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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 1.Big Stone Gap: A NovelNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first novel in the beloved Big Stone Gap series, now a major motion picture written and directed by Adriana Trigiani, starring Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, Whoopi Goldberg, John Benjamin Hickey, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia, and Jenna Elfman
“Delightfully quirky . . . chock-full of engaging, oddball characters and unexpected plot twists.”—People (Book of the Week)
It's 1978, and Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She’s also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the town’s long-running Outdoor Drama. Ave Maria is content with her life—until, one fateful day, her past opens wide with the revelation of a long-buried secret that will alter the course of her life. Before she knows it, Ave Maria is fielding marriage proposals, trying to claim her rightful inheritance, and planning the trip of a lifetime to Italy—one that will change her view of the world and her own place in it forever.
Millions of readers around the world have fallen in love with the small town of Big Stone Gap, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and its self-proclaimed spinster. Full of wit and wonder, hilarity and heart, Big Stone Gap is a gem of a book, and one that you will share with friends and family for years to come.
WINNER OF THE LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA ANNUAL LITERARY AWARD
Don’t miss any of Adriana Trigiani’s beloved Big Stone Gap series
BIG STONE GAP • BIG CHERRY HOLLER • MILK GLASS MOON • HOME TO BIG STONE GAP - 2.The Bookish Life of Nina HillInstant USA Today bestseller!
“Abbi Waxman is both irreverent and thoughtful.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin
“Meet our bookish millennial heroine—a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet, if you will… Waxman’s wit and wry humor stand out. She is funny and imaginative, and “Bookish” lands a step above run-of-the-mill romantic comedy fare.”—The Washington Post
“Abbi Waxman offers up a quirky, eccentric romance that will charm any bookworm…. For anyone who’s ever wondered if their greatest romance might come between the pages of books they read, Waxman offers a heartwarming tribute to that possibility.”—Entertainment Weekly
The author of Other People’s Houses and The Garden of Small Beginnings delivers a quirky and charming novel chronicling the life of confirmed introvert Nina Hill as she does her best to fly under everyone's radar.
Meet Nina Hill: A young woman supremely confident in her own...shell.
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.
When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realize what a terrible idea that is?
Nina considers her options.
1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)
It's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page. - 3.Man's Search for Meaning“It’s an absolute must-read for every human being. Period.”
—Anna Chlumsky
A book for finding purpose and strength in times of great despair, the international best-seller is still just as relevant today as when it was first published.
“This is a book I reread a lot . . . it gives me hope . . . it gives me a sense of strength.”
—Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNN
This seminal book, which has been called “one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought” by Carl Rogers and “one of the great books of our time” by Harold Kushner, has been translated into more than fifty languages and sold over sixteen million copies. “An enduring work of survival literature,” according to the New York Times, Viktor Frankl’s riveting account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps, and his insightful exploration of the human will to find meaning in spite of the worst adversity, has offered solace and guidance to generations of readers since it was first published in 1946. At the heart of Frankl’s theory of logotherapy (from the Greek word for “meaning”) is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but rather the discovery and pursuit of what the individual finds meaningful. Today, as new generations face new challenges and an ever more complex and uncertain world, Frankl’s classic work continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living, in spite of all obstacles.
A must-read companion to this classic work, a new, never-before-published work by Frankl entitled Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, is now available in English. - 4.Show Don't Tell: StoriesNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy “blends acerbic wit, shrewd insight and sharp-eyed observation [in this] bravura collection” (The Washington Post), including a story that revisits the main character from her iconic novel Prep
“Each of these witty, intelligent stories is a slice of modern life.”—People
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.
In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.
Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice. - 5.How to Kill Your Family: A NovelOutrageously funny, compulsively readable, and subversive, How to Kill Your Family is a wickedly dark romp about class, family, love . . . and murder. Coming soon as an 8-episode series on Netflix, executive produced and starring Anya Taylor-Joy.
Bella Mackie's debut novel is driven by a captivating first-person narrator who talks of self-care and social media while calmly walking the reader through her increasingly baroque acts of murder. But then, Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn't commit....
When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother's pleas for help, she vows revenge and coldly sets out to get her retribution--by killing them all, one by one.
This darkly humorous debut novel follows a cunning antihero as she gets her revenge. "Funny, sharp, dark, and twisted." --Jojo Moyes
When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I'm long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of twenty-eight, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing.
- 6.What the Wind Knows
An Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller.
In an unforgettable love story, a woman's impossible journey through the ages could change everything...
