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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 1451.Franny and Zooey"Perhaps the best book by the foremost stylist of his generation" (New York Times), J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey collects two works of fiction about the Glass family originally published in The New Yorker.
"Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and--sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."
A novel in two halves, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood. It is a gleaming example of the wit, precision, and poignancy that have made J. D. Salinger one of America's most beloved writers. - 1452.Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries
Journalist Greg Melville's Over My Dead Body is an "astonishing . . . fascinating . . . powerful" (New York Times Book Review) tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead.
- 1453.The Briar Club: A Novel
The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.
- 1454.Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in CrisisA #1 New York Times Best Seller and soon to be a Major-Motion Picture, Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
- 1455.The Way: A Novel
A postapocalyptic road trip and a quest for redemption.
- 1456.Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir
“A powerful, gut-wrenching tale of pain, suffering, and recovery.” —KIRKUS
"This is memoir writing at its best. Thoughtful. Vulnerable. Palpable. Empathetic. Hopeful." —SMOKELONG QUARTERLY
One month before his college graduation, Paul Rousseau was accidentally shot in the head by his roommate and best friend—this is the raw, inspiring true story of their friendship, the gunshot, and the aftermath.
- 1457.Girls Like UsThe instant New York Times bestseller, for the first time in mass market: Worlds collide when an FBI agent investigates a string of grisly murders on Long Island and faces the impossible question: What happens when the primary suspect is your father?
FBI agent Nell Flynn hasn't been home in ten years. Nell and her father, Homicide Detective Martin Flynn, have never had much of a relationship. And Suffolk County will always be awash in memories of her mother, Marisol, who was murdered when Nell was just seven.
When Martin dies in a motorcycle accident, Nell returns to the house where she grew up so that she can spread her father's ashes and close his estate. At the behest of her father's partner, Detective Lee Davis, Nell becomes involved in an investigation into the murders of two young women in Suffolk County. The further Nell digs, the more likely it seems to her that her father should be the primse suspect--and that his friends on the police force are covering his tracks.
Plagued by doubts about her mother's murder, and her own role in exonerating her father in that case, Nell can't help but ask questions about who killed the two women and why. But she may not like the answers she finds--not just about those she loves, but about herself. - 1458.Migrations
* INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER *
"Visceral and haunting" (New York Times Book Review) · "Hopeful" (Washington Post) · "Powerful" (Los Angeles Times) · "Thrilling" (TIME) · "Tantalizingly beautiful" (Elle) · "Suspenseful, atmospheric" (Vogue) · "Aching and poignant" (Guardian) · "Gripping" (The Economist)
Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?
Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds. - 1459.The September House
A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.
- 1460.The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia: A novelOne unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy (“Terrific” –Boston Globe).
Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.
Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.
Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.