Bookclubs makes it easy to organize your book club. Simplify logistics, save time, and read more with the app loved by book clubs everywhere.
DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 151.My Joy Journey with Amy: A Love Story Through Life, Loss, Grief and Healing
There is no manual for how to handle a cancer diagnosis or for the journey through treatments.
Neither for the grief many families experience when the outcome results in the loss of a loved one. Loss is a profound, life-changing event that has no end. I will not pretend to have any tidy answers for you on how to overcome grief or to provide a process for you to follow in your own grief journey. I simply do not have one, even for myself.
This book is about my joy journey with the love of my life, Amy. You probably are curious about the use of the word joy in describing this journey. Certainly, cancer is not a joyful event, but the word joy had special meaning and significance to Amy and, because of her example, to many others. After receiving her cancer diagnosis, Amy expressed very adamantly that she wanted to somehow find joy in our cancer journey as well. As you read this collection of reflections, I think you will come to understand the joy Amy sought. Throughout this book, I recall the many wonderful, joyful memories of my life with Amy as well as chronicle my own challenges and struggles through grief to healing.
While writing My Joy Journey with Amy was in many ways cathartic for me, my hope is that this book will inspire you to follow Amy’s example and find some way to seek joy each and every day.
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.” —Henri J.M. Nouwen
- 152.Personality Intelligence: Master the Art of Being You (For Your Sake and Everyone Else’s)
For thousands of years, personality types have offered fixed descriptions of who we are. In Personality Intelligence, award-winning author and personality expert Merrick Rosenberg—also known as the Bird Guy—takes it further and shows us how we can develop our personalities to become our best selves.
Utilizing his memorable Eagle, Parrot, Dove, and Owl personality styles, Rosenberg provides an intriguing glimpse into the neuroscience behind personality and human behavior. He introduces the idea that we can all advance through the four levels of Personality Intelligence—from struggling to express our natural talents to becoming adaptable Chameleons who are wildly successful at everything they do.
Through humorous and relatable fables, celebrity stories, and four subtly-named characters—Dawn Eagleton, Ian Parrotti, Scarlett Doveridge, and Carter Barnowl—Personality Intelligence provides a lens through which readers can clearly view their past, present, and potential selves.
In this transformative book, you’ll learn how to:- More effectively leverage your innate strengths
- Apply personality insights to build healthy, enduring relationships at home, work, and everywhere in between
- Master all four styles so you can fluidly adapt to any situation
Personality Intelligence is the guide to unlocking the full potential of who you can be.
- 153.Neverwhere: A Novel
National Bestseller
From #1 New York Times bestselling author
Neil Gaiman, a novel of bold creativity and narrative genius that brings to
life a world most people could never even dream of―one of ten classic Gaiman
works repackaged with elegant original watercolor art by acclaimed artist Henry
Sene Yee
Under the streets of London there’s a
world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints,
murderers and angels. This is the city of the people who have fallen between
the cracks. A single act of kindness to a ragged girl he finds injured on the
street catapults young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his workaday life into
a world that is both familiar and threateningly bizarre.
Displaying bold creativity and narrative
genius, Neverwhere is a dark, funny, and seductive tale that has become
a contemporary literary touchstone. - 154.Fundamentally: A NovelA wickedly funny and audacious debut novel following an academic who flees from heartbreak and lands in Iraq with a one-of-a-kind job offer—only to be forced to do the work of confronting herself.
*AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*
*AN NPR BOOKS WE LOVE PICK*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025*
When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalization, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why not? Abandoned by her mother and devastated by unrequited love, she leaps at the chance.
In Iraq, Nadia quickly realizes she’s in over her head. The UN is a mess of competing interests, and her team consists of Goody Two-shoes Sherri who never passes up an opportunity to remind Nadia of her objections; and Pierre, a snippy Frenchman who has no qualms about perpetually scrolling through Grindr. But then Nadia meets Sara, a hilarious, foul-mouthed East Londoner who was pulled into radicalism at just fifteen. The two are kindred spirits, and Nadia vows to get Sara home.
