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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 91.By the Hands of Men, Book One: The Old World: A Sweeping Saga of Courage, Love, and Redemption
A soldier fights for his soul in the trenches of France. A field hospital nurse battles death every day. When duty and honor are not enough of a reason to go on in the hell of a world at war, love gives purpose to their lives.
- 92.The Great Dane
"The Great Dane is both literary and approachable, a modern love story distinguished by its literary prose and comedic dialogue. Laqueur has crafted an unusual love story with heart, humor, and enough narrative mystery to keep readers turning the pages."
-Kirkus Reviews
From the award-winning author of An Exaltation of Larks comes a chimerical novel of romance, drama, identity, power and hope, woven with art and folklore to make a magical journey of human emotion. Through the vehicle of a video game mystery, two queer men negotiate their individual grief in the aftermath of profound loss.
After the sudden death of his only child, Liko Greenman is adrift, killing time until a mystery hidden inside his son's favorite video game, Three Hares, gives him a reason to move forward. When a cryptic clue from the game's maker leads him from the digital world to a secluded farm in rural New York, Liko meets Danelaw Strong, an intersex man with a layered past and a life shaped by love that defied convention.
As Dane guides Liko through the game's unanswered questions, the search becomes something deeper: a journey through grief, identity and the ways people find belonging when traditional labels fall short. Set against legends, folklore and the evocative symbolism of the Three Hares triskelion, The Great Dane is a luminous exploration of connection, chosen family and the healing power of love. Blending romance and drama with psychological and philosophical depth, Suanne Laqueur shows us that while we view the most profound human connection in pairs, three is often love's most magical number. Perfect for fans of John Irving, Fredrik Backman, Matt Haig, John Boyne, and lovers of emotional, thought-provoking fiction.
- 93.To Keep Her From Harm
"A realistic, gripping portrayal of family, trust, and the value of self-improvement."-Kirkus
A single mother's desperate attempt to protect her daughter from potential danger draws them into a web of secrets and hidden identities-raising the haunting question: how far is too far when a parent is fighting to keep their child safe?
When Laura first fell for Steven, she believed she'd finally found the life she'd always longed for. But after an unexpected pregnancy, the distant, simmering anger she'd once brushed aside in him becomes impossible to ignore. The birth of their daughter Amanda is a dream come true for Laura-until a violent outburst sends her fleeing to the safety of her affluent parents' home.
As Laura navigates a tense and uneasy co-parenting arrangement, subtle changes in her daughter's behavior suggest that Steven's connection to Amanda may not only be strained, but sinister. Consumed with the need to protect her child, Laura flees across the border into Canada after a court disagrees with her suspicions-leaving the FBI and a grieving father in pursuit.
A mother's love and a father's anguish have left a trail of frayed lives and fractured hearts. But the devastating consequences of a young child's attempt to take matters into her own hands reunites her parents as they struggle to make their daughter whole again.
- 94.Kin: Oprah's Book Club: A Novel
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
“Tayari Jones’s storytelling washed over me like a trip back home. . . . Kin is a masterpiece of a novel that will live with you long after you turn the last page.” —Oprah Winfrey
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction. - 95.The Ghost Women: A NovelA mysterious art academy in the woods, a deck of ancient tarot cards, a centuries-old secret
On a hot August morning in 1972, the body of Abel Montague, a student at St. Luke’s Institute of the Arts, is found hanging from a tree in the forest. An ancient Hanged Man tarot card is found in the back pocket of his pants and his body has been positioned into the exact pose illustrated on the card.
When Detective Lola Germany arrives at St. Luke’s—a former monastery that once housed a secret order of monks who carried out witch trials and executions—she believes they are dealing with a ritualistic murder. While interviewing school administrators and Abel’s classmates, Lola discovers Abel’s live-in girlfriend, Pearl, seems shaken but also might be hiding something—along with her group of friends who call themselves witches.
When more students are found dead, each body arranged like a tarot card, Lola realizes she is trapped in a web of power and ambition that spans centuries. Soon the lines between past and present, spiritual and tangible, begin to blur, and the only way to survive is to seek answers from places she never imagined. - 96.The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce NovelWINNER OF THE AGATHA • ARTHUR ELLIS • DILYS • DEBUT DAGGER AWARDS
“Wonderfully entertaining . . . sure to be one of the most loved mysteries of the year . . . [Flavia is] a delightful, intrepid, acid-tongued new heroine.”—Chicago Sun-Times
It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.
