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Taking place mostly in rural Georgia the story focuses on the life of African-American women in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture.

Celie is a poor, uneducated 14-year-old girl living in the South in the early 1900s. She writes letters to God because the man she thought was her father, Alphonso, beats, and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once, a pregnancy that resulted in the birth of a boy named Adam, whom Alphonso also abducts, and Celie thinks he killed him. Celie then has a second child, Celie's ailing mother dies after cursing Celie on her deathbed. The second child was a girl named Olivia, but Alphonso took the baby away shortly after her birth.

Celie and her younger sister, 12-year-old Nettie, learn that a man identified only as Mister wants to marry Nettie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, instead of arranging for Mister to marry Celie. Mister, a widower needing someone to care for his children and keep his house, eventually accepts the offer. Mister physically, sexually, and verbally abuses Celie, and all his children treat her badly as well.

Shortly thereafter, Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie's house, where Mister makes sexual advances toward her. Celie then advises Nettie to seek assistance from a well-dressed black woman that she saw in the general store a while back; the woman has unknowingly adopted Olivia and was the only black woman that Celie had ever seen with money of her own. Nettie is forced to leave after promising to write. Celie, however, never receives any letters and concludes that her sister is dead.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a 2015 young adult novel and the debut book by American author Becky Albertalli. The coming-of-age story focuses on its titular protagonist Simon Spier, a closeted gay high-school-aged boy who is forced to come out after a blackmailer discovers Simon's e-mails written to another closeted classmate with whom he has fallen in love.

"P.S. I Still Love You" is a heartwarming continuation of the To All the Boys I've Loved Before series, which delves deeper into the life of Lara Jean Covey as she navigates the complexities of her first real relationship with Peter Kavinsky. The book excels in portraying the emotional turmoil and growth of the characters, giving readers an intimate glimpse into Lara Jean's thoughts and feelings.

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society that is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. 

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a children's story by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel written in rhymws verse with illustrations by the author. It follows the Grinch a grumpy, solitary creature who attempts to put an end to Christmas by stealing Christmas-themed items from the homes of the nearby town Whoville on Christmas Eve. Miraculously, the Grinch realizes that Christmas may not all be about money and presents.

Meet Billy Bloom, a new student at the ultra-white, ultra-rich, ultra-conservative Dwight D. Eisenhower Academy and drag queen extraordinaire. Actually, ?drag queen? does not begin to describe Billy and his fabulousness. Any way you slice it, Billy is not a typical seventeen-year-old, and the Bible Belles, Aberzombies, and Football Heroes at the academy have never seen anyone quite like him before. But thanks to the help and support of one good friend, Billy?s able to take a stand for outcasts and underdogs everywhere in his own outrageous, over-the-top, sad, funny, brilliant, and unique way. See Less

The Rhythm Section begins with the crash of flight NEO027. The crash destroys Stephanie Patrick's life: her family was on board and there were no survivors. Devastated, she drops out of college and her life spins out of control as she enters a world of drugs and prostitution--until a journalist discovers that the crash wasn't an accident. There was a bomb planted on the plane. Filled with rage, and with nothing left to loose, she focuses on one goal: revenge. The opportunity to obtain it arrives quickly when Stephanie is approached and recruited by an extremely covert intelligence organization. She is young, smart, and beautiful--and has no family, making her the perfect candidate. The organization offers her a deal. She must undergo rigorous training; learn how to control her heart rate and breathing; and learn how to efficiently use weapons. Then, she will assume a new identity and commit acts of terrorism on behalf of the organization. When she completes these assignments successfully--and proves her loyalty--she will be offered the opportunity to take out the terrorists who brought down flight NEO027.

The novel takes place in Three Rivers, Connecticut in the early 1990s. Dominick Birdsey's identical twin, Thomas Birdsey, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. With medication, Thomas is able to live his life in relative peace and work at a coffee stand, but occasionally, he has severe episodes of his illness. Thinking he is making a sacrificial protest that will stop the Gulf War, Thomas cuts off his own hand while at a public library. Dominick sees him through the ensuing decision not to attempt to reattach the hand, and makes efforts on his behalf to free him from what he knows to be an inadequate and depressing hospital for the dangerously mentally ill.

In the process, Dominick contemplates his own difficult life as Thomas's brother, his marriage to his gorgeous ex-wife, which ended after their only child died of SIDS, and his ongoing hostility toward his stepfather. Dominick also displays classic symptoms of PTSD, as a result of stressors in his adult life. First in Thomas's interests, and then for his own sake, he sees a therapist, Dr. Rubina Patel, a psychologist employed by the hospital. She helps Dominick come to understand Thomas's illness better and the family's accommodations or reactions to it.

In the course of Thomas's treatment, Dominick is covertly informed of sexual abuse taking place in the hospital, and helps to expose the perpetrators. He succeeds in getting Thomas released, but Thomas soon dies, apparently by suicide. After Thomas's death, Dominick discovers the identity of their birth father, who was part African American and part Native American—a secret their mother had shared with Thomas, but not with him.

In the midst of this, Dominick is also reading the autobiography of his grandfather, Italian/Sicilian-born Domenico Tempesta, which discloses details about the legacy of twins in their family. Dominick learns about himself and his mother through learning about his grandfather.

He also learns that his live-in girlfriend, Joy, has been seeing a gentleman on the side, who is her bisexual half-uncle, and has also let him watch her and Dominick during sex on previous occasions. She is also HIV-positive, having contracted it from her secret lover. She asks Dominick to raise her baby if she dies. At first Dominick resists, but later, after having found his way back into a relationship with his ex-wife, Dessa, they decide to remarry each other and adopt Joy's daughter. The book ends with Dominick able to cope with the considerable loss, failure, and sorrow in his personal and family history.

Eleven-year-old Charlie Bucket lives in poverty with his parents and grandparents in a town that is home to a world-famous chocolate factory. One day, Charlie's bedridden Grandpa Joe tells him about Willy Wonka, the factory's eccentric owner, and all of his fantastical candies. Rival chocolatiers sent in spies to steal his recipes, forcing Wonka to close the factory and disappear. He reopened years later, but the gates remain locked, and nobody knows who is providing the factory with its workforce.

The next day, the newspaper announces that Wonka has hidden five Golden Tickets in Wonka Bars; the finders of these tickets will be invited to come and tour the factory. The first four tickets are found by gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde, and television addict Mike Teavee. One day, Charlie buys a Wonka Bar with some money he found in the snow; the bar contains the fifth and final ticket. Upon hearing the news, Grandpa Joe regains his mobility and volunteers to accompany Charlie to the factory.

