Silver Sparrow
Summary: With the novel’s opening line, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.
DISCUSSION GUIDES
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Running
Summary: When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruiz’s father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. A novel about waking up and standing up, and what happens when you stop seeing your dad as your hero—while the whole country is watching.
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The Mountains Sing
Summary: Steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s #ownvoices novel, The Mountains Sing, shares a multigenerational story—showing us the human costs of conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people, along with the true power of kindness and hope.
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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Summary: A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.
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Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel
Summary: Over the course of one summer that begins with a shocking tragedy, three generations of the Adler family grapple with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets in this stunning debut novel.
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Every Bone a Prayer
Summary: The story of one tough-as-nails girl whose choices are few but whose imagination is boundless, and whose coping becomes a battle cry for everyone around her.
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The Death of Vivek Oji: A Novel
Summary: Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.
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Mighty Justice: My Life in Civil Rights
Summary: Meet Dovey Johnson Roundtree—the trailblazing civil rights attorney who “proved . . . a single individual can turn the tides of history,” as Michelle Obama said—and discover the remarkable true story of a visionary woman we should all know more about.
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The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
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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Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
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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Tigers, Not Daughters
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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Deacon King Kong: A Novel
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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Ordinary Girls: A Memoir
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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Such a Fun Age
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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The Vanishing Half: A Novel
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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How to Be an Antiracist
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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The Bicycle Man
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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The Last Flight: A Novel
Summary: A chance meeting in an airport bar offers two women, with equally dire circumstances, one last chance to disappear.
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Afterlife
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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Untamed
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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