many years, including some of her own "pay it forward" style activities. Featured subjects include wildlife, wildflowers, sunsets, and photographs of interesting cloud formations that she refers to as "done by the Cloud Painter". Many of her best photographs are included in a special "coffee table" book of photographs called 365 Days of Gratitude. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014. ASIN B00JPSS208.
Notable activities

She has served on the 1998 fiction fellowship panel of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and on the editorial staff of the Santa Barbara Review and Central Coast Magazine. She teaches workshops at the Santa Barbara,[6] La Jolla, and Central Coast Writers Conferences.

She is founder and past president of the Pay It Forward Foundation.[7] As a professional public speaker she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University,[8] met with Americorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.[9]

Catherine has also given many interviews regarding success as a writer on blogs, radio stations, including short videos online about what it takes to succeed in becoming a published author. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
In the simple and captivating latest from Pay It Forward author Hyde, a chance encounter proves life-changing for two lonely New York City subway riders. Four months shy of 18, Sebastian Mundt has been held a virtual prisoner by his father since his mother died: his father home-schools him and doesn't let him have outside relationships. One night, with his father heavily sedated by his sleeping pill, Sebastian sneaks out to ride the subway and locks eyes with Maria Arquette, a young mother who is caught in an abusive marriage. The two share an instant connection and take to meeting on the subway almost nightly and tentatively planning a future in the California desert town that Sebastian remembers from childhood, where thousands of windmills stretch out across the horizon. Hyde gracefully alternates between Sebastian's and Maria's perspectives with gentle nods to this New York love story's precursors (Maria obsessively watches West Side Story). It is their voices—at once utterly credible and heartbreakingly naïve—that make the book, and while this is being billed as an adult novel, its closest stylistic relative is S.E. Hinton's YA classic The Outsiders.
Publishers Weekly


Seventeen-year-old Sebastian Mundt is homeschooled by his father in New York City. He hadn't seen his mother, now dead, since he was seven. When his father goes to sleep, Sebastian rides the subways, just to get out of the house. On one of his nocturnal subterranean journeys, he encounters 22-year-old Maria Arquette, who takes her own late-night rides to escape her abusive boyfriend, Carl, the father of her two children. A fan of the movie West Side Story (she was named for the lead character), Maria wishes her life could be as romantic. She calls Sebastian Tony, the movie's hero, and imagines a scenario where they run away together. Sebastian wants to get away from his domineering father, perhaps to the windmills he recalls from his brief stay as a child with his grandmother in the California desert. It does sound romantic, but how will Sebastian react to Maria's children? And how will she prevent Carl from finding her? Hyde (Love in the Present Tense ) presents two damaged people who are too young to have withstood all they have yet strong enough to take that first step to something, "somewhere" better. Readers will dream right along with them while realizing that real life (even as portrayed in novels) isn't like the movies. Recommended for public library collections. — Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal


(Adult/High School) Hyde's coming-of-age novel is a reimagining of the classic tale of star-crossed lovers-intentionally reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, but fresh and new as well. Sebastian, 17, and Maria, 24, meet while riding New York's subway trains until the wee hours of the morning. He's a sheltered homeschooler who sneaks out of the apartment after his controlling father takes his nightly sleeping pill. She's a mother of two who's afraid to tell her abusive husband that she's lost her night-shift job. There's also a fairy godmother-Delilah is a wise old woman who introduces Sebastian to the delights of pizza and DVDs and counsels him on love and the ways of the world. Sebastian and Maria alternate as narrators; short chapters make for a page-turning read and the distinct voices are sweet, soul-baring, and honest. Hyde writes evocatively of the visceral nature of first love. Her characters are well developed, and she describes settings (New York City, a cross-country bus trip, the Mojave Desert) economically but effectively. The ending is realistic and satisfying. Chasing Windmills will appeal to teens who enjoy realistic fiction and a good story about relationships. —Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH
School Library Journal


Hyde chronicles two New Yorkers' efforts to escape their different but equally constricting lives in a sweet tale openly modeled on West Side Story. Alternating chapters between the two main characters, the author begins with Sebastian, a naive 17-year-old who chafes under the domination of his strange, obsessive father. Home schooling prevents him from making friends his own age, and he's almost completely isolated until a doctor's orders give him a chance to escape his stifling apartment for a few hours each day to get fresh air and exercise. Sebastian spends most of his free time with his only friend, Delilah, an older black woman who has rented an apartment to be near her new grandchild. Delilah doesn't just provide companionship, she also gives him permission to start living for himself. Aimlessly riding the subway late at night just to get out of the house, Sebastian sees a young woman who, like him, goes to the end of the line and back. The two feel an instantaneous spark and, despite several miscues, finally manage to connect. Her name is Maria, and she's riding the Lexington Avenue line during the hours she'd normally be working to keep her abusive boyfriend Carl, father of her two children, from discovering that she's lost her job. When she and Sebastian find themselves falling in love, they see a chance to escape from their individual traps. She nicknames him "Tony," so they'll be Tony and Maria, just like in West Side Story. While the two plan, motherless Sebastian makes a devastating discovery that sends him to California to see his grandmother. That journey takes both him and Maria to the edge of a life-changing decision. A gentle tale centering on how people come to grip with their pasts.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Do you think it is a coincidence or a pattern that Maria, who had an abusive father, then found a man who abused her?

2. This leads us to consider the next generation: might Natalie's life turn out differently through having known Sebastian?

3. Do you think Maria could have found her way out of her abusive relationship without the support of her sister? Does breaking free from abusive control rely heavily on the support of others, and from having someone mirror back a different reality?

4. Similarly, how differently do you think Sebastian's life would have turned out without the support of Delilah?

5. Do you understand the decisions Sebastian's mother made when he was young? Do you forgive her for her actions?

6. In what ways do the themes of this novel match those of West Side Story? Did the novel's nod to this famous story effect your reading of it, and if so, how?

7. In your experience, is there a fine line between love and possession? Can the two be easily confused? What different kinds of love are illustrated in the novel?

8. How are Sebastian and Maria alike and how are they different? If they had met under happier circumstances, do you think they would still have fallen in love?

9. How important are your childhood memories to you? Is there a single memory you feel defines who you are?

10. How did you feel about the way the novel ended? Was it as you expected? Would you have preferred a different outcome?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Chatham School Affair 
Thomas H. Cook, 1996
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553571936


Summary
Winner, Mystery Writers of America Edgard Award

Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy.

Layer by layer, in The Chatham School Affair, Cook paints a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible...and inevitable.

"Thomas Cook's night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting," raved the New York Times Book Review, and The Chatham School Affair will cement this superb writer's position as one of crime fiction's most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected end. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 19, 1947
• Where—Fort Payne, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State College; M.A., Hunter 
   College; MPhil., Columbia University
• Awards—Edgar Award, Barry Award; Martin Beck Award
• Currently—lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and New York,
   New York


Thomas H. Cook is an American author, whose 1996 novel The Chatham School Affair received an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America. He has written at least 25 novels.

Cook was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, and holds a bachelors degree from Georgia State College, and a masters degree in American history from Hunter College in 1972, and in 1976 earned a M.Phil degree from Columbia University.

From 1978 to 1981, Cook taught English and History at Dekalb (GA) Community College, and served as a book review editor for Atlanta magazine from 1978 to 1982, when he took up writing full time.

Cook began his first novel, Blood Innocents, while he was still in graduate school. It was published in 1980, and he has published steadily since then. A movie version of one of his books, Evidence of Blood, was released in 1997. Cook lives with his family in Cape Cod and New York City.

Six of his novels have been nominated for awards, including Red Leaves in 2006, which was also shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger and the Anthony Award, and went on to win the Barry Award and The Martin Beck Award. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A seductive book ... the key to this mystery lies in the mind of the narrator. The pleasure is finding a new perspective to read that mind.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review


Like the best of his crime-writing colleagues, Cook uses the genre to open a window onto the human condition. In this literate, compelling novel, he observes the lives of people doomed to fates beyond their control and imagination. One character here comments: "If you look back on your life and ask, What did I do?, then it means that you didn't do anything." Elizabeth Channing is trying to change the path of her life as, in 1926, she arrives to teach art at a small boys' school located in the Cape Cod village of Chatham. Believing that "life is best lived at the edge of folly," she immediately enthralls the novel's narrator, Henry, the headmaster's son. But Elizabeth is drawn to a fellow teacher, Leland Reed, a freethinker who is unhappily married and has begun to have serious doubts about his life. The inevitable tragedy and its aftermath is narrated by a mature, melancholy Henry looking back at the strange, bleak fates of those involved. Cook is a marvelous stylist, gracing his prose with splendid observations about people and the lush, potentially lethal landscape surrounding them. Events accelerate with increasing force, but few readers will be prepared for the surprise that awaits at novel's end. Literary boundaries mean little to Cook; crime fiction is much the better for that.
Publishers Weekly


The destruction that passion can wreak is well demonstrated in this austere new novel by the author of Breakheart Hill. From the August day in 1926 that Elizabeth Channing comes to teach art at a private school outside Boston, Henry Griswald, son of the headmaster, finds himself a willing accomplice in the love affair between Channing and Leland Reed, a World War I veteran and fellow teacher. Now a bachelor in his seventies, Griswald looks back over a year in his adolescence that culminated in violent death and the destruction of innocent lives, a year that taught him the dangers of strong emotions. Although none of the characters except Henry is well developed, it's particularly difficult to understand what attraction the lovers have for each another. Cook effectively builds the tension through the use of foreshadowing. This well-written, genre-stretching mystery starts slowly and delivers a powerful ending. Appropriate for public libraries of all sizes. —Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Library Journal


This is a powerful, engaging, and deeply moving novel, highly recommended for all who enjoy well-crafted, genre-bending crime fiction. —George Needham
Booklist


From a celestial-seeming distance, Henry Griswald looks back on 1926-27, the year disaster overtook the Chatham School, where his mild, proper father served as headmaster until the events precipitated by the fatal arrival of art teacher Elizabeth Channing and English teacher Leland Reed. Henry remembers how he accepted Miss Channing's tutelage in drawing and helped Reed work on the boat he was building to sail away from Massachusetts, ignoring his family's orphaned boarder Sarah Doyle to fantasize instead about the free-spirited couple, and deploring the resistance of Reed's inconvenient wife and daughter. Pausing in his leisurely narrative to throw out hints of an impending calamity at Black Pond, recall his own testimony at Miss Channing's trial for murder, and observe the principals staggering under the weight of their past and future, Henry evokes by turns the lovers' stifled passion, his unreasoning hatred of his father and his determination to avoid growing up to be like him, and his crushing retrospective guilt at whatever it is that he has become. Readers who aren't exasperated by the glacial pace will find themselves entranced. Though Cook's story this time is less rich and resonant than Breakheart Hill (1995), reading it is like watching another avalanche in agonizing, exquisite slow-motion.
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 Chatham School Affair:

1. What is it about Elizabeth Channing that makes her so attractive to men, young and mature? Is she intentionally provocative? What is the ethos by which she lives her life?

2. Why is Leland Reed dissatisfied with his life? What does he long for? What is the attraction between Elizabeth and him? Does their romance feel real to you?

3. Describe the town of Chatham, Massachusetts, and its people? Why does young Henry Griswald perceive it as repressive? Is he correct?

4. Do you feel the characters "deserve" the ending they get at the book's conclusion?

5. Then there's Henry Griswald. How do the events of the story affect or change him? What is his secret and why has he kept it all these years? Why did Henry return to Chatham given the tragedy that took place there and the fact that he had resented the town as a child?

6. What about the pace of the story? Some reviewers felt it was maddeningly slow; others were captivated, driven to continue reading. How did the pace strike you?

7. Cook uses "foreshadowing"—a writer's technique in which authors give hints, sometimes through parallel occurrences, of events that will happen later. Can you point to any of the foreshadowing Cook uses?

8. What emotions did you experience while reading The Chatham School Affair? Were you unsettled, anxious ... or not? Some critics spoke of an impending sense of doom? If you felt it also, how does Cook create that atmosphere, or mood?

9. Were you intrigued by the twists and turns the plot took? Were you surprised by the ending ... or did you find it predictable? In all, does the book deliver?

10. Would you classify this as a standard mystery novel? Or is it something else? How does it compare to other crime/ detective stories you've read?

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

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The Chemist 
Stephanie Meyer, 2016
Little, Brown and Co.
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316387835


Summary
In this gripping page-turner, an ex-agent on the run from her former employers must take one more case to clear her name and save her life.

She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn't even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning.

Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They've killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.

When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it's her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous.

Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of.

In this tautly plotted novel, Meyer creates a fierce and fascinating new heroine with a very specialized skill set. And she shows once again why she's one of the world's bestselling authors. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 24, 1973
• Where—Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Brigham Young University
• Awards—
• Currently—lives in Cave Creek, Arizona


Stephanie Meyer is an American fiction writer and film producer, best known for her vampire romance series Twilight. The Twilight novels have gained worldwide recognition and sold over 100 million copies, with translations into 37 different languages Meyer was the bestselling author of 2008 and 2009 in America.

Meyer was ranked No. 49 on Time magazine's list of the "100 Most Influential People in 2008," and was included in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list of the world's most powerful celebrities in 2009 (listed as No. 26). Her annual earnings exceeded $50 million. In 2010, Forbes ranked her as the No. 59 most powerful celebrity with annual earnings of $40 million.

Early life
Meyer was born in Hartford, Connecticut as the second of six children to Stephen and Candy Morgan. She was raised in Phoenix, Arizona, attending Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, where her former English teacher remembered her as "bright but not overly so."

She attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where she received a BA in English. In 1994, at the age of 21, Meyer married her Christian Meyer, whom she had known since she was four. Meyer worked briefly as a receptionist in a property company and had even considered law school, but when her first child was born she decided to be a stay-at-home-mother. The couple now has three sons.

Twilight novels
According to Myer, the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream in 2003. Although she had no writing experience, she sat down to capture the dream on paper. Starting with a short draft—of what would become Chapter 13—she wrote the complete novel within three months. Although she says its writing was strictly for her own enjoyment and that she had no intentions of seeking a publisher, her sister persuaded her to send the manuscript to literary agencies.

Of the 15 letters she wrote, five went unanswered, nine brought rejections, and the last was a positive response from Jodi Reamer of Writers House. Eight publishers then competed for the rights to publish in a 2003 auction, and by the end of the year Meyer signed a $750,000 three-book deal with Little, Brown and Company.

Twilight was published in 2005 with a print run of 75,000 copies. Within a month, it reached No. 5 on the New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Chapter Books, later reaching #1. Foreign rights to the novel were sold to over 26 countries, and Publishers Weekly named it the Best Book of the Year. It was also a New York Times Editor's Choice.

With the success of Twilight, Meyer came out with three more books in the series: New Moon (2006), Eclipse (2007), and Breaking Dawn (2008). All books were top sellers, and in 2008 the four books of the series claimed the top four spots on USA Today's year-end bestseller list, making Meyer the first author to ever achieve this feat.

The novels held the top four spots again on USA Today's 2009 year-end list. In August of that year, the paper revealed that Meyer broke J. K. Rowling's record on their bestseller list—the four Twilight books had spent 52 straight weeks in the top 10. The books have spent more than 143 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List.

Adult novels
In 2008 Myer published her first adult sci-fi novel, The Host. The author has said she has plans, and some initial writing, for another two books: "The Soul" and "The Seeker." The Host, about an alien and the human woman in inhabits, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, remaining on the list for 26 weeks.

In 2016 Meyer broke out of speculative fiction with The Chemist. A spy novel, it has received comparisons to the Jason Bourne series. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/20/2016.)

Book Reviews
This espionage action story will no doubt tighten Meyer's grip on her devoted readers. Its main character is much like Jason Bourne, to whom the novel is dedicated affectionately.... Meyer knows how to control dramatic tension as skillfully as any of the Bourne movies. The pages turn themselves.
Keith Donohue - Washington Post


Engrossing.... A terrific ride.... The Chemist is consistently fast-paced fun, especially the way that Alex's scientific genius gives her an array of potions-she's small, but you don't want to get within swiping distance of the rings on her fingers-that verge on the magical.
Charles Finch - USA Today"


Fans will likely tear through The Chemist, just as they did with the Twilight novels and with The Host.... Our heroine is very good at staying alive.... The book hit on an appealing theme. Chris is an expert in her field, one that happens to be male dominated. Her peers are out to get her. She has to watch her back constantly.... With so many popular novels out there featuring unreliable female narrators stuck in various suburbs, it was nice to read about a woman who gets out and has a lot to do.
Meredith Goldstein - Boston Globe"


[Meyer has] an unusual ability to turn genres inside out. The characters in the novel are motivated by love of family rather than by duty to country or abstractions like saving the world. Love gives the adventure meaning, rather than just being a subplot off to the side. Spy fans can be assured that in most respects, The Chemist functions in much the same way as a Bourne or Bond story, complete with mounting body count, cool explosions, stakeouts and betrayals. But changing the proportion of gender in the genre gives the concoction a renewed, and welcome, rush.
Noah Berlatsky - Los Angeles Times


[U]neven...a former operative for a secret U.S. government agency...must take extraordinary steps to stay alive.... [T]he plot plays out along predictable lines that don’t do justice to the intriguing setup. Underdrawn characterizations don’t help.
Publishers Weekly


[S]py versus spy and throbbing romance novel with good results.... A tale of skulduggery... complete with help from a luscious mistress of disguise who could have stepped right out of a James Bond novel. Rated B for badass.
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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The Chemistry of Tears
Peter Carey, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307476081


Summary
When Catherine Gehrig, a museum conservator in London, falls into grief after her lover’s sudden death, her boss gives her a special project. She will bring back to “life” a nineteenth-century mechanical bird.

