DISCUSSION GUIDES

2026 B&N Discover Prize Finalist

An unexpected letter sends a man and his wife into their pasts--and offers them both a shot at redemption.

After an involuntary retirement from his high-flying Hollywood career, Stafford Hopkins has retreated to a luxury estate on Maui, along with his wife Agnes, both grimly resigned to life in a paradise where neither feels fully at home.

Stafford is ready to retreat into himself, too, when a letter arrives with shocking news. Stafford has been named guardian of four children he didn't know existed: the grandchildren of his late childhood friend, Bobby Shepherd, whose ghost Stafford can no longer ignore.

Returning to both the hardscrabble farming town and the dark secret he'd tried to forget for decades, Stafford is forced to confront his past in order to rebuild his future--and to redirect the fates of his family and the four young people suddenly in his care.

Slyly funny and deeply moving, The Golden Boy is a captivating debut about love, mercy, and second chances.

"The Golden Boy is not just an astoundingly ambitious novel, but also--and more importantly, in my opinion--a wildly entertaining one, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Bravo, Patricia Finn!" ―Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Trilogy

Long-listed for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ+ Fiction

Named one of The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year
One of The Washington Post’s Best Fiction Books of the Year

A radiant, intimate novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer—about family, desire, and what we inherit.

When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once-flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.

Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.

Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete.

At once sweeping and compressed, Tash Aw’s The South is a family novel of change and desire—a story of what happens when public and private lives collide, told with uncommon grace and beauty.

A queer woman must fight her way out of a craft store run by a megachurch in this gripping survival horror novel by Jenny Kiefer, author of This Wretched Valley.

The ratcheting tension and gut-churning terror will appeal to fans of Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle and Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix.

Ruth is trapped. She's stuck in her small, religious hometown of Kill Devil, Kentucky, stuck in the closet, and stuck living paycheck to paycheck. After her manager finds out that she lives with her girlfriend, Ruth is fired from her job at New Creations--a craft store owned by the church that dominates life in Kill Devil.

In an act of revenge, Ruth attempts to shoplift some yarn but is caught red-handed. Instead of calling the police, the employees lock her in the store--and attack her. As Ruth fights for her life using only the crafting supplies at hand, she plunges deeper into the tangled web of the New Creationists, who are hiding a terrible secret that threatens not only her but the entire town.

Urgent, scathing, and utterly original, Crafting for Sinners cements Kiefer's status as a dazzling new star in horror.

"Jessica Strawser delivers a thought-provoking, life-affirming novel about the things we keep, what we leave behind, and the courage it takes to, well, quit. The Quitters Club is an ode to female friendship and the liberating truth that defining life on your own terms isn't failure, it's freedom. A five-star must read by an unforgettable voice." --Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author of Summer State of Mind

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Last Caretaker comes a hopeful and empowering novel about the messy beauty of female friendship and the deep courage it takes to rebuild a life at any age.

When four ride-or-die friends reunite for a getaway, they're desperate for a break, a chance to reconnect. But each is hiding a deeper reason why. Marie feels like an impostor teaching "How to Say No" seminars while her marriage has evolved into something she never said yes to. Brooke's most heartfelt goal--motherhood--is proving out of reach. Lucy's dream career has broken her spirit, possibly for good. And Collins feels trapped in grief by her late husband's legacy.

All their lives, they've encouraged each other not to give up--but they can't do this anymore. Now, at a breaking point, they make a pact: Quit. And help each other through the fallout.

At first, it's positively liberating. A husband gets a much-needed wake-up call. A singles retreat is a widow's perfect escape. A very public career exit becomes a never-too-late return to college. And a childless life becomes a bold new plan to travel the world. But letting go will be more complicated than they imagined. Confronting hard truths about love, loss, and starting over, these four women must discover what's worth fighting for--and what's truly best left behind.

The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd's son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner's story was lost to time--until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.

As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief.

Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live--then, now, always.