As the rehabilitation program picks up traction, Sara reveals a secret that upends everything, forcing Nadia to make a drastic choice. In the fallout, Nadia’s brown-savior fantasies crumble, leaving her to wonder if she can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
A fierce, wildly funny, and razor-sharp exploration of radicalism, family, and the quest for belonging, Fundamentally boldly inspects one of the defining controversies of our age and introduces a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction. - 155.The Other Mrs.: A Thrilling Suspense Novel from the NYT bestselling author of Local Woman MissingNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY - PEOPLE MAGAZINE - MARIE CLAIRE - POPSUGAR - BUSTLE - SHEREADS - HELLOGIGGLES - and more!
A woman is drawn into a mysterious web of secrets in this twisty whodunnit from New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica
Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to a coastal island in Maine when their neighbor Morgan Baines is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie.
But it's not just Morgan's death that has Sadie on edge. And as the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of what really happened that dark and deadly night. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light.
"Altogether unpredictable." --Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author
Don't miss Mary Kubica's chilling upcoming novel, She's Not Sorry, where an ICU nurse accidentally uncovers a patient's frightening past...
And look for the new editions of The Good Girl, Pretty Baby, Don't You Cry and Every Last Lie featuring brand new covers!
More edge-of-your-seat thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica:- The Good Girl
- Pretty Baby
- Don't You Cry
- Every Last Lie
- When the Lights Go Out
- Local Woman Missing
- Just The Nicest Couple
- She's Not Sorry
- It's Not Her
- 156.
- 157.There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in AmericaONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ATLANTIC’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America.
“An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Elle, New America, BookPage, Shelf Awareness
The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.
In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.
Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.
By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right. - 158.A Spool of Blue Thread: A NovelNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Clock Dance comes the story of four generations unfolding in and around the lovingly worn house that has always been the Whitshank family's anchor. • MAN BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE
“Absorbing and deeply satisfying.” —Entertainment Weekly
"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon ...” This is how Abby Whitshank always describes the day she fell in love with Red in July 1959.
From Red’s parents, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to the grandchildren carrying the Whitshank legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, the Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories reveal only part of the picture: Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. - 159.The Satisfaction Café: A NovelNational Bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Minnesota Star Tribune
Named a Best Book of the Summer by People, Oprah Daily, and Today
A LibraryReads Top 10 Pick
How do we live so that we are satisfied? How can people connect during moments of loneliness? This is the story of Joan Liang, a woman who moves across the world to America, and in trying to answer these questions builds a wildly original life.
Joan’s life is a series of unexpected events: she never thought she would live in California, nor did she expect her first marriage to implode—especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with an older, wealthy American man and become his fourth wife and mother to his youngest children.
Joan and her children grow older, and one day she makes a drastic change: she opens the Satisfaction Café, a place where customers can find connection through conversation. With humor and grace, Joan creates a space for meaningful relationships and constructs a lasting legacy.
Vivid, comic, and profoundly moving, The Satisfaction Café is a novel about found family, the joy and loneliness that come with age, and how we can seek satisfaction at any stage of life. This is a novel of tremendous pleasures: sentences that teem with rich observations, wonderful plotting, and, in Joan, a protagonist for the ages. - 160.Forever, Interrupted: A NovelSoon to be a Netflix limited series!
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo—"Reid is seriously a genius when it comes to stories about life and love" (Redbook). "A stunning first novel” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
“Have you ever heard of supernovas? They shine brighter than anything else in the sky and then fade out really quickly, a short burst of extraordinary energy. I like to think you and Ben were like that . . . in that short time, you had more passion than some people have in a lifetime.”
Elsie Porter is an average twentysomething and yet what happens to her is anything but ordinary. On a rainy New Year’s Day, she heads out to pick up a pizza for one. She isn’t expecting to see anyone else in the shop, much less the adorable and charming Ben Ross. Their chemistry is instant and electric. Ben cannot even wait twenty-four hours before asking to see her again. Within weeks, the two are head over heels in love. By May, they’ve eloped.
Only nine days later, Ben is out riding his bike when he is hit by a truck and killed on impact. Elsie hears the sirens outside her apartment, but by the time she gets downstairs, he has already been whisked off to the emergency room. At the hospital, she must face Susan, the mother-in-law she has never met—and who doesn’t even know Elsie exists.
Interweaving Elsie and Ben’s charmed romance with Elsie and Susan’s healing process, Forever, Interrupted will remind you that there’s more than one way to find a happy ending.