DISCUSSION GUIDES

Summary: The bestselling historical fiction from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves, perfect for readers of Lee Smith and Lisa Wingate.

Summary: "A "well rounded and entertaining" (New York Times) Hollywood biography about the passionate, turbulent marriage of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Summary: An inventive, page-turning crime thriller with "palpable emotional depth" (New York Times Book Review) in which the Red Scare never ended.

Summary: It’s 1937. Jane’s on the run. She’s left her pregnant mother with a man she hates and left her father for dead in an irrigation ditch. To survive on her own, Jane remakes herself as a man. Everything’s getting better, until her father turns up on the newspaper’s front page, in a picture that threatens to destroy the life she’s making.

Summary: “A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. . . . I was captivated from the first sentence.”—NPR

Summary: Nature is the perfect teacher for the challenging and very personal concept of leadership. And no one knows this better than former zoo and aquarium senior leader turned leadership consultant Julie C. Henry. Wisdom from the Wild shows you―whether you’re a new or experienced leader―how to learn from and be inspired by the wildlife and wild places all around you. This fun, new approach to leadership presents nine “Unbreakable Laws” from the animal kingdom. These true, fundamental guidelines with concrete examples from wildlife can steer your work and decisions as a leader.

Summary: From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction—a New York Times-bestselling collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.

Summary: A propulsive and dazzling debut novel set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880s American West.

Summary: This novel, told in three parts, is a searing meditation on grief, female strength, and self‑discovery set against a backdrop of complicated social and racial histories. Nobody's Magic is a testament to the power of family—the ones you're born in and the ones you choose. And in these three narratives, among the yearning and loss, each of these women may find a seed of hope for the future.