Featured Guide

Margaret George, author of The Confessions of Young Nero

Julius Caesar’s imperial dynasty is only as strong as the next person who seeks to control it. In the Roman Empire no one is safe from the sting of betrayal: man, woman or child. As a boy, Nero’s royal heritage becomes a threat to his very life, first when the mad emperor Caligula tries to drown him, then when his great aunt attempts to secure her own son’s inheritance. Faced with shocking acts of treachery, young Nero is dealt a harsh lesson: it is better to be cruel than dead.

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Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, was buried in an unmarked grave 60 years ago. Yet her cells --- taken without her knowledge --- became one of the most important tools in medical research. Known to science as HeLa, the first "immortal" human cells grown in culture are still alive today, and have been bought and sold by the millions. Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to East Baltimore today, where Henrietta's family struggles with her legacy.

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Laura Lippman, author of Wilde Lake

Luisa “Lu” Brant is the newly elected --- and first female --- state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland. She sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death. The case dredges up painful memories, reminding her family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man’s life. Lu now wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld when she was a child? The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise.

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Christina Baker Kline, author of A Piece of the World

To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than 20 years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the 20th century.

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Elizabeth Brundage, author of All Things Cease to Appear

Late one winter afternoon in the small town of Chosen, New York, professor George Clare knocks on his neighbor’s door with terrible news: he returned from work to find his wife, Catherine, murdered in their bed. Once a thriving dairy farm, their home is haunted by the tragedy that left the former owner’s three sons orphaned and adrift.

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Fredrik Backman, author of Britt-Marie Was Here

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself, she is more than a little unprepared. Employed as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center, she finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, which includes a handsome local policeman whose romantic attentions to Britt-Marie are as unmistakable as they are unwanted. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory.

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Anderson Cooper, author of The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss

Though Anderson Cooper has always considered himself close to his mother, his intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS affords him little time to spend with her. After she suffers a brief but serious illness at the age of 91, they resolve to change their relationship by beginning a year-long conversation unlike any they had ever had before. The result is a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discuss their lives, the things that matter to them, and what they still want to learn about each other.

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Sally Hepworth, author of The Things We Keep

Anna Forster, in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease at only 38 years old, resides in Rosalind House, an assisted living facility. There, she meets fellow resident Luke, and a relationship develops between the two. When Eve Bennett is suddenly thrust into the role of single mother, she finds herself putting her culinary training to use at Rosalind House. When she meets Anna and Luke, she is moved by the bond the pair has forged.

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Will Schwalbe, author of Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life

Why is it that we read? Is it to pass time? To learn something new? To escape from reality? For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself but also to make sense of the world, to become a better person, and to find the answers to the big (and small) questions about how to live his life. In BOOKS FOR LIVING, Schwalbe invites us along on his quest for books that speak to the specific challenges of living in our modern world, with all its noise and distractions.

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Shūsaku Endō , author of Silence

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