As she begins to piece the automaton together, Catherine also uncovers the diaries of Henry Brandling, who, more than a hundred years prior, had commissioned the bird for his very ill son. Catherine finds resonance and comfort in Henry’s story. But it is the mechanical creature itself, in its uncanny imitation of life, that will link these two people across a century.

Through the clockwork bird, Henry and Catherine will confront the mysteries of creation, the power of human invention, and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—May 7, 1943
• Where—Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
• Education—Monash University
• Awards—Booker Prize (twice); National Book Council Award;
  Commonealth Writers Prize (twice); Franklin Miles Award
  (thrice); Prix duMeilleur Livre Etranger; Colin Roderick Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA

"My fictional project has always been the invention or discovery of my own country," the prizewinning Australian author Peter Carey has said. This postcolonial undertaking has sometimes led Carey to wrestle with the great works of English literature: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994) draws on Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, while Jack Maggs (1997), a version of Dickens's Great Expectations, is told from the perspective of the convict who returns to England from Australia.

But although Carey went to what he calls "a particularly posh" Australian boarding school, he claims he didn't discover literature until he was out of school. He studied chemistry at Monash University for just a year before leaving to work in advertising. There, surrounded by readers and would-be writers, he discovered the great literature of the 20th century, including authors like Joyce, Faulkner and Beckett. "To read Faulkner for the first time was for me like discovering another planet," Carey said in an interview with The Guardian. "The pleasure of that language, the politics of giving voice to the voiceless."

Publishers rejected Carey's first three novels, so he began writing short stories. These, he later said, "felt like the first authentic things I had done." He was still working for an advertising agency when his first collection of short stories appeared in 1973, and he kept the part-time job after moving to an "alternative community" in Queensland. His first published novel, Bliss (1981), won a prestigious Australian literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. The book is about an advertising executive who has a near-death experience and ends up living in a rural commune.

Carey's later novels ranged farther outside the bounds of his own experience, but he continued to develop his concern with Australian identity. 1988's Oscar and Lucinda, which tells the story of a colonial Australian heiress and her ill-fated love for an English clergyman, won the Booker Prize and helped establish Carey as one of the literary heavyweights of his generation. He won another Booker Prize for True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), the story of a notorious 19th-century outlaw whose legacy still shapes Australia's consciousness.

Though Carey now lives and teaches in New York City, his home country and its past still possess his imagination. ''History,'' he writes, ''is like a bloodstain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we paint over it.''

Extras
• Peter Carey and J. M. Coetzee are the only two-time Booker Prize winners to date.

• Carey caused a stir in the British press when he declined an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II. The royal invitation is extended to all winners of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, which Carey received in 1998 for Jack Maggs. He did meet the Queen after he won the award a second time, for True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.

• Fans of Carey's work know that in 1997, Oscar and Lucinda was made into a critically acclaimed movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett. But they may not know that Carey wrote the screenplay for the critically panned Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World (1991) as well as the screenplay adaptation of his own novel, Bliss (1991). (From Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
In an interview a few years ago, Carey spoke of admiring the quality of "risk" in works of fiction. This, I think, is exactly right, risk being an index of a book's and a writer's ambition. The Chemistry of Tears takes risks, is quietly ambitious and is, in its last pages, both touching and thought-provoking.
Andrew Miller - New York Times Book Review


Vividly rendered...Carey has given each story the chaotic quality of hallucination.... He shapes the two madnesses with imaginative intensity.
Boston Globe


Leave it to a protean virtuoso like Peter Carey to write a novel, The Chemistry of Tears, that draws compelling parallels between a Victorian-era automaton of a defecating duck and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And, what’s more, to make of it another delightfully recondite tour-de-force performance.
Toronto Star


Characters that beguile and convince, prose that dances or is as careful as poetry, an inventive plot that teases and makes the heart quicken or hurt, paced with masterly precision, yet with a space for the ideas to breathe and expand in dialogue with the reader, unusual settings of place and time: this tender tour de force of the imagination succeeds on all fronts.
Independent (UK)


A writer of such sustained flair that he has, only two years after his Man Booker–shortlisted Parrot and Olivier in America, delivered another stylish tour de force.... With typical dogged panache, Carey’s exploration of technology and tears indicates that emotion defies rationalism’s impositions.
Daily Telegraph (UK)


Carey is one of the finest living writers in English. His best books satisfy both intellectually and emotionally; he is lyrical yet never forgets the imperative to entertain.... A wholly enjoyable journey.
Economist


For his new, briskly paced novel, The Chemistry of Tears, [Caret] has pulled off a nifty trick, offering interconnected plots set in two distinct eras.... Carey’s deft, spare prose is full of striking images.... [He] explores a series of interconnected themes that are admirably complex for such a short book. Richmond Times-Dispatch


A beautifully written, richly layered novel that includes treats like a meaningful, hidden message in Latin and a mysterious blue wooden block hidden inside the automaton.... Its graceful subtlety will keep you thinking long after you've closed the book.
Vancouver Sun


Catherine, a horologist at the Swinburne Museum, and curator Matthew Tindall carried on a secret affair for 13 years. After Matthew dies of a heart attack, Catherine’s boss assigns her a projec...when she discovers...11 notebooks filled by Englishman Henry Brandling in 1854. The narrative then shifts to Henry’s point-of-view with his discovery of the inventor Vaucanson’s plans for a mechanical duck, just the thing, Henry thinks, to make his young consumptive son, Percy, happy.... Carey (Parrot and Olivier in America) alternates between present-day Catherine’s progress with repairing the avian automaton and Henry’s notebooks, about which Catherine becomes more obsessed as Henry meets a mysterious and potentially dangerous craftsman who promises to build him his “heart’s desire.” Catherine and Henry, linked both by the automaton and by grief, ponder questions of life and death, questions that, as posed by Carey, are more fascinating than any solution.
Publishers Weekly


[T]he incomparable Carey returns with a story of secret grief assuaged. A museum conservator in London, Catherine learns that her lover and colleague has died but hides her pain because he was a married man. Her boss, the only person who knew of her affair, seeks to help by having her work alone on a project involving a 19th-century automaton. When she discovers the diaries of Henry Brandling, the man who built the automaton, she enters into an understanding of the desire for invention, the magic of creation, and the healing power of love.
Library Journal


A puzzling novel that doesn't reveal its secrets easily. The latest from the renowned and prolific Carey (Parrot and Olivier in America, 2010, etc.) is too fanciful to pass as realism yet too inscrutable for parable or fable. Though all of it (or at least half of it) concerns a grieving woman's attempt to re-engage with life after the death of her married lover, the prevailing spirit is comedic, even whimsical, rather than tragic. And the prevailing metaphor is that of clockwork, the mechanical precision of the museum where she serves as a curator.... For what it's worth, the thematic key would seem to be a Latin epigram, which translates, "You cannot see what you can see." It's a novel that will amuse or challenge some and frustrate others.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. We are told the story through two different narrators: Catherine Gehrig and Henry Brandling. Are they reliable?

2. How are the lives of Catherine and Henry similar? How do they differ, aside from their time periods and locations?

3. Why do you think Catherine is drawn to Henry’s story with such curiosity? Do you think her state of grief affects the way she reacts to his journals? If so, how?

4. How do grief and loss function in the novel as a whole? What are some of the ways Catherine and Henry—or any of the other characters—cope with grief in their lives? How does this affect the mood and atmosphere of the novel?

5. Catherine is a horologist, used to dealing with many fine mechanical parts. How is her personality suited to this? How is it not?

6. Despite difficult circumstances at home, Henry Brandling begins his trek as an optimist, even saying “Brandling would see the glass half full even when it lay in shards around his feet” (p. 55). Do you think Henry is naive? Or is this a useful attitude for him to take in the face of hardships?

7. Carl emerges as an interesting and important character, particularly to Henry. How do Henry, Herr Sumper, and Frau Helga each view Carl? How do you view Carl?

8. Were you surprised when Henry violently beats Sumper (p. 93)? Were there any earlier indications that Henry would be prone to such rage? How would you characterize Henry’s and Sumper’s reactions the following day?

9. What reactions did you have to the scene between Catherine and her lover’s sons? What do you make of Noah and Angus’s gift to Catherine?

10. How would you characterize Catherine’s relationship with Amanda? How does it compare with Henry’s relationship with Sumper?

11. Eric Croft plays a central role in many aspects of Catherine’s life, which leads her to call him “an awful meddler” (p. 176). Do you agree or disagree? Do you think his motives are selfless, or does he have his own agenda?

12. What do you think the title "The Chemistry of Tears" might refer to?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Cherry 
Nico Walker, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525520139


Summary
A breakneck-paced debut novel about love, war, bank robberies, and heroin

Cleveland, 2003.
A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and Ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love.

But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York and he flunks out of school and joins the Army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq.

But as an Army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die.

He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at--robbing banks.

Hammered out on a typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—
• Where—
• Education—
• Awards—
• Currently—


Nico Walker is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. He served as a medic on more than 250 missions in Iraq. Currently he has two more years of an eleven-year sentence for bank robbery. Cherry is his debut novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
You won't hear Nico Walker on a book tour anytime soon because he’s serving two more years in prison for bank robbery. But don’t wait to pick up his lacerating new novel about the horrors of war and addiction. Cherry is a miracle of literary serendipity, a triumph born of gore and suffering that reads as if it’s been scratched out with a dirty needle across the tender skin of a man’s forearm.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


The rare work of literary fiction by a young American that carries with it nothing of the scent of an MFA program.… The voice Walker has fashioned has a lot in common with the one Denis Johnson conjured for his masterpiece Jesus’ Son.… A novel of searing beauty.
Vulture


One of the summer’s most exciting literary breakthroughs, Cherry is a profane, raw, and harrowingly timely account of the effects of war and the perils of addiction.
Entertainment Weekly


Some readers may find the innumerable descriptions of… [addiction] suitably transgressive. For everyone else, …the novel [may] feel like it’s willing to describe the catastrophe of its narrator’s life, but not truly examine it.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) [A] sad love story and a raw tale of a young man's downfall owing to war and its aftermath.… A raging, agonized scream of a novel and a tremendously powerful debut. —Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA
Library Journal


(Starred review) Unsparingly raw and utterly gripping. This is an astonishingly good novel, written by someone who clearly has a gift for storytelling. Walker’s characters, even minor players and walk-ons, are beautifully drawn. His dialogue rings achingly true.… A masterpiece.
Booklist


(Starred review) [U]nsettling debut [of] a young man raised in the middle-class comforts of America encounters war, love, and drug addiction.… A bleak tale told bluntly with an abundance of profanity but also of insight into two kinds of living hell.
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 CHERRY … then take off on your own:

1. The novel poses (and tries to answer) this question—"How do you become a scumbag?" In the arc of this story, how does one, or at least the book's narrator, become a scumbag? In other words, trace the trajectory of the narrator's downfall: from his first days in college, through his war experiences, and then back home with Emily. Was there one particular tipping point, was it his basic personality, or simply the totality of his experiences?

2. Follow-up to Question 1: Consider the inverse path this novel follows. In many war novels, joining the military and heading to war is a crucible that forges the hero/heroine's maturity. In this case, the narrator's battle experiences transform him into an antihero, with, as the New York Times review puts it, "no sliver of redemption." Is that how you see storyline? Or do you see it differently?

3. We meet the narrator in 2003 when he tells us...

I sold drugs but it wasn’t like I was bad or anything. I wasn’t bothering anybody; I didn’t even eat meat. I had a job at the shoe store. Another mistake I made. No interest whatsoever in shoes. I was marked for failure.

What do make of his self-assessment? What does that passage reveal about the kind of man he is?

4. Why does the narrator fall for Emily? How would you describe her? When they decide to get married, why does Emily say, "But we're gonna get divorced"?

5. How culpable is Emily for the narrator's drug addiction? What role does she play in his deterioration?

6. What prompts the narrator to enlist in the Army? What is his attitude during training?

7. How well is he (or any of the soldiers) prepared for the war he encounters in Iraq? Talk about the narrator's tone of voice as he describes his time overseas. Is his tone angry, cynical, morose, hopeless, perhaps even flippant?

8. Follow-up to Question 7: What were your feelings as you read about the Iraq experience? What surprised you, shocked you, angered you, or confirmed your suspicions about the conduct (on all sides) of the war?

9. Talk about how the war affected the narrator? What role did it play in his downward slide into addiction? Given the media focus on veterans' mental health issues, would you say the narrator's experience is typical?

10. What do you know about addiction: the chemistry involved, its effect on the brain's physiology, the availability and protocols for treatment, and especially the success/failure rates of treatment?

11. In one of the few negative reviews for the book, Publishers Weekly writes, "it feels like [the novel is] willing to describe the catastrophe of its narrator’s life, but not truly examine it." What do you think? Do you agree or not and why (or why not)?

12. Overall, how did you experience the book? Does knowing that Cherry is autobiographical and that its author, Nico Walker, is serving time in jail have any impact on how you read his novel?

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

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The Chestnut Man 
Soren Sveistrup, 2019
HarperCollins
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 970062895363#


Summary
IF YOU FIND ONE, HE’S ALREADY FOUND YOU

A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen.

His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene.

Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago.

A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted?

To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues.

Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over.

And no one is safe. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Søren Sveistrup is an internationally acclaimed script writer, creator and film producer of several TV series. From 2007 to 2012 he was the creator and writer of The Killing, which has won several international awards, been sold to more than a hundred countries all over the world and remade for AMC by Fox Television Studios in the US. He lives in Copenhagen.

Book Reviews
(Starred revivew) [S]tellar… [a] classy procedural…. Sveistrup illuminates the complexities of urban police work amid abundant inefficiencies, a plethora of red herrings, and government corruption. This one cries out for a sequel,
Publishers Weekly


(Starred revivew) The switching of perspectives among the short chapters is a bit jarring at first, but readers will soon learn to appreciate entering the minds of both the detectives and the potential victims.… Even a seasoned crime reader won't guess the ending. —Natalie Browning, Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA
Library Journal


A complex procedural deepened by gut-wrenching social commentary.
Booklist


(Starred revivew) It takes a little time for the novel to set itself apart from other such thrillers.… But with its densely layered plot, chilling settings, and multiple suspects…, Sveistrup's epic rises above any such comparisons. [A] page-turner… tantalizing, un-put-down-able…  by master of the form.
Kirkus Reviews

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

GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chestnut Street 
Maeve Binchy, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
197 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385351850


Summary
Maeve Binchy imagined a street in Dublin with many characters coming and going, and every once in a while she would write about one of these people. She would then put it in a drawer; "for the future," she would say. The future is now.

Across town from St. Jarlath’s Crescent, featured in Minding Frankie, is Chestnut Street, where neighbors come and go. Behind their closed doors we encounter very different people with different life circumstances, occupations, and sensibilities. Some of the unforgettable characters lovingly brought to life by Binchy are Bucket Maguire, the window cleaner, who must do more than he bargained for to protect his son; Nessa Byrne, whose aunt visits from  America every summer and turns the house—and Nessa’s world—upside down; Lilian, the generous girl with the big heart and a fiancé whom no one approves of; Melly, whose gossip about the neighbors helps Madame Magic, a self-styled fortune-teller, get everyone on the right track; Dolly, who discovers more about her perfect mother than she ever wanted to know; and Molly, who learns the cure for sleeplessness from her pen pal from Chicago . . .

Chestnut Street is written with the humor and understanding that are earmarks of Maeve Binchy’s extraordinary work and, once again, she warms our hearts with her storytelling. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 28, 1940
• Where—Dalkey (outside Dublin), Ireland
• Death—July 30, 2012
• Where—Dalkey, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College, Dublin
• Awards—see below


Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. She is best known for her humorous take on small-town life in Ireland, her descriptive characters, her interest in human nature and her often clever surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the passing of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writer.

Her books have outsold those of other Irish writers such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien and Roddy Doyle. She cracked the U.S. market, featuring on the New York Times best-seller list and in Oprah's Book Club. Recognised for her "total absence of malice" and generosity to other writers, she finished ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Stephen King in a 2000 poll for World Book Day.

