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A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, 5)Sarah J. Maas's sexy, richly imagined Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series continues with the journey of Feyre's fiery sister, Nesta. Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she's struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can't seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it. The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre's Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta's orbit. But her temper isn't the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable, and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other. Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts. Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance-and healing-in each other's arms. The Court of Thorns and Roses series includes: A Court of Thorns and Roses A Court of Mist and Fury A Court of Wings and Ruin A Court of Frost and Starlight A Court of Silver Flames - 2.
The Scarlet Thread: A Novel (The Historical Christian Fiction Story of Two Women, Centuries Apart, Joined through a Journal from the Oregon Trail)From the New York Times bestselling author of Redeeming Love and The Masterpiece comes the powerful story of two women, centuries apart, who are joined through a tattered journal as they contend with God, husbands, and even themselves. Sierra Madrid's life has just been turned upside down when she discovers the handcrafted quilt and journal of her ancestor Mary Kathryn McMurray, a young woman who was uprooted from her home only to endure harsh frontier conditions on the Oregon Trail. Though the women are separated by time and circumstance, Sierra discovers that many of the issues they face are remarkably similar . . . and uncovering Mary Kathryn's story may help her write the next chapter of hers. "Rivers tells a powerful story of marital love tested in a crucible. Your hankie will not be dry, nor your heart unchallenged, as the characters learn the lessons of surrender to God's sovereignty and unconditional love." ―Romantic Times Also available in The Francine Rivers Historical Collection (e-book only). - Features dual historical fiction and contemporary plot lines - Weaves together themes of faith, forgiveness, and overcoming challenges in marriage - Includes discussion questions for book clubs - 3.
The Great DivorceThe Timeless Novel About a Bus Ride from Hell to Heaven In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis again employs his formidable talent for fable and allegory. The writer finds himself in Hell boarding a bus bound for Heaven. The amazing opportunity is that anyone who wants to stay in Heaven, can. This is a starting point for an extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment. Lewis’s revolutionary idea is the discovery that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis’s The Great Divorce will change the way we think about good and evil. - 4.
Saoirse: A NovelFor readers of Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive. In Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha)—a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape. When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done. Saoirse is an evocative, suspenseful exploration of the intimate relationship between art and life and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of reinvention. Running a book club?
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Get Started- 5.
The Woman with the Cure"Huge applause... women have always been in science—despite those who would pretend otherwise.” --Bonnie Garmus, New York Times bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry She gave up everything — and changed the world. A riveting novel based on the true story of the woman who stopped a pandemic, from the bestselling author of Mrs. Poe. In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor –often the only woman in the room--she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood. This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine—and to decide what is forgivable, and how much should be sacrificed, in pursuit of the cure. - 6.
The Book of Records: A NovelLina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China. Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina's illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family's tragic past. As Lina confronts her father's troubling admissions, she begins to reconceptualize the world around her, gaining a deeper understanding of how our individual futures are shaped by our political circumstances, and she relies on the collective joy of art and intellectual endeavors to carry her through difficulty. A novel that voyages between centuries, generations, and ideas, The Book of Records is an indelible testament to the migratory nature of humanity and our ceaseless search for a home--in the physical world, in cyberspace, in history, and in the imagination--in the wake of catastrophe. - 7.
