Discussion Guides

1.
The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
by Emma Copley Eisenberg
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Summary: In the early evening of June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were killed in an isolated clearing in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though suspicion was cast on a succession of local men. In The Third Rainbow Girl, Eisenberg follows the threads of this crime through the complex history of Appalachia, forming a searing portrait of America and its divisions of gender and class, and of its violence.
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2.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur
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Summary: On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come. A daughter's tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.
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3.
Tigers, Not Daughters
by Samantha Mabry
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Summary: The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy father and their San Antonio neighborhood. After her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three sisters are still consumed by grief and haunted by Ana’s memory. But then strange things start happening around the house. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana is trying to send them a message—and what exactly she’s trying to say. Samantha Mabry weaves an aching, magical novel that is part family drama, part ghost story, and part love story.
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4.
Deacon King Kong: A Novel
by James McBride
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Summary: In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of DEACON KING KONG.
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5.
Ordinary Girls: A Memoir
by Jaquira Díaz
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Summary: In Ordinary Girls—one of the most anticipated books of the year—Jaquira Díaz writes a fierce and eloquent memoir of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. Her family split apart. Her mother battled schizophrenia and addiction. Her own life was upended by violence and sexual assault. And she searched for support for her burgeoning sexual identity. But with refreshing honesty and vivid lyricism, Jaquira Díaz maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.
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6.
Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
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Summary: A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
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7.
The Vanishing Half: A Novel
by Brit Bennett
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Summary: "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett is one of the most talked about books of the year -- a stunning page-turner about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds: one black, and one white. It’s a powerful story about family, compassion, identity and roots.
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8.
How to Be an Antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi
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Summary: Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.
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9.
The Bicycle Man
by Bob Deans
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Summary: This is a story of friendship. This is a story of hope. It’s the story of an era that helped shape this country and define our times, told through one boy’s extraordinary journey through his own small patch of America. And it’s the story of a debt he can never repay to someone he knows only as The Bicycle Man.
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10.
The Last Flight: A Novel
by Julie Clark
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Summary: A chance meeting in an airport bar offers two women, with equally dire circumstances, one last chance to disappear.
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11.
Afterlife
by Julia Alvarez
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Summary: Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including—maybe especially—members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?
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12.
Untamed
by Glennon Doyle
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Summary: In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, Glennon Doyle, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us.
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13.
Tiny Imperfections
by Alli Frank
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Summary: At thirty-nine, Josie Bordelon has left behind her career as the "it" black beauty of the '90s and is now the director of admissions at San Francisco's most sought after private school. While managing the shenanigans of over-anxious parents at school, Josie is also trying to keep her seventeen-year-old daughter from making the same mistakes she did.
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14.
Finding Mrs. Ford: A Novel
by Deborah Goodrich Royce
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Summary: On a sunny summer morning by the sea in New England, Susan Ford’s cocoon of privilege is threatened when an Iraqi man from her distant past boards a plane in Baghdad to come find her.
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15.
Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens
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Summary: A #1 New York Times Best Seller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
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16.
Saint X: A Novel
by Alexis Schaitkin
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Summary: Hailed as a “marvel of a book” and “brilliant and unflinching,” Alexis Schaitkin’s stunning debut, Saint X, is a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters never truly given the chance to know one another.
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17.
The Giver of Stars: A Novel
by Jojo Moyes
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Summary: From the author of Me Before You, set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.
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18.
Little Sister: A Memoir
by Patricia Walsh Chadwick
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Summary: Little Sister is the captivating and beautifully written memoir of a young woman who is reared in a religious cult in Massachusetts during the 1950s and 1960’s and how she managed to leave and become a successful businesswoman – a story of resilience and hope.
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19.
Everywhere You Don't Belong
by Gabriel Bump
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Summary: Raised by his grandmother in Chicago’s South Side, young Claude McKay Love hopes going away to college in Missouri will help him escape the havoc of his life there, but he discovers in this coming-of-age story that it’s not so easy to leave your past behind—or find a safe place to land.
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20.
Recipe for a Perfect Wife: A Novel
by Karma Brown
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Summary: In this captivating dual narrative novel, a modern-day woman discovers remarkable parallels between her own life and her home’s previous owner, a quintessential 1950s housewife whose hidden notes inspire her to discover what it means to be a wife fighting for her place in a patriarchal society.
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