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May 16, 2026

My book group has a lively group chat going between meetings. We often talk about whatever we are reading both for the group and for “outside” reading. Our next read is YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke. These past weeks, there have been lots of thoughts about the characters, the action, trad wives, and much more. I am really looking forward to our discussion in early June!

I wonder how many of you do this. It’s amusing to see what our book tribe talks about between meetings. There are times when I think that our chat has the tone of a great drama or sitcom.

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Laurie Frankel, author of Enormous Wings

At 77, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas --- that would be her three grown children --- but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant. As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubberneckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make --- and some she’s not allowed to make.

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Portia Elan, author of Homebound

It’s 1983, and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s 19, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete --- one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness. Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection --- and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.

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Gillian McAllister, author of Caller Unknown

With Lucy about to leave home for university, she and her mother, Simone, depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don’t tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal. Though Simone’s husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can’t take any chances. So that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up. What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn’t want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable. A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. 

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Douglas Stuart, author of John of John

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. He returns to the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother. Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.

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Elizabeth Strout, author of The Things We Never Say

Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to 11th graders. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad --- at himself and the people around him --- and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear --- and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

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Kathryn Stockett, author of The Calamity Club

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, 11-year-old Meg Lefleur is now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers that her sister's seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates --- and Meg’s --- converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women's freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences. 

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Editorial Content for The Calamity Club

Book

The Calamity Club

Teaser

The multimillion-copy-selling author of THE HELP returns with a bold, bighearted novel about a group of unbreakable women fighting for what’s rightfully theirs --- and the power of friendship to change everything.

Promo

The multimillion-copy-selling author of THE HELP returns with a bold, bighearted novel about a group of unbreakable women fighting for what’s rightfully theirs --- and the power of friendship to change everything.

About the Book

The multimillion-copy-selling author of THE HELP returns with a bold, bighearted novel about a group of unbreakable women fighting for what’s rightfully theirs --- and the power of friendship to change everything.

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933.

Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, 11-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. 

Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers that her sister's seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. 

Then Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates --- and Meg's --- converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women's freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences. 

THE CALAMITY CLUB will make you laugh, cry and cheer --- an epic testament to underestimated women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt and hilarious --- the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

Editorial Content for Caller Unknown

Book

Caller Unknown

Teaser

How far would you go to rescue your child? A mother races against the clock --- and finds herself on the wrong side of the law --- in a desperate fight to save her teenage daughter.

Promo

How far would you go to rescue your child? A mother races against the clock --- and finds herself on the wrong side of the law --- in a desperate fight to save her teenage daughter.

About the Book

How far would you go to rescue your child? A mother races against the clock --- and finds herself on the wrong side of the law --- in a desperate fight to save her teenage daughter in this pulse-pounding thriller from the author of Reese’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME.

There is nothing that Simone won’t do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don’t tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal.

Though Simone’s husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can’t take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up.

What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn’t want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable.

A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone’s courage --- and morality --- is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a mother.

Unbearably tense, compassionately told, and full of well-crafted moral dilemmas, CALLER UNKNOWN proves once again why Gillian McAllister’s thrillers are “the best of the best” (Lisa Jewell).

Editorial Content for Dear Missing Friend

Book

Dear Missing Friend

Teaser

Sag Harbor, New York, 1844: An Irish immigrant is torn between becoming a governess, the missing seaman she married, and the wealthy speculator she didn’t. 

Promo

Sag Harbor, New York, 1844: An Irish immigrant is torn between becoming a governess, the missing seaman she married, and the wealthy speculator she didn’t. 

About the Book

Sag Harbor, New York, 1840s: Catherine McGuirk leaves Ireland and a shipboard proposal behind, determined to forge a new life in America.

Amid the bustling height of the whaling era, she marries a dashing sailor who vows to give up life on the sea. But when he vanishes westward in pursuit of gold, she is forced to chart her own course as a governess in Manhattan society.

Torn between her ambition, the vanished whaleman she married, and the now-wealthy suitor she refused, Catherine must navigate love, loss, and the tides of a changing world.