DISCUSSION GUIDES

Summary: Quit letting fear call the shots! You've got a message that the world needs to hear & it's only going to happen if you get it in flight.

Summary: "Funny, eerie, tender, haunting and unsettling, smokily atmospheric, and fantastically enjoyable." ―Helen MacDonald, author of Vesper Flights

Summary: An intensely moving and revelatory memoir of enduring and emerging from exceptional grief

Summary: An uplifting, behind-the-scenes look at Grammy Award–winning Destiny’s Child singer Michelle Williams’s life, her life-long struggle with anxiety and depression, and the practical wisdom she learned along the way. After decades of sweeping her mental health under the rug, Williams discovered that joy can be found when we release toxic thought patterns, forgive ourselves and others, and live authentically.

Summary: For fans of Neal Stephenson, Andy Weir, and Cixin Liu comes a novel that readers describe as “a great Black Mirror episode” with the “page-turning pacing of Michael Crichton.”

Summary: A sensational divorce trial in 17th-century Boston becomes a deadly witch hunt in Chris Bohjalian’s HOUR OF THE WITCH. Puritan Mary Deefield—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt, a thrilling New York Times bestseller from the author of The Flight Attendant.

Summary: Jessamyn Stanley’s YOKE: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance takes readers on an autobiographical journey to self-acceptance in a series of deeply honest essays. Stanley explores everything from her path to body liberation and her struggle with imposter syndrome to the limitations she has come to see in yoga culture—consumerism, cultural appropriation, racism. Tying it all together is Jessamyn’s singular voice—funny, frank, and warm—producing a work that is a unique and compelling blend of memoir, philosophy, and self-help.

Summary:

"The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."--Publishers Weekly

From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.

"My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family."

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman's only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.

By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa's tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.

In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa--like so many of her neighbors--must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.

The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it--the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

Summary: Years after disappearing from Brooklyn, disgraced businessman Ricardo Desire is found dead in his home. A glimpse of Ricardo’s past reveals a salacious love triangle and double life. In the aftermath of his death, the lives of those he knew begin to unravel. Olena Jackson is the detective assigned to the high-profile case, and the more she digs, the more lies and bodies she uncovers. Although Ricardo is gone, for the people left behind, the collision course is just getting started.

Summary: It’s the last year of highschool, and everything has changed . . .