Early life
Binchy was born in Dalkey, County Dublin (modern-day Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown), Ireland, the oldest child of four. Her siblings include one brother, William Binchy, Regius Professor of Laws at Trinity College, Dublin, and two sisters: Renie (who predeceased Binchy) and Joan Ryan. Her uncle was the historian D. A. Binchy (1899–1989). Educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history), she worked as a teacher of French, Latin, and history at various girls' schools, then a journalist at the Irish Times, and later became a writer of novels, short stories, and dramatic works.

In 1968, her mother died of cancer aged 57. After Binchy's father died in 1971, she sold the family house and moved to a bedsit in Dublin.

Israel
Her parents were Catholics and Binchy attended a convent school.[12] However, a trip to Israel profoundly affected both her career and her faith. As she confided in a Q&A with Vulture:

In 1963, I worked in a Jewish school in Dublin, teaching French with an Irish accent to kids, primarily Lithuanians. The parents there gave me a trip to Israel as a present. I had no money, so I went and worked in a kibbutz — plucking chickens, picking oranges. My parents were very nervous; here I was going out to the Middle East by myself. I wrote to them regularly, telling them about the kibbutz. My father and mother sent my letters to a newspaper, which published them. So I thought, It’s not so hard to be a writer. Just write a letter home. After that, I started writing other travel articles.

Additionally, one Sunday, attempting to locate where the Last Supper is supposed to have occurred, she climbed a mountainside to a cavern guarded by a Brooklyn-born Israeli soldier. She wept with despair. The soldier asked, “What’ya expect, ma’am—a Renaissance table set for 13?” She replied, “Yes! That’s just what I did expect.” Binchy was no longer a Catholic.

Marriage
Binchy, described as "six feet tall, rather stout, and garrulous", confided to Gay Byrne of the Late Late Show that, growing up in Dalkey, she never felt herself to be attractive; "as a plump girl I didn't start on an even footing to everyone else", she shared. After her mother's death, she expected to a lead a life of spinsterhood, or as she expressed: "I expected I would live at home, as I always did." She continued, "I felt very lonely, the others all had a love waiting for them and I didn't."

She ultimately encountered the love of her life, however; when recording a piece for Woman's Hour in London, she met children's author Gordon Snell, then a freelance producer with the BBC. Their friendship blossomed into a cross-border romance, with her in Ireland and him in London, until she eventually secured a job in London through the Irish Times. She and Snell married in 1977 and after living in London for a time, moved to Ireland. They lived together in Dalkey, not far from where she had grown up, until Binchy's death. She told the Irish Times:

[A] writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers.


Ill health...and death
In 2002, Binchy "suffered a health crisis related to a heart condition", which inspired her to write Heart and Soul. The book about (what Binchy terms) "a heart failure clinic" in Dublin and the people involved with it, reflects many of her own experiences and observations in the hospital.

Towards the end of her life, Binchy had the following message on her official website: "My health isn't so good these days and I can't travel around to meet people the way I used to. But I'm always delighted to hear from readers, even if it takes me a while to reply."

She suffered with severe arthritis, which left her in constant pain. As a result of the arthritis she had a hip operation.

Binchy died on 30 July 2012 after a short illness. She was 72.] Gordon was by her side when she died in a Dublin hospital. Immediate media reports described Binchy as "beloved", "Ireland's most well-known novelist" and the "best-loved writer of her generation". Fellow writers mourned their loss, including Ian Rankin, Jilly Cooper, Anne Rice, and Jeffrey Archer. Politicians also paid tribute. President Michael D. Higgins stated: "Our country mourns." Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, “Today we have lost a national treasure.” Minister of State for Disability, Equality and Mental Health Kathleen Lynch, appearing as a guest on Tonight with Vincent Browne, said Binchy was, for her money, as worthy an Irish writer as James Joyce or Oscar Wilde, and praised her for selling so many more books than they managed.

In the days after her death tributes were published from such writers as John Banville, Roddy Doyle, and Colm Tóibín. Banville contrasted Binchy with Gore Vidal, who died the day after her, observing that Vidal "used to say that it was not enough for him to succeed, but others must fail. Maeve wanted everyone to be a success." Numerous tributes appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Guardian and CBC News.

Shortly before her death, Binchy told the Irish Times:

I don't have any regrets about any roads I didn't take. Everything went well, and I think that's been a help because I can look back, and I do get great pleasure out of looking back ... I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

Just before dying, she read her latest short story at the Dalkey Book Festival.

She once said she would like to die "... on my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain." She was cremated that Friday in Mount Jerome. It was a simple ceremony, as she had requested.

Journalism
The New York Times reports: Binchy's "writing career began by accident in the early 1960s, after she spent time on a kibbutz in Israel. Her father was so taken with her letters home that "he cut off the ‘Dear Daddy’ bits,” Ms. Binchy later recounted, and sent them to an Irish newspaper, which published them." Donal Lynch observed of her first paying journalism role: the Irish Independent "was impressed enough to commission her, paying her £16, which was then a week-and-a-half's salary for her."

In 1968, Binchy joined the staff at the Irish Times, and worked there as a writer, columnist, the first Women's Page editor then the London editor, later reporting for the paper from London before returning to Ireland.

Binchy's first published book is a compilation of her newspaper articles titled My First Book. Published in 1970, it is now out of print. As Binchy's bio posted at Read Ireland describes: "The Dublin section of the book contains insightful case histories that prefigure her novelist's interest in character. The rest of the book is mainly humorous, and particularly droll is her account of a skiing holiday, 'I Was a Winter Sport.'"

Literary works
In all, Binchy published 16 novels, four short-story collections, a play and a novella. Her literary career began with two books of short stories: Central Line (1978) and Victoria Line (1980). She published her debut novel Light a Penny Candle in 1982. In 1983, it sold for the largest sum ever paid for a first novel: £52,000. The timing was fortuitous, as Binchy and her husband were two months behind with the mortgage at the time. However, the prolific Binchy—who joked that she could write as fast as she could talk—ultimately became one of Ireland's richest women.

Her first book was rejected five times. She would later describe these rejections as "a slap in the face [...] It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either".

Most of Binchy's stories are set in Ireland, dealing with the tensions between urban and rural life, the contrasts between England and Ireland, and the dramatic changes in Ireland between World War II and the present day. Her books were translated into 37 languages.

While some of Binchy's novels are complete stories (Circle of Friends, Light a Penny Candle), many others revolve around a cast of interrelated characters (The Copper Beech, Silver Wedding, The Lilac Bus, Evening Class, and Heart and Soul). Her later novels, Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road, feature a cast of recurring characters.

Binchy announced in 2000 that she would not tour any more of her novels, but would instead be devoting her time to other activities and to her husband, Gordon Snell. Five further novels were published before her death—Quentins (2002), Nights of Rain and Stars (2004), Whitethorn Woods (2006), Heart and Soul (2008), and Minding Frankie (2010). Her final work, A Week in Winter, was published posthumously in 2012.

Binchy wrote several dramas specifically for radio and the silver screen. Additionally, several of her novels and short stories were adapted for radio, film, and television.

Awards and honors

• In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer.
• A 1993 photograph of her by Richard Whitehead belongs to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (London) and a painting of her by Maeve McCarthy, commissioned in 2005, is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland.
• In 1999, she received the British Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.
• In 2000, she received a People of the Year Award.
• In 2001, Scarlet Feather won the W H Smith Book Award for Fiction, defeating works by Joanna Trollope and then reigning Booker winner Margaret Atwood, amongst other contenders.
• In 2007, she received the Irish PEN Award, joining such luminaries as John B. Keane, Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern and Seamus Heaney.
• In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.
• In 2012, she received an Irish Book Award in the "Irish Popular Fiction Book" category for A Week in Winter.
• There have been posthumous proposals to name a new Liffey crossing Binchy Bridge in memory of the writer Other writers to have Dublin bridges named after them include Beckett, Joyce and O'Casey.
• In 2012 a new garden behind the Dalkey Library in County Dublin was dedicated in memory of Binchy. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)Binchy wrote several dramas specifically for radio and the silver screen. Additionally, several of her novels and short stories were adapted for radio, film, and television.

(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
This posthumously published collection of stories revolving around an imaginary street in Dublin was written by Binchy (A Week in Winter) over a period of decades, and approved by her husband, writer Gordon Snell. The earlier stories are more developed than some of the later tales, but overall, the author gives us one last extraordinary look at ordinary people as they struggle with family relationships, romances gone awry, and the possibility for a better future. Standouts include the first story, “Dolly’s Mother,” in which a shy, unassuming teenager copes with having a kind, charismatic mother who is more popular than she is, and—as is revealed—might not be as perfect as everyone thinks. In “It’s Only A Day,” Binchy fondly portrays the transformation of three childhood friends into adults, using the lens of their disparate views on romance, as old-fashioned values find a place in their modern worlds. The book is filled with vignettes in which dissatisfied husbands leave their wives, but find their new lives wanting; disparate people find common ground, and even romance; and holding one’s tongue leads to the best way to make relationships thrive. While some entries come off more as character studies than actual stories, one finds here insightful observations about human nature—all with Binchy’s thoughtful and loving touch that will be sorely missed
Publishers Weekly


A daughter jealous of her beautiful mother, an estranged and sickly uncle, a teacher tired of solving everyone else's problems, and three women who take a leap of faith by moving in with one another are only a few of the residents of Chestnut Street. This posthumous publication (the author died in 2012) offers a series of vignettes that celebrate the triumphs and sorrows that take place on a modest residential Dublin street. Although this book contains Binchy's trademark writing style, it suffers from an unfortunate lack of substance. Many of the scenes feel incomplete, with Chestnut Street serving as a tenuous link among tales that don't even take place simultaneously. With little to tie the narratives together and a lack of consistency with the characters, it is difficult to develop emotional attachment to any of the street's residents. VERDICT Some readers will be happy to have one more volume from the popular Binchy, but those looking for another Quentins or Tara Road will undoubtedly be disappointed. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/13.]—Vicki Briner, Westminster, CO
Library Journal


Binchy was well-known for creating realistic characters who interact in ordinary ways, in ordinary places.... Her many fans are sure to line up to read this.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. In “Dolly’s Mother,” what did Dolly really learn on her sixteenth birthday?

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Chickasolved! The NEW Bloody French
Zane Walker Morris, 2015
Self-published
214 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780978870515


Summary
DISCOVER THE SECRETS YOUR PARENTS HAVE HIDDEN FROM YOU . . .

CHICKASOLVED, The New Bloody French… (BOOK 2 in the author's SECRETS OF LIFE Series)
Includes These Bullets of Truth:

• Bible Stories Verified
• Evolution Debunked
• Sounds of Words (Social Meaning)
• English based Indian Native Americans
• Life after Death
• Advertising Research based Relationship Advice
• Looking Younger
• Communicating with Spirits (Like Native American Shamans)
• Picking the Perfect Mate (Based on Biology).

Orders include donation to Hollywood Neighbor Regeneration Project.

View a free read of the book at its order site.

Author Bio
• Birth—May 5, 1977
• Raised—Fort Worth, Texas, USA
• Education—Oklahoma State University
• Currently—Tulsa, Oklahoma


Zane Walker Morris is an advertising researcher who has done it all as production in this field. His production work has contributed to over 6 billion dollars moving in the economy since 1996 through the power of compound interest. Due to a stolen car and walk through below freezing temperatures (81 miles through Dallas in the freezing rain) he had an out of body experience. The story is noted in this SECOND BOOK in the (Secrets of Life series). The first book was listed at $138.44 up from $19.99 by used sellers on Barnes and Noble's website. Pictures are available at his website on the about page. This was 5 years after publication when President Bill Clinton's book was listed at 0.01¢ by the same sellers 5 years after its release.

In addition to this, Zane Walker Morris has been an amateur and professional (non-fake) wrestler in Texas for over 36 years. He has also been in professional music and concert promotion as a pro private DJ and advertiser since 1996. Zane Walker Morris is a dual citizen of the United States of America and the Great Chickasaw Nation of America. He is of Chickasaw (Which is ancient Anglo not Hispanic Indian which is covered in this book) and Scottish heritage. (From the author.)

You are invited to follow not friend this author at his Facebook page. 

Discussion Questions
1. Have you considered the Bible miracles may be illusion but may be real?

2. Did you know humans are confirmed to not come from Chimps? We only had a common ancestor?

3. Have you considered the same sounds convey the same emotion in both Germanic and Latin languages? Example, OH! means pain in both. Or extreme pleasure. Consider the impact on post-internet written and spoken communication in war, romance, and basic relationships?

4. Did you know some Native Americans came from Asia and some from old England? Before the Dutch and Goths started building castles in 1100 C.E. (A.D.)?

5. Do you know looking similar in the cheek bones creates similar buying, feeding, and mating habits? Mating as in relationships for life?

6. Did you know personal trainers (like the author) use the thought of an age to sculpt the body into the desired fit, like the "biologically immortal" jelly fish found in 2010 and found in the book?

7. Do you know you can use modern technology commonly found in the home to communicate with the spirits of the living and the dead like Native Americans and Scots have done since the founding of Europe? Have you used the technique found in the book (a new technique based on centuries used by the family of the author)?

8. Have you seen a shadow or light apparition like the one featured in print in the book?

9. Do you now have supreme confidence you can double your chances of finding the perfect mate based on the advertising insight found in the book? (Two things don't lie bankruptcy and success.) Have you seen the pictures? Have you added all the insights from each chapter to form a mission in building your perfect romantic and business relationships? What are your romantic goals now?

(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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Chiefs 
Stuart Woods, 1981
Penguin Group USA
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451215802


Summary
For the people of Delano, Georgia, 1920 was a landmark year. That winter they elected their first police chief, built the first jail...and discovered the first body—the naked, brutalized corpse of a young boy. So began a forty-year manhunt that would embroil three generations of small-town police chiefs in the dark, twisted secrets of their sleepy, God-fearing community—and expose a seamy underbelly of hatred, corruption, and perversion too terrible to imagine...and too virulent to ignore.

Beginning in 1920, Chiefs spans 40 years, chronicling the experiences of three Georgia police chiefs who watch the world, their town and their jobs, change. At the heart of this incredible read is a 40-year-old mystery each chief must try to crack. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Where—Manchester, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Georgia
• Awards—Edgar Award for Chiefs, 1981; Grand Prix de
   Literature Policiere for Imperfect Strangers, 1995
• Currently—lives in Key West, Florida; Mt. Desert, Maine;
   New York City


Stuart Woods was born in 1938 in Manchester, Georgia. After graduating from college and enlisting in the Air National Guard, he moved to New York, where he worked in advertising for the better part of the 1960s. He spent three years in London working for various ad agencies, then moved to Ireland in 1973 to begin his writing career in earnest.

However, despite his best intentions, Woods got sidetracked in Ireland. He was nearly 100 pages into a novel when he discovered the seductive pleasures of sailing. "Everything went to hell," he quips on his web site "All I did was sail." He bought a boat, learned everything he could about celestial navigation, and competed in the Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) in 1976, finishing respectably in the middle of the fleet. (Later, he took part in the infamous Fastnet Race of 1979, a yachting competition that ended tragically when a huge storm claimed the lives of 15 sailors and 4 observers. Woods and his crew emerged unharmed.)

Returning to the U.S., Woods wrote two nonfiction books: an account of his transatlantic sailing adventures (Blue Water, Green Skipper) and a travel guide he claims to have written on a whim. But the book that jump-started his career was the opus interruptus begun in Ireland. An absorbing multigenerational mystery set in a small southern town, Chiefs was published in 1981, went on to win an Edgar Award, and was subsequently turned into a television miniseries starring Charlton Heston.

An amazingly prolific author, Woods has gone on to pen dozens of compelling thrillers, juggling stand-alone novels with installments in four successful series. (His most popular protagonists are New York cop-turned-attorney Stone Barrington, introduced in 1991's New York Dead, and plucky Florida police chief Holly Barker, who debuted in 1998's Orchid Beach.) His pleasing mix of high-octane action, likable characters, and sly, subversive humor has made him a hit with readers—who have returned the favor by propelling his books to the top of the bestseller lists.

Extras
• His first job was in advertising at BBDO in New York, and his first assignment was to write ads for CBS-TV shows. He recalls: "They consisted of a drawing of the star and one line of exactly 127 characters, including spaces, and I had to write to that length. It taught me to be concise.

• He flies his own airplane, a single-engine turboprop called a Jetprop, and tours the country every year in it, including book tours.

• He's a partner in a 1929 motor yacht called Belle and spends two or three weeks a year aboard her.

• In 1961-62, Woods spent 10 months in Germany with the National Guard at the height of the Berlin Wall Crisis.

• In October and November of 1979, he skippered a friend's yacht back across the Atlantic, with a crew of six, calling at the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands and finishing at Antigua in the Caribbean. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Critics Say . . .
Pre-Internet works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer 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 Chiefs:

1. Chiefs is as much about life in a small southern town as it is about solving crimes. Talk about the town's journey from racial bigotry to acceptance and integration of the black and white communities. How might that journey have mirrored the larger US society?

