Skip to main content

Miranda Cowley Heller Event Art

Janet Skeslien Charles Event

April 18, 2022

We appreciate all of you who shared your thoughts on how your group organizes in our recent survey.

64% of you email each other, while 30.5% of you just decide what you are reading, and when you are getting together next, while you are in your meeting. 10% have a Facebook page for organizing, while 8% have a library coordinating for them. 7% just call each other. A number of you mentioned what I am calling an “Annual Selection,” where you select all the books in advance, as well as your meeting times, and then there are no logistics to figure out. Bravo on that!

May 2022 Bookaccino Live Event

Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility

Edwin St. Andrew is 18 years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the Canadian wilderness and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal. Two centuries later, Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended.

Jennifer Egan, author of The Candy House

Bix Bouton’s 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 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 THE CANDY HOUSE, Jennifer Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades.

Editorial Content for The Book of Cold Cases

Teaser

A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of THE SUN DOWN MOTEL.

Promo

A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of THE SUN DOWN MOTEL.

About the Book

A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of THE SUN DOWN MOTEL. 

In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect --- a rich, eccentric 23-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.

Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases --- a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.

They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she’s not looking, and she could swear she’s seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn’t right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?

Editorial Content for French Braid

Teaser

From beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anne Tyler comes a funny, joyful and brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles --- from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild in our pandemic present.

Promo

From beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anne Tyler comes a funny, joyful and brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles --- from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild in our pandemic present.

About the Book

From beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anne Tyler comes a funny, joyful and brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles --- from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild in our pandemic present.

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

Full of heartbreak and hilarity, FRENCH BRAID is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close --- yet how unknowable --- every family is to itself.

Editorial Content for Her Last Affair

Teaser

Part page-turning thriller, part homage to film noir, and dazzling in its insight into the often desperate desires of the human heart, HER LAST AFFAIR is a tense and atmospheric novel of love lost and found again.

Promo

Part page-turning thriller, part homage to film noir, and dazzling in its insight into the often desperate desires of the human heart, HER LAST AFFAIR is a tense and atmospheric novel of love lost and found again.

About the Book

Every marriage has its secrets…

Skyla lives alone in the shadow of the defunct drive-in movie theater that she and her husband ran for nearly 50 years. Ever since Hollis’ death in a freak accident the year before, Skyla spends her nights ruminating about the regrets and deceptions in her long marriage. That is, until she rents a cottage on the property to a charming British man, Teddy Cornwell.

A thousand miles away, Linelle is about to turn 50. Bored by her spouse and fired from her job when a questionable photo from her youth surfaces on social media, her only source of joy is an online affair with her very first love, a man she’s not seen in nearly 30 years, Teddy Cornwell.

While in New York City, Jeremy, a failed and bitter writer, accepts an assignment to review a new restaurant in Providence. Years ago, Providence was the site of his first great love and first great heartbreak --- and maybe, just maybe, he’ll look her up when he’s back in town.

Part page-turning thriller, part homage to film noir, and dazzling in its insight into the often desperate desires of the human heart, HER LAST AFFAIR is a tense and atmospheric novel of love lost and found again.

Editorial Content for Peach Blossom Spring

Teaser

A bold and moving novel about war, migration and the power of telling our stories, PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home.

Promo

A bold and moving novel about war, migration and the power of telling our stories, PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home.

About the Book

A "beautifully rendered" novel about war, migration and the power of telling our stories, PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home (Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES).

It is 1938 in China. As a young wife, Meilin’s future is bright. But with the Japanese army approaching, Meilin and her four-year-old son, Renshu, are forced to flee their home. Relying on little but their wits and a beautifully illustrated hand scroll, filled with ancient fables that offer solace and wisdom, they must travel through a ravaged country, seeking refuge.

Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down? Yet how can Lily learn who she is if she can never know her family’s story?

Spanning continents and generations, PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It’s about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the haunting question: What would it mean to finally be home?