The hero of The Good Shepherd is Commander Krause, the captain of the fictional US Navy Mahan-class destroyer USS Keeling in World War II. Krause is in overall command of an escort force protecting an Atlantic convoy in the Battle of the Atlantic, shepherding it through the Mid-Atlantic gap where no antisubmarine aircraft are able to defend convoys. He finds himself in a difficult position. The voyage in question occurs early in 1942, shortly after the United States' entry into the war. Although he is a career Navy officer, with many years of seniority, this is Krause's first wartime mission. The captains of the other vessels in the escort group are junior to him in rank, and much younger, but they have been at war for over two years.

The story covers 13 watches (52 hours) aboard the ship's bridge and is told in the third person entirely from Krause's point of view as he fights to save his ship, detailing his mood swings from his intense and focused excitement and awareness during combat to his resulting fatigue, depression, and self-doubt as his self-perceived inferiority and inexperience to the other captains under his command troubles him (although as the story progresses he is shown to be quite capable). He broods over his career and the wife who left him, partly because of his strict devotion to duty. He is troubled when the press of duty forces him to neglect his prayers (unlike most of Forester's other heroes, Krause is devout). He is troubled by recollections that the Navy review board had twice passed him over for promotion, returning a judgment of fitted and retained due to little or no opportunity in the prewar Navy. His promotion to Commander only came when the United States entered the war, leading him to fear that he may be unsuited to his command.

The Help is 2009  about African Americans working in white households in Mississippi during the early 1960s. 

The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person perspectives of three women: Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson, and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan. Aibileen is a maid who takes care of children and cleans. Her own 24-year-old son, Treelore, died from an accident on his job. In the story, she is tending the Leefolt household and caring for their toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny is Aibileen's friend who frequently tells her employers what she thinks of them, resulting in her having been fired from nineteen jobs. Minny's most recent employer was Mrs. Walters, mother of Hilly Holbrook.

Skeeter is the daughter of a wealthy white family who owns Longleaf, a cotton farm, and formerly a plantation, outside Jackson. Many of the field hands and household help are African Americans. Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from University and wants to become a writer. Skeeter's mother wants her to get married and thinks her degree is just a pretty piece of paper. Skeeter is curious about the disappearance of Constantine, her maid who brought her up and cared for her. Constantine had written to Skeeter while she was away from home in college saying what a great surprise she had awaiting her when she came home. Skeeter's mother tells her that Constantine quit and went to live with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would leave her like this; she knows something is wrong and believes that information will eventually come out. Everyone Skeeter asks about the unexpected disappearance of Constantine pretends it never happened and avoids giving her any real answers.

Orion is scared of a lot of things, but most of all he’s scared of the dark. So one night the Dark decides to take Orion on an adventure. Emma Yarlett’s second picture book combines her incredible storytelling and artwork with die-cut pages that bring the Dark to life.

What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once? Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.

Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy’s most famous aviator duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. Jesse became the Navy’s first black carrier pilot, an African American sharecropper's son from Mississippi, defending a nation that wouldn’t even serve him in a bar. While much of America remained divided by segregation, Jesse and Tom joined forces as wingmen in Fighter Squadron 32. Adam Makos takes us into the cockpit as these bold young aviators cut their teeth at the world’s most dangerous job—landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier—a line of work that Jesse’s young wife, Daisy, struggles to accept.

In 1814, after years as one of the most notorious rakes of the Anthony, Viscount Bridgerton decides to settle down and carry on the family line. Haunted by his father's death at a young age from a bee sting, Anthony now believes, albeit irrationally, that he will die young, too and does not want the complication of falling in love.

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t always walk around with a smile plastered to his face? Behind the cranky exterior, there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning, a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.

Having learned of a secret group within the Swedish Security Service that has committed several constitutional violations against Lisbeth Salander, Mikael Blomkvist and a group of policemen from Swedish Security Service's Constitutional Protection division try to learn who its members are and have Salander cleared of the murder charges against her.

The Call of the Wild is one of Jack London's most famous novels.

The story follows a dog named Buck, a 140 pound Saint Bernard, and Scotch Shepherd mix. Buck is abducted from a comfortable life as a pet and tossed into the chaos of the Klondike Gold Rush and the brutal realities of frontier life. Buck changes hands several times before landing in the kindly hands of John Thornton. For teachers and students, we offer our The Call of the Wild Study Guide. Thornton takes ownership of Buck from a trio of ignorant stampeders, intent upon making a dangerous river crossing. Buck refuses to cross, despite a vicious beating. Thornton recognizes the dog's intelligence and strength. He steps in to claim the dog and nurses Buck back to health. But Buck is forever changed by the treatment he has received at the hands of other men.

 

A young dog named Bella is separated from her owner, Lucas, and must find her way home. On her 400-mile journey, the lost dog meets new friends who help her find her way through the Colorado wilderness.

Celie, a poor African-American girl, lives in rural Georgia in the early 1900s. She writes letters to God because her father Alphonso beats and rapes her. Due to the rape, she gives birth to two children, Olivia and Adam, whom Alphonso takes away. A farmer identified as "Mister" (Mr. __) asks to marry her younger sister Nettie, but Alphonso offers him Celie instead. Celie is abused by Mister and mistreated by his prior children. Nettie runs away and stays with Celie, but Mister eventually makes her leave after she refuses his unwanted sexual advances. Nettie promises to write, but Celie never receives any letters, and Celie concludes that she is dead.

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857 when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl. Over the ensuing months, Henry—whom Brown nicknames Little Onion—conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually, Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859—one of the great catalysts for the Civil War. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

Mikael Blomkvist is contacted by freelance journalist Dag Svensson with regard to having Millennium publish his exposé on the sex trade in Sweden, which includes implicating government officials. Svensson and his girlfriend are murdered and the police believe Lisbeth Salander is the culprit. Blomkvist works to prove Salander's innocence while also trying to finish Svensson's piece and finds that both are connected.

Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself. Devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice, her days are full of familiar things: she lives in the very New York apartment in which she was raised, and sends Henry to the school she herself once attended. Dismayed by how women delude themselves, Grace is also the author of a book You Should Have Known, in which she cautions women to really hear what men are trying to tell them. But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster and horrified by how she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.

Years, before he becomes the tyrannical president of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow, remains the last hope for his fading lineage. With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow becomes alarmed when he's assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird from District 12. Uniting their instincts for showmanship and political savvy, they race against time to ultimately reveal a songbird and a snake.

On her 30th birthday, Andrea Oliver celebrates the occasion at a local diner with her mother, Laura. Moments later, she witnesses the unthinkable on a day that would forever change her life. After her mother attempts to stop a shooter from killing more victims, Andrea notices that Laura has flipped the script and watches her violently dispose of the threat. Visibly shaken, Andrea is left with wavering thoughts and conflicted feelings about her mother's actions. Soon after, video footage of the incident at the diner becomes a viral hit, exposing Laura's identity to her past enemies. As Andrea begins to gather the pieces of Laura's past on her journey to uncover the real identity that her mother has forsaken long ago, what other truths will she find?

On Enola's fourteenth birthday, her mother disappears, and Sherlock and Mycroft, Enola's brothers, conclude that her mother voluntarily left. Enola is devastated but eventually discovers elaborate ciphers her mother wrote, which leads her to conclude that she left to live with the Romani people and escape Victorian society's confines. Enola finds that her mother left money to fund her escape. When the eldest Mycroft insists that Enola attend boarding school and learn to be a proper lady, she runs away to London instead. 

Horrified by her brothers' plans to send her to a boarding school and the prospect of wearing a corset, she escapes. Dressed as a widow, she runs across Inspector Lestrade, who is working on a case with Sherlock about the disappearance of a young Viscount, Lord Tewksbury. Nearly blowing her cover, she finds a secret hiding place that seems to be the young Viscount's hideaway. Concluding that he ran away, she sets off to look for him. Upon arriving in London, Enola discovers the city is not the magical place of her imagination. The same people who have kidnapped the Viscount, who has no street smarts, kidnap Enola. After escaping with the Viscount, she bribes a woman to buy them clothing. Hiding in a police station right under Sherlock's nose, Enola runs away, leaving only a sketch of the suspect on the bench.

She sends a coded message via the personal column to her mother, who responds that she has gone to live with the Romani. The epilogue reveals that Enola has taken on two personas. To the poor, she's the mute "Sister," and to the rich, Ivy, the secretary to a private investigator.

The book is narrated through the eyes of Pat Peoples, and occasionally Tiffany's through letters. A former history teacher who has moved back to his childhood home in Collingswood, New Jersey, after spending time in a Baltimore psychiatric hospital, Pat believes he has been away only a few months, but soon realizes it has been years, and struggles to piece together his lost memories and what has become of his wife, Nikki. He has a hypothesis that life is a film created by God and that its "silver lining" will be the end of "Apart Time" with Nikki. Pat embarks on a plan of self-improvement in order to win Nikki back.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race is a 2016 nonfiction book written by Margot Lee Shetterly. Shetterly started working on the book in 2010. The book takes place from the 1930s through the 1960s when some viewed women as inferior to men. The biographical text follows the lives of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three mathematicians who worked as computers (then a job description) at NASA, during the space race. They overcame discrimination there, as women and as African Americans. Also featured is Christine Darden, who was the first African-American woman to be promoted into the Senior Executive Service for her work in researching supersonic flight and sonic booms.

We the Animals is the debut novel by the American author Justin Torres. It is a novel about three wild brothers of white and Puerto Rican parentage who live a rough and tumble childhood in rural upstate New York.   Scrambling their way through a dysfunctional childhoodrk during the 1980s. The youngest brother, who is the protagonist, eventually breaks away from the rest of the family.

We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become? In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake made from a family recipe with a long history and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever? Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel tells how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

Nine people from different walks of life attend a pricey 10-day "Mind and Body Total Transformation Retreat" at a place called the Tranquillum House run by a mysterious Russian woman named Masha. Throughout the course of their retreat, they realize that each of them is battling their own demons and all of them are subjects of an experiment.

Horton Hears a Who is a children's book written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss. It was published in 1954Elephant Horton finds a speck of dust floating in the Jungle of Nool. Upon investigation of the speck, Horton discovers the tiny city of Who-ville and its residents, the Whos, which he can hear but cannot see. Horton forms a friendship with the mayor of Who-ville, Ned McDodd, and promises to transport Who-ville to safety. However, Horton encounters opposition from his jungle neighbors, who don't want to believe in the existence of Who-ville. 

Set in 1948, the story begins in the Watts area of Los Angeles, with Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins. Easy is a Houstonian, from that city's Fifth Ward, who lost his job at a Los Angeles aviation defense plant, and is unable to pay the mortgage on his LA home. Easy is sitting in a bar run by Joppy, a friend who is also from Houston, when a man named DeWitt Albright walks into the bar and offers him a job finding a young woman named Daphne Monet. Monet, a young white woman, is rumored to be hanging out in bars frequented mostly by African Americans, although white women are allowed inside.

At the bar Easy meets two old friends, Coretta and Dupree, among many other people that he knew from his former life in Houston. Coretta says that she knows Daphne, but gives an incorrect address to Easy. He goes home with them and has sex with Coretta, with Dupree asleep in the next room. Easy then leaves her early the next morning, only to be arrested by the LAPD. Shortly thereafter following police interrogation, he is told that Coretta is dead, and that he is a suspect in Coretta's murder.

In 1998, the Richardson home catches fire. Arson is suspected, as there were multiple small fires. The previous year, 1997, Elena Richardson rents her rental home across town to Mia Warren, an artist, and her teenage daughter, Pearl. Elena's younger son, Moody, who is Pearl's age, develops a crush on Pearl and becomes friends with her. Pearl meets his siblings Lexie, Trip, and Izzy. Pearl, who is used to a transient lifestyle in which her mother scrapes together money, is charmed by the Richardsons and their established home. 

Mia works part-time at a Chinese restaurant and sells photographs through a dealer in New York. She becomes concerned about Pearl's idealization of the Richardsons. When Elena condescendingly offers her a job doing housekeeping for her family, she agrees only to keep an eye on Pearl. She meets Izzy, the black sheep of the family, and the two become close.

The Richardsons are invited to the birthday party of Mirabelle McCullough, the adopted daughter of Elena's friend. Mia realizes that the child is May Ling Chow, the daughter of Bebe Chow, Mia's co-worker at the restaurant, who gave up her child in the middle of a postpartum episode and economic hardship. Bebe has been looking for her child for over a year.  The scandal results in Bebe getting visitation rights and help from a lawyer pro bono.

Elena discovers that Bebe learned of her child's whereabouts through Mia. Angry on behalf of her friend, she investigates Mia's past. She tracks down Mia's parents and learns that Pearl was conceived by Mia for a wealthy New York couple who were unable to have children of their own. Mia could not face the idea of giving up her child. She told the couple that she miscarried and ran away with Pearl; Mia's parents hadn't heard from her since. Lexie gets pregnant and asks Pearl to come with her to get an abortion. Afraid of being discovered, Lexie uses Pearl's name at the clinic. 

Bebe Chow loses her case and Mia comforts her. Elena tells Mia she knows about Pearl and that she must move out. Pearl is reluctant to go, but Mia explains about her biological father and she accepts. Izzy realizes that Moody, Lexie, and Trip have all used Pearl in their own way and becomes angry at them. Choosing a moment when they are all out of the house, she starts small fires on everyone's beds, not realizing that her mother is still in the house. Elena manages to escape the fire unharmed. After the fire, the Richardsons go to the rental home, now vacated by the Warrens, where they find that Mia has left them with photographs that have personal significance to each of them.

Set primarily in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s, the story centers on the reunion of two childhood friends—Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield—and their increasing fascination with each other's lives. The title refers to the practice of "racial passing" and is a key element of the novel. Clare Kendry's attempt to pass as white for her husband, John (Jack) Bellew, is a significant depiction in the novel and a catalyst for the tragic events.

 

Daphne Bridgerton, the fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen.

Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar.

The plan works like a charm—at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: love ignores every rule.

The Last Thing he wanted is a novel published by Joan Didion.

The story centers on Elena McMahon, a reporter for The Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 US Presidential election to care for her father after her mother's death. In an unusual turn of events, she inherits his position as an arms dealer for the U.S. Government in Central America. In this sparsely written, quick-paced narrative, Elena struggles to cope with the spies, American military personnel, and the consequences of her father's errors that are waiting for her on a small island off the coast of Antillas.

he grisly headline leaves nothing to the imagination: “Woman’s torso recovered from Tokyo Bay. Believed to be missing British bartender Lily Bridges.” The only suspect is Lucy Fly. Her friend is dead, her lover has disappeared, and as far as anyone is concerned, she’s as good as guilty.

Trapped in the interrogation room, Lucy begins to unravel two stories. One, for the police, is a spare outline, offering more questions than answers. The other–the real one, if you believe her–is a gripping dive into an obsessive mind, revealing the checkered past that brought her to Japan, her complicated friendship with Lily, and a tempestuous affair with a missing Japanese photographer named Teiji. As she excavates the dangerous secrets–both past and present–that haunt her waking mind, Lucy relates an unsettling life story that spans bustling Tokyo, the British countryside, and remote Japanese islands, each step taking us closer to the chilling truth about Lily’s death.

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and romantic misunderstandings. It is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abbey and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. The novel was first published in December 1815, with its title page listing a publication date of 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England. Emma is a comedy of manners, and depicts issues of marriage, sex, age, and social status.

he Giver is a 1993 American young adult dystopian novel by Lois Lowry. It is set in a society which at first appears to be utopian but is revealed to be dystopian as the story progresses. The novel follows a 12-year-old boy named Jonas. The society has taken away pain and strife by converting to "Sameness", a plan that has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who stores all the past memories of the time before Sameness, as there may be times where one must draw upon the wisdom gained from history to aid the community's decision making. Jonas struggles with concepts of all the new emotions and things introduced to him: whether they are inherently good, evil, or in between, and whether it is even possible to have one without the other. The Community lacks any color, memory, climate, or terrain, all in an effort to preserve structure, order, and a true sense of equality beyond personal individuality.

The novel begins with 16-year-old Steve Harmon writing in his book awaiting his trial for murder. Musing on his short time in prison so far, he decides to record this upcoming experience in the form of a movie screenplay. Kathy O'Brien, Steve's lawyer, informs him of what will happen during the trial. At this stage, only two of the four accused – James King and Steve – will be tried, since the other two accused – Richard "Bobo" Evans and Osvaldo Cruz – have entered into a plea bargain. When the trial first begins, Steve flashes back to a movie he saw in his school's film of predictability.

The trial begins with the opening statements of the prosecutor Sandra Petrocelli, Miss O'Brien, and King's lawyer, Asa Briggs. Petrocelli labels the four accused men, including Steve, as "monsters." The lawyers call on several witnesses, including Salvatore Zinzi and Wendell Bolden, illicit cigarette traders, who admit to buying cigarettes that came from a drugstore robbery that led to the murder. The story of the trial is often broken up by a variety of flashbacks, including ones showing that King is only acquainted with Steve, that King had accused Steve of pulling the trigger during the robbery. Petrocelli calls as a witness Osvaldo Cruz, who is affiliated with the Diablos, a violent street gang. Cruz admits to participating in the crime only due to coercion by Bobo.

The novel depicts the themes of identity, race, peer pressure, dehumanization, crime, teenaged masculinity, and the relative or subjective nature of the truth.

The novel centers on 18-year-old Madeline Whittier, who is being treated for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), also known as "bubble baby disease". Due to this, Madeline is kept inside her house in Los Angeles, where she lives with her mother, a doctor. The story follows 18-year-old Madeline Whittier a half Japanese, half African-American 18-year-old who is being treated by her doctor mother for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), and therefore is not allowed to leave her house or interact with anything that has not been "sanitized". Her world consists of her mother Pauline, her nurse Carla, and the books she finds comfort in; with her father and brother having died a long time ago in a car accident.

Maddy's life changes when a family moves in next door. She watches them from the window and learns that the family includes a father, mother, daughter named Kara, and a son named Olly. Olly befriends Maddy, and the two begin to message each other online. Meanwhile, Olly's father is abusive and Kara has a smoking problem.

At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother before long, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie's years spent serving upper-middle-class America as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren't being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American dream from the poverty line while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. 

In autumn 1943, the unnamed narrator befriends Holly Golightly. The two are tenants in a brownstone apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Holly (age 18–19) is a country girl turned New York café society, girl. As such, she has no job and lives by socializing with wealthy men, who take her to clubs and restaurants, and give her money and expensive presents; she hopes to marry one of them. According to Capote, Golightly is not a prostitute, but an "American geisha".

Holly likes to shock people with carefully selected tidbits from her personal life or her outspoken viewpoints on various topics. Over the course of a year, she slowly reveals herself to the narrator, who finds himself quite fascinated by her curious lifestyle.

Sarah's Key is a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, first published in its French translation as Elle s'appelait Sarah in September 2006. Two main parallel plots are followed through the book. The first is that of ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski, a Jewish girl born in Paris, arrested with her parents during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup.  Before they go, she locks her four-year-old brother in a cupboard, thinking the family should be back in a few hours. The second plot follows Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris, who is asked to write an article in honor of the roundup's 60th anniversary.

John Doolittle is a kind-hearted country physician who keeps goldfish in his pond, rabbits in the pantry, white mice in a piano, and a hedgehog in the cellar. He also has an unusual gift: he can talk to animals — a talent that comes in handy, since he prefers treating animals, rather than humans, as his patients. One day, a mysterious call summons him to Africa, where a serious epidemic has spread among the monkey population. Of course, the good doctor sets out immediately with some of his best friends.

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab, and soon, you’ll be matched with your perfect partner—the one you’re genetically made for. That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance, and love. Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.” They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets, and some are more shocking than others… A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One, is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences.