2. Discuss the town's political climate. Who wielded power in the town, and how did it impact residents and the work of the three police chiefs?

3. Discuss the differences, or similarities, between the three eras: 1920, 1946, and 1963—and the three chiefs? Do you have a favorite, preferring one over the other?

4. Did you find some of the language/dialogue offensive? What about the treatment of African-Americans? Was it gratuitous (sensational), or necessary to further the plot?

5. While the villain may be obvious early on, how does Stuart Woods maintain suspense throughout the novel? In other words, what keeps you turning the page?

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

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The Chilbury Ladies' Choir 
Jennifer Ryan, 2017
Crown/Archetype
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101906750


Summary
Just because the men have gone to war, why do we have to close the choir? And precisely when we need it most!
 
As England enters World War II's dark early days, spirited music professor Primrose Trent, recently arrived to the village of Chilbury, emboldens the women of the town to defy the Vicar's stuffy edict to shutter the church's choir in the absence of men and instead "carry on singing."

Resurrecting themselves as "The Chilbury Ladies' Choir," the women of this small village soon use their joint song to lift up themselves, and the community, as the war tears through their lives.

Told through letters and journals, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir moves seamlessly from budding romances to village intrigues to heartbreaking matters of life and death.

As we come to know the struggles of the charismatic members of this unforgettable outfit...
  ♦ a timid widow worried over her son at the front
  ♦ the town beauty drawn to a rakish artist
  ♦ her younger sister nursing an impossible crush and dabbling in politics she doesn't understand
  ♦ a young Jewish refugee hiding secrets about her family
  ♦ a conniving midwife plotting to outrun her seedy past.

...we come to see how the strength each finds in the choir's collective voice reverberates in her individual life.

In turns funny, charming and heart-wrenching, this lovingly executed ensemble novel will charm and inspire, illuminating the true spirit of the women on the homefront, in a village of indomitable spirit, at the dawn of a most terrible conflict. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Jennifer Ryan is a novelist and nonfiction editor. Her debut novel, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir was released in 2017.

Ryan, was born in a small village in Kent in the UK, which afforded her a near idyllic childhood. As she writes on her website, those early years were spent…

gallivanting around the countryside, often on bikes, climbing tress...and eating cheese and tomato rolls in red telephone boxes to shelter from the rain.

She writes of the scent of lavender and roses and freshly mown grass, memories that permeate settings for her stories.

Ryan attended college, and afterward became an editor for nonfiction books in London. As she gained more experience editing and writing, she eventually found the courage to try fiction. Once she married and took off time to have children, she was able to carve out time to develop her first novel, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir.

That novel is based on stories from her grandmother, who was 20 when World War II began. She recalls bumping into people during the blackouts, singing in air raid shelters, and the relishing the freedom many women felt with the men absent in the war. And, of course, her grandmother belonged to a choir.

Ryan has moved to the Washington, DC, area with her husband and children. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Though their vicar thinks it is quite preposterous, the womenfolk of Chilbury band together to form a Ladies’ Choir as World War II begins. Most of the men have departed from their coastal village to fight the Nazis. The ladies still long to lift their voices in song and so the choir is born.… [T]hat was the beauty of this book — the music. I felt like I was singing alongside the ladies, nervous at first, but then soothed and rewarded by the collective harmonies and applause from the grateful audiences.… Readers who enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society …should also feel right at home. READ MORE …
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers


Told in the form of diaries and letters in the voices of the female characters, Ryan’s novel, reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, captures the experience of the war from a woman’s perspective.… [The] format works well and the plot elements satisfyingly come together.
Publishers Weekly


 Unfortunately, debut author Ryan miscalculates the credibility of her novel's structure and her narrators.… The stalwart ladies of the choir deserve better. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal


All are borderline stock characters, and little that happens in the book is unexpected—though the brutality of Brig. Winthrop… does come as a bit of a shock. The author also tends to tell rather than show.… Mildly entertaining, Ryan's debut novel seems overfamiliar and too intent on warming the heart.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Chilbury Ladies' Choir...then take off on your own:

m. What are the consequences on village life of the war and the absence of so many men?

m. In the fairly large cast of characters, who are your favorites—whom do you find most engaging or most admirable, generous, or helpful, and why? Which characters do you find less so? Mrs. Brampton-Boyd, perhaps? Or Miss paltry?

m. Then there is the Brigadier. Does he surprise you?

m. What tests do the many women in this novel face? In what manner does each rise to the occasion in order to meet (or not) those challenges?

m. The book, like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is made up of letters and diary entries, documents, and notices. Do you enjoy the insertion of these extra-textual narratives, or do you prefer straightforward storytelling with a narrator?

m. When asked if music will help strengthen the spirit of the women during the war, Prim responds:

Music takes us out of ourselves, away from our worries and tragedies…. All those cadences and beautiful chord changes, every one of them makes you feel a different splendor of life.

Do you agree? Do you, personally, find that music offers consolation? What other forms of art might do so, as well?

Discuss, also, how being part of the choir affects each of the characters. What do the members gain, individually and together?

m. Consider the symbolic and/or spiritual significance of the Chilbury choir in this story—the gathering together of people, the blending of a multiplicity of voices, and fact that many voices are more powerful than one. Think of chords and harmony. How might all that relate to the thematic concerns of the novel?

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

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The Child 
Fiona Barton, 2017
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101990483


Summary
A brand-new novel of twisting psychological suspense.

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years.

For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby?

As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss.

But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn—house by house—into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery. And she soon finds herself the keeper of unexpected secrets that erupt in the lives of three women—and torn between what she can and cannot tell. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1957
• Where—Cambridge, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Awards—National Press Awards-Reporter of the Year
• Currently—lives in southwest France


Fiona Barton is a British journalist and novelist, born in Cambridge and now living in the southwest of France. She built a career in journalism: as senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at the Mail on Sunday. It was while working for that paper that she won Britain's National Press Award for Reporter of the Year.

Then, toward the end of 2004, in a "light bulb moment" over bad Chinese food, Barton and her husband, Gary, wondered what it would take to change the direction of their lives. As she told the Daily Mail:

I was 48 and a journalist, a job I’d loved and succeeded in for 25 years—Gary, 52, was a builder with his own business. We had two adult children, mortgages and all the paraphernalia of a full working life. Yet the idea of volunteering was so powerful that I remember it made our teeth chatter with excitement. We did lots of research talked to our family and, three years later, applied to Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). It was both exhilarating and terrifying—we lived on £140 a month in a small flat, washing our clothes under a cold outside tap and coping with the occasional rat and cockroach. A year later [in 2008], we boarded a plane to Colombo in Sri Lanka to begin a two-year placement.

In Sri Lanka, Barton trained journalists facing exile and sometimes physical danger because of their work. Since then, she has worked with journalists from around the globe.

It was Barton's familiarity with news stories, however, that gave her ideas for novels she'd always hoped to write. Once liberated from the daily grind of deadlines, she was was able to turn to fiction. Her 2016 debut, The Widow, a story about a wife who suspects her husband of murder, became a bestseller and sold in 36 countries.

Next, in 2017, came The Child, which also grew out of a news story—the skeleton of a child discovered in a building site. Barton continues her writing, in the early morning, in bed, as she says on her website. Her only distraction is her noisy cockerel, Twitch. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
This being a Barton thriller, there’s more to pretty much everything than meets the eye.
Boston Globe

Fiona Barton has masterfully delivered again with The Child, her follow-up to her bestselling debut novel, The Widow....So many questions, so much perfect suspense….Barton tells the child’s story as only she can—brilliantly.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram


[An] intriguing, twisty tale....With plenty of red herrings, nothing and no one is who  they seem in this evocative puzzler.
Cleveland Plain Dealer


A twisty and tantalizing story you won't be able to put down.
Bustle


(Starred review.) Kate Waters, the catalyst for Barton’s devastating debut The Widow, returns in this strong if more subdued psychological thriller.… Readers patient with the relatively slow initial pace…will be rewarded with startling twists—and a stunning, emotionally satisfying conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Barton's second well-plotted outing, with its sustained tension and believable characters, is an excellent addition to the popular psychological thriller genre. Readers who liked Barton's first novel, Paula Hawkins's The Girl On a Train, and Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will love this. —Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA
Library Journal


Barton flirts with melodrama at times but pulls back and allows her characters to develop into fully realized, deeply scarred women whose wounds aren't always visible. This is as much a why-dunit as a whodunit, with the real question being whether it's possible to heal and live with the truth after hiding behind a lie for so long.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How would you describe Emma and Jude’s relationship? Do you think Jude loves her daughter? Why or why not?

2. Do you think Kate plays a larger role in this book than she does in The Widow? How does her presence in the story affect how it unfolds? Why do you think this "cold case" investigation is so important to her initially, and does her motivation change over the course of the novel?

3. Several examples of victim blaming occur in the novel. For instance, in the initial kidnapping investigation, the police blame Angela for leaving her child alone in the hospital room. How does the book treat victim blaming? How might the story be different without it?

4. What is the role of journalism in the book? Like in The Widow, the media is inextricably linked with the police investigation. What do you think of Kate’s methods and involvement? Do you think the media help or hinder the police during crime investigations?

5. Discuss the theme of motherhood in the novel. Would you describe the women in the book as good mothers? Why or why not? How has motherhood affected each of the characters? How does it affect their interactions with each other?

6. Discuss Will’s character. Will is the only male character whose perspective is shown in the book. Do you think this is significant? Why do you think the author chose to include his perspective? How does it affect your feelings towards him?

7. Angela’s devastation over the loss of her child seeps into every aspect of her life, including her marriage and her relationship with her other children. Discuss the role of trauma and recovery, and how trauma can be passed down through generations.

8. Discuss the relationship between secrets and truth in this story. Almost all of the characters keep secrets. Whose actions are justified and whose are not? Use examples from the book to illustrate your points.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Child 44 
Tom Rob Smith, 2008
Grand Central Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446402392


Summary
A gripping novel about one man's dogged pursuit of a serial killer against the opposition of Stalinist state security forces, Child 44 is at once suspenseful and provocative. Tom Rob Smith's remarkable debut thriller powerfully dramatizes the human cost of loyalty, integrity, and love in the face of totalitarian terror.

A decorated war hero driven by dedication to his country and faith in the superiority of Communist ideals, Leo Demidov has built a successful career in the Soviet security network, suppressing ideological crimes and threats against the state with unquestioning efficiency. When a fellow officer's son is killed, Leo is ordered to stop the family from spreading the notion that their child was murdered. For in the official version of Stalin's worker's paradise, such a senseless crime is impossible—an affront to the Revolution. But Leo knows better: a murderer is at large, cruelly targeting children, and the collective power of the Soviet government is denying his existence.

Leo's doubt sets in motion a chain of events that changes his understanding of everything he had previously believed. Smith's deftly crafted plot delivers twist after chilling twist, as it lays bare the deceit of the regime that enveloped an impoverished people in paranoia.

In a shocking effort to test Leo's loyalty, his wife, Raisa, is accused of being a spy. Leo's refusal to denounce her costs him his rank, and the couple is banished from Moscow. Humiliated, renounced by his enemies, and deserted by everyone save Raisa, Leo realizes that his redemption rests on finding the vicious serial killer who is eviscerating innocent children and leaving them to die in the bleak Russian woods.

The narrative unfolds at a breathless pace, exposing the culture of fear that turns friends into foes and forces families to hide devastating secrets. As Leo and Raisa close in on the serial killer, desperately trying to stay a step ahead of the government's relentless operatives, the reader races with them through a web of intrigue to the novel's heart-stopping conclusion. (From Barnes and Noble.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 19, 1979
• Where—London, England
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Currently—lives in London, England

After graduating from Cambridge University in 2001 and spending a year in Italy on a creative writing scholarship, Tom Rob Smith went to work writing scripts and storylines for British television. He lived for a while in Phnom Penh, working on Cambodia's first-ever soap opera and doing freelance screenwriting in his spare time.

While researching material for a film adaptation of a short story by British sci-fi writer Jeff Noon, Smith stumbled across the real-life case of "Rostov Ripper" Andrei Chikkatilo, a Russian serial killer who murdered more than 60 women and children in the 1980s. Chikkatilo's killing spree went unchecked for nearly 13 years, largely because Soviet officials refused to admit that crime existed in their perfect state. Intrigued, Smith recognized the potential of this concept as a work of fiction and worked up a script "treatment." His agent, however, suggested the material would be better showcased in a novel.

The result was Child 44, a gripping crime thriller about a Soviet policeman determined to stop a child serial killer his superiors won't even admit exists. Smith upped the action ante by setting the story in the Stalinist era of the 1950s, a period when opposing the state could cost you your life. And, in MGB officer Leo Stepanovich Demidov, he created the most fascinating Russian detective since Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko.

Child 44 became the object of an intense bidding war at the 2007 London Book Fair. (The buzz only increased when director Ridley Scott bought the film rights.) But the book proved worthy of its hype, garnering glowing reviews on its publication in the spring of 2008. Scott Turow (no slouch in the thriller department himself) proclaimed, "Child 44 is a remarkable debut novel—inventive, edgy and relentlessly gripping from the first page to the last."

Extras
From a 2008 Barnes and Noble interview:

• One of my first jobs was working in a sports complex, and I had to fill up all the vending machines. It was boring work and lonely, carrying boxes of Mars Bars down very long, fluorescent-lit corridors. But a moment sticks out. I was restocking a machine when a young boy, maybe five years old, approached me and asked if he could have a chocolate bar. I told him they were for sale: he needed to buy one. He thought about this very seriously for a while, ran off, and came back five minutes later with a conker [horse chestnut]. He honestly believed this was a fair exchange. I guess it must have had some value to him. Anyway, I gave him the chocolate bar for free. It wasn't mine, I suppose, to give away, but it made a dull day a little brighter."

• My Swedish grandparents used to be beekeepers. They made the best honey I've ever tasted. I spent my summer holidays living on their farm. It was a wonderful place to spend a summer. My parents, now retired, live on a small farm—a different farm—near the sea in the South of Sweden. So now I have another place to retreat from the world. They're not beekeepers though.

• I like running, although I suffer from a problem with my knees. They slide out of position, which has caused me some problems recently. If anyone out there can help, I'd be more than happy to hear suggestions. Hours of physiotherapy haven't really worked."

• When asked what book that most influenced his life or career as a writer, here is what Smith said:

In terms of my career as a writer, I'm going to pick Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow. It played a crucial part in my decision to write Child 44.

Back in August 2005, all I had was a story outline. It was set in a period I didn't, in all honesty, know that much about. I remember walking into a book shop in Piccadilly and browsing the Russian History section. The prologue was set in the famines of the 1930s, so Conquest's book seemed an obvious purchase. Had the book been oblique or impenetrable, had the book not engaged me emotionally, I'm not sure I would've taken the plunge. As it happened, Conquest's book provided me with a jolt of energy. It's a remarkable read—brilliantly lucid, yet never clinical or detached. There's a cool-headed outrage at the events it describes.

It's one thing to have the broad brushstrokes of a story, but it was when tiny moments started to occur to me, that's when I knew I could write Child 44. It was while reading Conquest's descriptions of villages where all the dogs and cats had been eaten that I began to wonder if there had been someone who loved their cat so much that they couldn't bear to eat it—even when they were starving to death. That was how the character of Maria (from the opening paragraph) was born. (Author bio and interview from Barnes and Noble.)

