Skip to main content

Lara Love Hardin, author of The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Lara is convicted of 32 felonies. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and LORD OF THE FLIES. But Lara brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller.” When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her.

Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Anna Quindlen, author of After Annie

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, children and closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie’s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life. Over the course of the next year, what saves them all is Annie --- ever-present in their minds, loving but not sentimental, caring but nobody’s fool, a voice in their heads that is funny, sharp and remarkably clear. The power she has given to those who loved her is the power to go on without her. The lesson they learn is that no one beloved is ever truly gone.

Editorial Content for Belonging

Book

Teaser

Appealing to readers of Delia Owens’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, Kristin Hannah’s FIREFLY LANE and Ann Packer’s THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER, BELONGING is a heartbreaking and hopeful coming-of-age story that traverses lifelong friendship, first love and a young woman’s fierce desire to transcend her traumatic childhood.

Promo

Appealing to readers of Delia Owens’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, Kristin Hannah’s FIREFLY LANE and Ann Packer’s THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER, BELONGING is a heartbreaking and hopeful coming-of-age story that traverses lifelong friendship, first love and a young woman’s fierce desire to transcend her traumatic childhood.

About the Book

Appealing to readers of Delia Owens’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, Kristin Hannah’s FIREFLY LANE and Ann Packer’s THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER, BELONGING is a heartbreaking and hopeful coming-of-age story that traverses lifelong friendship, first love and a young woman’s fierce desire to transcend her traumatic childhood.

Jenny is 13 when an epic dust storm rolls into her central California town in December 1977. Bedridden after contracting a life-threatening illness in the storm and suffering a shocking loss, Jenny realizes she will never be cared for by the mother who both neglects and terrifies her or the father who allows it. She relies on her cousin, Heather, who has the loving home Jenny longs for; her beloved great-uncle, Gino, the last link between generations; her best friend, Henry, a free spirit with whom she shares an inexplicable bond; and earnest baseball star, Billy, who becomes her first love.

After a stunning turn of events in both their lives, Jenny and Henry leave for college in LA together in the summer of 1982 --- Jenny fleeing a broken heart, and Henry running from something he can’t reveal, even to his best friend. When she returns home years later, the life Jenny so carefully created collides with the one she left behind.

Spanning three decades, BELONGING is about first love and heartbreak, friendship and secrets, family and forgiveness, hometowns and coming of age, and memory and music. The heart of the story is Jenny’s struggle to undo the binds of a childhood that have deeply affected her life, the painful path to love endured by children raised in alcoholic families, and the grim reality of believing you must hide a part of yourself in order to belong.

Editorial Content for Come and Get It

Teaser

From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of SUCH A FUN AGE comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.

Promo

From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of SUCH A FUN AGE comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.

About the Book

From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of SUCH A FUN AGE comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.

It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, COME AND GET IT is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion and bad behavior --- and the highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed and award-winning author Kiley Reid.

Editorial Content for Good Material

Teaser

From the New York Times bestselling author of GHOSTS and EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE comes a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both.

Promo

From the New York Times bestselling author of GHOSTS and EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE comes a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both.

About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author of GHOSTS and EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE: a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both.

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is without a home, waiting for his stand-up career to take off, and wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking.

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.

Editorial Content for A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Teaser

In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art and magic of Harlem.

Promo

In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art and magic of Harlem.

About the Book

In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art and magic of Harlem.

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian Ms. Della invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.

Editorial Content for One Wrong Word

Teaser

Hank Phillippi Ryan's heart-racing psychological thriller explores the insidious nature of gossip, scandal and lies --- and how careers, friendships and even marriages can be shattered forever.

Promo

Hank Phillippi Ryan's heart-racing psychological thriller explores the insidious nature of gossip, scandal and lies --- and how careers, friendships and even marriages can be shattered forever.

About the Book

A heart-racing new psychological thriller from USA Today bestselling and multiple award-winning author Hank Phillippi Ryan.

One wrong word can ruin your life. And no one knows that better than savvy crisis management expert Arden Ward. Problem is, she's now forced to handle a shocking crisis of her own. Unfairly accused of having an affair with a powerful client, Arden’s life and dreams are about to crash and burn. Then Arden is given an ultimatum. She has just two weeks to save her career and her reputation.

Is Cordelia Bannister the answer to her prayers?

Cordelia needs Arden’s help for her husband Ned, a Boston real estate mogul. Though he was recently acquitted in a fatal drunk driving accident, his reputation is ruined, and the fallout is devastating not only to the Bannisters' lives, but to the lives of their two adorable children.

Arden devotes her skill and determination --- and maybe her final days on the job --- to helping this shattered family. But revelations soon begin to emerge about what really happened the night of the accident. And then another car crash throws Ned back into the spotlight.

This case is Arden’s final chance to protect her own future and clear her name. But the more she tries to untangle the truth, the more she’s haunted by one disturbing question: What if she’s also protecting a killer?

Gossip. Lies. Rumors. Words like that can hurt you. And Arden knows the reality. Sometimes one wrong word can kill.

Editorial Content for Redwood Court

Teaser

Award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel is about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s.

Promo

Award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel is about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s.

About the Book

A “nuanced, brilliant” (Essence) debut about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s.

“Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write ’em in your books and show everyone who we are.”

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel, REDWOOD COURT. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they’ve built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. REDWOOD COURT is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

February 17, 2024

In the January 18th newsletter, I wrote about my book group and what makes our meetings so special. I then asked you to tell me about your group and share any stories you had about your discussions or how your group was formed. We heard from a number of readers and compiled their comments into a blog post that you can take a look at here.