Andrea Sachs, a recent graduate of Brown University with a degree in English, moves to New York City with her best friend, Lily, a graduate student at Columbia. Andrea hopes to find a career in publishing and blankets the city with her résumé. She believes she'll be closer to her dream of working for The New Yorker if she can get a job in the magazine industry. She gets a surprise interview at the Elias-Clark Group and is hired as a junior assistant for Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of the fashion magazine Runway. Although she knows little of the fashion world, everyone tells her that "a million girls would die for [her] job." If she manages to work for Miranda for a year, people tell her, she can have her choice of jobs within the magazine industry.

Mockingjay is chronologically the last installment of The Hunger Games series.  The book continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, who agrees to unify the districts of Panem in a rebellion against the tyrannical Capitol.

Kindred (1979) is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. 

The book is the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who is repeatedly transported in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 with her white husband and an early 19th-century Maryland plantation just outside Easton. There, she meets some of her ancestors: a proud, free Black woman and a white planter who forces her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana stays for more extended periods in the past, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. Dana makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time.

Born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Dhonielle spent much of her childhood hiding beneath her grandmother's dining table with a stack of books. As an English teacher at a ballet academy, Clayton rediscovered her passion for children's and young adult literature. To ground herself in the canon, she pursued her Masters in Children's Literature from Hollins University before receiving her MFA in Writing for Children at the New School. She is a former middle school librarian, where she pestered children to read and curated a diverse collection. An avid traveler, Dhonielle's lived in several foreign countries, but she's now settled in Harlem, where you'll find her writing late into the night, lurking in libraries, and hunting for the best slice of New York pizza. She is the COO of We Need Diverse Books and the co-founder of Cake Literary. The co-author of the dance dramas Tiny Pretty Things and Shiny Broken Pieces, as well as the upcoming Rumor Game, Dhonielle is the author of the New York Times bestselling YA fantasy series The Belles.  In our next episode, we will review  Dhonielle book Tiny Pretty Things

In the Tall Grass is a horror novella by American writers Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. 

Cal and Becky Demuth are inseparable siblings (being called Irish twins by their parents, although they are 19 months apart). Becky finds out during her sophomore year of college that she is pregnant, leading the twins' parents to suggest she go live with her aunt and uncle until the baby is born.  While on this journey brother and sister enter a field of tall grass to rescue a boy, but they soon realize they cannot escape and something evil lurks in the grass.

Alex Cross is a homicide detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. He works and lives in the ghettos of D. C. and looks like Muhammad Ali in his prime. He's a tough guy from a tough part of town who wears Harris Tweed jackets and likes to relax by banging out Gershwin tunes on his baby grand piano. But he also has two adorable kids of his own, and they are his own special vulnerabilities. Jezzie Flanagan is the first woman ever to hold a highly sensitive job as supervisor of the Secret Service in Washington. Blond, mysterious, seductive, she's got an outer shell that's as tough as it is beautiful. She rides her black BMW motorcycle at speeds of no less than 100 mph. What is she running from? What is her secret? Alex Cross and Jezzie Flanagan are about to have a forbidden love affair at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji, who wants to commit the "crime of the century," is playing at the top of his game. Soneji has outsmarted the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police. Who will be his next victim?

Thirteen Reasons Why is a young adult novel written by Jay Asher in 2007 that follows the story of Hannah Baker, a high school freshman, and the thirteen reasons why she commits suicide. Following her death, Hannah leaves behind 7 double-sided cassette tapes detailing the 13 specific people and events that she blames for her demise. Two weeks after her death, these cassette tapes are mailed out with directions to pass the tapes on to the next person on the tape. Hannah's life story is conveyed through these tapes, which are narrated by Hannah herself, and through the point of view of Clay, her classmate and the ninth person to receive the tapes. The inspiration behind the main character, Hannah Baker, comes from author Jay Asher's close relative who attempted suicide.

Since the novel's publication in 2007, Thirteen Reasons Why has received much recognition.  As of 2014 Thirteen Reasons Why had been a New York Times bestseller for over 3 years and published in multiple countries. The novel's success has also been met with backlash, becoming the third-most banned book in the United States between 2010 and 2019. Additionally, in March 2017 a Netflix original series was released based on the book.

In Flint City, Oklahoma, police detective Ralph Anderson arrests popular teacher and Little League coach Terry Maitland in front of a crowd of baseball spectators, charging him with raping, mutilating and killing an eleven-year-old boy. Maitland hires his friend and lawyer, Howie Gold, to assist him but Anderson has eyewitnesses and clear forensic evidence pointing to his guilt. In the meantime, eager reporters harass Maitland's wife, Marcy and his two daughters, Sarah and Grace.

District Attorney Bill Samuels tells Anderson to break Maitland's alibi in order to make this an open-and-shut case. Anderson discovers, however, that multiple eyewitnesses confirm Maitland was out of town when the murder occurred, at a writer's conference in a neighboring town. Conference site security footage also provides confirmation of Maitland's alibi. Anderson finds a book at the conference center gift shop that Maitland (or his doppelgänger) touched and the fingerprints on the book are confirmed to be Maitland's. Samuels encourages Anderson to destroy this new evidence but he does not. Despite evidence that Maitland was in two places at once, Anderson still believes Maitland killed the boy. Maitland is shot to death outside of the courthouse by the older brother of the victim, who is subsequently shot and killed by Anderson. Anderson is placed on administrative leave and the district attorney decides not to seek reelection.

With the help of private investigator Holly Gibney, Anderson follows a trail of clues that takes the duo to Marysville, Texas. Jack Hoskins, Anderson's rival in local law enforcement, is coerced by the Outsider (the real killer) into killing Anderson. The Outsider promises Hoskins that if he kills Anderson he will be cured of his cancer. With the help of a number of characters, Anderson and Gibney discover that they have an actual monster on their hands. They set out to destroy him in a large cave in Marysville, where two children died years earlier. Holly hits the Outsider with the happy slapper (a sock filled with ball bearings, similar to what she used to stop Brady Hartsfield in Mr. Mercedes). He appears destroyed. The district attorney holds a press conference clearing Maitland, alleging defective DNA samples and confirming the video proof supporting Maitland's alibi.

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone wrong Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter. But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?

Claireece Precious Jones is an obese, illiterate 16-year-old girl who lives in Harlem with her abusive mother Mary. Precious is a few months pregnant with her second child, the result of being raped by her father, also the father of her first child. When her school discovers the pregnancy, it is decided that she should attend an alternative school. Precious is furious, but the counselor later visits her home and convinces her to enter an alternative school, located in the Hotel Theresa, called Higher Education Alternative Each One Teach One. Despite her mother's insistence that she apply for welfare, Precious enrolls in the school. She meets her teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, and fellow students Rhonda, Jermaine, Rita, Jo Ann, and Consuelo. All of the girls come from troubled backgrounds. Ms. Rain's class is a pre-GED class for young women who are below an eighth-grade level in reading and writing and therefore are unprepared for high school-level courses. They start off by learning the basics of phonics and vocabulary building. Despite their academic deficits, Ms. Rain ignites a passion in her students for literature and writing. She believes that the only way to learn to write is to write every day. Each girl is required to keep a journal. Ms. Rain reads their entries and provides feedback and advice. By the time the novel ends, the women have created an anthology of autobiographical stories called "LIFE STORIES – Our Class Book" appended to the book. The works of classic African-American writers such as Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and Langston Hughes are inspirational for the students. Precious is particularly moved by The Color Purple.

Henrietta Lacks was born in 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. Henrietta was a 30-year-old, African-American tobacco farmer. On January 29, 1951, she went to John Hopkins Hospital complaining of vaginal bleeding. Upon examination, it was found that she was suffering from an adenocarcinoma in her cervix. A malignant tumor was metastasizing and ravaging her body. Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cells were taken from her body without her knowledge and were used to form the HeLa cell line.  The HeLa cell lines were the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. An immortalized cell line reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions, and the HeLa cell line continues to be a source of invaluable medical data to the present day. All while her children suffered and received no help or compensation for her contributions to science. 

Always and Forever, Lara Jean is a 2017 novel by American author Jenny Han. It is the third and final installment of the To All the Boys I've Loved Before series. Now in her final year of high school, Lara Jean Song Covey is excitedly looking forward to attending school with her boyfriend, Peter Kavinsky, at the University of Virginia (UVA). Peter has been accepted early on a sports scholarship for lacrosse. When acceptance letters come in, Lara Jean learns she has been rejected. After being wait-listed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), Lara Jean decided to go with William and Mary with the plan of transferring to UVA after freshman year. However, Lara Jean is eventually accepted to UNC at Chapel Hill in her last week of school and decides to attend school there.

The Hunger Games is the first book in the series.

The Hunger Games follows 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12 who volunteers for the 74th Hunger Games in place of her younger sister Primrose Everdeen. Also selected from District 12 is Peeta Mellark. They are mentored by their district's only living victor, Haymitch Abernathy, who won 24 years earlier and has since led a solitary life of alcoholism.

Peeta confesses his longtime secret love for Katniss in a televised interview prior to the Games. This revelation stuns Katniss, who harbors feelings for Gale Hawthorne, her friend and hunting partner. Haymitch advises her to feign feelings for Peeta in order to gain wealthy sponsors who can provide crucial supplies to the "star-crossed lovers" during the Games.

In the arena, Katniss allies with Rue, a young tribute from District 11 who reminds Katniss of her kid sister. When Rue is killed, Katniss places flowers around her body as an act of defiance toward the Capitol. Then the remaining tributes are alerted to a rule change that allows tributes from the same district to win as a team. Katniss finds a seriously wounded Peeta and nurses him back to health. When all of the other tributes are dead, the rule change is abruptly revoked. With neither willing to kill the other, Katniss comes up with a solution: a double suicide by eating poisonous berries. This forces the authorities to concede just in time to save their lives. During and after the Games, Katniss develops genuine feelings for Peeta and struggles to reconcile them with what she feels for Gale. Haymitch warns her that the danger is far from over.

The authorities are furious at being made fools of, and the only way to try to allay their anger is to pretend that her actions were because of her love for Peeta. On the journey home, Peeta is dismayed to learn of the deception.

Just Mercy is the story of a young lawyer fighting on the frontlines of a country in thrall to extreme punishments and careless justice. The story shadows world-renowned civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson as he recounts his experiences and details the case of a condemned death row prisoners whom he fought to free.

In the 1950s, Elizabeth Zott's dream of being a scientist is challenged by a society that says women belong in the domestic sphere; she accepts a job on a TV cooking show and sets out to teach a nation of housewives way more than recipes.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist has been convicted of libeling billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström and wants to escape the media attention. He is hired by industrial tycoon Henrik Vanger under the guise of writing a biography of Henrik and the Vanger family, while really investigating the 40-year-old disappearance of Henrik's niece Harriet. He teams up with the introverted and skilled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander.

A mysterious man, Griffin, arrives at the local inn owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hall of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves; his face is hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose; and he wears a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, unfriendly, and an introvert. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. While Griffin is staying at the inn, hundreds of strange glass bottles (that he calls his luggage) arrive. Many local townspeople believe this to be very odd. He becomes the talk of the village with many theorizing as to his origins.

Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. Griffin is running out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady demands that he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of pique. An attempt to apprehend the stranger is frustrated when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs. In the process, he arms himself with an iron pipe; when a man follows the "floating pipe" and accidentally forces the Invisible Man into thorn bushes, the Invisible Man commits his first murder.

There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that contain records of his experiments. When Marvel attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, Griffin chases him to the seaside town of Port Burdock, threatening to kill him. Marvel escapes to a local inn and is saved by the people at the inn, but Griffin escapes. Marvel later goes to the police and tells them of this "invisible man," then requests to be locked up in a high-security jail.

Griffin's furious attempt to avenge his betrayal leads to his being shot. He takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp, he reveals his true identity. Griffin is a former medical student who left medicine to devote himself to optics. He recounts how he invented chemicals capable of rendering bodies invisible, and, on impulse, performed the procedure on himself. Griffin tells Kemp the story of how he became invisible. He explains how he tried the invisibility on a cat, then himself. Griffin burned down the boarding house he was staying in, along with all the equipment he had used to turn invisible, to cover his tracks, but he soon realized that he was ill-equipped to survive in the open. He attempted to steal food and clothes from a large department store, and eventually stole some clothing from a theatrical supply shop on Drury Lane and headed  to attempt to reverse the invisibility. Having been driven somewhat unhinged by the procedure and his experiences, he now imagines that he can make Kemp his secret confederate, describing a plan to begin a "Reign of Terror" by using his invisibility to terrorize the nation.

Molly Bloom reveals how she built one of the most exclusive, high-stakes underground poker games in the world—an insider’s story of excess and danger, glamour and greed.

In the late 2000s, Molly Bloom, a twentysomething petite brunette from Loveland Colorado, ran the highest stakes, most exclusive poker game Hollywood had ever seen—she was its mistress, its lion tamer, its agent, and its oxygen. Everyone wanted in, few were invited to play.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were won and lost at her table. Molly’s game became the game for those in the know—celebrities, business moguls, and millionaires. Molly staged her games in palatial suites with beautiful views and exquisite amenities. She flew privately, dined at exclusive restaurants, hobnobbed with the heads of Hollywood studios, was courted by handsome leading men, and was privy to the world’s most delicious gossip until it all came crashing down around her.

Molly’s Game is a behind-the-scenes look at Molly’s game, the life she created, the life she lost, and what she learned in the process.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist receives a phone call from a source claiming to have information vital to the United States. The source has been in contact with a young female superhacker—a hacker resembling someone Blomkvist knows all too well. The implications are staggering. Blomkvist, in desperate need of a scoop for Millennium, turns to Lisbeth Salander for help. She, as usual, has her own agenda. The secret they are both chasing is at the center of a tangled web of spies, cybercriminals, and governments around the world, and someone is prepared to kill to protect it.

Convinced they'd be better off raising themselves, the Willoughby children hatch a sneaky plan to send their selfish parents on vacation. The siblings then embark on their own high-flying adventure to find the true meaning of family.

The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James that first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly magazine (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898 it appeared in The Two Magics, a book published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. Classified as both gothic fiction and a ghost story, the novella focuses on a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted.

In the century following its publication, The Turn of the Screw became a cornerstone text of academics who subscribed to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive. Many critics have tried to determine the exact nature of the evil hinted at by the story. However, others have argued that the brilliance of the novella results from its ability to create an intimate sense of confusion and suspense within the reader.

"The Most Dangerous Game", also published as "The Hounds of Zaroff", is a short story by Richard Connell on January 19, 1924. The story features a big-game hunter from New York City who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat. The story is inspired by the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were particularly fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s. 

The story has been adapted numerous times in this episode the following adaptations are reviewed.

1932 - Most Dangerous Game

1994 - Surviving the Game

2020 - The Hunt

2020 - Most Dangerous Game (mini series)

Atticus Turner, working in Florida after leaving the army, returns home to Chicago after receiving a mysterious letter from his estranged father, Montrose, saying he had left Chicago to go to Ardham, Massachusetts, where he believed he could find some information on Atticus' mother's family (previously unknown to them). Atticus, his uncle George, and his childhood friend Letitia drive to Ardham to find Montrose. They are chased, accosted, and later nearly murdered by racists on the way. Once at Ardham, they find a large manor house called Ardham Lodge. Atticus learns that he is the descendant of the Lodge's founder, Titus Braithwhite. Montrose is being held hostage, chained up in a basement. The current owner of the house, Samuel Braithwhite, is planning a ceremony with all of the members of his lodge (a sect of sorcerers called "The Order of the Ancient Dawn") during which he needs a Braithwhite descendant to be a conduit for some ancient power. Presumably, this will kill Atticus. Caleb Braithwhite (Samuel's only son) is also in attendance, and he secretly instructs Atticus with an incantation to say during the ceremony. Atticus does this, and it causes the unleashed power to consume Samuel and all the members of the lodge and turn them into dust while protecting Atticus. Caleb releases Atticus, George, Montrose, and Letitia and lets them leave to go back to Chicago. The story broken into distinct storylines with several themes such as Lovecraft Country, Dreams of the Which House, Abdullah's Book, Hippolyta Disturbs the Universe, Jekyll In Hyde Park, The Narrow House, Horace, and the Devil Doll, and The Mark Of Cain.

Disobedience is the debut novel by British author Naomi Alderman. First published in the UK in March 2006, the novel has since been translated into ten languages. Disobedience follows a rabbi's bisexual daughter as she returns from New York to her Orthodox Jewish community in Hendon, London. Although the subject matter was considered somewhat controversial, the novel was well received and earned Alderman the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers and the 2007 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

Based on the first two books in author Eoin Colfer wildly popular children's fantasy series, Walt Disney Studios' Artemis Fowl tells the story of adolescent criminal genius Artemis, who captures a vicious fairy, and attempts to harness her magical powers in a bid to rescue his family.

Black Swan meets Pretty Little Liars in this drama-packed debut about three perfect girls who will do anything to be the prima ballerina at their elite New York ballet school. Now a major Netflix series!

Being a dancer at New York’s most elite ballet school isn’t easy. Everyone wants to be the prima ballerina, and sometimes you must play dirty. With the competition growing fiercer with every performance and harmless pranks growing ever darker, Bette, June, and Gigi find themselves battling it out to stay at the top. And it’s only a matter of time before one small spark ignites... and even the best get burned...

A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult science fantasy novel by American author Madeleine L'Engle. The main characters – Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O'Keefe – embark on a journey through space and time, from galaxy to galaxy, as they endeavor to rescue the Murry's' father and fight back The Black Thing that has intruded into several worlds.

The novel offers a glimpse into the war between light and darkness and good and evil as the young characters mature into adolescents on their journey.

The Little Mermaid is a literary fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children. The story follows the journey of a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul. 

The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her widowed father (The Sea King), her dowager grandmother, and her five older sisters, born one year apart.

Catching Fire is  the second book in The Hunger Games series. As the sequel to the 2008 bestseller The Hunger Games, it continues the story of Katniss Everdeen and the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem. Following the events of the previous novel, a rebellion against the oppressive Capitol has begun, and Katniss and fellow tribute Peeta Mellark are forced to return to the arena in a special edition of the Hunger Games.

A  compulsively readable follow-up to her widely acclaimed debut novel, You.

Joe Goldberg is no stranger to hiding bodies. In the past ten years, this thirty-something has buried four of them, collateral damage in his quest for love. Now he’s heading west to Los Angeles, the city of second chances, determined to put his past behind him.

In Hollywood, Joe blends in effortlessly with the other young upstarts. He eats guac, works in a bookstore, and flirts with a journalist neighbor. But while others seem fixated on their own reflections, Joe can’t stop looking over his shoulder. The problem with hidden bodies is that they don’t always stay that way. They re-emerge, like dark thoughts, multiplying and threatening to destroy what Joe wants most: truelove. And when he finds it in a darkened room in Soho House, he’s more desperate than ever to keep his secrets buried. He doesn’t want to hurt his new girlfriend—he wants to be with her forever. But if she ever finds out what he’s done, he may not have a choice…

This episode is a review of the book A Rage in Harlem aka  Five corner Square aka For Love of Imabelle by Chester Himes and the movie adoption A Rage in Harlem

A Rage in Harlem" is a ripping introduction to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, patrolling New York City's roughest streets in Chester Himes's groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. For love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds--and then he steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a craps table. Luckily for him, he can turn to his savvy twin brother, Goldy, who earns a living--disguised as a Sister of Mercy--by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. With Goldy on his side, Jackson is ready for payback.

Check out this latest episode, when the ladies of Read, Watch, and Wine review the book "Boy Erased: A Memoir" by Garrard Conley.

