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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 1.Storybook Ending: A NovelNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A charming story about friendship, community, and the magic that happens in bookstores—when an anonymous note left in a book finds the wrong recipient.
April, a smart and lonely tech worker, worries work from home has gotten out of hand: She’s left an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her Seattle neighborhood bookstore who has a gentle smile and looks great in flannel. But thanks to fate, Laura—a busy single mom who had given up on love—buys the book, finds the note, and thinks Westley has left it for her. A handsome man who loves books seems like just the plot twist she has been looking for.
Meanwhile, Westley—not the most perceptive—is too distracted by the movie filming at the store and the ambition it’s unlocked in him to notice either of the two women. But as April and Laura’s anonymous correspondence continues back and forth, their mundane routines are challenged, sparking a glimmer of hope. Is a happy ending in the cards for them?
A heartwarming web of mistaken identities and serendipitous encounters, Storybook Ending is a playful tribute to friendship, love stories of all kinds, and to the objects—from a forgotten slip of paper to someone’s heart—left between the pages of books we loved. - 2.The Burning Side: A NovelFrom the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging.
When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.
As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.
A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love. - 3.Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes
What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers?
Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence.
Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human.
Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate.
Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, this exploration of our origin stories shows how history is carried forward and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted.
Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and insightful cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.
This provocative and inspiring book offers a powerful vision for a new era of equality.
- Origin Stories Revisited: Challenge the foundational myths—from Eve and the apple to Pandora’s Box—that have shaped Western culture and discover what happens when women are the ones telling the story.
- A New Definition of Power: Move beyond outdated models of dominance and explore what it truly means to be courageous, daring, and strong in a modern world.
- The Merging of Paths: Discover a unique synthesis of the spiritual and the feminist, giving voice to both the cool water of the meditative self and the fire of the feminist self.
- A Toolbox for Inner Strength: Acquire practical, internal tools for inner change, helping you become both strong-willed and kind-hearted in the face of corrupting influences.
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- 6.I Will Find You
Read the book that's soon to be a Netflix series! In this breathtaking thriller, an innocent father serving life for the murder of his own son receives evidence that his child may still be alive--and must break out of prison to find out the truth.
David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love--until one fateful night when David woke to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall.
Half a decade later, David's been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison--a fate which, grieving and wracked with guilt, David didn't have the will to fight. The world has moved on without him. Then Cheryl's younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph . . . in the background, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David's son. David just knows: Matthew is still alive.
David plans a harrowing escape, determined to achieve the impossible-save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. But with his life on the line and the FBI following his every move, can David evade capture long enough to reveal the shocking truth?
- 7.The Lost Baker of Vienna: A NovelAn historical novel inspired by the experiences of the author’s own family after the Holocaust, a sweeping saga about survival, loss, love, and the reverberating effects of war
In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war.
Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother, and her younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn’t look like they’d imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe.
Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father’s recipes. Soon, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions. How will Chana balance her love of baking against her family’s need for security?
The Lost Baker of Vienna affirms the unbreakable bonds of family, shining a light on the courageous spirit of WWII refugees as they battle to survive the overwhelming hardships of a world torn apart. - 8.Taiwan Travelogue: A Novel
WINNER OF THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman—who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name—is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships. - 9.The Mark of the Bear Clan (The Far Northern Land Saga)
When the cold hand reaches southward,
reaches with its frozen fingers,
comes a child into the Northland,
all the clans to bring together.
The child is Ulla, a green-eyed girl from a hardscrabble village in Iron-Age Finland. Mauled by a bear, she is healed by the famous wizard Väinämöinen, but walks away with a striking scar that evokes an ancient prophecy. Hundreds of miles away, Prince Egan is thrust into power when his father is killed by a horrific shade from Hell.
The lives of the two young heroes intertwine as they battle Löhi, a powerful sorceress and the Far Northern Land's ancient enemy. For Egan, this means overcoming the skepticism of his own people and the hidden self-doubt that gnaws at him deep inside. Torn from everyone she ever knew, Ulla embarks on a desperate search for love and belonging, and takes the first steps to becoming a wizard herself.
The Mark of the Bear Clan, Book I of the Far Northern Land Saga, goes where no epic fantasy series has ever gone before-Finnish mythology and the world of the Kalevala, where legendary heroes like the wizard Väinämöinen mix with original characters like Ulla and Egan to create a unique mosaic wholly new to fantasy literature.
- 10.Sublimation
A most-anticipated title from USA Today, Glamour, LitHub, New Scientist, The Nerd Daily, Library Journal, and more!
Doppelgängers, corporate intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, and the harsh permanence of the border: Sublimation is a thrilling and provocative debut for fans of Severance that asks what you'd sacrifice for a different life from award-winning author Isabel J. Kim.
“One of the best debuts of the year.” —John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain
The border cuts you in two.
When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home.
Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral.
She doesn’t know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life.
How far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make?
“After Sublimation, the immigrant story will never be the same.” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao