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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 11.Fagin the Thief: A NovelEDGAR AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST NOVEL ● A thrilling reimagining of the world of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of the infamous Jacob Fagin, London’s most gifted pickpocket, liar, and rogue.
"Fagin the Thief takes one of literature's greatest rogues and gives him a soul, a backstory, and a spotlight. Layered and clever, Epstein's story is as ambitious as it is deeply satisfying." --Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of I Have Some Questions for You
Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob's whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.
Striking out on his own, Jacob familiarizes himself with London's highest value neighborhoods while forging his own path in the shadows. But everything changes when he adopts an aspiring teenage thief named Bill Sikes, whose mercurial temper poses a danger to himself and anyone foolish enough to cross him. Along the way, Jacob’s found family expands to include his closest friend, Nancy, and his greatest protégé, the Artful Dodger. But as Bill’s ambition soars and a major robbery goes awry, Jacob is forced to decide what he really stands for—and what a life is worth.
Colorfully written and wickedly funny, Allison Epstein breathes fresh life into the teeming streets of Dickensian London--reclaiming one of Victorian literature’s most notorious villains in an unforgettable new adventure. - 12.Beth Is DeadThree starred reviews!
Beth March’s sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer—until they begin to suspect each other—in this “brilliantly snappy…electrifying” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) debut thriller that’s also a bold, contemporary reimagining of the beloved classic Little Women.
When Beth March is found dead in the woods on New Year’s Day, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer.
Suspects abound. There’s the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two of the girls. Meg’s manipulative best friend. Amy’s flirtatious mentor. And Beth’s lionhearted first love. But it doesn’t take the surviving sisters much digging to uncover motives each one of the March girls had for doing the unthinkable.
Jo, an aspiring author with a huge following on social media, would do anything to hook readers. Would she kill her sister for the story? Amy dreams of studying art in Europe, but she’ll need money from her aunt—money that’s always been earmarked for Beth. And Meg wouldn’t dream of hurting her sister…but her boyfriend might have, and she’ll protect him at all costs.
Despite the growing suspicion within the family, it’s hard to know for sure if the crime was committed by someone close to home. After all, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight months ago when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own daughters. Beth could have been killed by anyone.
Beth’s perspective told in flashback unfolds next to Meg, Jo, and Amy’s increasingly fraught investigation as the tragedy threatens to rip the Marches apart. - 13.Goode Vibrations of the Wresting Place
The transformation of Penelope Brigid Goode begins after a near-death experience on her 30th birthday while skiing on a mountain in Maine. She wakes up in recovery and the world around her is more vibrant, vivid, and intense. Strange visions begin to creep up on her like a dream—the spirits of her recently deceased dog and the mother she hardly knew. Ghost owls cast shadows of premonition.
When the number three occurs and reoccurs, Pennie fears for her sanity, especially while she and her uncle survey a graveyard near the former Home for the Feeble-Minded. Here she senses her first vibrations—spirits of the Malaga Island settlement reinterred on these very grounds after a forced exile over a century ago by the State of Maine, a chapter of racism and eugenics in Maine’s history.
Despite warning signs and against her best instincts, she rushes headlong into a relationship with the developer who is excavating near the graves. She begins to realize the signs all around her, listen to her intuition, and awaken to her visions. Through a slow unearthing, Pennie uncovers the past and recognizes the power of her dreams, the haunting history of Malaga Island, and her fight for justice and the truth. - 14.My Life in Dog Years: A Poodle Named Henry and Other Melodramas
When Candida Pugh fell in love with a friend's giant poodle, she decided to find one for herself. But the poodle she found at a Fremont, California, shelter resembled the other dog only in his keen intelligence and outgoing personality. In fact, she was advised not to adopt Henry because "he's a biter." If that had summed up his defects, it would've been bad enough, but his tendency to bite the hand that fed him proved merely the tip of the iceberg.
Her struggles with this maddening, adorable, astute animal foreshadowed a series of impulsive acquisitions of dogs with issues. In this memoir, she details how her love for difficult dogs resulted in frustration, determination, and ultimately jubilation. The unwavering devotion she won from each gave her the courage to overcome her own troubled past.
- 15.Operation Texas
In 1938, Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson hires the 24-year-old, multi-lingual Rosalind Fisher to accompany his good friend, Jim Novy, on a hazardous trip to Poland. Rosalind is responsible for easing 40 visas for Novy’s family to leave Poland through the US Embassy—a nearly impossible job on its own.
During the trip on the Queen Mary, Rosalind encounters German spies just returning from New York with secreted documents, and a handsome British undercover agent, with consequences for American security. At the embassy, Rosalind finds no one willing to help and must use her own skills, make her own compromises, and risk her safe return to the US, to secure the signed visas. At the same time, can she help her own cousins, also trapped in Warsaw? - 16.Love Beyond Reasonable Doubt: A Novel
In this second-chance workplace romance, two lawyers find themselves working in the same office after a steamy vacation fling a year and a half ago, from the author of Can’t Help Faking in Love
Naina Shetty is a proud workaholic, and she is gunning for a promotion at her law firm. No distractions will get in her way this time, not even the bad breakup that happened over a year ago. She brushed off her pain with a long vacation and a no-strings-attached fling with a handsome stranger, but now Naina is back to business.
