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—Lucy Rose Fischer, author of THE JOURNALIST: Life and Loss in America’s Secret War

June 2022 Bookaccino Live Event

Jennifer Weiner, author of The Summer Place

When her 22-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house in Cape Cod. Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting the big house on the market. But when the wedding day arrives, lovers are revealed as their true selves, misunderstandings take on a life of their own, and secrets come to light. There are confrontations and revelations that will touch each member of the extended family, ensuring that nothing will ever be the same.

Win Up to 12 Copies of DAMNATION SPRING by Ash Davidson for Your Group

Each month, we ask book groups to share the titles they are reading that month and rate them. From all entries, three winners will be selected, and each will win up to 12 copies of that month’s prize book for their group. Note: To be eligible to win, let us know the title of the book that YOUR book group is CURRENTLY reading, NOT the title we are giving away.

Our latest prize book is DAMNATION SPRING by Ash Davidson, a national bestseller and a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick that is now available in paperback. This stunning novel about love, work and marriage asks how far one family and one community will go to protect their future. To enter, please fill out the form below by Wednesday, June 8th at noon ET.

Zain E. Asher

Zain Ejiofor Asher was born to first-generation Nigerian parents in South London. She was raised by her mother after losing her father in a tragic car accident when she was just five. A graduate of Oxford University and Columbia University, she is currently the anchor of "One World with Zain Asher" on CNN International. Ejiofor Asher’s brothers are Oscar-nominated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, successful entrepreneur Obinze. Her sister, Kandibe, is a medical doctor. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

April 29, 2022

There’s lots to share in this late-month update, so let’s get right to it!

Last Wednesday night, we hosted our latest "Bookaccino Live" Book Group event. Our guest was Miranda Cowley Heller, and we had a wonderful conversation about her debut novel, THE PAPER PALACE, which is now out in paperback. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Barnes & Noble Book Club pick, a Reese’s Book Club pick, and a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection when it released in hardcover last year.

Betsy Prioleau, author of Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in New York City’s Gilded Age

For 20 years Miriam Leslie ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But she also flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. DIAMONDS AND DEADLINES reveals the unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: She left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage --- a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Karen White, author of The Shop on Royal Street

Nola Trenholm is looking to begin her life anew in New Orleans. But the historic fixer-upper she buys comes with even more work than she anticipated when the house’s previous occupants don’t seem to be ready to depart. Although she can’t communicate with ghosts like her stepmother can, luckily Nola knows someone in New Orleans who is able to --- even if he’s the last person on earth she wants anything to do with ever again. Beau Ryan comes with his own dark past --- a past that involves the disappearance of his sister and parents during Hurricane Katrina --- and he’s connected to the unsolved murder of a woman who once lived in the old Creole cottage Nola is determined to make her own...whether the resident restless spirits agree or not.

Adriana Trigiani, author of The Good Left Undone

In the halcyon days of the past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until the day her beloved home becomes unsafe as Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. As her journey takes her from the rocky shores of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of wartime Liverpool --- where Italian Scots were imprisoned without cause --- Domenica experiences love, loss and grief as she longs for home. A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her great-granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy as Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for, and when to let go. The Cabrellis have survived so much, and it is only through the transformative power of love that they can hope to truly heal.

Editorial Content for The Candy House

Teaser

Jennifer Egan, one of the most celebrated writers of our time, has written a “sibling novel” to A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD --- an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.

Promo

Jennifer Egan, one of the most celebrated writers of our time, has written a “sibling novel” to A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD --- an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.

About the Book

From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, a literary figure with cult status, a “sibling novel” to her Pulitzer Prize --- and ​NBCC Award-winning A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD --- an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.

THE CANDY HOUSE opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is 40, with four kids, restless and desperate for a new idea when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. It’s 2010. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious” --- which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others --- has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, THE CANDY HOUSE is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires, and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles --- from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets.

If GOON SQUAD was organized like a concept album, THE CANDY HOUSE incorporates Electronic Dance Music’s more disjunctive approach. The parts are titled: Build, Break, Drop. With an emphasis on gaming, portals and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.

THE CANDY HOUSE is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. Egan takes to stunning new heights her “deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture” (Vogue). THE CANDY HOUSE delivers an absolutely extraordinary combination of fierce, exhilarating intelligence and heart.