April 30, 2020
So what has your book group been up to? Are you meeting remotely? Are you still reading and emailing each other about the books you are reading? Are you postponing your discussions? Shoot me a note at [email protected]. PLEASE use the subject line (so I can find your comment) “My Group,” and in our next newsletter I will let you know what we are hearing from people around the country. If you are not reading the same book for discussion, I am going to recommend that you all share what you are reading in emails to each other. You know your fellow members' tastes, so your recommendations can be golden!
Editorial Content for Circe
Book
Teaser
With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, CIRCE is a triumph of storytelling --- an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
Promo
With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, CIRCE is a triumph of storytelling --- an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
About the Book
"A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller is "both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times).
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child --- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power --- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.
With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, CIRCE is a triumph of storytelling --- an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
Editorial Content for The German Heiress
Book
Teaser
For readers of THE ALICE NETWORK and THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS, Anika Scott's novel is an immersive, heart-pounding debut about a German heiress on the run in post-World War II Germany.
Promo
For readers of THE ALICE NETWORK and THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS, Anika Scott's novel is an immersive, heart-pounding debut about a German heiress on the run in post-World War II Germany.
About the Book
For readers of THE ALICE NETWORK and THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS, an immersive, heart-pounding debut about a German heiress on the run in post-World War II Germany.
Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended, and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa.
Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa. Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other --- if only they can stay ahead of the officer determined to make Clara answer for her actions during the war.
Propulsive, meticulously researched and action-fueled, THE GERMAN HEIRESS is a mesmerizing page-turner that questions the meaning of justice and morality, deftly shining the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn.
Editorial Content for Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
Teaser
HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD is the heartrending story of a mid-century American family with 12 children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
Promo
HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD is the heartrending story of a mid-century American family with 12 children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
About the Book
The heartrending story of a mid-century American family with 12 children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins --- aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony --- and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope.
Editorial Content for Let the Willows Weep
Book
Teaser
In the tradition of the best Southern fiction --- from BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA to WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING --- Sherry Parnell’s LET THE WILLOWS WEEP is a heart-wrenching portrait of hardscrabble, humble lives in rural America.
Promo
In the tradition of the best Southern fiction --- from BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA to WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING --- Sherry Parnell’s LET THE WILLOWS WEEP is a heart-wrenching portrait of hardscrabble, humble lives in rural America.
About the Book
In the tradition of the best Southern fiction --- from BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA to WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING --- Sherry Parnell’s LET THE WILLOWS WEEP is a heart-wrenching portrait of hardscrabble, humble lives in rural America. A keenly observed and unflinching look at the life of Birddog Harlin as she grows up in her dysfunctional family, this novel explores the line between destruction and redemption.
Editorial Content for Valentine
Book
Teaser
Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, VALENTINE is an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.
Promo
Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, VALENTINE is an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.
About the Book
Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.
Mercy is hard in a place like this...
It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.
In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, 14-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field --- an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, one of the town’s women decides to take matters into her own hands, setting the stage for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.
VALENTINE is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, darkly funny and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.
April 20, 2020
When we left off, we were in the early days of quarantine and a new term that has become a household word: “social distancing.” Who knew this phrasing would be part of our lexicon?
Lots of groups shared ideas for remote meeting, and some other questions came up. So let me “go to the mailbag” first, as there are some great ideas here.




