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Win Up to 12 Copies of THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray 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 PERSONAL LIBRARIAN by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, a "Good Morning America" Book Club pick and a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. This instant New York Times bestselling novel tells the remarkable story of J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation. To enter, please fill out the form below by Wednesday, September 8th at noon ET.
 

July 29, 2021

After never belonging to a book group, I have been in two book groups over the last couple of years. One, with members in my neighborhood, fizzled during the pandemic, while the other, comprised mostly of young moms, continued to meet --- first virtually, then outdoors (we became adept at campfire discussions), and recently in-person indoors.

We lost one of the group’s founders when she moved to Colorado in December. With her departure, our regular meeting place at a firehouse where her husband volunteered also vanished. Recently we have been a dedicated band of five, with other members dropping in and out of meetings.

Joyce Maynard, author of Count the Ways

Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family. Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner. Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart.

Leslie Cohen

Leslie Cohen was born and raised in New York. She studied fiction at Columbia University. She is the author of THIS LOVE STORY WILL SELF-DESTRUCT and RIDE OR DIE.

Editorial Content for The Exiles

Book

Teaser

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller ORPHAN TRAIN returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in 19th-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society.

Promo

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller ORPHAN TRAIN returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in 19th-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society.

About the Book

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller ORPHAN TRAIN returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in 19th-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society.

Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early 19th-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.

During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel --- a skilled midwife and herbalist --- is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors.

Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.

In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel and Mathinna. While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom. Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, THE EXILES is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy.

Editorial Content for The Forest of Vanishing Stars

Teaser

The New York Times bestselling author of THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis --- until a secret from her past threatens everything.

Promo

The New York Times bestselling author of THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis --- until a secret from her past threatens everything.

About the Book

The New York Times bestselling author of the “heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism” (People) THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis --- until a secret from her past threatens everything.

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest --- and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING a worldwide phenomenon, THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author whose writing has been hailed as “sweeping and magnificent” (Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author), “immersive and evocative” (Publishers Weekly), and “gripping” (Tampa Bay Times).

Editorial Content for Hell of a Book

Teaser

This astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott --- always deeply honest, at times electrically funny --- goes to the heart of racism, police violence and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole.

Promo

This astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott --- always deeply honest, at times electrically funny --- goes to the heart of racism, police violence and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole.

About the Book

An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole.

In Jason Mott’s HELL OF A BOOK, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives HELL OF A BOOK and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.

As these characters’ stories build and build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.

Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, HELL OF A BOOK is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last 10 years. And in its final twists it truly becomes its title.

Audiobook available, read by JD Jackson and Ronald Peet

Editorial Content for The Stranger in the Mirror

Teaser

THE STRANGER IN THE MIRROR is a diabolically twisty, psychologically unsettling novel about a woman with no recollection of her past from the authors of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick THE LAST MRS. PARRISH and THE WIFE STALKER.

Promo

THE STRANGER IN THE MIRROR is a diabolically twisty, psychologically unsettling novel about a woman with no recollection of her past from the authors of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick THE LAST MRS. PARRISH and THE WIFE STALKER.

About the Book

A diabolically twisty, psychologically unsettling novel about a woman with no recollection of her past from the authors of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick THE LAST MRS. PARRISH and THE WIFE STALKER.

Addison is about to get married but is not looking forward to the big day. It’s not her fiancé; he’s a wonderful man. It’s because Addison doesn't know who she really is. A few years ago, a kind driver found her bleeding next to a New Jersey highway and rescued her. While her physical wounds healed, Addison’s memory never returned. She doesn’t know her real name. Or how she ended up injured on the side of a road. Or why she can’t shake the notion that she may have done something very, very bad.

In a posh home in the Boston suburbs, Julian tries to figure out what happened to his loving, caring wife, Cassandra, who disappeared without a trace two years ago. She never would have left him and their seven-year-old daughter Valentina of her own free will. Or would she? 

As these two lives intersect, THE STRANGER IN THE MIRROR hooks readers with riveting drama, told with Liv Constantine’s hallmark blend of glamour, tense psychological thrills and jaw-dropping twists.

Liv Constantine, author of The Stranger in the Mirror

Addison is about to get married but is not looking forward to the big day. She doesn't know who she really is. A few years ago, a kind driver found her bleeding next to a New Jersey highway and rescued her. While her physical wounds healed, Addison’s memory never returned. She doesn’t know her real name. Or how she ended up injured on the side of a road. Or why she can’t shake the notion that she may have done something very, very bad. In a posh home in the Boston suburbs, Julian tries to figure out what happened to his loving, caring wife, Cassandra, who disappeared without a trace two years ago. She never would have left him and their seven-year-old daughter Valentina of her own free will. Or would she?

Kathy Reichs, author of The Bone Code: A Temperance Brennan Novel

On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to Montreal to gather evidence. Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become increasingly alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads. Someone is protecting a dark secret --- and willing to do anything to keep it hidden.