Anne Gallagher grew up enchanted by her grandfather's stories of Ireland. Heartbroken at his death, she travels to his childhood home to spread his ashes. There, overcome with memories of the man she adored and consumed by a history she never knew, she is pulled into another time.
The Ireland of 1921, teetering on the edge of war, is a dangerous place in which to awaken. But there Anne finds herself, hurt, disoriented, and under the care of Dr. Thomas Smith, guardian to a young boy who is oddly familiar. Mistaken for the boy's long-missing mother, Anne adopts her identity, convinced the woman's disappearance is connected to her own.
As tensions rise, Thomas joins the struggle for Ireland's independence and Anne is drawn into the conflict beside him. Caught between history and her heart, she must decide whether she's willing to let go of the life she knew for a love she never thought she'd find. But in the end, is the choice actually hers to make?
- 7.Conform: A Novel (Thousand Voices)NATIONAL BESTSELLER • THE MUST-READ FIRST NOVEL FROM JENNA BUSH HAGER’S NEW VENTURE, THOUSAND VOICES
In the far future, one young woman finds herself torn between two loves—and two sides of a rebellion boiling under the surface—in the “luminous” (People) first novel of a sweeping dystopian romance series.
The stunning hardcover of Conform features a custom-stamped case, beautiful endpapers, and foiled jacket.
“Compulsively readable and vividly written—it kept me awake long past my bedtime!”—Sarah J. Maas, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Court of Thorns and Roses
“An irresistible romantic debut with a love triangle that will have you picking sides . . . then changing sides . . . then changing sides again.”—Veronica Roth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Divergent
A lifelong outcast, twenty-seven-year-old Emeline spends her days alone, sorting ancient art for destruction. Centuries after a catastrophic war nearly decimated humanity, society is now ruled by an elusive and technologically advanced group called the Illum, who constantly monitor the population’s health and mandate procreation contracts. But Emeline’s bleak existence is shattered when, for the first time in decades, an Illum named Collin takes a Mate: Emeline.
Baffled as to why she was chosen, Emeline is swept into the dangerous game of the Courting, where one wrong move can mean elimination. Soon, she discovers a rebellion rising in secret, and that her Mate may be keeping secrets of his own. Collin is confusing, both cold and protective, and worse, she finds herself drawn to the very last person she should be falling for: Hal, one of the resistance leaders.
As she draws closer to both Collin and Hal, the Illum exercise their power in increasingly brutal ways, forcing Emeline to question everything—most of all whether she’ll have to give up her heart and even her life to stop them. - 8.The Land in Winter
Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
A best book of the year for the Independent, Guardian, i Newspaper and Good Housekeeping
'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect. A novel that hits your cells and can be felt there, without your brain really knowing what's happened to it. Superb'
SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital
'Delicate and devastating'
INDEPENDENT, The 20 best books of the year
'Miller may have written his best book yet . . . brilliance that is not to be missed'
GUARDIAN, The best fiction of 2024'Incredibly satisfying'
FINANCIAL TIMES'A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose'
MAIL ON SUNDAY'Perfect'
RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER'I loved The Land in Winter . . . There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald - that moment I have always loved in The Beginning of Spring when the birch trees seem to grow hands - those liminal moments that are kind of beyond words, or explanation, but Miller finds them anyway. It's a thing of rare beauty'
RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
'Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I've read'
SARAH HALL, author of BurntcoatDecember 1962, the West Country.
In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills.In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage.
Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering.
There is affection - if not always love - in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards - a true winter, the harshest in living memory - the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.
Where do you hide when you can't leave home? And where, in a frozen world, can you run to?
A masterful, page-turning examination of the minutiae of life, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling - proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of Britain's most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight'
HILARY MANTEL
'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind'
SUNDAY TIMES
'A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts'
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
'A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative'
THE TIMES
'A wonderful storyteller'
SPECTATOR - 9.Flesh: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize | Finalist for the Kirkus Prize | Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence
From Booker Prize finalist and “the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have” (Esquire), a “captivating...hypnotic...virtuosic” (The Baffler) novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.
A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy. “Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity. - 10.Girl Dinner: A Novel
DELUXE EDITION—a gorgeous hardcover edition featuring hot pink sprayed edges!
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, Girl Dinner is a darkly fun novel about power, lust, and eating your fill, as wealthy moms and sorority girls practice a sinister new wellness trend . . .
Good girls deserve a treat.
Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.
After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she's taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey.
Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner's new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane's clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is, and even the few hours a day she's apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so desperately craves.
As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.