The Unknown: A NovelTHE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The first edition of this stunning hardcover features designed endpapers, a foil-stamped case, hued edges, and a shimmery jacket! In 1926, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont. Now, one hundred years later, it’s happening again. Struggling actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon, an island on sprawling Lake Faraday in Vermont. She’s even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot. Because New Avalon isn’t your ordinary island. A century ago, it was a commune for spiritual mediums—until they all vanished in 1926. The only trace of them was five dresses hanging from the branches of an old oak tree in the middle of the island, one for each missing woman. Some locals say they simply left. Others think they were murdered. But the prevailing opinion, thanks to a diary left behind by one of the vanished, a young woman named Daisy Rue, is that a séance gone wrong conjured something supernatural that took them all one by one. Not long after arriving, Marin and her castmates, including legendary actress Violet Wright and white-hot director Ronan Peters, begin to realize all is not right with New Avalon. They hear strange noises in the night and notice mysterious symbols left behind by the island's previous occupants. And after a sudden health emergency leaves Marin, Ronan, and the other actors stranded on the island, the disappearances begin again. Is it the work of someone trying to derail the movie? Or is the island’s alleged supernatural past catching up with the present? As fear and suspicion mount, Marin turns to Daisy’s diary, hoping it holds the key to figuring out what really happened to the women of New Avalon—and how to keep the island’s terrible history from repeating itself. - 8.
Trash!: A Garbageman's Story“Raffish and spirited . . . a nonconformist cri de coeur . . . Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it’s accurate . . . It’s been a long time since I’ve read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work.” — Dwight Garner, The New York Times A Montreal garbageman's sharp and funny memoir/exposé, in which he attempts to convince people to "stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears" . . . This fascinating no-bullshit account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean. Paré-Poupart’s story is atypical: he started working as a garbageman to pay for school, and after earning graduate degrees and working in more “respectable” fields, he is still on a truck — out of love for the physical rush, for his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and for an honesty and freedom that no other job has yet given him. Includes eight black and white photographs of the author on the job. His sociology background informs his inquiry into our collective wastefulness and individual failure to confront the trash we produce. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to his days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan. Trash! — the French edition of which is a runaway bestseller in Canada — explains and questions efforts to “clean up” a business with longstanding conventions of its own, a last bastion of well-paid employment for people who cannot fit in anywhere else. Aligned with great books about work from Zola to Orwell to Lucia Berlin, and in dialogue with societal critiques like How To Do Nothing, Trash! will change how you think about your waste and the people who handle it. Reading with a group?
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Set Up Your Club- 9.
The Patron Saint of Second Chances: A NovelThe self-appointed mayor of a tiny Italian village is determined to save his hometown no matter the cost in this “charming farce that highlights the triumph of hope and community” (People). Vacuum repairman and self-appointed mayor of Prometto, Italy (population 212) Signor Speranza has a problem: unless he can come up with 70,000 euros to fix the town’s pipes, the water commission will shut off the water to the village and all the residents will be forced to disperse. In a desperate bid to boost tourism—and revenue—he spreads a harmless rumor that movie star Dante Rinaldi will be filming his next project nearby. Unfortunately, the plan works a little too well, and soon everyone wants to be a part of the fictional film—the village butcher will throw in some money if Speranza can find roles for his fifteen enormous sons, Speranza’s wistfully adrift daughter reveals an unexpected interest in stage makeup, and his hapless assistant Smilzo volunteers a screenplay that’s not so secretly based on his undying love for the film’s leading lady. To his surprise—and considerable consternation, Speranza realizes that the only way to keep up the ruse is to make the movie for real. As the entire town becomes involved (even the village priest invests!), Signor Speranza starts to think he might be able to pull this off. But what happens when Dante Rinaldi doesn’t show up? Or worse, what if he does? A “warmhearted, original gem of a novel” (Amy Poeppel, author of Musical Chairs), The Patron Saint of Second Chances is perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Maria Semple. - 10.
Just Watch Me: A Novel“Funny, chatty, weird, and at times unexpectedly poignant.” —Electric Literature Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this “one-of-a-kind debut” (Cosmopolitan) about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption. Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her bathroom-less studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet); she’s being plagued by perpetual stomach pain; and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plant propagations to trust-fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a twenty-four-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy. Dell is her stream’s dungeon master, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes as her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost pepper to the hottest pepper on earth: the Caroline Reaper. Dell is finally good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means. Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestreams, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this misguided striver with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both a “captivating” (The Chicago Review of Books) tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched—and the terror of being seen.