DISCUSSION GUIDES

The 20th Anniversary Edition of the Hugo-award winning, epic New York Times Bestseller and basis for the BBC miniseries, where two men change England's history when they bring magic back into the world, now with a new introduction from V.E. Schwab.

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England - until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity.

Another practicing magician then emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's pupil, and the two join forces in the war against France.

But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic, and he soon risks sacrificing his partnership with Norrell and everything else he holds dear.

Susanna Clarke's brilliant first novel is an utterly compelling epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two magicians who, first as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.

An epistolary novel of historical fiction that imagines the life of Katharine Wright and her relationship with her famous brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the world’s first airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, establishing the Wright Brothers as world-renowned pioneers of flight. Known to far fewer people was their whip-smart and well-educated sister Katharine, a suffragette and early feminist.

After Wilbur passed away, Katharine lived with and took care of her increasingly reclusive brother Orville, who often turned to his more confident and supportive sister to help him through fame and fortune. But when Katharine became engaged to their mutual friend, Harry Haskell, Orville felt abandoned and betrayed. He smashed a pitcher of flowers against a wall and refused to attend the wedding or speak to Katharine or Harry. As the years went on, the siblings grew further and further apart.

In The Wright Sister, Patty Dann wonderfully imagines the blossoming of Katharine, revealed in her “Marriage Diary”—in which she emerges as a frank, vibrant, intellectually and socially engaged, sexually active woman coming into her own—and her one-sided correspondence with her estranged brother as she hopes to repair their fractured relationship. Even though she pictures “Orv” throwing her letters away, Katharine cannot contain her joie de vivre, her love of married life, her strong advocacy of the suffragette cause, or her abiding affection for her stubborn sibling as she fondly recalls their shared life.

An inspiring and poignant chronicle of feminism, family, and forgiveness, The Wright Sister is an unforgettable portrait of a woman, a sister of inventors, who found a way to reinvent herself.

A Zibby Owens "Summer Read" * A Jordy's Book Club "Most Anticipated Book of 2025" * An Oprah Daily "Best Summer Reads"

"It stole my breath and my heart. It’s a grand story of science and startups, and a simple story of first love and belonging." ―Chris Whitaker, author of All the Colors of the Dark and We Begin at the End

A singular, extraordinary debut about Zoe and Jack, Harvard students who find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for aging. A different kind of love story where the thirst for achievement consumes and the stakes are forever.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel antiaging drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

A captivating novel about young love, the allure of immortality, and the recklessness that can come with early success, Notes on Infinity asks: How far would you go to achieve your dreams?

From Attica Locke, a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire:

“The Cutting Season is a rare murder mystery with heft, a historical novel that thrills, a page-turner that makes you think. Attica Locke is a dazzling writer with a conscience.”—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times bestselling author of Wench

After her breathtaking debut novel, Black Water Rising, won acclaim from major publications and respected crime fiction masters like James Ellroy and George Pelecanos, Locke returns with The Cutting Season, a second novel easily as gripping and powerful as her first—a heart-pounding thriller that interweaves two murder mysteries, one on Belle Vie, a historic landmark in the middle of Lousiana’s Sugar Cane country, and one involving a slave gone missing more than one hundred years earlier. Black Water Rising was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an Edgar® Award, and an NAACP Image Award, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the U.K.

New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde tells the emotional story of an alcoholic reeling from the loss of his son on the journey to finally facing his pain--and forging a path to redemption.

August Shroeder, a burned-out teacher, has been sober since his nineteen-year-old son died. Every year he's spent the summer on the road, but making it to Yellowstone this year means everything. The plan had been to travel there with his son, but now August is making the trip with Philip's ashes instead. An unexpected twist of fate lands August with two extra passengers for his journey, two half-orphans with nowhere else to go.

What none of them could have known was how transformative both the trip--and the bonds that develop between them--would prove, driving each to create a new destiny together.