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—Barbara Shoup, author of ABOUT GRACE and A COMMOTION IN YOUR HEART: Notes on Writing and Life

August 2025 Bookaccino Live Signup

Links to https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qnFWKZx9SIy9mtwQTOghfg.

June 30, 2025

There is something about the summer that allows me to get a lot of books read. How can I possibly have more time in the summer than I do in the winter? Well, I do save time watering the house plants as they are all outside being watered by the sprinkler system, but I am trying to figure out what else lends itself to more reading time. I seem to have no problem reading beside the pool, or in the pool. I feel like there are fewer distractions. I can even tune out the birds, the squirrels and the chipmunks! There is just a calm that moves over the summer that lets me unwind.

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Fiona Davis Book Group Event

Links to https://tbrnetwork.com/podcasts/bookreporter-talks-to/bookaccino-live-book-group-with-fiona-davis/.

B.A. Shapiro, author of The Lost Masterpiece

B.A. Shapiro embeds us in a circle of famous painters in late-19th-century Paris, centering on the anguished Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot --- the one woman in their midst who never got her due --- and the story of Morisot’s great-great-great-great granddaughter, Tamara Rubin, who has inherited Édouard Manet’s Party on the Seine, a painting that completely upends her life. Tamara discovers a long-hidden family history replete with unanswered questions: How had it been stolen by the Nazis? How had the painting managed to survive three disasters that destroyed every other artwork around it? And why had she never known about her ancestor, Berthe Morisot? As the painting begins to metamorphose into darker and more terrifying versions of itself, Tamara’s ordinary life is thrown into turmoil.

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Renée Ahdieh, author of Park Avenue

The daughter of Korean bodega owners, Jia Song has just made junior partner at her prestigious Manhattan law firm, and she is about to score the ultraluxe gold-on-gold Birkin bag of her dreams. So when her boss asks her to sit in on the hush-hush family implosion of a high-level client, she accepts without hesitation --- only to find out that it is one of the most famous Korean families in the world. The Park family’s net worth is estimated at a billion dollars, and their mega-successful Korean beauty brand has shaped the culture for the past two decades. But the patriarch is filing for divorce while his wife is dying, and their three children can’t stop snapping at one another. With both the family fortune and legacy under threat from the worst kind of scandal, it’s up to Jia to set things right --- and she only has a month to do it.

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Hal Ebbott, author of Among Friends

It’s an autumn weekend at a comfortable New York country house where two deeply intertwined families have gathered to mark the host’s 52nd birthday. Together, the group forms an enviable portrait of middle age. The wives and husbands have been friends for over 30 years, their teenage daughters have grown up together, and the dinners, games and rituals forming their days all reflect the rich bonds between them. This weekend, however, something is different. An unforeseen curdling of envy and resentment will erupt in an unspeakable act, the aftermath of which exposes treacherous fault lines upon which they have long dwelt.

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Kaira Rouda, author of Jill Is Not Happy

If you ask Jill Tingley, she’ll tell you that she and her husband, Jack, are college sweethearts living the dream in Southern California. Theirs is an enviable life, though they’ve grown distant in recent years. With their daughter, Maggie, away at college, Jill suggests a road trip to reconnect. Jack would rather do anything else than drive to Utah with his wife. He’s only stayed in this marriage because of a shared secret, a tragedy in the past that he wanted to keep buried. And for his daughter’s sake. But Jack is finished with the charade of his marriage. He’s filing for divorce as soon as they return, no matter what. But he doesn’t realize what else Jill is hiding. So begins a cat-and-mouse road trip as a cunning wife and a reluctant husband match wits and drive each other to the edge.

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Megan Abbott, author of El Dorado Drive

The three Bishop sisters grew up in privilege in the moneyed suburbs of Detroit. But as the auto industry declined, so did their fortunes. Harper, the youngest, is barely making ends meet when her beloved, charismatic sister, Pam --- currently in the middle of a contentious battle with her ex-husband --- and her eldest sister, Debra, approach her about joining an exciting new club. The Wheel offers women like themselves --- middle-aged and of declining means --- a way to make their own money, independent of husbands or families. Quickly, however, the Wheel’s success, and their own addiction to it, leads to greater and greater risks --- and a crime so shocking that it threatens to bring everything down with it.

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Kristin Harmel, author of The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, Annabel: take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared, along with an exquisite diamond bracelet sewn into the hem of her nightgown for safekeeping. Soon after, Annabel was executed, and Liliane’s body was found floating in the Seine --- but the bracelet was nowhere to be found. Seventy years later, Colette’s life begins to unravel when the long-missing bracelet suddenly turns up in a museum exhibit in Boston.

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