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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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A Celibate Season by Carol Shields

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD --- the 20th century's most widely read American novel --- has sold 30 million copies and still sells a million yearly. In this in-depth biography, first published in 2006, Charles J. Shields brings to life the woman who gave us two of American literature's most unforgettable characters: Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout. Now, 10 years after its initial publication --- with revisions throughout the book and a new epilogue --- Shields finishes the story of Harper Lee's life, up to its end.

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Harper Lee, author of Go Set a Watchman

Originally written in the mid-1950s, GO SET A WATCHMAN was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. GO SET A WATCHMAN features many of the characters from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD some 20 years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch --- Scout --- struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

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Win 12 Copies of BEACH TOWN by Mary Kay Andrews for Your Group

Each month, we ask book groups to share the titles they are reading that month and rate them. From all entries, three winners will be selected, and each will win 12 copies of that month’s prize book for their group. Note: To be eligible to win, let us know the title of the book that YOUR book group is CURRENTLY reading, NOT the title we are giving away.
 

Interview: Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us

May 5, 2016

Laura Barnett is a writer, journalist and theater critic, whose first novel, THE VERSIONS OF US, is now available in the US. It’s a story of how lives intersect, of possibilities and consequences that ring across the shifting decades, of how even the smallest choices can define the course of our lives. In this interview with Carol Fitzgerald, the president and co-founder of The Book Report Network, Barnett discusses the challenges and delights of writing three versions of the same story and which story she likes best. She also opens up about her own feelings regarding fate and why she may not be as much of a romantic as she’d thought.

Interview: Laura Lippman, author of Wilde Lake

May 5, 2016

Since her debut, Laura Lippman has won multiple awards and critical acclaim for her excellent crime novels, set in her hometown of Baltimore. Her latest book, WILDE LAKE, is as provocative and timely as ever; the New York Times bestselling author challenges our notions of memory, loyalty, responsibility and justice in this psychologically complex story about a long-ago death that still haunts a family. In this interview, Lippman talks to The Book Report Network's Sarah Rachel Egelman about why she prefers to write about strong women (“write what you know”), what she learned about rape culture while thinking about and researching this novel, and how WILDE LAKE parallels the Harper Lee classic TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD --- while diverging in one key way.

Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us

The one thing that’s certain is they met on a Cambridge street by chance and felt a connection that would last a lifetime. But as for what happened next... They fell wildly in love, or went their separate ways. They kissed, or they thought better of it. They married soon after, or were together for a few weeks before splitting up. They grew distracted and disappointed with their daily lives together, or found solace together only after hard years spent apart.

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Where did you get the book that you most recently read with your group? If you are in more than one book group, please respond about just one.

May 4, 2016, 320 voters

Chloe Durante

Editorial Intern

Chloe Durante studied at Montclair State University where she received a dual degree in English and Women & Gender Studies. She is currently interning at the Book Report Network and wishes to pursue a career in copywriting.

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Editorial Content for Father's Day

Book

Father's Day

Teaser

FATHER'S DAY is the moving story of an orphaned girl named Harvey and the troubled uncle who raises her --- an unforgettable tale of loss and redemption from the award-winning author of THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS.

Promo

FATHER'S DAY is the moving story of an orphaned girl named Harvey and the troubled uncle who raises her --- an unforgettable tale of loss and redemption from the award-winning author of THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS.

About the Book

The moving story of an orphaned girl named Harvey and the troubled uncle who raises her --- an unforgettable tale of loss and redemption from the author of THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS.

At the age of six, a little girl named Harvey learns that her parents have died in a car accident. As she struggles to understand, a kindly social worker named Wanda introduces her to her only living relative: her uncle Jason, a disabled felon with a violent past and a criminal record. Despite his limitations --- and his resistance --- Wanda follows a hunch and cajoles Jason into becoming her legal guardian, convinced that each may be the other’s last chance.

Moving between past and present, FATHER'S DAY weaves together the story of Harvey’s childhood and her life as a young woman in Paris, as she awaits her uncle’s arrival for a Father’s Day visit. To mark the occasion, Harvey has planned a series of gifts for Jason --- all leading to a revelation she believes will only deepen their bond.

With extraordinary empathy and emotional impact, the award-winning writer Simon Van Booy has crafted a simple yet luminous novel of loss and transcendence, second chances and forgiveness: a breakthrough work from one of our most gifted chroniclers of the human heart.