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DISCUSSION GUIDES
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One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, 1)Summary:THE FANTASY BOOKTOK SENSATION!
For fans of Uprooted and For the Wolf comes a dark, lushly gothic fantasy about a maiden who must unleash the monster within to save her kingdom--but the monster in her head isn't the only threat lurking. Elspeth needs a monster. The monster might be her. Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom she calls home--she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets.But nothing comes for free, especially magic.
When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it. Except the highwayman just so happens to be the King's own nephew, Captain of the Destriers...and guilty of high treason.
He and Elspeth have until Solstice to gather twelve Providence Cards--the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly, darkly, taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.
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Catalina: A NovelSummary: LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom "[A] sparkling fiction debut."--The New York Times Book Review
"[A] fresh and unflinching take on the campus novel."--People
"Diabolically charming and magnetic."--Ira Glass When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school's elite subcultures--internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies--which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper's skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved? Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you've ever read--and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget. - 423.
Husbands & Lovers: A NovelSummary: Two women--separated by decades and continents, and united by an exotic family heirloom--reclaim secrets and lost loves in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.
"My favorite kind of page-turner--unputdownable!"--Martha Hall Kelly, author of The Golden Doves New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads--her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory's forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother's adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams-- one of the world's most beloved singer-songwriters--a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal. Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself--marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah's longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations. Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues--of privilege, class, and the female experience--inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life. - 424.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: A NovelSummary:An instant New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today Bestseller - AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION - ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S "GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS" - BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 - WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times - Time - Washington Post - Oprah Daily - People - Boston Globe - BookPage - Booklist - Kirkus - Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Chicago Public Library
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel - Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction - Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction - Nominee for the NAACP Image Award
"Epic. . . . I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family. . . . I've never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." --Oprah Winfrey
The NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic--an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer--that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers--Ailey carries Du Bois's Problem on her shoulders.
Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother's family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women--her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries--that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors--Indigenous, Black, and white--in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story--and the song--of America itself.
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A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Series)Summary: Book one of the New York Times bestselling All Souls series, from the author of The Black Bird Oracle. Look for the hit series "A Discovery of Witches," now streaming on Netflix "A wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy with all the magic of Harry Potter and Twilight" (People). Deborah Harkness's sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Harkness has created a universe to rival those of Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova, and she adds a scholar's depth to this riveting tale of magic and suspense. The story continues in book two, Shadow of Night, book three, The Book of Life, and the fourth in the series, Time's Convert. - 426.
The Miracle of EnergySummary:In the realm of human existence, where every moment is imbued with the ebb and flow of energy, lies the essence of our potential for growth and fulfillment. "Unleashing the Power Within" is a transformative exploration into the intricate tapestry of energy that permeates every aspect of our lives.
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When Shadows Grow Tall: A NovelSummary:In the Grasp, a realm on the threshold of enlightenment, the dactyli guard the fading embers of their ancient brotherhood, dedicated to the pursuit of absolute truth.
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Bones: Anorexia, Anxiety and My Path to Self-LoveSummary:Bones is the tragicomic, roller coaster story of Robyn Shumer’s lifelong battle with—and triumph over—a crippling eating disorder. It’s an honest, first-person account that takes the reader inside the emotional, mental, physical, and social world of an anorexic from childhood to adulthood, through four decades of a changing society whose message to girls and women remained stubbornly the same: “thinner is the winner.”
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The Boy Behind the Glass ScreenSummary:The Boy Behind the Glass Screen is a thought-provoking, page-turning exploration of humanity that will leave you questioning the very nature of life itself.
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The Fallen Fruit: A NovelSummary:Combining history and fantasy, and spanning the 1750s through 1960s, The Fallen Fruit is a sweeping multi-generational epic about the Bridges, a family of free Black Virginians who have a dark secret: in every generation, one offspring from each Bridge family unit vanishes—and is mysteriously whisked back in time. When history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis discovers her family’s curse in 1964, she must race against the clock to find the answers that could free her family forever.
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