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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 1.The Gift of a Broken Heart: How Our Grief Can Connect Us
A searing and poignant memoir of parental love, unthinkable loss, and the power of grief to open our hearts and connect us to others.
Grief can be profoundly disorienting and traumatic. Yet it can also open our hearts, strengthening our empathy, affection, and compassion for others. It may even open us up to new forms of joy. In this heartrending memoir, business executive and Buddhist Bryan Welch movingly recounts his own journey through deep grief at the unimaginable loss of his 25-year-old son. In unflinching detail, the book describes the pain of parents grappling with their adult son's addiction, and his eventual death from the disease.
As Welch begins the monumental process of recovering from devastating parental grief, his vulnerability transforms into unexpected feelings of warmth, kinship, and compassion toward other people. This, as much as debilitating grief, is part of his son's legacy, and he begins exploring practical, psychological, and spiritual ways of honoring that legacy and sustaining a more compassionate, less egotistical view of the world.
Grief is a part of every human life. We desperately try to avoid it, but it can also provide profound guidance for how we can experience life, and love, more deeply. This book explores how our own vulnerability as human beings can help us heal the traumas that separate us from one another, and may even lead us toward a more loving and connected world.
- 2.One Day in the Life of Ivan DenisovichThe first published novel from the controversial Nobel Prize winning Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago.
In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength.
First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man’s will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.
Includes an Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
and an Afterword by Eric Bogosian - 3.Caller Unknown: The Heart-Stopping New Thriller from the Author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time
"An unputdownable adventure that was both heartwarming and thrilling! Everything I've come to expect from Gillian McAllister!" —Freida McFadden, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
“Only a Gillian McAllister thriller can make your heart race and then your heart melt from one page to the next! I’m a devoted fan!” —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author
How far would you go to rescue your child? A mother races against the clock—and finds herself on the wrong side of the law—in a desperate fight to save her teenage daughter in this pulse-pounding thriller from the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time.
There is nothing that Simone won’t do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don’t tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal…
Though Simone’s husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can’t take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up.
What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn’t want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable.
A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone’s courage—and morality—is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a mother.
Unbearably tense, compassionately told, and full of well-crafted moral dilemmas, Caller Unknown proves once again why Gillian McAllister’s thrillers are “the best of the best” (Lisa Jewell).
- 4.Subjugation: Book 2 of the Ephisian Saga
Pregnant and with a whole new list of enemies to kill, Izzy and Baal flee south.
- 5.Poinsettia Girl: The Story of Agata della Pieta
Venice, 1710, Poinsettia Girl is based on the story of Agata de la Pieta, an orphan musician of the Ospedale de la Pieta.
- 6.Grabtown: a psychological thriller
Grabtown is a gripping dual-timeline thriller that exposes the dark underbelly of small-town secrets, where sisterhood and courage become the only weapons against those who prey on the vulnerable. Perfect for fans of Kellye Garrett's Like a Sister, Shari Lapena’s Listen for the Lie, and Amy Gentry's Good as Gone.
- 7.Swing Time: A NovelA New York Times Best Seller, Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Swing Time is an ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty. The story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time.
- 8.Good Sister
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"A stunningly clever thriller made doubly suspenseful by not one, but two unreliable narrators."—People
Sally Hepworth, the author of The Mother-In-Law delivers a knock-out of a novel about the lies that bind two sisters in The Good Sister.
There's only been one time that Rose couldn't stop me from doing the wrong thing and that was a mistake that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister Rose three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights, and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous.
When Rose discovers that she cannot get pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple.
Fern's mission will shake the foundations of the life she has carefully built for herself and stir up dark secrets from the past, in this quirky, rich, and shocking story of what families keep hidden. - 9.LoreTHE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLER
“Epic from start to finish.” —Marie Lu, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Warcross
“A brilliant and breathless twist on classic mythology!” —Marissa Meyer, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lunar Chronicles
Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she’s pushed away any thought of revenge against the man—now a god—responsible for their deaths.
Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek her out: Castor, a childhood friend and first love Lore believed to be dead, and Athena, one of the last of the original gods, now gravely wounded.
The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and a way to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to rejoin the hunt, binding her fate to Athena's, will come at a deadly cost—and it may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.
From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Darkest Minds comes a sweepingly ambitious, high-octane tale of power, destiny, love, and redemption.
NOW IN PAPERBACK WITH EXCLUSIVE ART AND BONUS CONTENT! - 10.The Downstairs Girl: Reese's YA Book ClubFrom the critically-acclaimed author of Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon and founding member of We Need Diverse Books comes a powerful novel about identity, betrayal, and the meaning of family.