Book Reviews
Once Leo and his wife are banished to a town in the Ural Mountains, where another murder is committed, the narrative whips into action as a fugitive drama. The language becomes leaner, the style more fluid and cinematic, as Leo's forbidden investigation causes more innocent people to suffer and transforms this onetime war hero into a criminal. In a society riven by fear and mistrust, even a serial killer seems less threatening than a man who has learned to think for himself.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review

Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, this stellar debut from British author Smith offers appealing characters, a strong plot and authentic period detail. When war hero Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a rising star in the MGB, the State Security force, is assigned to look into the death of a child, Leo is annoyed, first because this takes him away from a more important case, but, more importantly, because the parents insist the child was murdered. In Stalinist Russia, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. After attempting to curb the violent excesses of his second-in-command, Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, the beautiful Raisa, who's suspected of being an Anglo-American sympathizer. Demoted and exiled from Moscow, Leo stumbles onto more evidence of the child killer. The evocation of the deadly cloud-cuckoo-land of Russia during Stalin's final days will remind many of Gorky Park and Darkness at Noon, but the novel remains Smith's alone, completely original and absolutely satisfying.
Publishers Weekly

Grisly, gruesome, and gory are just three ways to describe this debut novel by young British screenwriter Smith. While adapting a short story by sf writer Jeff Noon, Smith came across the true account of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who after killing more than 50 women and children was executed in 1994. His story inspired Smith to write this grim, 1953-set novel, which ties together just about all of the worst aspects of the Stalinist regime. The Ukrainian famine and the unrelieved horror of the gulag, among other historical hooks, add to the saga of ex-soldier and police official Leo Demidov, who dissects the morbid clues left by the killer. The paradox of crime in a workers' paradise denies any legitimacy to Leo's investigation, since, by definition, such repellent crimes are impossible. With some 20 foreign sales to date and film rights already in Ridley Scott's hands, this successor to Hannibal Lector's lurid mantle has nonstop plotting, a nonstop pace, and even a surprise ending. Horror genre readers will thrill to it; others may be advised to ask for a barf bag as well as their date due slip. Suspense collections in large libraries will likely need several copies to fill waiting lists.
Barbara Conaty - Library Journal

During the terror of Stalin's last days, a secret policeman becomes a detective stalking a serial killer in a debut novel from a shockingly talented 28-year-old Brit. Skillfully drawing on the only totalitarian milieu more frightening than the Nazis, Smith opens the book in a village of starving kulaks, where two young brothers set out in the snow to trap the last local cat that hasn't been eaten. Myopic young Andrei throws himself on the frantic feline only to have both cat and older brother Pavel snatched by a mysterious man who bags them and disappears, leaving Andrei to stumble home alone. Both Pavel and Andrei figure later in a plot that shifts to the early '50s as Father Stalin has begun his final mad purges. War hero MGB officer Leo Stepanovich Demidov begins to realize, during the course of performing his brutal State Security duties, that the death of the four-year-old son of a younger associate may not have been as accidental as the official report suggested. Family and neighbors claim that the child was brutally assaulted before being left on the railroad tracks. The problem for good soldier Leo is that in the Glorious Workers' Paradise, where every citizen has everything he needs, there is no such thing as crime. There are only attacks by the corrupt outside world. Leo has another problem. His beautiful wife Raisa, whom he suspects of infidelity, has been charged by Leo's vicious rival Vasili with espionage, and Leo has been ordered to verify that claim. Learning too late that the innocent and faithful Raisa fears rather than loves him, rattled by Vasili's treachery, knowing that he is damaged goods, Leo counts himself lucky to be exiled to duty in a hick town where hediscovers further murders and begins a hair-raising hunt for the perpetrator. Nerve-wracking pace and atmosphere camouflage wild coincidences.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Leo's character evolves over the course of the book. What do you see as the most significant catalyst for change?

2. What propels Leo to go forward in his quest for the murderer: fear, compassion, or a sense of justice?

3. The relationship between Vasili and Leo is contentious from the beginning. Does Vasili feel pure hate, contempt, or jealousy for Leo? Why?

4. When Raisa reveals the truth of their marriage to Leo, were you surprised at his reaction? Would you have made similar choices under the circumstances? When does personal conviction trump duty and loyalty?

5. Who do you think was ultimately responsible for incriminating Raisa. What would it be like to live in a society in which everyone is under suspicion of crimes against the state?

6. Does the book's portrayal of life in a totalitarian state remind you of any other books?

7. In 1953, the year of Stalin's death, there were 2,468,524 prisoners in the Gulag system. Do you think that legacy affects Russian culture today?

8. Which character's duplicity or innocence did you find most surprising, and why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Child Finder 
Rene Denfeld, 2017
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062659057


Summary
A haunting, richly atmospheric, and deeply suspenseful novel from the acclaimed author of The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

"Where are you, Madison Culver? Flying with the angels, a silver speck on a wing? Are you dreaming, buried under snow? Or—is it possible—you are still alive?"

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now — if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing.

Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Rene Denfeld is a bestselling author, journalist, and licensed investigator. Her debut novel, The Enchanted won numerous honors, including the prestigious French Prix, an ALA Medal for Excellence in Fiction, a Carnegie listing, listing for the International Dublin Literary Award, Book of the Year for the Oregonian, and a finalist for the Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan prize. She has written for the New York Times, Oregonian, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rene has been a foster child for twenty years. She was awarded the Break The Silence Award at the 24th Annual Knock Out Abuse Gala in Washington, DC, in recognition for her advocacy and social justice work. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her three children, all adopted from foster care. (Adapted from the pubisher .)

Book Reviews
Denfeld endows her novel with psychological heft, with the ravages of trauma placed front and center. For Naomi, whole swathes of her life have been erased, and for years “she had been running from terrifying shadows she couldn’t see.” For the Snow Girl, drawing on her imagination to retreat into a world of fairy tales is the only means of keeping her mental self intact. Even Mr. B’s tragic past is hinted at, obliquely, giving his character a degree of pathos rarely found in typical thriller fare.… Dark though it is, The Child Finder is superb, revealing a world that contains evil but also goodness. And Rene Denfeld’s writing, artful yet precise, make it a pleasure to read.  READ MORE …
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers


[A] powerful novel about a search for a missing girl that's also a search for identity.… Elegaic, informative and disquieting, it artfully moves between Naomi's painstaking search …and the survival tactics of plucky Maidson.
Michael Callahan - New York Times Book Review


Using multiple voices, Denfeld takes an innovative approach to dealing with the pain of trauma, taking moments of darkness and frailty and probing them in heartbreaking, surprising ways.… The conclusion will leave readers breathless.
Publishers Weekly


Investigator Naomi is especially good at locating lost children because once upon a time she was lost herself. Now she's after Madison Culver, who vanished three years ago in Oregon's Skookum National Forest.… Big in-house love.
Library Journal


And though Denfeld is no doubt trying to explore the psychological realities of this abuse…, her tendency toward florid writing can make her depiction feel romanticized and takes the book at times from disquieting into downright unpalatable. Denfeld's intentions are good, but her tone strikes the wrong notes.
Kirkus Reviews

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

1. How would you describe Naomi? What motivates her to become "the child finder? When asked by Madison's mother how she is able to find lost children, Naomi responds, "I know freedom." What does she mean? Talk about the ways in which Naomi uses her experience, both as a previous captive and as an investigator, to locate missing children?

2. What is Naomi's relationship with Jerome? Why is she unable to settle accept his offer of love? She acknowledges her need to "keep running from terrifying shadows she couldn't see," but wouldn't Jerome offer some protection from those shadows?

3. Something hovers around the edges of Naomi's memory which is trying to reveal itself through her dreams. Did you guess what it is before the end of the book? Why is Naomi unable to remember anything before her life with Mrs. Cottle and Jerome? Talk about those years with her foster family and about Mrs. Cottle's goodness.

4. Naomi tells Madison's mother that if she is able to locate her daughter, that Madison "won't return the same." What does Naomi mean … and how else does Rene Denfeld explore the lasting effects of trauma on survivors of kidnapping and child abuse?

5. Talk about the novel's setting: the mountains, the snow and ice, the darkness of the forest. How does that setting contribute to the book's atmosphere?

6. What are some of the ways Denfeld incorporates fairy tale elements into her novel. Why might she have done so?

7. Talk about Mr. B, both his monstrous side and his tender side. How would you describe his pathology … and does what we learn at the end of the novel help you make sense of his actions?

8. Describe the emotional dynamics between Mr. B and Madison. — why does Madison want to be close to Mr. B yet fear him at the same time? How does her retreat into her imagination help her survive? Finally, how difficult was it for you to read about the physical relationship between Mr. B and Madison?

m. SPOILER ALERT: At the end, Naomi tells Madison that she must own her experience. Why does she say that — what does she mean?

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

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The Children 
Ann Leary, 2016
St. Martin's Press
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250045379


Summary
The captivating story of a wealthy, but unconventional New England family, told from the perspective of a reclusive 29-year-old who has a secret (and famous) life on the Internet.

Charlotte Maynard rarely leaves her mother’s home, the sprawling Connecticut lake house that belonged to her late stepfather, Whit Whitman, and the generations of Whitmans before him.

While Charlotte and her sister, Sally, grew up at "Lakeside," their stepbrothers, Spin and Perry, were welcomed as weekend guests. Now the grown boys own the estate, which Joan occupies by their grace—and a provision in the family trust. When Spin, the youngest and favorite of all the children, brings his fiance home for the summer, the entire family is intrigued. The beautiful and accomplished Laurel Atwood breathes new life into this often comically rarefied world. But as the wedding draws near, and flaws surface in the family’s polite veneer, an array of simmering resentments and unfortunate truths is exposed.

With remarkable wit and insight, Ann Leary pulls back the curtain on one blended family, as they are forced to grapple with the assets and liabilities—both material and psychological—left behind by their wonderfully flawed patriarch. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—Syracuse, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Connecticut


Ann Leary is the author of the memoir An Innocent, A Broad (2004) and three novels, Outtakes From a Marriage (2008) and The Good House (2013), and The Children (2016).

She has written fiction and nonfiction for various publications and media outlets, including New York Times, Ploughshares, National Public Radio, Redbook, and Real Simple, among other publications

Leary was born in Syracuse, N.Y., but moved around with her family, living in various parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Wisconsin. She finally landed in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where she graduated from high school.

With short-lived friendships in so many places, Anne turned to books early on. She especially loved stories about animals—A Jungle Book, Black Beauty, Lassie come Home, My Friend Flicka, and all the Black Stallion books (her love for all things equestrian continues to this day).

She believes that the first non-animal book she ever read was while babysitting at age thirteen, when she picked up Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. From that point she switched her allegiance from books about four-legged creatures to books about two-legged ones, in particular inspiring stories about beautiful, opium-addicted nymphomaniacs!

Leary attended Bennington College in Vermont for two years then switched to Emerson College in Boston. It was there that she met her to-be husband, actor-comedian Dennis Leary, who was teaching a comedy-writing course. The two married in 1989 and have two now grown children.

Leary competes in equestrian sports and has been a volunteer EMT. She and her husband live with dogs, cats, and horses on their farm in northwestern Connecticut. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and Freshfiction.com.)

Book Reviews
A witty, touching, unputdownable novel.
Good Housekeeping

A fast-paced, darkly funny novel.
Popsugar


[Leary’s] characters are a delightful blend of strong personalities, all with their own little touch of delicious evil, and her darkly comic send-ups of New England wealth, nouveau riche, and Internet culture should keep readers absorbed until the final, most shocking secrets are revealed
Publishers Weekly


A read-in-one-sitting romp, Leary’s wry and searing satire of affluence and elitism comically yet steadily builds to a sobering and malevolent finale.
Booklist


(Starred review.) In this deeply satisfying novel about how unknowable people can be, intrigue builds with glass shards of dark humor toward an ending that is far from comic.
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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The Children Act 
Ian McEwan, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101872871


Summary
Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge who presides over cases in the family court. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity.

But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now her marriage of thirty years is in crisis.

At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: Adam, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, is refusing for religious reasons the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents echo his wishes.

Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely expressed faith? In the course of reaching a decision, Fiona visits Adam in the hospital—and encounter that stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 21, 1948
• Where—Aldershot, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Sussex; M.A. University of East Anglia
• Awards—(see blow)
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England


Ian Russell McEwan is an English novelist. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (nee Moore). His father was a working class Scotsman who had worked his way up through the army to the rank of major. As a result, McEwan spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve.

McEwan was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson's pioneering creative writing course.

Career
McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. He achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its alleged obscenity. His second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978.

The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels, both of which were adapted into films. The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed "Ian Macabre." These were followed by The Child in Time (1987), winner of the 1987 Whitbread Novel Award; The Innocent (1990); and Black Dogs (1992). McEwan has also written two children's books, Rose Blanche (1985) and The Daydreamer (1994). His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about the relationship between a science writer and a stalker, was popular with critics and adapted into a film in 2004.

In 1998, he won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam. His next novel, Atonement (2001), received considerable acclaim; Time magazine named it the best novel of 2002, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2007, the critically acclaimed movie Atonement, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, was released in cinemas worldwide. His next work, Saturday (2005), follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon. Saturday won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 2005, and his novel On Chesil Beach (2007) was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize.

McEwan has also written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, an oratorio and a libretto titled For You with music composed by Michael Berkeley.

In 2008 at the Hay Festival, McEwan gave a surprise reading of his then novel-in-progress, eventually published as Solar (2010). The novel includes a scientist hoping to save the planet from the threat of climate change and got its inspiration from a 2005 Cape Farewell expedition. McEwan along with fellow artists and scientists spent several weeks aboard a ship near the north pole.

McEwan's twelfth novel, Sweet Tooth (2012), is historical in nature and set in the 1970. In an interview with the Scotsman newspaper, McEwan revealed that the impetus for writing the novel was a way for him to write a "disguised autobiography." McEwan's 13th novel, The Children Act (2014), is about a high court judge.

Controversy
In 2006 McEwan was accused of plagiarism, specifically a passage in Atonement that closely echoed one from a 2012 memoir, No Time for Romance, by Lucilla Andrews. McEwan acknowledged using the book as a source for his work; in fact, he had included a brief note at the end of the book referring to Andrews's autobiography, among several other works. Writing in the Guardian in November 2006, a month after Andrews' death, McEwan professed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt to the author.

The incident recalled critical controversy over his debut novel The Cement Garden, key plot elements that closely mirrored some of those in Our Mother's House, a 1963 novel by Julian Gloag, which had also been made into a film. McEwan denied charges of plagiarism, claiming he was unaware of the earlier work.

In 2011 McEwan caused controversy when he accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. In the face of pressure from groups and individuals opposed to the Israeli government, specifically British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP), McEwan wrote a letter to the Guardian in which he said...

There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics, and for me the emblem in this respect is Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra—surely a beam of hope in a dark landscape, though denigrated by the Israeli religious right and Hamas. If BWISP is against this particular project, then clearly we have nothing more to say to each other.

He announced that he would donate the ten thousand dollar prize money to Combatants for Peace, an organization that brings together Israeli ex-soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters.

Recognition
McEwan has been nominated for the Man Booker prize six times to date, winning the Prize for Amsterdam in 1998. His other nominations were for The Comfort of Strangers (1981, Shortlisted), Black Dogs (1992, Shortlisted), Atonement (2001, Shortlisted), Saturday (2005, Longlisted), and On Chesil Beach (2007, Shortlisted). McEwan also received nominations for the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and 2007.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2005, he was the first recipient of Dickinson College's Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholar and Writers Program Award, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. In 2008, McEwan received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College, London, where he used to teach English literature. In 2008, The Times (of London) featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Personal
McEwan has been married twice. His 13-year marriage to spiritual healer and therapist Penny Allen ended in 1995 and was followed by a bitter custody battle over their two sons. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, was formerly the editor of the Guardian's Review section.

In 2002, McEwan discovered that he had a brother who had been given up for adoption during World War II when his mother was married to a different man. After her first husband was killed in combat, McEwan's mother married her lover, and Ian was born a few years later. The brothers are in regular contact, and McEwan has written a foreword to Sharp's memoir. (Excerpted and adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) As in Atonement, what doesn’t happen has the power to destroy; as in Amsterdam, McEwan probes the dread beneath civilized society. In spare prose, he examines cases, people, and situations, to reveal anger, sorrow, shame, impulse, and yearning. He rejects religious dogma that lacks compassion, but scrutinizes secular morality as well.... Few will deny McEwan his place among the best of Britain’s living novelists.
Publishers Weekly


Obsession is a familiar subject for McEwan, most memorably explored in his 1997 Enduring Love. This time the theme is a touchstone in a novel exploring a man's fixation on having an open marriage, a boy's fascination with the judge who will decide his fate, and a couple's determination to follow the strictures of their religion no matter the cost. —Henrietta Verma
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Irrefutably creative.... With his trademark style, which is a tranquil mix of exacting word choice and easily flowing sentences, McEwan once again observes with depth and wisdom the universal truth in the uncommon situation.
Booklist


(Starred review.) British judge faces a complex case while dealing with her husband's infidelity in this thoughtful, well-wrought novel..... McEwan, always a smart, engaging writer, here takes more than one familiar situation and creates at every turn something new and emotionally rewarding.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
How did The Children Act affect your perception of family courts? What makes it so challenging for parents and the courts alike to follow the deceptively simple mandate that “the child’s welfare shall be the . . . paramount consideration”?

2. How would you react if your spouse made a proposal like Jack’s? Is Jack’s interest in Melanie purely sexual? When he asserts that couples in long marriages lose passion, is he right?

3. How would you have ruled in the first case described in The Children Act, regarding the education of Rachel and Nora Bernstein? Does Fiona approach religious freedom the same way in her ruling for Adam’s case?

4. How did your impression of Adam and his parents shift throughout the novel? How does his childhood exposure to religion compare to your own?

5. At the heart of Adam’s testimony is a definition of scripture, secured by faith in his religious leaders to interpret scripture perfectly. How should the government and the court system consider religious texts?

6. Both Jack and Adam are drawn to romantic ideals, albeit at opposite stages of life. Are their dreams reckless or simply passionate?

7. As Fiona reflects on her life, which choices bring her solace? How does she reconcile her childlessness with her notions of the ideal woman? How does her personal history affect her decisions in court?

8. Discuss Fiona’s sojourn to Newcastle. What is she pursuing on that journey? What is Adam pursuing when he follows her there?

