DISCUSSION GUIDES

Patricia Highsmith's story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1952 and touted as "the novel of a love that society forbids," the book soon became a cult classic.

Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life, The Price of Salt (or Carol) tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany--the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. The Price of Salt is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels

“A coming–of–age masterpiece.” —Boston Globe

"It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." —USA Today

The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s masterwork—an acclaimed and timeless novel about a young woman falling into the grip of mental illness and societal pressures.

The story chronicles the breakdown of Esther Greenwood, a bright, beautiful, enormously talented college student coming of age in 1950s America, as she navigates the pressures of society along with her own ambitions. While at a prestigious, competitively won position at a New York City magazine one summer, Esther finds herself struggling with the looming expectations of marriage, motherhood, and giving up on her dreams to achieve them. She becomes increasingly disillusioned and her mental health deteriorates, ultimately leading her to undergo harsh treatment and therapy.

"Funny, intense, enormously human" (Cosmopolitan), The Bell Jar is a poignant exploration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche and remains an extraordinary accomplishment from one of the country's most luminous talents.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

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Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.

The award-winning, New York Times bestselling fantasy sensation that Madeline Miller called, “a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling,” Piranesi is an intoxicating, hypnotic novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls lined with thousands upon thousands of statues. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; and waves thunder up staircases, while rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

“Spellbinding, strange, and unforgettably original” (Esquire), Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Financial Times, Slate, The Chicago Public Library, Kirkus, The Telegraph
A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick

“[A] savagely satirical thriller.” —People

The Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.

Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

From the first dance to the last word, an epic love story spanning fifty years. Told entirely in dialogue, an encounter on an ocean liner leads to life and living in the heartland of the American Midwest.

From critically acclaimed librarian and author Eva Jurczyk comes That Night in the Library, a chilling literary mystery that transports readers to a world where secrets live in the dark, books breathe fears to life, and the only way out is to wait until morning. 

An explosive and emotional story of four siblings--each fighting their own personal battle--who return home in the wake of their father's death in order to save their family's home from being sold out from under them, from the author of One Summer in Savannah.