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DISCUSSION GUIDES
- 11.Poinsettia Girl: The Story of Agata della Pieta
Venice, 1710, Poinsettia Girl is based on the story of Agata de la Pieta, an orphan musician of the Ospedale de la Pieta.
- 12.Grabtown: a psychological thriller
Grabtown is a gripping dual-timeline thriller that exposes the dark underbelly of small-town secrets, where sisterhood and courage become the only weapons against those who prey on the vulnerable. Perfect for fans of Kellye Garrett's Like a Sister, Shari Lapena’s Listen for the Lie, and Amy Gentry's Good as Gone.
- 13.Swing Time: A NovelA New York Times Best Seller, Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Swing Time is an ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty. The story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time.
- 14.Good Sister
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"A stunningly clever thriller made doubly suspenseful by not one, but two unreliable narrators."—People
Sally Hepworth, the author of The Mother-In-Law delivers a knock-out of a novel about the lies that bind two sisters in The Good Sister.
There's only been one time that Rose couldn't stop me from doing the wrong thing and that was a mistake that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister Rose three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights, and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous.
When Rose discovers that she cannot get pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple.
Fern's mission will shake the foundations of the life she has carefully built for herself and stir up dark secrets from the past, in this quirky, rich, and shocking story of what families keep hidden. - 15.LoreTHE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLER
“Epic from start to finish.” —Marie Lu, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Warcross
“A brilliant and breathless twist on classic mythology!” —Marissa Meyer, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lunar Chronicles
Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she’s pushed away any thought of revenge against the man—now a god—responsible for their deaths.
Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek her out: Castor, a childhood friend and first love Lore believed to be dead, and Athena, one of the last of the original gods, now gravely wounded.
The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and a way to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to rejoin the hunt, binding her fate to Athena's, will come at a deadly cost—and it may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.
From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Darkest Minds comes a sweepingly ambitious, high-octane tale of power, destiny, love, and redemption.
NOW IN PAPERBACK WITH EXCLUSIVE ART AND BONUS CONTENT! - 16.The Downstairs Girl: Reese's YA Book ClubFrom the critically-acclaimed author of Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon and founding member of We Need Diverse Books comes a powerful novel about identity, betrayal, and the meaning of family.
- 17.Her Hidden Genius: A Novel
"Brings to life Franklin's grit and spirit...an important contribution to the historical record." --The Washington Post
The new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie!
She changed the world with her discovery. Three men took the credit.
Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider--brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets.
Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture--one more after thousands--she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who'd rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her.
Then it finally happens--the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
Marie Benedict's powerful new novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind.
Also By Marie Benedict:
The Other Einstein
Carnegie's Maid
The Only Woman in the Room
Lady Clementine
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie
- 18.The Witch's HeartWhen a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this moving, subversive national bestselling debut novel that reimagines Norse mythology.
Angrboda’s story begins where most witches' tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to provide him with knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him transforms into a deep and abiding love.
Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who Angrboda is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin’s all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life—and possibly all of existence—is in danger.
With help from the fierce huntress Skadi, with whom she shares a growing bond, Angrboda must choose whether she’ll accept the fate that she’s foreseen for her beloved family...or rise to remake their future. From the most ancient of tales this novel forges a story of love, loss, and hope for the modern age.
- 19.Blood Water PaintA harrowing and empowering story of strength and persistence in the aftermath of sexual assault, written in stunning verse and based on the life of seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A WILLIAM C. MORRIS DEBUT AWARD FINALIST • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE CENTURY
"Haunting . . . teems with raw emotion . . . deftly captures the experience of learning to behave in a male-driven society and then breaking outside of it."—The New Yorker
He will not consume
my every thought.
I am a painter.
I will paint.
I will show you
what a woman can do.
After her mother died when she just twelve, Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice to make: a life as a nun in a convent, or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint.
She chose paint.
By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape, Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the cost.
Joy McCullough's bold novel in verse is a portrait of an artist as a young woman, filled with the soaring highs of creative inspiration and the devastating setbacks of a system built to break her. McCullough weaves Artemisia's heartbreaking story with those of ancient heroines Susanna and Judith, who become not only the subjects of two of Artemisia's most famous paintings, but also sources of strength as she battles to paint a woman's timeless truth in the face of unspeakable and all-too-familiar violence. - 20.We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel
"Impossible to put down. . . . Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Maybe we all do.” — Boston Globe
Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver's gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry
Shriver’s resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark realities.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
Like Shriver’s charged and incisive later novels, including So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.