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Allen Levi Book Group Event

Links to https://tbrnetwork.com/podcasts/bookreporter-talks-to/bookaccino-live-book-group-with-allen-levi/.

Thrity Umrigar, author of Missing Sam

One night after a party, old grievances surface between married couple Aliya and Sam, and the night ends badly with a heated argument. Sam goes for a run early the next morning to clear her head --- and doesn’t come back. Aliya reports her wife missing, but as a gay Muslim daughter of immigrants, she can't escape the scrutiny and suspicion of those around her. Scared and furious, and feeling isolated as strangers and acquaintances alike doubt her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another. She must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye even as she is torn between her fear that Sam is dead and her desire to find and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible for them?

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Lynn Cullen, author of When We Were Brilliant

In 1952, Norma Jeane Baker follows documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room on the night they first meet. She has a proposition for her. Norma Jeane created Marilyn Monroe to be photographed, and she wants Eve to do it. Eve is better than anyone she’s seen at revealing a person’s inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, she says, they can make something brilliant. Skeptical of this cipher of a young woman, Eve demurs. She’s looking for more serious subjects than this ambitious starlet. But she keeps getting drawn back into Marilyn’s orbit, and the women come to recognize something in each other --- something fundamental. Nothing will get in the way of what they want, and when Marilyn’s star takes off to teetering heights, neither will ever be the same.

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Karen Winn, author of The Society

Vivian Lawrence was born into old-money Boston, but when her family fortune vanishes so does her carefully curated life. Desperate, she turns to an old family legend that ties her to the Knox and its inheritance, seeking a way into the exclusive secret society. She doesn’t expect that entry to come in the form of Peter, a Knox insider with movie star good looks and just enough roughness to his charm to make Vivian weak in the knees for the first time in her life. Far from Boston’s glittering elite is newcomer Taylor Adams, a young nurse eager to leave her humble past behind. When the effortlessly glamorous Vivian lands in her ER after a suspicious fall, Taylor is instantly captivated. But then Vivian abruptly disappears without a trace, sending Taylor on a search for answers that pulls her into the Knox itself --- as their new employee.

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Jennifer Niven, author of Meet the Newmans

For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb --- literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n’ roll idol Shep may have finally run out. When Del is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964.

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May Cobb, author of All the Little Houses

It's the mid-1980s in the tiny town of Longview, Texas. Nellie Anderson, the beautiful daughter of the Anderson family dynasty, has burst onto the scene. She always gets what she wants. What she can't get for herself… well, that's what her mother is for. Because Charleigh Andersen --- blond, beautiful and ruthlessly cunning --- remembers all too well having to claw her way to the top. When she was coming of age on the poor side of East Texas, she was a loser and an outcast, humiliated and shunned by the in-crowd, whose approval she'd so desperately thirsted for. When a prairie-kissed family moves to town --- all trad wife, woodworking dad, wholesome daughter vibes --- Charleigh's entire self-made social empire threatens to crumble. Who will be left standing when the dust settles?

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Gabriel Tallent, author of Crux

Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. One is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout. Climbing boulders in trash-strewn parking lots during cold desert nights, they seal their unique bond and dream of a life of adventure. As the year progresses and adult reality looms, they are rocked by change and pulled apart by irreconcilable obligations. Differences of class, talent and prospects take on new importance; options dwindle, and their decisions grow ever more consequential and perilous. It feels inevitable, finally, that something must give.

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George Saunders, author of Vigil

Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it? Crowds of people and animals --- worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead --- arrive, clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room, and two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for his post-death future.

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Editorial Content for The First Time I Saw Him

Book

The First Time I Saw Him

Teaser

Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall's pulse-pounding journey in this riveting and deeply moving sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling blockbuster and Apple TV+ show, THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME.

Promo

Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall's pulse-pounding journey in this riveting and deeply moving sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling blockbuster and Apple TV+ show, THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME.

About the Book

Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall's pulse-pounding journey in this riveting and deeply moving sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling blockbuster and Apple TV+ show, THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME.

Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they've forged a relationship with Bailey's grandfather, Nicholas, and are putting the past behind them.

But when Owen shows up at Hannah's new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again.

As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety --- and finds there just might be one way back to Owen.

A gripping, rich and deeply evocative novel about the power of forgiveness, THE FIRST TIME I SAW HIM picks up right where the epilogue for the "genuinely moving" (The New York Times) THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME left off, giving readers the eagerly awaited and absolutely exhilarating sequel to Laura Dave's global blockbuster.

Editorial Content for The Rest of Our Lives

Book

The Rest of Our Lives

Teaser

THE REST OF OUR LIVES is a triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle age, and a man at a crossroads in his life.

Promo

THE REST OF OUR LIVES is a triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle age, and a man at a crossroads in his life.

About the Book

A triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle age, and a man at a crossroads in his life.

When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair 12 years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work.

So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past --- an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son --- en route, maybe, to California. He’s moving towards a future he hasn’t even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he’s made that have brought him to this particular present.

Pitch-perfect, tender and keenly observed, THE REST OF OUR LIVES is a story about what to do when the rest of your life is only just the beginning of your story.