Unlucky-in-love Tejas Rajput hasn’t stopped thinking about the brown-eyed beauty he met on the beaches of Goa two summers ago. He’d been looking for a rebound to get over his ex, which is why he’d agreed to keep things strictly casual, use fake last names, and respond to all personal questions with “wrong answers only.” But he didn’t think he’d fall for her, hard, only for her to get on a plane and leave.
When they cross paths again—this time working at the same office—Naina is adamant that her no-relationships policy won’t change, especially not for Tejas, whose disarming smile and easygoing charm could spell trouble. Her career will always come first.
But as they team up for a case that could make or break their firm’s reputation, they discover that there’s something more than just sparks between them—and it might turn out to be true love.
- 17.Bridge from Saigon: A Viet-American Memoir of Family and Mind
As a young Vietnamese refugee, Hoangmai Pham suddenly lost her sense of safety and belonging when her family fled Saigon at the end of the war. But her later success in navigating life in America as a physician and health policy leader at the top of her profession paradoxically triggered a psychological unraveling during middle age.
Bridge from Saigon depicts Hoangmai’s struggle in confronting her hidden multiple personalities to heal, luring the reader into parallel slipstreams of discovery—one of family secrets and epic history before and during the Vietnam War, the other of traumas masked behind a child's vivid imagination. Hoangmai’s final triumph crystallizes the immense price that immigrants pay for a chance at a better life, and their resilience in achieving every sense of integration.
Stories of ghostly ancestors, a fraught return to Vietnam as an adult, and her kaleidoscopic inner characters unfurl in a voice that is at once dreamlike and brutally honest in a memoir that incisively depicts an immigrant story like no other.
- 18.Six Little Words
Escape into the world of Sally Page with the perfect armchair read! From the author of phenomenal bestsellers The Keeper of Stories and The Book of Beginnings comes another novel that will warm your heart.
Can one small note give her the courage to find a new path?
Kate gave up her dreams of being a painter years ago. But six little words pinned to the noticeboard of her local café could change her path forever.
"To be, or not to be ..."--printed on an orange card with no explanation--appears one morning.
Each day, a new line from a different Shakespeare play is added, sparking curiosity throughout the café. Among the regulars is Bardy, a retired English teacher grappling with writer's block.
As Kate and Bardy follow this breadcrumb trail, they discover a local community group encouraging people to rediscover their own creative spark--and the long-lost courage to chase it.
For Kate, their new group might just offer a second chance at happiness, if only Bardy can find the strength to share his story too ...
- 19.Wretch: A Novel
"If you only read one more horror novel this year, make sure this is it." --Edward Lee
Wretch is a relentless descent into crime, horror, and vengeance. A brutal unflinching thriller for fans of organized crime sagas, dark detective fiction, and monsters born in the shadows of science.
Chicago is choking under the hottest summer on record, but the true heat comes from the blood spilled on its streets.
Detective Donnie Lynch trails a killer who shouldn't exist. Mob boss Tico "The Meatgrinder" Tortellio has stepped out from the shadows of his empire with a personal vendetta to avenge his daughter--and nothing short of blood will settle the score. Both men are hunting the same man-- if "man" is still the right word...
The elusive killer, Derek Hoffman, is a steroid-abusing-sociopath twisted beyond recognition whose body and mind have been grotesquely transformed after his participation in a clinical trial for an experimental ED-arousal-drug called, LIBIDONAL. Hoffman has become something monstrous, a predator driven by lust, rage, and a thirst for blood.
With the city becoming a killing ground for a new apex predator, Lynch and Tortellio race toward the same target. But who will reach Hoffman first? And when they do, can bullets or brutality be enough to stop him?
Wretch is a brutal descent into crime, horror, and vengeance. A nightmare version of a city where justice wears many faces, and none of them are merciful.
- 20.The Lies We Trade
A high-powered Wall Street career, a beautiful family in a quiet suburban neighborhood--she seems to have everything. Which means she has everything to lose.
Meredith Hansel should be having the best week of her life. After establishing herself as a portfolio manager at a prestigious Wall Street firm, she's in the national spotlight for the innovative funds she created. But as Meredith prepares to celebrate, the plates she's kept spinning for years begin to crash: Her strained marriage reaches a breaking point. Her conscientious teenage daughter acts out under mysterious pressures. Someone vandalizes her home with disturbing graffiti. And Betsey, her most trusted ally at the financial firm, goes rogue, and Meredith is forced to sign a restraining order against her.
Then her worlds collide when she receives a thumb drive and a cryptic note from Betsey threatening to reveal a secret that could have devastating effects on Meredith's family . . . unless she can figure out what Betsey wants and deliver it in time.
As Meredith begins to dig into the data, however, she begins to suspect that it's no coincidence her life is crumbling. That maybe what's happening to her family is connected to what's boiling beneath the surface at her investment company. Soon Meredith realizes there's only one way to avoid taking the fall, and it all hinges on Betsey's true motives. Was she really threatening Meredith or trying to warn her?