DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 1.
Happy Hour: A Novel
Summary: Happy Hour is a book that could easily be dismissed as a boozy, hedonistic memoir of a summer. Yet “being easily dismissed” is precisely what it’s about.
- 2.
Beautiful World, Where Are You: A Novel
Summary: Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young―but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
- 3.
The Book of Atlantis Black: The Search for a Sister Gone Missing
Summary: The Book of Atlantis Black will have you questioning facts, rooting for secrets, and asking what it means to know the truth.
- 4.
When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky
Summary: Louise Erdrich meets Karen Russell in this deliciously strange and daringly original novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble: An eclectic cast of characters—both real and ghostly—converge at an amusement park in Nashville, 1926.
- 5.
What Storm, What Thunder
Summary: Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and―at the same time―an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.
- 6.
Flesh & Blood: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life: A Memoir
Summary: Honest, warm, and witty, this memoir reads like a chat with a dear friend sharing her insight and her vulnerabilities and taking us along as she heals. Complete with family stories over cocktails and a new friend named Claude, who happens to be a praying mantis.
- 7.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Summary: The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist.
- 8.
The Redemption of Bobby Love: A Story of Faith, Family, and Justice
Summary: The inspiring, dramatic, and heartwarming true account of an escaped convict and his wife of thirty-five plus years who never knew his secret, which captured the imaginations of millions on Humans of New York.
- 9.
A House Is a Body: Stories
Summary: A finalist for a PEN award and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, this collection provides insight into small but intense moments of beauty, pain, and power in twelve riveting short stories set in the United States and India.
- 10.
Greenlights
Summary: From the Academy Award-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.
- 11.
His Only Wife
Summary: When Afi agrees to an arranged marriage with a wealthy man she has never met, she thinks she understands the rules she must play by in her home of Ghana. But she just might break them all in this must-read, captivating tale that questions issues of independence and identity. A Reese’s Book Club pick.
- 12.
Queen Move (All the King's Men Series Book 3)
Summary: From Wall Street Journal, USA Today Bestselling and RITA® Award-winning Author Kennedy Ryan, comes a captivating second chance romance like only she can deliver…
- 13.
The Last Tiara
Summary: A moving story of a young female architect in post-World War II Manhattan, who stumbles upon a hidden treasure and begins a journey to discovering her mother’s life during the fall of the Romanovs.
- 14.
All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
Summary: Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.
- 15.
The Nickel Boys: A Novel
Summary: In this Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling follow-up to The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
- 16.
From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash Series)
Summary: Captivating and action-packed, From Blood and Ash is a sexy, addictive, and unexpected fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Laura Thalassa.
- 17.
Finding Napoleon
Summary: With its charming adaptation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s real attempt to write a novel, Finding Napoleon offers a fresh take on Europe’s most powerful man after he’s lost everything. A forgotten woman of history―his last lover, the audacious Countess Albine―helps narrate their tale of intrigue, love, and betrayal during exile on desolate St. Helena Island.
- 18.
The Green Beach File
Summary: An ecological mystery for those who love the great outdoors and reading at the beach! The main character “Jenn is a pleasantly quirky heroine who takes ‘tree hugging’ to a whole new level.” Kirkus Reviews. Your book group members will enjoy discussing the serious environmental issues raised in this ecological mystery, and laughing about the lighthearted issues raised by Jenn’s potential romance.
- 19.
My Monticello: Fiction
Summary: My Monticello is a debut collection of short stories and a gripping novella in which a diverse cast of characters struggle to find a sense of belonging in America. In the title novella, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings leads her grandmother and neighbors to seek refuge at Jefferson’s estate when a white militia drives them out of their homes during a great unraveling.
- 20.
Afterparties: Stories
Summary: This short story collection offering a portrait of Cambodian-American life, diving deep into queer and immigrant communites. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family.
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