9. What does “The Ballad of Adam Henry” (page 187) reveal about the nature of youth, and the nature of mortality?

10. What is Fiona able to experience through music that she can’t access any other way? For Mark (possibly with a new lover to impress), and for the Gray’s Inn community, what is the significance of the Great Hall concerts?

11. In the novel’s closing scene, what transformations do Jack and Fiona undergo?

12. How does The Children Act enhance your experience of Ian McEwan’s previous novels? What is unique about the way his characters approach moral dilemmas?

13. Explore a few of the recordings of Benjamin Britten’s setting for “Down by the Salley Gardens” that are available online. How do the melody and the verses affect you? In your experience, what does it mean to take love and life “easy”?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Children of God
Mary Doria Russell, 1999
Random House
438 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449004838


Summary
Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. A critically acclaimed bestseller, The Sparrow was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year, a finalist for the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Prize and the winner of the James M. Tiptree Memorial Award. Now in Children of God, Russell further establishes herself as one of the most innovative, entertaining and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.

The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the Society of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.

Old friends, new discoveries and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.

Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Children of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell's special literary magic. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 19, 1950
• Where—Elmhurst, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A. University of Illinois; M.A. Northeastern
   University; Ph.D. University of Michigan
• Awards—The John W. Campbell Award, 1998
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Ohio


Mary Doria Russell was born in suburban Chicago in 1950. Her mother was a U.S. Navy nurse and her father was a Marine Corps drill sergeant. She and her younger brother, Richard, consequently developed a dismaying vocabulary at an early age. Mary learned discretion at Sacred Heart Catholic elementary school and learned how to parse sentences at Glenbard East High; she moved on to study cultural anthropology at the University of Illinois, social anthropology at Northeastern University in Boston, and biological anthropology at the University of Michigan.

After earning a doctorate, Russell taught human gross anatomy at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s but left the academic world to write fiction, which turned out to be a good career move.

Her novels have struck a deep chord with readers for their respectful but unblinking consideration of fundamental religious questions. The Sparrow and Children of God remain steady sellers, translated into more than a dozen languages. Russell has received nine national and international literary awards and has been a finalist for a number of others. She and her family live in Cleveland, Ohio. (From the publisher.)

Extra
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:

• I honestly think getting up early gives you cancer. You should definitely sleep in as often as possible.

• Coffee is good for you. Don't believe anyone who says different. All research concluding that coffee is bad is seriously flawed in scientific design.

• Here's how you know when you're grown up: you decide if you get to have a pet. You don't have to ask anyone else's permission. I just got myself a 4-year-old miniature dachshund named Annie from Petfinder.com. She makes me laugh out loud first thing in the morning, and at least half a dozen times a day after that.

• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (1935). I saw the David Lean movie Lawrence of Arabia when it first came out in 1962. I was twelve then, and ripe for hero worship, living in Lombard, Illinois, but ready to imagine a larger world than the Chicago suburbs. I found a musty old copy of Seven Pillars, and to this day I remain fascinated by the book and the man who wrote it. I can name a number of direct effects of reading the book.

Initially, I became interested in archeology because of Lawrence's early work, and that led me to anthropology, which sustained my interest through three degrees and years of professional work. I keep my hand in by editing the professional papers of friends in the field.

Lawrence taught me that speaking more than one language opens doors to experiences you'd miss if you only speak English. Over the years, I've studied Spanish, Russian, French and Croatian fairly formally, with less studious stabs at Latin, Hebrew, Italian and German. Each one has led me places I'd never have gone other wise. My study of Croatian led directly to the adoption of our son Daniel in Zagreb—so Lawrence is Dan's sort-of godfather!

I learned that intentions are irrelevant and regrets are useless: it doesn't matter what you thought would happen, or that you meant no harm. Unintended consequences of good intentions are a theme I return.

Lawrence taught me that how you write is as important as what you have to tell about. Choice of word, rhythm, detail, editing and overall structure make Seven Pillars literature, not just a military history or personal memoir.

There are echoes of Lawrence's experience in Deraa in my first novel, echoes of his war guilt in my third. I'm beginning research for a novel about the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, and will come full circle: T. E. Lawrence will actually be a character in that one.

I also caught the colon habit from reading Lawrence's work: quod erat demonstradum. (Interview from Barnes & Noble.com.)

Book Reviews
Brilliant...Powerful...An outstanding natural storyteller.
San Francisco Chronicle

Immensely satisfying...engages readers with Russell's provocative themes because it is a fine novel, with a compelling plot, intriguingly complex characters and enough poetry in the writing to convey the heartbreaking tragedy that even the best-intended actions can cause.
Cleveland Plain Dealer


Mary Doria Russell continues the story she began in The Sparrow, her first novel about the arduous spiritual journey of Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest.... The brooding Emilio lost his friends and his faith on a strange planet that he thought at first was very close to God.... When he arrives back on Rakhat a generation later, against his will, everything has changed. The world is in political turmoil, and the events set in motion on his previous visit are playing out in ways he never could have anticipated.
USA Today


A gem...seeping, operatic...Russell's gift for dialogue and the novel's questioning of our very souls at the dawn of a new millennium give Children of God a quality that transcends genre.
Globe and Mail (Canada)


Russell follows her speculative first novel, The Sparrow, with a sequel that will please even readers new to her interplanetary missionaries. Having returned from a disastrous, 21st-century expedition to the planet Rakhat, Jesuit Father Emilio Sandoz, the sole survivor of the mission, faces public rage over the order's part in the war between the gentle Runa and the predatory Jana'ata—fury more than matched by the priest's own self-hatred and religious disillusionment. In the sequel, he is forced to return to Rakhat with a new expedition more interested in profits than prophets. When they discover the planet in turmoil and the Runa precariously in power, the temptation to interfere is more than they can withstand. As in her first book, Russell uses the entertaining plot to explore sociological, spiritual, religious, scientific and historical questions. Misunderstandings between cultures and people are at the heart of her story. It is, however, the complex figure of Father Sandoz around which a diverse interplanetary cast orbits, and it is the intelligent, emotional and very personal feud between Father Sandoz and his God that provides energy for both books.
Publishers Weekly


Emilio Sandoz is a priest and brilliant linguist who was crippled and sexually assaulted during a mission to Rakhat, a planet inhabited by two intelligent life forms, the Runa and the Jana'ata. Vowing never to return, Emilio quits the priesthood and finds peace, even love. He is kidnapped, however, and sent on a return mission, where he finds that the servant Runi are rebelling against the Jana'ata and the planet is consumed by unrest and savagery. Intertwined are other stories, including that of Sophia, a previously unknown survivor from the first mission, and Supaari, a Jana'ata who risks everything to protect his daughter who, in accordance with Jana'ata policy, should have been killed. Compelling and chilling, set in the not-too-distant 2060, Russell's novel immediately pulls the listener in and delivers. —Susan McCaffrey, Sturgis Middle School, Michigan.
Library Journal


Sequel to The Sparrow, Russell's account of a 21st-century Jesuit-led expedition to planet Rakhat with its two intelligent, kangaroo-like alien races, the carnivorous Jana'ata and their prey, the enslaved Runa. Broken, beset by terrible nightmares, Emilio Sandoz—the expedition's sole survivor—has returned to Earth, where he rejects the Jesuits and the priesthood and falls in love with Gina Giuliani and her four-year-old daughter Celestina. Still, for a variety of reasons the Jesuits (as well as the Pope) pressure Sandoz toward agreeing to return to Rakhat. But even when Sandoz discovers that another expedition member, Sofia Mendes, also survived, he refuses to go. On Rakhat, meanwhile, changes continue. The merchant Supaari, who broke Sandoz and sold him, rejects the Jana'ata lifestyle and takes his supposedly deformed daughter into the forest. Jana'ata poet Hlavin Kitheri, who bought Sandoz in order to rape him, slaughters all his relatives, blames Supaari, and tries to build a society based on ability, not inherited rank. Sofia Mendes, hiding in the forest with the Runa she incited to rebel, gives birth to Isaac, an autistic child with an uncanny musical talent, and supplies the Runa with advanced technology so that they can continue the revolt against their Jana'ata overlords. On Earth, Sandoz is shanghaied aboard the Jesuits' new ship (thanks to relativistic effects, he will never see Gina again), which arrives at Rakhat just in time to prevent the extermination of the Jana'ata by the Sofia-led Runa. Finally, Sandoz will return to Earth, free at last of his nightmares, to meet the daughter he never knew he had. A brutal and deliberate tale, its characters rathertoo forgiving to be wholly human, that will challenge and sometimes shred the reader's preconceptions.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How have the unforeseen mistakes of the first visitors to Rakhat influenced the history of the planet? Are there any parallels from our history? What does this story say about the gap between intention and effect? What do you see as the themes of this story?

2. Russell has constructed Children of God using a three-tiered story line: Earth and its standard time; the ship, Giordano Bruno, and its Earth-relative time; and time on Rakhat. The story also contained two parallel narratives: that of Mendes and that of Sandoz. Do you think this makes the story more interesting? Did you find it easy or difficult adjusting to the time jumps?

3. Russell never tells us what happened to the UN party that showed up at the end of The Sparrow and sent Emilio back to Earth. What do you think happened to them? Why does Russell leave the fate of the rescue party a mystery?

4. One reviewer describes the characters in this story as "rather too forgiving to be wholly human." Do you agree? If you were in Sandoz's shoes, would you be able to work with the people who kidnapped you?

5. At the end of the book Emilio Sandoz makes it very clear to Sofia that he can't forgive what was done to him. He is ashamed of that—he wishes he could, but he just can't let go of his hate. Do you think that will ever change for Sandoz? Sandoz also realizes that he can't hate the children of the men who harmed him, he can't hate the Jana'ata ingeneral for what Supaari VaGayjur and Hlavan Kitheri and seventeen other men did to him. Is this a moral triumph for the former priest?

6. What price does Danny Iron Horse pay for agreeing to do what feels like a wrong for the right reason? Eventually Sandoz comes to understand the pressures Danny caved in to, but he never misses an opportunity to rake him over the coals for it. What sort of pressures was Danny subjected to? And how does Sandoz make him pay for his decision?

7. History and religious literature are both packed with examples indicated that God's favor brings not wealth and happiness, but agony and torture. How could Sandoz, a Jesuit priest inculcated with stories of martyred saints, feel so betrayed by God? Is there a difference between what happened to Sandoz and what happened to martyred saints throughout history?

8. Sofia has had all the same traumas as Emilio but unlike Emilio, she did not have sympathetic supporters to help her overcome what happened to her. How does she survive her experiences? How would you describe her reaction to the traumas she has suffered? Why does she become so blind to the suffering of the remaining Jana'ata?

9. In the Coda, Emilio muses that we come into the world hardwired to hear noise and make language, to see a chaos of color and find patterns, to experience random events and make a coherent life out of them. Is it possible that the idea of God is simply a manifestation of that biological drive to impose structure on sensory input?

10. How would you compare Children of God to the first Sandoz/Rakhat book, The Sparrow? Some reviewers consider Children of God a much darker story. Do you agree?

11. Even when he appears to be getting on with his life, Sandoz is caught in the larger machinations of a battle between Fate and Providence. Which do you think wins out in the end? Is there a clear winner? Does this novel provide the answers to Sandoz's questions about faith?

12. This story forces us to face the task of accepting the less theological and more ethical possibility that God may be merely an idea, yet one that still drives a people to live like children of God who place as much faith in a universal family as they do in the divine. Do you think God is merely an idea or does God really exist?

13. Beyond its determination to see Sandoz fulfill his destiny on Rakhat with or without his consent, why does the Church conspire to kidnap Sandoz and send him back to Rakhat? What purpose does this act serve? What would your reaction be if you were in Sandoz's shoes? Does the result--Sandoz's reconnection with God and his coming to terms with what happened to him on the planet—justify his kidnapping? In other words, do the ends justify the means?

14. There were extraordinarily important children born because Emilio was on Rakhat, including Isaac, Ha'anala and Rukuei. So, whether it's Providence or dumb luck, Emilio was the catalyst for everything that happened on Rakhat in the generations that followed the first Jesuit mission. Do you think Emilio realizes this? Does this make the suffering he lived through worthwhile?

15. What do you think of Danny Iron Horse's plan to save the Jana'ata by establishing reservations? Do you think Danny's plan will work in the long run or will it be as disastrous as America's reservation system was for Native Americans?

16. Sandoz faces a dilemma at the end of The Sparrow. If he accepts the spiritual beauty and the religious rapture he experienced as real and true, then all the rest of it—the violence, the deaths, the maiming, the assaults, the humiliations--all that was God's will, too. Either God is vicious—deliberately causing evil or at least allowing it to happen--or Sandoz has been deluded. What do you think of the way Russell handled this dilemma in Children of God? What is the place of evil and pain in a world ruled by a benevolent God?

17. Isaac composes a song based on the DNA for humans, Jana'ata, and Runa. He says it is God's music. What do you think he means by that?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Children of the Jacaranda Tree 
Sahar Delijani, 2013
Atria Books
282 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476709093


Summary
Neda is born in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where her mother is allowed to nurse her for a few months before the arms of a guard appear at the cell door one day and, simply, take her away.

In another part of the city, three-year-old Omid witnesses the arrests of his political activist parents from his perch at their kitchen table, yogurt dripping from his fingertips. More than twenty years after the violent, bloody purge that took place inside Tehran’s prisons, Sheida learns that her father was one of those executed, that the silent void firmly planted between her and her mother all these years was not just the sad loss that comes with death, but the anguish and the horror of murder.

These are the Children of the Jacaranda Tree. Set in post-revolutionary Iran from 1983 to 2011, this stunning debut novel follows a group of mothers, fathers, children, and lovers, some related by blood, others brought together by the tide of history that washes over their lives. Finally, years later, it is the next generation that is left with the burden of the past and their country’s tenuous future as a new wave of protest and political strife begins.

Children of the Jacaranda Tree is an evocative portrait of three generations of men and women inspired by love and poetry, burning with idealism, chasing dreams of justice and freedom. Written in Sahar Delijani’s spellbinding prose, capturing the intimate side of revolution in a country where the weight of history is all around, it is a moving tribute to anyone who has ever answered its call. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1983
• Where—Tehren, Iran
• Raised—California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley
• Currently—lives in Turin, Italy

Sahar Delijani was born in Tehran's Evin Prison in 1983 and grew up in California, where she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published in a broad spectrum of literary journals and publications, including The Battered Suitcase, Tryst, Slice Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Perigee, Border Hopping, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Sangam Review. She was nominated for the 2010 and 2011 Pushcart Prize and was for a time a regular contributor to Iran-Emrooz (Iran of Today) Political and Cultural Journal. She makes her home with her husband in Turin, Italy. Children of the Jacaranda Tree is her first novel.

Book Reviews
Born in 1983 in an Iranian prison, Delijani delivers a fictionalized account of her harrowing origins.... After this strong opening in Evin Prison, Delijani turns from the powerful immediacy of Azar’s fight to the struggle outside, touching on the bleak sadness of four prisoners’ families over three repetitious sections.... A contrivance connects her to the Arab Spring through the son of a Revolutionary Guard, leaving it unclear if she’ll be able to fully transcend her bloody history.
Publishers Weekly


Filled with compelling characters and poetic language, this beautiful and poignant novel highlights the unbreakable bond between parent and child, and a people’s passionate dedication to their homeland, despite its many flaws.
Booklist


Children of the Jacaranda Tree is a beautifully rendered tale that reads almost like a collection of connected short stories, with characters’ perspectives and histories being unveiled as they intersect with one another.
BookPage


Iran-born Delijani pens a horrifying picture of life in her home country in this sad yet compelling first novel.... Delijani is exceptionally talented as a writer, and the subject matter is both compelling and timely, however some of her imagery is jarring and seems out of place, and the relentlessly depressing storyline may make some readers uncomfortable. Delijani falls back on her family's personal experience to write this searing and somber slice-of-life novel, centered around children whose parents were singled out for persecution by the Iranian government, and scores a win with her grittiness and uncompromising realism.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Delijani’s gorgeous novel is based, at least partially, on the author’s own experiences—she was born in Iran in 1983—and the stories of her family and friends who lived through the Revolution. How are we to read her interpretation of the events that she describes? Can an author ever separate her own story from the fictional world she creates? Should she? How does our own history and upbringing affect how we as readers interpret what we read?

2. The capital city Tehran is the backdrop for much of the action in this story, and is in some ways almost a character on its own. And yet some characters are drawn to the city, against all odds and in the face of all logic, while others are lured away from it, for education, for safety, for reasons they can’t explain. How does proximity to the city affect the decisions different characters make? In what ways does landscape shape who we become?

3. The characters we meet throughout this book often don’t immediately seem to be connected, but it is slowly revealed how intricately intertwined their stories are and how each of their experiences brings them close to each other as if they were a family. In what ways is this like real life? How is it different? How do you think history plays a role in creating bonds between people that otherwise will not have existed?

