Introduction “Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas—a thirty-three-year-old widower and scholar who directs the Great Midwestern Humanities Initiative—asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” Yet he remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his own life, opting instead [...]
Archive of posts tagged marriage
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
Reading Group Guide About the Book When long-hidden secrets about his past come to light, John Wade — a Vietnam veteran and recent candidate for the U.S. Senate — retreats with his wife, Kathy, to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival, Kathy mysteriously vanishes into the wilderness. As a search [...]
The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall
About the Book A stunning novel about two women and two marriages, by a writer who has been hailed as “exquisite” by Cynthia Ozick. Two women return to Venice: one in June of 1880, the other a hundred years later. The first is Marian Evans, the great English novelist whose pen name is George [...]
Seek the Living by Ashley Warlick
“[A] gemlike novel about a Southern family . . . Original and surprising on page after page, it is a gift of language from an extraordinary writer.” — Raleigh News & Observer About the Book Set in the new South, Seek the Living is a beautiful novel about the allegiances within families — the [...]
Story-Wallah by Shyam Selvadurai
About Story-Wallah Story-Wallah gathers the finest South Asian voices in fiction for the first time in a single volume. In this book, some of the world’s best fiction writers hawk their wares from different parts of the South Asian diaspora — Sri Lanka, India, the United States, Great Britain, Guyana, Malaysia, Trinidad, and Fiji [...]
Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston
“Preston employs immaculate research and a rich imagination . . . A fascinating rendering of the tragedy that was Fitzgerald’s life and of the young woman who was the catalyst for so much of his glorious body of work.” — Library Journal, starred review About the Book She was two months past her sixteenth [...]
The Answer Is Yes by Sara Lewis
The Answer Is Yes Sara Lewis ISBN:9780156005647 About the book: Jenny Brown has three simple wishes: to enjoy a happy marriage, to have a job she loves, and to be reunited with her birth mother. But her wishes don’t seem to be coming true. After moving from academic Cambridge to suburban San Diego, Jenny finds [...]
