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
- 251.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. - 252.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. - 253.The Lacuna: A Novel
New York Times Bestseller • A Best Book of the Year: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, and Kansas City Star • Winner of the Orange Prize
“Breathtaking. . . dazzling.” — New York Times Book Review
“Epic and deeply personal. . . . This is thought-provoking, and potentially thought-changing, historical fiction at its best.” — Dallas Morning News
In this powerfully imagined, provocative novel, Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters, takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is the poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as well as an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself.
Born in the United States, raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd lacks a sense of home in either. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen; from errands he runs in the streets; and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There, in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America’s hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Kingsolver has created a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
- 254.1776America’s beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation’s birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war against her rebellious colonial subjects and that placed America’s survival in the hands of George Washington.
- 255.All Quiet on the Western FrontThe masterpiece of the German experience during World War I, considered by many the greatest war novel of all time--with an Oscar-winning film adaptation now streaming on Netflix. "[Erich Maria Remarque] is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank."--The New York Times Book Review I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . . This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive.
- 256.The First Time I Saw Him (A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick)THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED SEASON 2 OF THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME STARRING JENNIFER GARNER
A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB SELECTION!
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
THE SEQUEL TO THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME
“Taut prose matches the story with moments of emotional poignancy...a tense story, but a surprisingly tender one.” —The Washington Post
“Action-packed and deeply felt, this sequel is every bit as incredible as The Last Thing He Told Me.” —Mary Kubica
“A novel worth your time.” —The New York Times
Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall’s pulse-pounding journey in the riveting and deeply moving sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling blockbuster and Apple TV+ show, The Last Thing He Told Me.
How far would you go for a second chance?
Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they’ve forged a relationship with Bailey’s grandfather Nicholas and are putting the past behind them.
But when Owen shows up at Hannah’s new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again.
Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety—and finds there just might be a way back to Owen and their long-awaited second chance.
A gripping, rich, and deeply moving novel about the power of forgiveness, The First Time I Saw Him picks up right where the epilogue for the “genuinely moving” (The New York Times) The Last Thing He Told Me left off, giving readers the eagerly awaited and absolutely exhilarating sequel to Dave’s global blockbuster. - 257.Upside-Down Love: A Memoir in Two Voices
With a message of hope that is both timely and timeless, Upside-Down Love is an extraordinary memoir--irreverent, funny, and profoundly uplifting--of an Israeli lawyer, a Palestinian professor, and a love that transcends all division.
- 258.Murder by Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery (Golden Girls Cozy Mystery Series)***Instant NEW YORK TIMES bestseller***
The first novel in the all-new Golden Girls Cozy Mystery Series!
When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf–themed wedding Rose is hosting.
Things are heating up, and not just because of Blanche’s hot flashes. Rose’s cousin is eloping to Miami, and Rose is playing host. If she can't balance the groom’s family’s snobbery against the traditional St. Olaf wedding week guidelines, her hometown may never accept her cousin again!
Dorothy quickly realizes she needs a date with whom she can exchange wedding-related wisecracks. Turning to a newfangled VHS dating service, she believes she’s found the ideal conversationalist. Unfortunately, what looks good on TV can actually be a total jerk in real life. It seems she’ll just have to enjoy the company of Sophia, Blanche, and whomever Blanche has targeted for a hookup.
As the Girls all pitch in, Rose is thrilled that the tea-and-fish-themed kickoff event is perfect, not a herring out of place. That is until Dorothy’s date is found dead—face-planted in an otherwise scrumptious-looking cheesecake. With every guest a suspect (especially Dorothy) and a marriage on the line, the four besties must ID the real killer, get the should-be-happy couple down the aisle, and make sure nobody from St. Olaf gets lost in the wilds of Miami. It’s up to the Golden Girls to sleuth out a way for friendship and love to win the day! - 259.The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal FreedomThe incredible New York Times and international bestselling guide to true happiness.
“This book by don Miguel Ruiz, simple yet so powerful, has made a tremendous difference in how I think and act in every encounter.”—Oprah Winfrey
In The Four Agreements, a perennial bestseller published in dozens of languages worldwide, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.
“Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is a roadmap to enlightenment and freedom.”—Deepak Chopra, Author, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
“An inspiring book with many great lessons.”—Wayne Dyer, Author, Real Magic
“In the tradition of Castaneda, Ruiz distills essential Toltec wisdom, expressing with clarity and impeccability what it means for men and women to live as peaceful warriors in the modern world.”—Dan Millman, Author, Way of the Peaceful Warrior - 260.The Bear
From National Book Award in Fiction finalist Andrew Krivak comes a gorgeous fable of Earth's last two human inhabitants, and a girl's journey home
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion.