Reading Group Choices

12/26/2024

One of our featured books this month is Flores and Miss Paula by Melissa Rivero. A wry, tender novel about a Peruvian immigrant mother and a millennial daughter who have one final chance to find common ground. Spirited and warm-hearted, Rivero’s new novel showcases the complexities of the mother-daughter bond with fresh insight and empathy.

Read more about this title here: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/flores-and-miss-paula/

12/23/2024

WIN THIS BOOK!⁠
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A wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss—and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life—from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Oshetsky.⁠
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Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life’s most difficult moments.⁠

Read more about this title here: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/poor-deer/
Enter to win this title here!: https://readinggroupchoices.com/giveaways/

12/22/2024

WIN THIS BOOK!

Set during World War II, an unforgettable historical novel about love, war, family, and loyalty told in in the voices of two women, generations apart, who find themselves connected by a mysterious and valuable bottle of wine stolen by the Nazis.

Read more about this title here: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/french-winemakers-daughter/
Enter to win this title here!: https://readinggroupchoices.com/giveaways/

12/20/2024

One of our featured books this month is When the Mapou Sings by Nadine Pineda. Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and self-determination in 1930s Haiti. Read more about this title here: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/when-the-mapou-sings/
Check out more featured books here: https://readinggroupchoices.com

12/19/2024

WIN THIS BOOK!

The author of the beloved international hit The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot returns with a funny, uplifting story about the power of friendship and finding love in unexpected places.

Read more about this title here: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/eddie-winston-is-looking-for-love/
Or enter to win it here!: https://readinggroupchoices.com/giveaways/

12/18/2024

Time of the Child was featured in our December eNewsletter and is such a perfect winter read!

From the author of This Is Happiness, a compassionate, life-affirming novel about the Christmas season that transforms the small Irish town of Faha.

Read more about this title on our site!
https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/time-of-the-child/

12/17/2024

Our friends over at the Silent Book Club have published their 2024 Survey! Each December, they round up the most-recommended, most-swapped, most-loved-by-members books of the year to share in our yearly list of Silent Book Club Favorites. Get your votes in by December 20th!

It's our 2nd annual Silent Book Club Reader Survey! We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback, and collect your nominations for the 2024 Top Books Recommended by SBC Readers. Complete this 5-10 minute survey and receive 20% off your next order at the Silent Book Shop! (offer ends Dec 20, 2024) Re...

12/17/2024

Take a peek at the December RGC eNewsletter! A lot of great titles featured here to get you through the holidays and into the new year.

Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams’ beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.

09/23/2024

COLEMAN HILL by Kim Coleman Foote as an RGC featured book this month!

In 1916, during the early days of the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post–Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of Vauxhall, New Jersey. But the North possesses its own challenges and bigotries that will shape the fates of the women and their families over the next seventy years. Told through the voices of nine family members—their perspectives at once harmonious and contradictory—Coleman Hill is a penetrating multigenerational debut.

“A masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true . . . This is the American story.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost

Read more about this feature at the link:
https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/coleman-hill/

09/18/2024

AGNES SHARP AND THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME by Leonie Swann as an RGC featured book this month!

This highly anticipated follow-up to The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp finds Agnes and her octogenarian friends face-to-face with a killer after winning a trip to a beautiful hotel in the seaside town of Cornwall.

The year is rapidly drawing to an end, Hettie the tortoise is hibernating and Agnes, Charlie, Marshall, and the other elderly residents of Sunset Hall are going stir-crazy at home. They’ve had enough of the broken boiler, draughty bedrooms, and Christmas jingles on the radio. And to top it all off, another series of murders is rocking the hamlet of Duck End. It seems like every villager and his dog is trying to make up for all of the thwarted murders of the past thirty years.

“This madcap, quirky, laugh-out-loud funny, thoroughly delightful tale is as charming as it is improbable. It will especially appeal to fans of Richard Osman.” —Booklist

Read more about this feature at the link:
https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/agnes-sharp-and-the-trip-of-a-lifetime/

09/16/2024

A PLACE TO HIDE by Ronald H. Balson as an RGC featured book this month!

From the winner of the National Jewish Book Award

Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan is the scion of a wealthy Washington, D.C. family who place him into a comfortable job at the State Department and a placid diplomat’s career. In 1938, as Hitler’s inexorable rise continues, Teddy is re-assigned to the US Consulate in Amsterdam to replace fleeing staff.

Read more about this feature and grab the discussion questions at the link:
https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/place-to-hide/

08/31/2024

Wrapping up August we have THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS by Jacqueline Winspear as an RGC recommended book this month!

London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.

“Taut, tense, beautifully written . . . What you may not expect is the inventiveness of Winspear’s twists, the on-edge excitement they provoke, or the philosophical issues and psychological depths they all allow her to explore.” —USA Today

Read more about this book at the link: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/comfort-of-ghosts/

08/31/2024

Reminder! The window to enter our monthly giveaway ends today! You can win a copy of THE SHADOW KEY by Susan Stokes-Chapman!

Click the link to enter: https://readinggroupchoices.com/giveaways/

08/30/2024

KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler is an RGC featured YA book this month AND you can win a free copy when you enter our monthly giveaway!

Dana, a 1970s Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

“Butler’s characters are so vivid and the racist milieu in which they struggle to survive so realistically depicted that one cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery, and racial dilemmas, then and now.” —Sam Frank, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

Read more about this feature at the link: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/kindred/

Enter to win a copy of your own here:
https://readinggroupchoices.com/giveaways/

08/29/2024

THE ITALY LETTERS by Vi Khi Nao is an RGC recommended book this month!

The Italy Letters is a slim, powerful shot of literary fantasia from one of America’s best-kept secrets. Long an underground favorite, visionary writer Vi Khi Nao weaves an unforgettable and highly distinctive story of a love affair suffused with longing, erotic passion, and heartbreak—all while painting a picture of the gritty underside of Las Vegas.

“Queer, sensual, ‘literary fantasia.'” —Ms Magazine

“Explodes with feeling.” —Publisher’s Weekly

Read more about this feature at the link: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/italy-letters/

08/28/2024

WORDHUNTER by Stella Sands is an RGC featured book this month and we a running a giveaway! 10 winners each receive a copy + one grand prize winner wins up to 10 copies!

Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The top student in her forensic linguistics class, she’s tapped by local police to use her skills to decipher harrowing notes left by a stalker-turned-rapist—and succeeds brilliantly.

“For readers who enjoy chilling mysteries and thrillers. Fans of strong character-building will delight in watching Maggie and Jackson’s partnership bring out their individual strengths.” —Library Journal

Read more about it at the link: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/wordhunter/

Enter the giveaway here: https://readinggroupchoices.com/giveaways/

08/27/2024

WANTED: TODDLER’S PERSONAL ASSISTANT by Stephanie Kiser is an RGC featured book this month!

When Stephanie Kiser moves to New York City after college to pursue a career in writing, she quickly learns that her entry-level salary won’t cover the high cost of living—never mind her crushing student loan debt. But there is one in-demand job that pays more than enough to allow Stephanie to stay in the city: nannying for the 1%. Desperate to escape the poverty of her own childhood and jump social classes, Stephanie falls into a job that hijacks her life for the next seven years: a personal assistant to toddlers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“Humor and wit pervade her page-turning tales, allowing a lightness to peek through her poignant, pertinent employment experiences… A unique examination of persistent wealth inequality in the U.S.” —Kirkus Reviews

Read more about this feature at the link: https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/wanted-toddlers-personal-assistant/