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September 17, 2021

Well, here we are, halfway through September already, and I still have that back-to-school feeling...even though both of my sons are well out of school. It’s time to get back to routines, yet so many programs still are impacted by COVID-19 protocols. To get a view of what’s happening with your book group and your meetings, can you answer this poll? We will share results in our early October newsletter.

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October Bookaccino Live Event

Links to https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_alNOfg0lQX6pDciCW80b6Q.

Qian Julie Wang, author of Beautiful Country: A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, her parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal,” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

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Paula Hawkins, author of A Slow Fire Burning

When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member. And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim. Three women who are --- for different reasons --- simmering with resentment. When it comes to revenge, even good people might be capable of terrible deeds. How far might any one of them go to find peace? How long can secrets smolder before they explode into flame?

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Lauren Groff, author of Matrix

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. Born the last in a long line of female warriors and crusaders, Marie is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

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William Kent Krueger, author of Lightning Strike

Aurora is a small town nestled in the ancient forest alongside the shores of Minnesota’s Iron Lake. In the summer of 1963, it is the whole world to 12-year-old Cork O’Connor, its rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to question everything he took for granted about his hometown, his family and himself. Cork’s father, Liam O’Connor, is Aurora’s sheriff, and it is his job to confirm that the man’s death was the result of suicide, as all the evidence suggests. In the shadow of his father’s official investigation, Cork begins to look for answers on his own.

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Editorial Content for We Are the Brennans

Book

We Are the Brennans

Teaser

In the vein of Mary Beth Keane’s ASK AGAIN, YES and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's THE NEST, Tracey Lange’s WE ARE THE BRENNANS explores the staying power of shame --- and the redemptive power of love --- in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets.

Promo

In the vein of Mary Beth Keane’s ASK AGAIN, YES and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's THE NEST, Tracey Lange’s WE ARE THE BRENNANS explores the staying power of shame --- and the redemptive power of love --- in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets.

About the Book

In the vein of Mary Beth Keane’s ASK AGAIN, YES and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's THE NEST, Tracey Lange’s WE ARE THE BRENNANS explores the staying power of shame --- and the redemptive power of love --- in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets.

When 29-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it’s not easy. She deserted them all --- and her high school sweetheart --- five years before with little explanation, and they have questions.

Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family’s pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets --- secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes --- and ultimately find a way forward, together.

Lolá Ákínmádé, author of In Every Mirror She's Black

Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm. Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury and privilege as the object of his unhealthy obsession. And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny's office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home.

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Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Last Mona Lisa

August, 1911: The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincent Peruggia. Exactly what happens in the two years before its recovery is a mystery. Many replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, and more than one historian has wondered if the painting now returned to the Louvre is a fake, switched in 1911. Present day: Art professor Luke Perrone digs for the truth behind his most famous ancestor: Peruggia. His search attracts an Interpol detective with something to prove and an unfamiliar but curiously helpful woman. Soon, Luke tumbles deep into the world of art and forgery, a land of obsession and danger.

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Win Up to 12 Copies of THE LAST MONA LISA by Jonathan Santlofer 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 THE LAST MONA LISA by award-winning crime writer and celebrated artist Jonathan Santlofer. This enthralling tale, which is a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick, is about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, the forgeries that appeared in its wake, and the present-day underbelly of the art world. To enter, please fill out the form below by Wednesday, October 6th at noon ET.

» Click here to watch Carol's "Bookreporter Talks To" interview with Jonathan Santlofer.
» Click here to listen to a podcast of the interview.