For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”
BONUS: This edition contains a The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie discussion guide and an excerpt from Alan Bradley's The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. - 97.The Wayfinder: A Novel
Named one of Ten Best Books of 2025 by The Wall Street Journal
Named one of Ten Best Books of 2025 by The Washington Post
Named a Best Novel of 2025 by NPR and Publishers Weekly
Named a Best Historical Novel of 2025 by The New York Times
“A powerful and original epic . . . Deadly politics, tragic romance and dangerous sea journeys keep the drama at a spirited boil.”
—The New York Times
“An epic of extraordinary abundance . . . modern and mythological . . . wondrous enough to endure.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“An epic that feels less created than unearthed . . . The Wayfinder is sui generis—a tapestry of South Pacific myth, archetypal quest, political allegory, environmental jeremiad and feminist revision that feels both ancient and impossibly relevant.”
—The Washington Post
Talking corpses, poetic parrots, and a fan that wafts the breath of life—this is the world young Kōrero finds herself thrust into when a mysterious visitor lands on her island, a place so remote its inhabitants have forgotten the word for stranger. Her people are desperate and on the brink of starvation, and the wayward stranger offers them an impossible choice: they can remain in the only home they’ve ever known and await the uncertainty to come, or Kōrero can join him and venture into unfamiliar waters, guided by only the night sky and his assurance of a bountiful future in the Kingdom of Tonga. What Kōrero and her people don’t know is that the promised refuge is no utopia—instead, Tonga is an empire at war and on the verge of collapse, a place where brains are regularly liberated from skulls and souls get trapped in coconuts with some frequency.
The perils of Tonga are compounded by a royal feud: loyalties are shifting, graves are being opened, and everyone lives in fear of a jellyfish tattoo. Here, survival can rest on a perfectly performed dance or the acceptance of a cup of kava. Together, the stranger and Kōrero embark upon an epic voyage—one that will deliver them either to salvation or to the depths of the Pacific.
Evoking the grandeur of Wolf Hall and the splendor of Shōgun, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Adam Johnson conjures oral history, restores the natural world, and locates what’s best in humanity. Toweringly ambitious and breathtakingly immersive, The Wayfinder is an instant, timeless classic. - 98.
- 99.The Vanishing PlaceInstant #1 International Bestseller • A New York Times and Washington Post's Best Thriller of 2025
A shocking murder in the New Zealand bush—and the witness who looks all too familiar—draws a woman back to the very place she swore she’d never return to in this breakneck debut thriller.
A child who ran from the forest.
A woman who must return to it
Growing up with her younger siblings in the unforgiving New Zealand bush, Effie believed their parents had cut them off from civilization because they loved Nature. She never suspected that their reasons might be more menacing. After witnessing a terrifying episode of violence, she escaped the wilderness to forge a life for herself halfway across the globe.
Now, when she learns the only witness to a murder is a little girl who looks just like her, Effie is compelled to return to the scene of her troubled childhood, where the secrets of her upbringing and the terrors of her past come rushing back to the surface. In order to find out once and for all what became of her family—and possibly help this mysterious girl who could be her younger self—Effie must face her greatest fears once more. - 100.The Harvey GirlsJuliette Fay—known for her “well-drawn characters and vibrant historical backdrops” (Library Journal)—transports us to 1920s America with this big-hearted tale of two very different women who must learn to trust each other as one tries save her family and the other to save herself. Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah and Kristina McMorris.
1926: Charlotte Crowninshield was born into one of the finest Boston society families. Now she’s on the run from a brutal husband, desperate to disappear into the wilds of the Southwest. Billie MacTavish is the oldest of nine children born to Scottish immigrants in Nebraska. She quit school in the sixth grade to help with her mother’s washing and mending business, but even that isn’t enough to keep the family afloat.
Desperate, both women join the ranks of the Harvey Girls, waitresses who serve in America’s first hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad. Hired on the same day, they share three things: a room, a heartfelt dislike of each other…and each has a secret that will certainly get them fired.
Through twelve-hour days of training in Topeka, Kansas, they learn the fine art of service, perfecting their skills despite bouts of homesickness, fear of being discovered, and a run-in with the KKK. When they’re sent to work at the luxurious El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon, the challenges only grow, as Billie struggles to hide her young age from would-be suitors, and Charlotte discovers the little-known dark side of the national park’s history.
“Juliette Fay’s gift for creating complex, exquisitely human characters” (Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author) is on full display in this deeply moving and joyous celebration of female empowerment, loyalty, and friendship.