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RGG Speed Dating May 2022 Event

May 18, 2022

We love hearing from readers. I received this message from Pat, who won copies of THE PARIS LIBRARY by Janet Skeslien Charles for her book group, The Lynbrook Ladies Literary League, in our “What’s Your Book Group Reading This Month?” contest: “Wow is all I can say and my heartfelt THANKS! Our book club is celebrating its 30th year, and this is a great gift for all of us! We have been devoted fans of ReadingGroupGuides and have attended your presentations at the Rockville Centre Library. You have brought so much to our discussions with your bios and suggested discussion questions from selected authors. The pandemic has brought your expertise and love of reading even closer to us with your Zoom presentations. You never missed a beat in keeping us informed of the latest books and some inspiring author interviews.”

Kirsten Miller, author of The Change

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment. After Nessa James’ husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead. On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. But her life is far from over --- in fact, she has undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis. Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent 30 long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw --- until she realizes she has the ability to channel them.

Shelby Van Pelt, author of Remarkably Bright Creatures

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her 18-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over 30 years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors --- until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now he must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.

Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words

Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. One day, a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath their sorting table. Esme rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means “slave girl,” she begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so, she must venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Kim Michele Richardson, author of The Book Woman's Daughter

In the ruggedness of the beautiful Kentucky mountains, Honey Lovett has always known that the old ways can make a hard life harder. As the daughter of the famed blue-skinned, Troublesome Creek packhorse librarian, Honey and her family have been hiding from the law all her life. But when her mother and father are imprisoned, Honey realizes she must fight to stay free, or risk being sent away for good. Picking up her mother's old packhorse library route, Honey begins to deliver books to the remote hollers of Appalachia. Honey is looking to prove that she doesn't need anyone telling her how to survive. But the route can be treacherous, and some folks aren't as keen to let a woman pave her own way.

Editorial Content for Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age

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DIAMONDS AND DEADLINES is the first major biography of the glamorous and scandalous Miriam Leslie, titan of publishing and an unsung hero of women’s suffrage.

Promo

DIAMONDS AND DEADLINES is the first major biography of the glamorous and scandalous Miriam Leslie, titan of publishing and an unsung hero of women’s suffrage.

About the Book

The first major biography of the glamorous and scandalous Miriam Leslie, titan of publishing and an unsung hero of women’s suffrage.

Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age --- Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt --- is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For 20 years she 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 Miriam Leslie was also a byword for scandal. She flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both before and after her lifetime, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth.

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. In this dazzling biography, cultural historian Betsy Prioleau draws from diaries, genealogies and published works to provide an intimate look at the life of one of the Gilded Age's most complex, powerful women and unexpected feminist icons.

Ultimately, DIAMONDS AND DEADLINES restores Mrs. Frank Leslie to her rightful place in history, as a monumental businesswoman who presaged the feminist future and reflected, in bold relief, the Gilded Age, one of the most momentous, seismic and vivid epochs in American history.

Editorial Content for The Good Left Undone

Teaser

From Adriana Trigiani comes a lush, immersive novel about three generations of Tuscan artisans with one remarkable secret. Epic in scope and resplendent with the glorious themes of identity and belonging, THE GOOD LEFT UNDONE unfolds in breathtaking turns.

Promo

From Adriana Trigiani comes a lush, immersive novel about three generations of Tuscan artisans with one remarkable secret. Epic in scope and resplendent with the glorious themes of identity and belonging, THE GOOD LEFT UNDONE unfolds in breathtaking turns.

About the Book

From “a master of visual and palpable detail” (The Washington Post) comes a lush, immersive novel about three generations of Tuscan artisans with one remarkable secret. Epic in scope and resplendent with the glorious themes of identity and belonging, THE GOOD LEFT UNDONE unfolds in breathtaking turns.
 
Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew.
 
In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. 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 are imprisoned without cause --- as Domenica experiences love, loss and grief while she longs for home.

A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy, while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking revelations and, ultimately, redemption.

Editorial Content for Shadows of Berlin

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SHADOWS OF BERLIN is David R. Gillham's captivating novel of a Berlin girl on the run from the guilt of her past and the boy from Brooklyn who loves her.

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SHADOWS OF BERLIN is David R. Gillham's captivating novel of a Berlin girl on the run from the guilt of her past and the boy from Brooklyn who loves her.

About the Book

A captivating novel of a Berlin girl on the run from the guilt of her past and the boy from Brooklyn who loves her.

1955 in New York City: the city of instant coffee, bagels at Katz's Deli, new-fangled TVs. But in the Perlmans' walk-up in Chelsea, the past is as close as the present. Rachel came to Manhattan in a wave of displaced Jews who managed to survive the horrors of war. Her Uncle Fritz fleeing with her, Rachel hoped to find freedom from her pain in New York and in the arms of her new American husband, Aaron.

But this child of Berlin and daughter of an artist cannot seem to outrun her guilt in the role of American housewife, not until she can shed the ghosts of her past. And when Uncle Fritz discovers, in a dreary midtown pawn shop, the most shocking portrait that her mother had ever painted, Rachel's memories begin to terrorize her, forcing her to face the choices she made to stay alive --- choices that might be her undoing.

From the cafés of war-torn Germany to the frantic drumbeat of 1950s Manhattan, SHADOWS OF BERLIN dramatically explores survival, redemption, and the way we learn to love and forgive across impossible divides.

Editorial Content for The Shop on Royal Street

Teaser

Nola Trenholm is hopeful for a fresh start in the Big Easy but must deal with ghosts from her past --- as well as new ones --- in this first book in a spinoff series of Karen White's New York Times bestselling Tradd Street novels.

Promo

Nola Trenholm is hopeful for a fresh start in the Big Easy but must deal with ghosts from her past --- as well as new ones --- in this first book in a spinoff series of Karen White's New York Times bestselling Tradd Street novels.

About the Book

Nola Trenholm is hopeful for a fresh start in the Big Easy but must deal with ghosts from her past --- as well as new ones --- in this first book in a spinoff series of Karen White's New York Times bestselling Tradd Street novels.

After a difficult detour on her road to adulthood, Nola Trenholm is looking to begin anew in New Orleans, and what better way to start her future than with her first house? 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.