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—D. Schalley, The Reading Corner Book Lounge blog

—Amazon Reviewer

—Amazon Reviewer

—Melissa, Goodreads User

Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At 31, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

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Rebecca Serle, author of In Five Years

Where do you see yourself in five years? When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan. But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment and beside a very different man. The date is December 15, 2025, five years in the future. After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. Determined to ignore this odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind. That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

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Lisa See, author of The Island of Sea Women

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Little do they know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.

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Amanda Eyre Ward, author of The Jetsetters

When 70-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the “Become a Jetsetter” contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children. She yearns for the years when they were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When Charlotte wins the contest, the family packs their baggage --- both literal and figurative --- and spends 10 days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.

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Win 12 Copies of THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN by Lisa See 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 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 ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN by Lisa See. This Bookreporter.com Bets On title, which is now available in paperback, is an evocative tale of two best friends whose bonds are both strengthened and tested over decades by forces beyond their control. To enter, please fill out the form below by Wednesday, April 8th at noon ET.
 

February 27, 2020

When my Long Hill Book Club met this week, we discussed Ruth Reichl’s SAVE ME THE PLUMS. There are five recipes in the book, and we had four members who took on the cooking --- German Apple Pancakes, Spicy Chinese Noodles, Gina Marie’s Cheddar Scallion Biscuits, Thanksgiving Turkey Chili and Jeweled Chocolate Cake. You can find some of the recipes here.

I confess that we chatted more about the food than we did about the actual text of the book, though we did talk about the complexity of the recipes, as well as the role of an editor at a magazine. A few of us talked about how emotional we were when Ruth described 9/11. And we all loved the way she emptied the wine cellar at the magazine and gathered her staff at her home for a mourning party when Gourmet’s closing was announced. I appreciated that bold move. A number of us listened to the book on audio and loved Ruth’s narration.

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