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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 11.The Letter Carrier: A NovelNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “[A] five-star read . . . If you love a family saga, sprinkled with historical fiction elements, and strong female protagonists, you need to read this book.”—theSkimm
Discover a little town in southern Italy that might be just like every town—with women and men, husband and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, all trying to navigate the world while staying true to their hearts.
What would happen if you finally met your soul mate—but they were married to someone else?
Salento, Italy, June 1934: A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a tight-knit village where everyone knows each other. A couple gets off: The man, Carlo, a child of the South, is happy to be back home after a long time away; the woman, Anna—his wife—is a stranger from the North. Carlo’s brother is there to meet them, and he and everyone else can’t help but notice that Anna is as beautiful as a Greek statue.
But Anna is not like the other wives. She doesn’t gossip or attend church. She reads books no one else has ever heard of, exploring ideas that some find threatening. She even wears pants, just like a man, and thinks a woman should have rights, just like a man.
There aren’t many options for a woman with Anna’s sensibilities, so when she learns that the post office is hiring, she leaps at the opportunity. A female letter carrier? It is unthinkable! But Anna passes the postal exam and soon becomes the invisible thread connecting the town as she delivers letters between clandestine lovers, families waiting to hear news of loves ones away at war, and even helping those who can’t read.
Letters connect people, and they convey information and emotion. But for some in Lizzanello, letters are too little and too late.
The Letter Carrier taps into the universal feeling of connection—and what happens when that connection perhaps comes at the wrong time. - 12.Good People: A Novel“Good People is a stunning read. I could not recommend it more enthusiastically. . . . What a spectacular triumph this book is. This is the Afghan novel I have been eagerly waiting for.”—Khaled Hosseini
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times. - 13.Dubliners (Twentieth-Century Classics)
A definitive edition of perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language
James Joyce’s Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of “dear dirty Dublin” at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as “Araby,” “Grace,” and “The Dead,” delve into the heart of the city of Joyce’s birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners’ speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their outer and inner lives. Dubliners is Joyce at his most accessible and most profound, and this edition is the definitive text, authorized by the Joyce estate and collated from all known proofs, manuscripts, and impressions to reflect the author’s original wishes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. - 14.It's Not Her: A Twisty Thriller about Two Families and a Chilling Lake Resort Crime from the Author of Local Woman Missing"A gripping thrill ride." --Jeneva Rose
"Tantalizing, terrifying and all too real." --Shari Lapena
"Cancel your plans, you won't be able to put this one down." --Chris Whitaker
"Wickedly smart and incredibly twisted." --Ashley Elston
"Terrifying." --Megan Miranda
Two families at a secluded lake resort are at the center of a chilling crime in this twisty thriller from the bestselling author of Local Woman Missing
A scream shatters the silence...
Courtney Gray's peaceful vacation turns into a nightmare when she discovers her brother and sister-in-law dead in their lakeside cottage. Her niece Reese is missing. Her nephew Wyatt is asleep upstairs--unharmed.
A town full of secrets...
As police swarm the quiet resort, dark truths about Courtney's family--and the town itself--begin to surface. Is Reese a victim... or the killer?
A truth no one saw coming...
With everyone hiding something, Courtney races to uncover the terrible mystery. But the closer she gets, the harder it is to know who--or what--to trust.
For a limited time get this deluxe edition hardcover featuring beautiful packaging and custom designed endsheets.
Check out these other riveting thrillers from Mary Kubica:- The Good Girl
- The Other Mrs.
- Local Woman Missing
- She's Not Sorry
- 15.Bared to YouFrom #1 New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day comes the first novel in the Crossfire series—a provocative masterstroke of abandon and obsession that redefined the meaning of desire, and became a global phenomenon.
Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness...
He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily...
Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other’s most private wounds...and desires.
The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn’t tear us apart... - 16.Rejection: Fiction
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"A master comedian with a virtuoso prose style has produced an audacious, original and highly disturbing book . . . an incandescent satire." —Giles Harvey, The New York Times Magazine
From the Whiting and O. Henry–winning author of Private Citizens (“the first great millennial novel,” New York Magazine), an electrifying novel-in-stories that follows a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos.
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
In “The Feminist,” a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid. A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics” spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,” a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.
These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.
"Rejection is unrelentingly brutal and gut-bustingly funny and spares no one—not you, not me. Tulathimutte is a pervert and a madman and a stone-cold genius." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
“One of the foremost fiction writers exploring the subject of his own generation.” —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
- 17.If I Ruled the World: A Novel
A MOST ANTICIPATED Book (Oprah Daily, Essence, Bustle, Stylist, Missing Perspectives, and more!)
"The first CAN'T MISS page-turner of 2026." —Oprah Daily • "EXCEPTIONAL." —Forbes • "CAPTIVATING." —Essence • "Sizzling...A SEXY, FAST-PACED ride!” —Tia Williams, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author
In development as a MAJOR TV SERIES with Hulu!
A juicy debut novel that peeks behind the curtain at the cutthroat world of hip-hop music and the glamorous magazine scene in the late 1990s, written by the ultimate insider
It's 1999, and Nikki Rose is the only Black editor on the staff of a prestigious fashion magazine she once thought would be her ticket to becoming a respected editor in chief. But after being told one too many times by her boss that “Black girls don’t sell magazines,” she quits to take over Sugar, a struggling hip hop music and lifestyle magazine with untapped potential.
Thrown into an entirely new world of wealth, decadence, and debauchery, Nikki has just six months to save Sugar—and her own dreams. As she pulls all-nighters at the office and parties with New York City’s most influential bad boys, Nikki must prove she has what it takes to lead. But her most dangerous challenge is evading Alonzo Griffin, her very married, very powerful ex-lover and former boss, who is determined to destroy both her and Sugar. Along the way, Nikki leans on a circle of loyal friends and navigates unexpected romances that force her to reckon with what—and who—she truly wants.
If I Ruled the World is a smart, utterly immersive journey through one of the most dynamic eras in pop culture history—a story of ambition, friendship, love, and finding your own voice. - 18.King of Ashes: A Novel
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Propulsive and powerful. . . A gripping roller coaster ride of escalating danger.” —New York Times Book Review
“Pick up the novel everyone will be talking about.” —The Atlantic
“Dark, riveting, and accomplished.” —Washington Post
Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.
Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.
Because everything burns.
"[A] sizzling summer read that concludes with a few unexpected twists.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution - 19.Lovely One: A Memoir#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her “vulnerable, tender, and infinitely inspirational” (Oprah Daily) memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States chronicles her extraordinary life story.
“A billowingly triumphant American tale.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.
Named “Ketanji Onyika,” meaning “Lovely One,” based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.
Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.
Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, openhearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come. - 20.Mad Mabel: A Novel
From Sally Hepworth, the New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate and The Good Sister, comes a twist-filled, darkly funny mystery about the two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: little girls and old ladies.
Meet Mad Mabel.
Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She's lived on her idyllic street, Kenny Lane, for sixty years--longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past that she has worked exceedingly hard at concealing. Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.
When a new little girl (talkative, curious, nosy) moves into the neighborhood and stops at nothing to befriend Elsie, her carefully-constructed life threatens to come crashing down as the secrets in Elsie's past start coming to light. Who was "Mad Mabel" fifty years ago? Who is Elsie Fitzpatrick today? And if the past has a habit of repeating itself, who has the most to lose?
Told with Sally Hepworth's twists, humor, charm, and heart, MAD MABEL is novel that weaves past and present together--through the power of justice and redemption, and all the way to its stunning conclusion.