Reading Group Guide Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots By Jessica Soffer Introduction Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks, making croissants and chocolat chaud, seeking out rare ingredients, all to earn the love of her distracted chef of a mother. When Lorca is expelled from public school, her mother decides to pack her off [...]
Archive of posts tagged fiction
Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller — Discussion Guide
Introduction A captivating debut novel, Norwegian by Night is by turns a pulse-pounding thriller and a luminous meditation on fate. Grudgingly leaving New York to move in with his granddaughter and her new husband in Norway, widower Sheldon Horowitz grapples with memories of loss, from the unspeakable scenes he witnessed as a Marine sniper in [...]
Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall
Introduction Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good, compliant woman. Iris knows, though, that [...]
Accidents of Providence by Stacia Brown
About the Book Accidents of Providence, by Stacia M. Brown, depicts the life of an ordinary woman living in early modern London during the Interregnum, the kind of person often overlooked by the history books and films centered in the period. Even in her own time, Rachel Lockyer is hardly noticed by others: she is [...]
The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai
Introduction Anita Desai ruminates on art and memory, illusion and disillusion, and the sharp divide between life’s expectations and its realities in three perfectly etched novellas. Set in India in the not-too-distant past, the stories’ dramas illuminate the ways in which Indian culture can nourish or suffocate. All are served up with Desai’s characteristic perspicuity, [...]
The Diviner’s Tale by Bradford Morrow
About the Book Hired by a developer to dowse a lonely forested valley in upstate New York, Cassandra Brooks happens upon a girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with the authorities, the body has vanished, leaving in question Cassandra’s sanity. The next day, a dazed, mute girl emerges from the woods, alive and [...]
The Maid by Kimberly Cutter
Introduction The girl who led an army, the peasant who crowned a king, the maid who became a legend It is the fifteenth century, and the tumultuous Hundred Years’ War rages on. France is under siege, English soldiers tear through the countryside destroying all who cross their path, and Charles VII, the uncrowned king, [...]
Damascus Gate by Robert Stone
A Note from the Author The idea of writing a book set in Jerusalem came to me when I first saw the city in 1985 after doing a travel article set in Egypt. I returned, and in 1992 visited Gaza and the West Bank and witnessed some of the disorders attendant on the intifada, the struggle [...]
Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass
Introduction In 1959, the Brown siblings were the biggest thing in country music. Their inimitable harmony would give rise to the polished sound of the multibillion-dollar country music industry we know today. But when the bonds of family began to fray, the flame of their celebrity proved as brilliant as it was fleeting. Masterfully jumping between the Browns’ once-auspicious past and the heartbreaking present, Nashville [...]
