Summer Preview Evening Program Signup
May 17, 2025
ReadingGroupGuides.com is celebrating a big anniversary --- 25 years --- and we are looking for ways to honor this major milestone! Over the years, we have gotten some of our best ideas from readers. So we would love to hear yours! Send me your suggestions at [email protected] with the subject line “25!”
We will be hosting our 14th Annual Book Group Speed Dating event on Friday, June 13th at 1pm ET. If you are a librarian, bookseller, or book club leader of four or more groups, and you would be interested in attending this event, please email me and tell me a bit about yourself using the subject line “Speed Dating.” Invites will be going out next week. This is a “trade only” event, but we will be sharing the publisher videos, PowerPoint slides and other materials with you later next month.
Editorial Content for The Amalfi Curse
Book
Teaser
Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse. Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance, and the untamed magic of the sea.
Promo
Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse. Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance, and the untamed magic of the sea.
About the Book
Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse.
Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever.
Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance, and the untamed magic of the sea.
Editorial Content for Big Chief
Book
Teaser
THERE THERE meets THE NIGHT WATCHMAN in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.
Promo
THERE THERE meets THE NIGHT WATCHMAN in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.
About the Book
THERE THERE meets THE NIGHT WATCHMAN in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.
Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and an aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation and the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go --- and what they will sacrifice --- to win it all.
But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation’s descent into violence.
Thrilling and timely, BIG CHIEF is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging --- to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.
Editorial Content for Happy Land
Book
Teaser
A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom --- and her family’s ties to it --- in this enthralling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and NAACP Image Award-winning author of TAKE MY HAND.
Promo
A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom --- and her family’s ties to it --- in this enthralling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and NAACP Image Award-winning author of TAKE MY HAND.
About the Book
A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom --- and her family’s ties to it --- in this enthralling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and NAACP Image Award-winning author of TAKE MY HAND.
Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can.
But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.
It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale --- royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.
Inspired by true events, HAPPY LAND is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.
Editorial Content for Heartwood
Book
Teaser
HEARTWOOD takes readers on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team races against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
Promo
HEARTWOOD takes readers on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team races against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
About the Book
“A riveting wilderness suspense novel by a novelist at the height of her powers” (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of THE CANDY HOUSE), HEARTWOOD takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team races against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is 42-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.
At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a 76-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.
HEARTWOOD is a “gem of a thousand facets --- suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A BURNING), which tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, HEARTWOOD is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.
Editorial Content for How to Seal Your Own Fate
Teaser
Kristen Perrin is back with the second novel in her Castle Knoll series. Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades, returning us to the idyllic English village that holds layers of secrets.
Promo
Kristen Perrin is back with the second novel in her Castle Knoll series. Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades, returning us to the idyllic English village that holds layers of secrets.
About the Book
New York Times bestselling author Kristen Perrin is back and better than ever with her second Castle Knoll Murder Mystery.
Welcome to Castle Knoll, the idyllic English village home to a surprising number of murderers.
Present day: Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane shares a cryptic message only hours before being found dead inside the locked Gravesdown Estate. Annie has no choice but to delve into the dark secrets of her new countryside home in order to find out just what Peony Lane was trying to warn her about, before her brand new life comes crashing down around her.
1967: Teenage Frances Adams, Annie’s great aunt, finds herself caught between two men. Ford Gravesdown is one of the only remaining members of a family known for its wealth and dubious uses of power. Archie Foyle is a local who can’t hold down a job and lives above the village pub. But when Frances teams up with Archie to investigate the car crash that killed most of Ford's family, it quickly becomes clear that this was no accident --- hints of cover-ups, lies and betrayals abound. Just how far does the blackness creep through the heart of Castle Knoll? When Frances uncovers secrets kept by both Ford and Archie, she starts to wonder what exactly has she gotten herself into.
As Annie and Frances investigate two new mysteries spanning decades, they’ll unlock the next level of secrets held in Castle Knoll’s dark heart.
Editorial Content for The Lilac People
Book
Teaser
THE LILAC PEOPLE is a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis and then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves.
Promo
THE LILAC PEOPLE is a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis and then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves.
About the Book
A moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis and then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves, for readers of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE and IN MEMORIAM.
In 1932 Berlin, a trans man named Bertie and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin's thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond. But everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The Institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation.
In the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him --- not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies' vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation is to flee to the United States.
Brimming with hope, resilience and the enduring power of community, THE LILAC PEOPLE tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an unknown moment of World War II and trans history.
Editorial Content for Matriarch: A Memoir
Book
Teaser
MATRIARCH is a revealing personal life story like no other --- enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering --- and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood.
Promo
MATRIARCH is a revealing personal life story like no other --- enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering --- and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood.
About the Book
A revealing personal life story like no other --- enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering --- and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood.
“You are Celestine,” she said. She squatted to push the hair off my face and pull leaves off my pajama legs. “Like my sister and my grandmother.” And there, under the pecan tree, as she did countless times, that day my mother told me stories of the mothers and daughters that went before me.
Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that.
MATRIARCH begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch, and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of a more grandiose world. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood.
That life’s journey --- through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts --- is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America --- and the wisdom that women pass on to one another, mothers to daughters, across generations.