DISCUSSION GUIDES

Summary: Lil and Frank married young, started a family, and have recently retired to North Carolina. Determined to leave a history behind for their grown kids, Lil sifts through letters and diary entries, uncovering family stories—and revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Empathetic and profound, this novel from master storyteller Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and to be a child trying to know your parents, trying to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory.

Summary: In post-Katrina New Orleans, a single mother jeopardizes the safety of her friends and family as she fights crooked businessmen, her corrupt law firm, and a white supremacist group in a collision of race and greed.

Summary: From Anthony Doerr--the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author of Cloud Cuckoo Land--the beautiful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Summary: From the USA Today bestselling author of The Long Flight Home...Recruited from Churchill’s typing pool to become an undercover spy in German-occupied France, a young woman from London bravely endures daring missions, audacious escapes, and harrowing imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp, risking everything for the country—and the man—she loves.

Summary: The unforgettable, haunting story of a young woman’s perilous fight for freedom and justice for her brother, the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer.

Summary: Award-winning investigative journalist and bestselling author Caitlin Rother invites readers to examine the mysterious death of 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau. Found hanging from a second-story balcony of her multimillionaire boyfriend’s San Diego mansion in 2011, Rebecca was naked and gagged, with her ankles tied and hands bound behind her. On the door to her bedroom, investigators found a mysterious hand-written message: “SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER.” The death was deemed a suicide, but Rother reveals there's more to the story...

Summary: This New York Times bestseller intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Summary: A brilliant novel about a building, a brothel, and a swirl of characters in London’s red-light district. From the author of the Booker Prize finalist Elmet, Hot Stew confronts questions about class, gender, and power, all through an entertaining, cinematic story.

Summary: Schoolteacher Rose follows her dream, buys an apartment in Florence and falls in love. She makes a mysterious discovery that changes her destiny.

Summary: Through linked stories of an ambitious 1920’s chorus girl and a grieving modern-day film student, award-winning author and journalist Denny S. Bryce brings jazz age Chicago’s Black Renaissance to vibrant life in this stirring, impeccably researched novel about loss, forgiveness, and the limitations—and surprises—of love.