Feature and Contest

Fencing with the King by Diana Abu-Jaber

The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime --- fencing --- and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan. Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her --- even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. The Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other --- one that almost costs Amani her life.

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Our Reader-Selected Best Books of 2021

Over the last two months, we asked you to share both your favorite book that you read with your book group and your favorite book that you read outside your group in 2021.

The results are in! Below are the top 10 selected titles in each category.

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The Husbands by Chandler Baker

Nora Spangler is a successful attorney, but when it comes to domestic life, she packs the lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are, and designs and orders the holiday cards. Her husband works hard, too...but why does it seem like she is always working so much harder? When the Spanglers go house hunting in Dynasty Ranch, an exclusive suburban neighborhood, Nora meets a group of high-powered women with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to help with a resident’s wrongful death case, she is pulled into the lives of the women there. As the case unravels, Nora uncovers a plot that may explain the secret to having it all. One that’s worth killing for.

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Masque of Honor: Book One in the Fields of Honor Series by Sharon Virts

General Armistead Mason and John “Jack” Mason McCarty are brothers-in-law, second cousins and descendants of founding father George Mason IV. Ambitious and headstrong, together they set out to find love, acceptance and honor on their own merit. Armistead --- by nature a politician --- demands respect and strives for perfection. Jack --- by inclination a rover --- looks to forge his own path. When Armistead is challenged by corruption in the political machine and is denied a seat in the US Congress, the two become embroiled in a bitter dispute that sets in motion an irrevocable chain of events, leading them to the dueling grounds and an outcome that changes everything.

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Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. She is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother, a Cuban immigrant named Carmen, and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, Carmen must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

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The Four Winds (Audiobook) by Kristin Hannah

Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work, and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli --- like so many of her neighbors --- must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life.

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Our Reader-Selected Best Books of 2020

Over the last two months, we asked you to share both your favorite book that you read with your book group and your favorite book that you read outside your group in 2020.

The results are in! Below are the top 10 selected titles in each category.

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Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

In suburban Indiana, we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota, we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down. Finally, in the northeast, we meet Sloane, the successful, refined restaurant owner whose husband enjoys watching her have sex with other men and women.

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The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

Roya is a dreamy, idealistic teenager who finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood book and stationery shop. When Mr. Fakhri introduces Roya to Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry, she loses her heart at once. A few months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but violence suddenly erupts --- a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows.

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A Good Neighborhood (Audiobook) by Therese Anne Fowler

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. Xavier is headed to college in the fall, and after years of single parenting, Valerie is facing the prospect of an empty nest. All is well until the Whitmans move in next door --- an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter. With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

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