4. The children born after the Revolution are affected by what happened to their parents, and to their country, in different ways. And yet each, in their own way, wants what Donya wants, to “finish everything their parents left undone.” (p. 223) How do you see each of the characters of the younger generation wrestling with this in different ways? Do you think this is a universal theme? Does every generation essentially fight the same fight? How do you see this in other cultures and other periods in history?

5. “Truth,” Sheida says, when she finds out her mother has lied to her about how her father died, “cannot have so many sides.” (p. 181) Do you agree?

6. “If it’s anything that can easily be articulated in an article, then it’s an insult to put the same thoughts and ideas into the language of poetry,” Omid says. “It sullies its essence, because poetry is there to say what cannot be said.” (p. 220) Do you agree with his sentiments? How does this affect the form this story takes? Why do you think the author chose to write a novel based on her family’s experiences instead of a nonfiction piece? Do you think poetry or a novel can ever communicate a message better than nonfiction?

7. “We all have a tree inside of us,” Ismael has told Azar. “Finding it is just a matter of time.” (p. 36) What do you think this means? How do the characters reflect this? What does the jacaranda tree represent?

8. For each character, in one way or another, there's some hope that accompanies them at the end of their stories. The only character who is left with nothing is Donya. Why do you think this is?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Children's Book 
A.S. Byatt, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
688 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307473066


Summary
A spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.

When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.

But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.

Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Aka—Antonia Susan Drabble Byatt
• Birth—August 24, 1936
• Where—Sheffield, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University; undergraduate
   work, Bryn Mawr College (USA) and Oxford University
• Awards—Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in London, England, and France

A. S. Byatt is the author of numerous novels, including the quartet The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman; The Biographer's Tale; and Possession, which was awarded the Booker Prize.

She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels & Insects; five collections of shorter works, including The Matisse Stories and Little Black Book of Stories; and several works of nonfiction.

A distinguished critic as well as a novelist, she lives in London. (From the publisher and Barnes & Noble.)

She is the sister of author Margaret Drabble.

Book Reviews
While Byatt's engagement...is serious and deep, so much is stuffed into The Children's Book, that it can be hard to see the magic forest through for all the historical lumber—let alone the light at the end of the narrative tunnel.
Jennifer Schuessler - New York Times Book Review


Bristling with life and invention, it is a seductive work by an extraordinarily gifted writer…more compelling than the social and political history is the domestic drama among the dozen or more characters that Byatt draws in vivid detail…The Children's Book holds a mirror to the new middle class during an era of growing appreciation for children and greater sexual freedom for women and for the love that dares not speak its name. That Byatt marries this novel of ideas with such compelling characters testifies to her remarkable spinning energy.
Keith Donohue - Washington Post

A mesmerizing exploration of, well, everything: families, secrets, love, innocence, corruption, art, the desire for knowledge, nature, politics, war, sex, power.
Miami Herald

Byatt's overstuffed latest wanders from Victorian 1895 through the end of WWI, alighting on subjects as diverse as puppetry, socialism, women's suffrage and the Boer War, and suffers from an unaccountably large cast. The narrative centers on two deeply troubled families of the British artistic intelligentsia: the Fludds and the Wellwoods. Olive Wellwood, the matriarch, is an author of children's books, and their darkness hints at hidden family miseries. The Fludds' secrets are never completely exposed, but the suicidal fits of the father, a celebrated potter, and the disengaged sadness of the mother and children add up to a chilling family history. Byatt's interest in these artists lies with the pain their work indirectly causes their loved ones and the darkness their creations conceal and reveal. The other strongest thread in the story is sex; though the characters' social consciences tend toward the progressive, each of the characters' liaisons are damaging, turning high-minded talk into sinister predation. The novel's moments of magic and humanity, malignant as they may be, are too often interrupted by information dumps that show off Byatt's extensive research. Buried somewhere in here is a fine novel.
Publishers Weekly

A girl places some diminutive folk she's discovered into her doll house, then is imprisoned by a giant child herself. A prince discovers that he alone has no shadow. No, these aren't plot points in this masterly new work by the author of Possession but children's stories written by one of its protagonists, Olive Wellwood. There are, or course, actual children in the book—Olive's, with blustery banker-turned-crusader husband Humphrey; the Wellwood cousins; Julian, son of a keeper at the South Kensington Museum; Philip, the wayward boy discovered living surreptitiously in the museum, whom Olive brings home to her country estate; the family of brilliant but selfish master potter Benedict Fludd, who takes in the talented Philip as an unpaid apprentice; and more. Like the children in Olive's stories, these children have their notions quietly disabused; one small instant—say, a parent's overheard comment—and life is changed forever. It's the late 1800s, with new ideas in the air—and it's all rushing toward World War I. Verdict: Pitch perfect, stately, told with breathtakingly matter-of-fact acuteness, this is another winner for Byatt. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal

Byatt encompasses the paradigm shift from Victorian to modern England in a sweeping tale of four families. The deeper subject, however, is the complex, not always benign bond that attaches children to adults. As the novel opens in 1895, Olive Wellwood seems the model New Woman: popular author of books that reinvent fairy tales for contemporary children, tolerant wife to Fabian Society stalwart Humphry, devoted mother pregnant with her seventh baby. She takes in Philip Warren, a working-class boy who longs to make art, and connects him with Benedict Fludd, a master potter whose family belongs to the Wellwoods' progressive, artistic circle. As the long, dense narrative unfolds, we see the dark side of these idealists' lives. Three of the children Olive is raising are not hers with Humphry; in another household, magnificent works of art reveal repellent acts of incest. The gothic sexual interconnections recall Bloomsbury, and Olive is clearly a gloss on E. Nesbit, but this is no mere roman a clef. Byatt's concern is the vast area where utopian visions collide with human nature. Her adult subjects, she writes, "saw, in a way that earlier generations had not, that children were people, with identities and desires and intelligences . . . But they saw this, so many of them, out of a desire of their own for perpetual childhood." World War I forces everyone to grow up. Only one son of this socialist set becomes a conscientious objector; the others serve and most of them die. The pace, positively stately in the novel's first half, speeds up and becomes unduly hasty in the final section. But Byatt has painted her large cast of characters so richly that we care aboutall of them even when their fates are summarized in a sentence. In the last chapter, the variously battered survivors reunite and dream once more: "They could make magical plays for a new generation of children."Ambitious, accomplished and intelligent in the author's vintage manner.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Why is this novel called The Children's Book? Discuss the many possible meanings this title suggests.

2. How are fairy tales important to the novel—both to the story and to the characters themselves? Byatt has said in interviews that fairy tales and the children's books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as E. Nesbit's magical stories and The Wind in the Willows, inspired her to write the novel; do you see echoes of any of your favorite children's stories here?

3. We follow a huge cast of characters for nearly three decades over the course of the novel; whom did you care about most at the end? Many of the characters are not who they seem; how did your feelings about these characters change as the story developed?

4. What secrets are the many families in the novel—the Todefright Wellwoods, the Basil Wellwoods, the Cains, the Fludds, and even Elsie and Philip—hiding from each other and from outsiders? Which of the characters' betrayals did you find most shocking?

5. How does class constrain the characters in the novel? Olive and Elsie both marry outside their class—are they similar in any other ways? Which is the greater divide for them and the other characters in the novel: class or sex? How does Philip's absorption into the Wellwood circle differ from his sister's?

6. From the opening scene, pottery—the craft of it, its history, the contrast between fine art and factory-made pieces—is a recurring presence throughout the novel. Does Olive do the right thing in apprenticing Philip to Benedict Fludd? How does Byatt use the metaphor of clay to enrich the story?

7. A German puppeteer is a surprise guest at the Wellwoods' Midsummer party at the beginning of the novel. What role do puppets play in the novel, and what do they represent? How does the relationship between the German and British characters change as the novel unfolds?

8. What is the significance of the Tree House? What does it mean to Tom—and to his siblings?

9. Motherhood is a crucial part of the novel, and of Olive's stories; Olive herself is something of a "Mother Goose," as in her story "The Shrubbery" on pages 105–114. But is Olive a good mother? What about Violet, and the other mothers in the story?

10. How does the notion of lineage—of knowing who one's real parents are—affect the children in the novel? Does knowing "the truth" ultimately make much difference to the adults the children grow into—or do the people who actually raise them, and the way they are raised, make more of an impact?

11. A number of the adult characters are artists in one way or another; many of them—through their art or their actions—cause damage to the other people in their lives. Discuss how the artists in the novel both create and destroy.

12. Discuss the Fludd family. Why do you think Byatt chose not to divulge the specifics of Benedict's acts? What do you think he did?

13. In an essay she wrote for the London Times, Byatt wrote, "There is a strong case to be made that the Edwardians enjoyed school stories, magical tales, and tales of children alone in landscapes—woodland camps, secret expeditions—because they were themselves reluctant to grow up." How do the adults in the novel reflect this idea? What distinction do the characters make between childhood and adulthood? What distinction is Byatt making through the novel?

14. Several characters embrace the notion of free love, or of sex outside marriage. What is the result? Is it good for any of them? How do these attitudes resemble, or not, those of the 1960s in the United States?

15. How is Dorothy—who doesn't share her mother's love of stories, who is the serious daughter, and who becomes a doctor—different from her siblings? How does Humphry's revelation, and his betrayal, change her?

16. Several characters undergo transformations. Is Charles/Karl's the most obvious, or the least?

17. Olive writes stories for each of her seven children, which are bound into their own private books. As the novel unfolds, the story written for her oldest and most beloved son, Tom—"Tom Underground"—becomes more and more important. Why does he cling so tightly to this fairy tale? What does the metaphor of shadow signify? Why does he see the play his mother writes as a betrayal?

18. On page 562, Dorothy tells Tom that he's responsible for Philip's success. Is this accurate? Why or why not?

19. What is the significance of the stone with a hole that Tom picks up on page 586?

20. Why does Hedda try to destroy the Gloucester Candlestick? Is it a coincidence that she chose this item? How does the suffragette movement affect her and the other women in the story?

21. Reread Julian's poetry. How does it reflect upon the novel itself?

22. The Children's Book is a historical panorama that encompasses many political and social movements of the early twentieth century. Were you familiar with the figures and movements Byatt discusses: the Fabian Society, British socialists, women's rights, etc.? What is your understanding of their purpose in the novel?

23. The acknowledgments give a glimpse of the research that went into the novel; what subjects did you most enjoy learning about? How does Byatt's erudition enrich her storytelling?

24. The Great War seems to take nearly all of the characters by surprise; were you surprised by the scope of the damage it inflicted? Which character is most changed by the war? Did it change the way you saw the characters' sexual and personal secrets—and how they themselves saw their own lives?

25. Reread page 675, the last page of the novel. Is it a happy ending? What emotions are conjured by this reunion, which takes place in a far different setting than that which opens the novel—and around a bowl of soup?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Children's Crusade
Ann Packer, 2015
Scribner
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476710464


Summary
Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley.

Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children.

Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high.

Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family’s future.

One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story—Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn’t settled down—their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history.

Reviewers have praised Ann Packer’s "brilliant ear for character" (New York Times Book Review), her "naturalist’s vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented" (New Yorker), and the "utterly lifelike quality of her book’s everyday detail" (New York Times).

Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children’s Crusade, an extraordinary study in character, a rare and wise examination of the legacy of early life on adult children attempting to create successful families and identities of their own. This is Ann Packer’s most deeply affecting book yet. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Stanford, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—James Michener Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Northern California


Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer, perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed first novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Personal life
Packer was born in Stanford, California. She is the daughter of Stanford University professors Herbert Packer and Nancy (Huddleston) Packer.

Her mother was a student of novelist Wallace Stegner at the Stanford Writing Program; she later joined the Stanford faculty as professor of English and creative writing. Ann's father was on the faculty of Stanford Law School, where he highlighted the tensions between Due Process and Crime Control. In 1969, when Ann was 10 years old, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. He committed suicide three years later. Her brother, George Packer, is a novelist, journalist, and playwright.

Packer currently lives in Northern California with her two children.

Early career
Packer was an English major at Yale University, but only began writing fiction during her senior year. She moved to New York after college and took a job writing paperback cover copy at Ballantine Books. She attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop from 1986 to 1988, selling her first short story to The New Yorker a few weeks before receiving her M.F.A. degree.

In 1988 Packer moved to Madison, Wisconsin as a fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. During her two years in Wisconsin she published stories in literary magazines, including the story "Babies," which was included in the 1992 O. Henry Award prize stories collection. The New Yorker story, "Mendocino," became the title story of her first book, Mendocino and Other Stories, published by Chronicle Books in 1994.

Recent career
Packer spent almost 10 years writing The Dive From Clausen's Pier. Geri Thoma of the Elaine Markson Agency agreed to take on the book and sold it almost immediately to the editor Jordan Pavlin at Alfred A. Knopf. It was published in 2002 and became the first selection of the Good Morning America "Read This!" Book Club. It also received a Great Lakes Book Award, an American Library Association Award, and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. The novel was adapted into a 2005 cable television film. 

Packer’s next two books were also published by Knopf: a novel, Songs Without Words (2007), and a collection of short fiction, Swim Back to Me (2011). "Things Said or Done," one of the stories in Swim Back to Me, was included in the 2012 O. Henry Award prize stories collection. In 2015 another novel, The Children's Crusade, was published by Scribner.

In addition to fiction, Packer has written essays for the Washington Post, Vogue, Real Simple, and Oprah Magazine.  (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/13/2015.)

Book Reviews
Psychologically acute... provocative... Packer shows how unhappiness and happiness, selfishness and kindness, ricochet in complicated ways through relationships. This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love.
Marion Wink - New York Newsday


A more ambitious work that succeeds beautifully. The beauty comes from the rich characterizations that make each of the Blairs spring to life. We do not like them all equally, but ultimately we come to know them equally.... Packer’s dissection of domestic life reminds me of her elders in the field Anne Tyler and Louise Erdrich. But I’ve rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics. Packer is also a superb storyteller. The Children’s Crusade is as much plot-driven as character-driven. From its opening pages, the book seduces us into a world far from the present era, glides through ensuing decades, and finally drops us off in the 21st century.
Dan Cryer - San Francisco Chronicle


First-rate storytelling... Few writers are as emotionally astute at conveying subtle family ties as Packer.
Jane Ciabbattari - BBC.com


An absorbing novel which celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages.
People


A tour de force family drama… An engrossing saga… Packer brilliantly constructs the siblings’ narratives with both an appealing lightness and an arresting gravitas… Packer’s golden touch makes us care deeply for this memorable tribe.
Elle - Lisa Shea


An artful portrait of a California family.
Elissa Schappell - Vanity Fair


[W]ell-crafted family saga.... [Family members'] stories unfold through distinctive narrative styles...suited to the characters.... Packer is an accomplished storyteller whose characters are as real as those you might find around your dinner table. Readers will be taken with this vibrant novel.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]n engrossing story of the Blair family, their secrets, wounds, and struggles for second chances....  [A] flawless, compassionate portrayal of each family member at both their best and worst and shows what a strong hold the past has on the present. Literary fiction at its finest. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal


Told in the most elegant prose... extraordinarily compassionate... A masterful portrait of indelible family bonds. —Joanne Wilkson
Booklist


(Starred review.) Packer is an expert at complicated relationships; she likes to show more than two sides to every story. Who's responsible for the fracturing of the Blair family?... When you read Packer, you'll know you're in the hands of a writer who knows what she's doing. A marvelously absorbing novel.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Explain the significance of the title of the book. What is the "children’s crusade"? Did your interpretation of the title change as you read?

2. One of Rebecca’s friends tells her, "Your dad is like a mom" (p. 35). Discuss Bill and Penny’s parenting styles. What did you think of Penny as a mother?

3. Discuss the structure of The Children’s Crusade. What is the effect of allowing each of the Blair children to narrate parts of the story? Packer intersperses the chapters from the children’s points of view with chapters where events are recounted in the third person. Why do you think she chose to do so?

4. At the outset of The Children’s Crusade, all four of the Blair children were "united in [their] desire" to keep their childhood home, but they have their "separate rationalizations" (p. 160). Why are the children reluctant to sell the house? Do these rationalizations give you any insight into their personalities?

5. When Ryan and Sierra become romantically involved, the narrator tells the reader, "Robert had had a girlfriend for almost three months, but until today [Rebecca] hadn’t truly believed anyone in her family would ever love someone outside it" (p. 254). What does Ryan’s relationship with Sierra make Rebecca understand? Discuss the romantic relationships of the Blair children. How does their parents’ marriage influence those relationships?

6. During a Thanksgiving visit to Penny’s parents, the children put together a jigsaw puzzle that reveals an old photo of the family on the porch of Bill’s childhood home. The image "upset[s] her more than she’d expected" because Penny views it as "a warning about the danger of desire" (p. 228). How do Penny’s yearnings change as she settles into married life with Bill? Which of her longings do you think are the most dangerous? Do you agree with the sacrifices that Penny makes in order to realize her desires?

7. Rebecca’s analyst tells her, "We never get over it.... Having started out as children" (p. 171). What does she mean? Apply this statement to each of the Blair children. How have their childhood experiences shaped who they are as adults?

