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Lisa See Book Group Event

September 30, 2026

While talking about books with other readers enhances the reading experience, I love when the conversation includes an author as well. My book group was lucky enough to have Nadia Hashimi join us on Monday night to discuss her latest novel, CITY OF WIDOWS (see the photo above). The book follows three characters as the calendar is turning to August 31, 2021, when we were evacuating people from Afghanistan. For those who worked with the United States --- and those who spoke out against the Taliban --- there is a race to get on one of the final US flights leaving the country.

Jonathan Santlofer, author of Ten Perfect Guests

When celebrated and enigmatic artist Victor D'Arcangelo dies unexpectedly, his nearest and dearest receive an irresistible summons: attend his weekend memorial --- or forfeit their inheritance. But once they arrive, the paradise begins to feel more like a prison. Someone knows their secrets. Someone wants revenge. As the weekend spirals into chaos, one question hangs in the sultry, tropical air: Who, if anyone, will survive? This time, the masterpiece may be murder.

Robert Kolker, author of The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia

In Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, there lived a family with nine siblings, the youngest a girl named Barb. As the older children headed off to college, only Barb was home to see their mother fall under a gothic spell, changing into someone she didn’t recognize. We learn that this family has a genetic mutation that causes dementia, but with an especially cruel twist. As early as their 40s, formerly loving parents and hard-driving executives will lose their jobs, have affairs, take up drinking, and become people their families hardly know. Their former personalities seem to vanish --- and there is a 50-50 chance that it will happen to their children, too. THE VANISHING FAMILY unfolds like a heartbreaking thriller as the siblings begin to realize that what happened to their mother is happening to them.

James Patterson, author of The Munich Affair

Spanning a century, THE MUNICH AFFAIR is set in motion by the murder of Adolf Hitler's young lover by his own hand. A determined detective, Thomas Bauer, obsessively pursues Hitler --- putting Bauer’s Jewish wife and children in grave danger. A courageous journalist, Fritz Gerlich, writes story after story detailing the murder --- making Gerlich a target for Hitler’s Gestapo. An American professor, Eleanor Robbins, picks up the trail of evidence from present-day Neo-Nazis guarding the Führer’s long-held secrets to the death.

Jodi Picoult, author of Hollow Bones

On September 11, 2001, when Molly Fitzgerald was only two months old, her mother went to an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came home. Her father and the stepmother who raised her couldn’t have loved her more, but she still grew up with a healthy dread of disasters. Now an adult, Molly runs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness, mapping out ways to save lives during storms, epidemics and airplane crashes. She and her husband, Jesse --- a police polygraph expert with his own history of crisis --- have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world. But then the unexpected upends their new marriage, leading them both to question everything they thought they knew.

Min Jin Lee, author of American Hagwon

The men, women and children in AMERICAN HAGWON struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children find their lives upended --- first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California --- where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures.

Editorial Content for American Hagwon

Teaser

The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of PACHINKO returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.

Promo

The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of PACHINKO returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.

About the Book

The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of PACHINKO returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.

In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women and children in AMERICAN HAGWON struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children --- Bo, DH and Mido --- find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California --- where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.

In AMERICAN HAGWON, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice --- for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers --- is a kind of prayer.

Editorial Content for The Barman of the Ritz

Teaser

A celebrated bartender at the Ritz Hotel during the Nazi occupation of Paris harbors a dangerous secret in this international bestseller based on a true story.

Promo

A celebrated bartender at the Ritz Hotel during the Nazi occupation of Paris harbors a dangerous secret in this international bestseller based on a true story.

About the Book

A celebrated bartender at the Ritz Hotel during the Nazi occupation of Paris harbors a dangerous secret in this “magnificent” (ELLE), “brilliant” (Le Parisien) international bestseller based on a true story.

Paris, 1940. The Nazis have descended on Paris, and the Occupation has begun. Businesses across the city have shuttered, but the legendary Ritz Hotel remains open, its dazzling lights still burning bright on the Place Vendôme. When it becomes the favorite watering hole of the occupying forces, its barman, Frank Meier, is forced to adapt to a new clientele. But Frank has a secret: he is Jewish.

Tensions rise as the war progresses, but Frank refuses to leave his post behind the bar. Unbeknownst to the Nazi officers he serves night after night, Frank forms precarious alliances with unlikely accomplices in order to save other Jewish families in the city and keep his loved ones alive.

Inspired by real events, with the highest of stakes and a brilliant protagonist, THE BARMAN OF THE RITZ is a heady cocktail of history and fiction set in one of Paris’s most glamorous places, diving deep into the impossible choices of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.

Editorial Content for Big Little Truths

Teaser

In this highly anticipated sequel to BIG LITTLE LIES, Liane Moriarty examines the complexities of modern women’s lives, shining light on family dynamics and long-hidden truths with wit and compassion.

Promo

In this highly anticipated sequel to BIG LITTLE LIES, Liane Moriarty examines the complexities of modern women’s lives, shining light on family dynamics and long-hidden truths with wit and compassion.

About the Book

In this highly anticipated sequel, Liane Moriarty examines the complexities of modern women’s lives, shining light on family dynamics and long-hidden truths with wit and compassion. Whether you’ve read BIG LITTLE LIES or not, this is the perfect novel for longtime fans and new readers alike.

The last time we saw the women of BIG LITTLE LIES --- Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie --- their children were five years old. If someone wasn’t invited to a birthday party, feelings were hurt. But 10 years have passed, and the kids are in high school, navigating all of the drama that accompanies teendom (goodbye playdates, hello drugs, sex and alcohol).

When the high school principal receives a threatening package in the mail, word quickly spreads throughout the community, and parents are in an uproar. But Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie have other things to worry about. Celeste’s mother-in-law, Mary Louise, is behaving oddly. Is it old-age forgetfulness and bluntness, or something more sinister? Madeline is facing perhaps the biggest challenge of her life, Jane is at a dangerous fork in her marriage, Bonnie has realized there’s only so much solace in yoga. And Renata? Renata is living her best life --- revenge is sweet.

When a stranger begins lurking around the school asking supposedly innocent questions, this tightly connected group of women finally must face the full repercussions of the big little truths they have and haven’t shared with their kids. Because the stakes are now much higher than not being invited to an ice-skating party --- and the ice has never been thinner for any of them.