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Wendy Francis

Wendy Francis is the author of five novels: SUMMERTIME GUESTS, BEST BEHAVIOR, THE SUMMER SAIL, THE SUMMER OF GOOD INTENTIONS and THREE GOOD THINGS. She grew up in the Midwest and moved east for high school and college. After graduating from Harvard, she attended law school for a brief stint before realizing that she was more interested in rewriting cases than studying case law. She went on to work at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Da Capo Press for nearly 15 years as a book editor.

Andrea Lee

Andrea Lee is the author of five books, including the National Book Award–nominated memoir RUSSIAN JOURNAL, the novels RED ISLAND HOUSE, LOST HEARTS IN ITALY and SARAH PHILLIPS, and the story collection INTERESTING WOMEN. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, she has written for The New York Times MagazineVogue, W and The New York Times Book Review. Born in Philadelphia, she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University and now lives in Italy.

Elizabeth Brundage

Elizabeth Brundage is the author of five novels, including ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR, which was a WSJ best mystery of 2016, and was the basis for the Netflix film Things Heard and Seen. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she received a James Michener Award, and attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Witness, New Letters, Greensboro Review and elsewhere.

April 29, 2021

Our book group read SUNFLOWERS SISTERS by Martha Hall Kelly this month (which we all loved), and for next month we are reading THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME by Laura Dave. We typically read new books --- we have fun at our meetings talking about what’s new that we want to explore. Reading through the submissions for our “What’s Your Book Group Reading This Month?" feature, we see there is a whole range of timing for book releases in what you are reading. And I see the same thing when I answer requests from readers who write looking for discussion guides. I often get a request for a guide for a much older or lesser known title, and I really should ask the sender what had them gravitate towards that book. I love that there is not “one kind” of book group, but rather a wonderful variety of them.

Lea Geller

Lea Geller is the author of TROPHY LIFE and THE TRUTH AND OTHER HIDDEN THINGS. A recipient of the 2019 Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship at Sarah Lawrence College, she began her writing career by blogging about her adventures in the trenches of parenting. Lea lives in New York with her husband and children, for whom she frequently wakes up and makes several separate breakfasts. When Lea’s not writing and eavesdropping on her children, she can be found running, gardening, drinking diner coffee, and occasionally teaching middle school English.

Laura Munson

Laura Munson is the New York Times and international bestselling author of the memoir THIS IS NOT THE STORY YOU THINK IT IS: A Season of Unlikely Happiness and the USA Today bestselling novel WILLA'S GROVE. Her books have been published in nine countries and featured in Vanity Fair, Elle, Redbook, Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and many other newspapers, magazines and online venues across the globe.

Kim Michele Richardson Event

Bookaccino Live Book Group Event on May 20th

Editorial Content for The Girls in the Stilt House

Teaser

Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder --- perfect for readers of WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING and IF THE CREEK DON'T RISE.

Promo

Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder --- perfect for readers of WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING and IF THE CREEK DON'T RISE.

About the Book

Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder --- perfect for readers of WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING and IF THE CREEK DON'T RISE.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.

Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.

As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.