8. Were you surprised by Penny’s behavior at the Lawson recital? What prompts her to leave? Once the family is back home, "Bill saw that the children were defining the moment as a rescue operation rather than the act of capture it actually was" (p. 140). Do you think, like Bill, that Penny is being cornered or, like the children, that she’s being saved?

9. At Ryan’s birthday, James reacts very strongly to Penny’s assertion that Bill isn’t supportive of her work. Do you think that James is justified? Why do you think that James destroys Penny’s watercolor?

10. Penny believes she and James "ruin things" (p. 415). Do you agree with her? In what ways are they forces of destruction? How pronounced are the differences between Penny and James, particularly in the way that they view family obligations?

11. Describe the Barn. What prompts James to join it? How does being part of the Barn change James? Why do you think he is reluctant to tell his siblings about it?

12. What is the significance of the three capital Rs that Bill scratches into the concrete foundation of his shed? How does the presence of the carving bring Bill and Penny closer together? How does it comfort Robert?

13. Discuss Penny’s artwork. From the descriptions of her work and the reactions of others to it, do you think she’s a talented artist? The narrator says, "It was no wonder Penny was so protective of her art; she’d needed to protect it for most of her life" (p. 305). What has Penny needed to protect her artwork from? Why is creating art so important to Penny?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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China Dolls 
Lisa See, 2014
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812992892


Summary
It’s 1938 in San Francisco: a world’s fair is preparing to open on Treasure Island, a war is brewing overseas, and the city is alive with possibilities.

Grace, Helen, and Ruby, three young women from very different backgrounds, meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. Grace Lee, an American-born Chinese girl, has fled the Midwest with nothing but heartache, talent, and a pair of dancing shoes. Helen Fong lives with her extended family in Chinatown, where her traditional parents insist that she guard her reputation like a piece of jade. The stunning Ruby Tom challenges the boundaries of convention at every turn with her defiant attitude and no-holds-barred ambition.
 
The girls become fast friends, relying on one another through unexpected challenges and shifting fortunes. When their dark secrets are exposed and the invisible thread of fate binds them even tighter, they find the strength and resilience to reach for their dreams.

But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 18, 1955
• Where—Paris, France
• Education—B.A., Loyola Marymount University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Lisa See is an American writer and novelist. Her Chinese-American family (See has one Chinese great-grandparent) has had a great impact on her life and work. Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995) and the novels Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), Dragon Bones (2003), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007), Shanghai Girls (2009), which made it to the 2010 New York Times bestseller list, and China Dolls (2014).

Flower Net, The Interior, and Dragon Bones make up the Red Princess mystery series. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love focus on the lives of Chinese women in the 19th and 17th centuries respectively. Shanghai Girls chronicles the lives of two sisters who come to Los Angeles in arranged marriages and face, among other things, the pressures put on Chinese-Americans during the anti-Communist mania of the 1950s. See published a sequel titled Dreams of Joy.

Writing under the pen name Monica Highland, See, her mother Carolyn See, and John Espey, published three novels: Lotus Land (1983), 110 Shanghai Road (1986), and Greetings from Southern California (1988).

Biography
Lisa See was born in Paris but has spent many years in Los Angeles, especially Los Angeles Chinatown. Her mother, Carolyn See, is also a writer and novelist. Her autobiography provides insight into her daughter's life. Lisa See graduated with a B.A. from Loyola Marymount University in 1979.

See was West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly (1983–1996); has written articles for Vogue, Self, and More; has written the libretto for the opera based on On Gold Mountain, and has helped develop the Family Discovery Gallery for the Autry Museum, which depicts 1930s Los Angeles from the perspective of her father as a seven-year-old boy. Her exhibition On Gold Mountain: A Chinese American Experience was featured in the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, and the Smithsonian. See is also a public speaker.

She has written for and led in many cultural events emphasizing the importance of Los Angeles and Chinatown. Among her awards and recognitions are the Organization of Chinese Americans Women's 2001 award as National Woman of the Year and the 2003 History Makers Award presented by the Chinese American Museum. See has served as a Los Angeles City Commissioner. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2014.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [T]hree young women, Grace, Helen, and Ruby, meet and form an unlikely but strong bond in San Francisco in 1938.... The story alternates between their viewpoints, with each woman’s voice strong and dynamic, developing a multilayered richness as it progresses. The depth of See’s characters and her winning prose makes this book a wonderful journey through love and loss.
Publishers Weekly


In 1938, three friends are competing for a single job as showgirl on San Francisco's Chop Suey Circuit, the glittery underworld of all-Asian revues.... With the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans are being interned, among them Ruby. Did one of her friends betray her?
Library Journal


The lives of three young Chinese-American women...intersect in valuable and often violent ways in... pre-WWII San Francisco.... In her impeccably researched and distinctive historical saga of desire and ambition, betrayal and revenge set amid the glitz and debauchery of burlesque entertainment..., See  again lavishly explores the thorny intricacies of female friendships.
Booklist

The episodic and creaky plot staggers under the weight of See's considerable research into the careers and lifestyles of the actual stars of the all-Asian revue craze of the 1930s and '40s. Still, a welcome spotlight on an overlooked segment of showbiz history.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion. Questions
1. The novel opens with the below quotation:

Only three things cannot be long hidden:
the sun
the moon
and the truth.

What do you think this quotation means in the context of China Dolls? Lisa’s novel is filled with secrets—some hidden and not revealed until late in the novel. What were the most important ones? Why are they hidden? Why are they secrets? Do you agree with how and when they were revealed?

2. “China doll” or “China dolls” are phrases used often in the novel. What are the most important meanings behind this phrase? Which are positive? Which are negative?

3. It seems as if there’s a fine line between the blessings of family and the burdens of family. How is that line crossed in each girl’s family? What do you think Lisa is specifically saying about mothers and fathers and their relationships with their children in China Dolls?

4. Grace’s father brutally abuses her when she is a young girl. Although Lisa never excuses his behavior, how does she gradually reveal to the reader some of the factors that have made him the man he is? Do you ever accept him for who he is?

5. What aspects of Helen’s life make her situation fundamentally different from that of the other girls? Helen’s life in the compound with her family has many obvious negative aspects. Are there positive aspects to the compound as well?

6. How does Grace’s ambition differ from that of Ruby’s?

7. Is it fair to be critical of the way Joe and Ruby try to hide their early relationship from Grace? Does this betrayal ultimately help Grace in some respects?

8. What important elements does Eddie bring to the novel? How would you characterize Helen’s relationship with him?

9. How did you react to the way Ruby seeks to hide her Japanese ancestry as WWII begins? How do you feel about her relationship with her parents? Do you think Ruby’s parents are Japanese spies? Can you tell one way or another? Does it matter to you whether they are verifiably innocent or guilty?

10. What personal effect does World War II have on each of the characters?

11. While there are big betrayals in the novel, there are also moments of great resiliency and hope as the girls help each other and others. In what ways do Grace, Helen, and Ruby support each other?

12. Grace, Helen, and Ruby face many varieties of prejudice, as well as sexism. How do their reactions differ, and how are they similar?

13. Helen’s narratives are filled with traditional Chinese sayings. Which are the most important in the novel and why?

14. Perhaps more than in any of her other novels, Lisa has written in great detail about clothes and fashion. Why do you think she did that and what was she trying to say?

15. The idea of losing face is a recurring concern in China Dolls, but the main characters tend to differ in how they understand it. For example, Grace feels that she can’t comfort Ruby in her darkest hour, because she doesn’t want her friend to lose face in her presence. What are some other instances where you see their differing viewpoints, and what do those moments say about each character?

16. Do you think Grace’s relationship with Joe is significantly different when he returns at the end of the novel? If so, how? In what ways has Grace changed? In what ways has Joe changed? Or have either of them changed?

17. How is Helen’s betrayal of Ruby different from her betrayal of Grace? Which betrayal is worse? Why?

18. “The Darkness of Love” is the chapter title for Ruby’s account of the big confrontation scene at the end of China Dolls. What do you think this phrase means in relation to this chapter? What is its importance to the novel as a whole?

19. Would the final confrontation scene have been different if it had been entirely narrated by Grace? Or by Helen?

20. At the end of China Dolls, Tommy’s daughter Annie criticizes Grace’s career as one that promoted racial stereotypes. Is this criticism fair? Why or why not?
(Quesitons from the author's website.)

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China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy 2)
Kevin Kwan, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804172066


Summary
t’s the eve of Rachel Chu’s wedding, and she should be over the moon.

She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond, a wedding dress she loves, and a fiancé willing to thwart his meddling relatives and give up one of the biggest fortunes in Asia in order to marry her.

Still, Rachel mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won’t be there to walk her down the aisle. 

Then a chance accident reveals his identity.

Suddenly, Rachel is drawn into a dizzying world of Shanghai splendor, a world where people attend church in a penthouse, where exotic cars race down the boulevard, and where people aren’t just crazy rich … they’re China rich. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1973-74
• Where—Singapore
• Raised—Clear Lake, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Houston-Clear Lake; B.F.A., Parsons School of Design
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Kevin Kwan is a Singaporean-American novelist best known for his satirical Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy (2013-17). He was born in Singapore, the youngest of three boys, into an established, old-wealth Chinese family.

Background and early years
His great-grandfather, Oh Sian Guan, was a founding director of Singapore's oldest bank, the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation. His paternal grandfather, Dr. Arthur Kwan Pah Chien, was an ophthalmologist who became Singapore's first Western-trained specialist and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his philanthropic efforts. His maternal grandfather, Rev. Paul Hang Sing Hon, founded the Hinghwa Methodist Church. Kwan is also related to Hong Kong-born American actress Nancy Kwan.

As a young boy, Kwan lived in Singapore with his paternal grandparents and attended the Anglo-Chinese School. When he was 11, his father, an engineer, and mother, a pianist, moved the family to the U.S., eventually landing in Clear Lake, Texas, where Kwan graduated from high school at the age of 16. Kwan earned a B.A. in Media Studies from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, after which he moved to Manhattan to attend Parsons School of Design to pursue a B.F.A. in Photography.

Career
Staying in New York, Kwan worked for Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, and Tibor Kalman's design firm M & Co. In 2000, Kwan established his own creative studio; his clients have included Ted.com, Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Times.

In 2007, Kwan edited I Was Cuba, a photographic "memoir" of Cuba; in 2008 he co-authored with Deborah Aaronson an advice book, Luck: The Essential Guide.

Then, in 2009, while caring for his dying father, Kwan began to conceive of Crazy Rich Asians. He and his father reminisced about their life in Singapore while driving to and from medical appointments. Hoping to capture those memories, Kwan began writing them down in story form.

Living in the U.S. since 1985, Kwan's view of Asia had become westernized—he has said he feels like "an outsider looking in." His goal was to change the stereotypical perception of wealthy Asians' conspicuous consumption, refocusing instead on old-wealth families more like his own, families that exude "style and taste [and] have been quietly going about their lives for generations."

Four years later, in 2013, Kwan published Crazy Rich Asians, the first volume of what would become his trilogy. Two years later, in 2015, he released China Rich Girlfriend and, in 2017, Rich People's Problems. In 2018 the first book of the trilogy was released as a film and became an immediate box office hit.

In August 2018, Amazon Studios ordered a new drama series from Kwan and STX Entertainment. The as yet unnamed series is to be set in Hong Kong and will follow the "most influential and powerful family" along with their business empire.

Recognition
In 2014, Kwan was named as one of the "Five Writers to Watch" on the list of Hollywood's Most Powerful Authors published by The Hollywood Reporter. In 2018, he made Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people; that same year he was also inducted into The Asian Hall of Fame. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/18/2018.)

Book Reviews
Kevin Kwan’s brand of giddy wealth porn arrived in 2013 with Crazy Rich Asians, not a moment too soon.… China Rich Girlfriend [is] the second volume in what has been projected as a gossipy, good-humored trilogy that will follow the richest old families of Singapore, Hong Kong and a few from mainland China. They join in a single shared pursuit: watching in horror as their youngest generations squander money in ways so staggering that Western show-offs look like pikers by comparison.… Mr. Kwan has good aim with his fashion world- and ego-skewering shivs. And regardless of how reality-based these characters may be, he has his style references down cold.… [Keeps] readers surprised and inquisitive.… Snarky.… Wicked.… Funny.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


In this year's best beach reading, Jane Austen meets Singapore.… There's no timely cocktail I'd rather recommend than China Rich Girlfriend.… As frothy as the egg whites on the sort of cocktail you should drink while reading Kwan's books. But if you need to assuage your guilt about summer reading with a little intellectual patina, Kwan has you covered too; his peek into this rarified world is spiked with tart observations about old and new money, the nuances of racism and the way they all interact.… Fizzy, highly entertaining.
Washington Post


As the real China rich dig their nails into the world of the wealthy and wasteful, Kwan sharpens his with another acerbic yet affectionate examination of Asian uber-elite social mores, still largely invisible in Western popular culture.… The novel is filled with jaw-dropping accounts of opulence… and showdowns worthy of an episode of "Gossip Girl."… China Rich Girlfriend is a crazy parade through the lives of the aspirational elite. It's also a rich portrait of Asia's real obsession with consumerism and its economic rise, one whose trajectory, like Kwan's, is not yet complete.
Nicole Lee - Los Angeles Times


What happens when the young woman destined to marry Asia’s most eligible bachelor gets derailed by a shocking family secret? That’s what Kwan examines in this amusing, whirlwind novel about Rachel Chu, who discovers her long-lost father and falls headlong into a Shanghai—the fashion! the social climbing! the secrets!—wilder than her wildest dreams.
Miami Herald


Take a Jane Austen novel, combine it with Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and set it in the glittering capitals of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. What have you got? This deliciously fun follow-up to Kwan's bestselling Crazy Rich Asians… a field guide to Asia's uberwealthy echelon and comic satire at its best.
People Magazine


The summer's funniest beach read. When Crazy Rich Asians hit shelves in peak beach-read season two summers ago, readers ate up its urestrained and uproarious fictional depictions of the opulent lives of Asia's super elite.… China Rich Girlfriend follow[s] the same multitentacled clan and their world-traveling, high-spending, and backstabbing antics.
Lauren Christensen - Vanity Fair


Welcome to the world of China Rich Girlfriend, which picks up a few years after the events of Kevin Kwan's frothy 2013 best-seller, Crazy Rich Asians. In accordance with the Law of Sequels, it's more over-the-top than its predecessor—which is saying something.… [E]ntertaining.… [B]uoyant.
Entertainment Weekly


The novel offers a second helping of the social-climbing, jet-setting, wildly scandalous world that propelled Kwan's first book to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. With one exception—somehow it manages to outstrip the earlier work's excesses.
Women's Wear Daily


The much-anticipated sequel to Crazy Rich Asians (a great summer read in its own right), China Rich Girlfriend continues the tale of Rachel Chu and her upcoming nuptials to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia.… With the same hilarity and scandalous narrative as the first novel, China Rich Girlfriend will not disappoint both fans and newcomers to the series.
Town & Country


(Starred review) Kwan’s latest follows in the footsteps of his wildly imaginative Crazy Rich Asians.… Those who enjoy splendid writing and getting a glimpse at how the other half… lives will delight in this book.
Library Journal


Lovers of clothes, cuisine, and cars will find themselves at home in Kwan’s second smart and snarky send-up of the Chinese jet set. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist


Kwan returns with an equally good-natured, catty-as-hell sequel to his bestselling roman a clef about China's new and old money dynasties. For those not cued in, Kwan's tone is breakneck and utterly disarming—part Oscar Wilde…. Hilarious…. Over-the-top and hard to stop.
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 CHINA RICH GIRLFRIEND … then take off on your own:

1. Consider the book's title: what does "China rich" mean? How is it different (or is it...?) from "Singapore rich" where Crazy Rich Asians (CRA) takes place?

2. Like the previous book, China Rich Girlfriend is filled with jaw-dropping opulence. Which incident, or which character, dropped your jaw more than others?

3. In what way do Rachel and Nick serve as (somewhat) objective observers into this world of crazy conspicuous consumption? To what degree are their values different from the characters who live in Asia? Do they exude a sense of superiority over the others?

4. Poor Rachel has her trouble with secondary mothers: Eleanor, her future mother-in-law, and Shaoyen, her step-mother. Both make life difficult for Rachel. How do their attitudes change and are those changes genuine?

5. Talk about the ins & outs of Rachel's relationship with her half-brother Carlton.

6. What do you make of Kitty Pong, her social climbing and attempts to fit in with the Straits Chinese? Is she a sympathetic character?

7. How have events transformed Astrid's husband, Michael? Is he due a "comeuppance?"

8. Overall, what do you think of these characters? Is Kevin Kwan presenting them critically, satirically, lovingly, humorously? All or none of those?

9. Is there a take-away from this novel and, if you've read CRA, from that novel as well? If so, what? Or are these books simply one of those guilty pleasures that one loves to indulge in?

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

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