Boy Erased tells the story of Jared (Hedges), the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, who is outed to his parents (Kidman and Crowe) at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a gay conversion therapy program - or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith. Boy Erased is the true story of one young man's struggle to find himself while being forced to question every aspect of his identity.

Did the Read, Watch and Wine Crew like it or dislike it. You have to listen to find out. Tune in to hear the discussion, and we would love to hear your opinion the book to movie transition. Please keep in mind that the discussion contains spoilers.

A Dog's Journey is the sequel of A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron. The story starts with Buddy a good dog, an old dog from A Dog's Purpose. Buddy thought his purpose in life was completed by loving and caring for Ethan. Ethan was his human in A Dog's Purpose but he died. A year after A Dog's Purpose Hannah has allowed Gloria and her infant child Clarity June (CJ) to stay with her at the farm after the death of Ethan and Hannah's son, Henry. Gloria takes an immediate dislike to Hannah's old Labrador Retriever, Buddy, who feels he has found his purpose, which was to watch over CJ. Numerous incidents occur in which Gloria's negligence endangers Clarity June before Buddy saves her. Gloria blames Buddy for all of them. Hannah suggests that she keep CJ at the farm while Gloria pursues her singing career, enraging Gloria, who leaves with Clarity June. Hannah notices Buddy has a limp and takes him to the vet. A veterinarian diagnoses Buddy with cancer and he is euthanized shortly after. Buddy wakes up reincarnated as many different dogs until he finds CJ.

A Dog's Purpose is a 2010 novel written by American author W. Bruce Cameron.  The book chronicles a dog's journey through four lives via reincarnation and how he looks for his purpose through each of his lives.

An avid member of the Hitler Youth in 1940s Vienna, Johannes Betzler, discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa behind a false wall in their home. His initial horror turns to interest—then love and obsession. After his parents disappear, Johannes is the only one aware of Elsa’s existence in the house and the only one responsible for her survival.

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, first published in 1953. The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found.

Guy Montag is a "fireman" employed to burn the possessions of those who read outlawed books. He is married but has no children. One fall night while returning from work, he meets his new neighbor, a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and his own perceived happiness. Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. Two uncaring EMTs pump Mildred's stomach, drain her poisoned blood, and fill her with new blood. After the EMTs leave to rescue another overdose victim, Montag goes outside and overhears Clarisse and her family talking about the way life is in this hedonistic, illiterate society. Montag's mind is bombarded with Clarisse's subversive thoughts and the memory of his wife's near-death. Over the next few days, Clarisse faithfully meets Montag each night as he walks home. She tells him about how her simple pleasures and interests make her an outcast among her peers and how she is forced to go to therapy for her behavior and thoughts. Montag looks forward to these meetings, and just as he begins to expect them, Clarisse goes missing. He senses something is wrong. In the following days, while at work with the other firemen ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman before the inevitable burning, Montag steals a book before any of his coworker's notice. The woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match and burn herself alive. Jarred by the woman's suicide, Montag returns home and hides the stolen book under his pillow. Later, Montag wakes Mildred from her sleep and asks her if she has seen or heard anything about Clarisse McClellan. She reveals that Clarisse's family moved away after Clarisse was hit by a speeding car and died four days ago. Dismayed by her failure to mention this earlier, Montag uneasily tries to fall asleep. Outside he suspects the presence of "The Mechanical Hound," an eight-legged robotic dog-like creature that resides in the firehouse and aids the firemen in hunting book hoarders.

 

Review Contains spoilers.

Tess is 21 when she packs up her things in her car and moves from Ohio to New York City. Knowing nothing and no one she stumbles her way into a job at a semi-prestigious restaurant as a back waitress. The servers and staff are exceptionally tight-knit and take their jobs extremely seriously and Tess does as well. Tess is also drawn to Jake, one of the bartenders, and Simone, a senior server who takes Tess under her wing and begins to train her palate and teach her about wines so that she might one day be able to become a server.

Initially disliked by the staff they soon warm up to Tess and she joins them in their hedonistic lifestyle. Nevertheless she longs to be included in Simone and Jake's more exclusive circle and comes to learn that they are both from Connecticut, knew each other before the restaurant, and that Simone treats him like family. Tess aggressively pursues Jake but he refrains from sleeping with her which Tess comes to realize is because of Simone. When Simone walks in on Tess licking Jake after he cut himself Simone says she will speak to Jake and he finally begins sleeping with Tess.

Tess is initially happy to be involved with Jake and with Simone. Gradually her closeness to the two turns to bitterness after she discovers that they have matching tattoos neither one will talk about and that Simone raised Jake from the time he was eight. She also loses respect for Simone after realizing that at 37 she is chained to the restaurant. Hers is a specialty whose skills will transfer nowhere, and her beauty is quickly fading.

When the restaurant is closed by the health inspectors Tess goes upstairs to the general manager's office and accidentally discovers that Simone and Jake have planned a one month vacation to France for his birthday without telling her. She gets black out drunk and tries to confront Simone and Jake but they fail to respond to her. The next time she sees them she confronts Simone, mocking her for being irrelevant. She also tries to convince Jake that his relationship with Simone is unhealthy and asks him to quit for her but though he admits he is tempted he ultimately rejects her.

Feeling defeated Tess goes to speak to the general manager, Howard, to convince him to give her one of the prestigious server jobs even though she knows that Simone will try to block her promotion. Howard has sex with her in return for the promotion however it turns out to be a transfer to one of their sister restaurants which Tess refuses. She tells Simone that she instead will try to work at a wine shop and Simone encourages the move.

A walk to remember is a coming-of-age romantic novel written by Nicholas Sparks, about a guy who falls irrevocably in love with a pretty daughter of the Reverend, who ultimately dies of cancer. The story revolves around the young couple and how Jamie embarks love in Landon. The story is of hope and endless love.

Following the events of The Shining, after receiving a settlement from the owners of the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance remains psychologically traumatized as his mother Wendy slowly recovers from her injuries. Angry ghosts from the Overlook, including the woman from Room 237, still want to find Danny and eventually consume his phenomenal "shining" power. Dick Hallorann, the Overlook's chef, teaches Danny to create lockboxes in his mind to contain the ghosts, including that of former Overlook owner Horace Derwent.

As an adult, Danny (now going by Dan) takes up his father's legacy of anger and alcoholism. Dan spends years drifting across the United States, but he eventually makes his way to New Hampshire and decides to give up drinking. He settles in the small town of Frazier, working first at a tourist attraction and then at a hospice, and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His psychic abilities, long suppressed by his drinking, re-emerge and allow him to provide comfort to dying patients. Aided by a cat, "Azzie," that can sense when someone is about to die, Dan acquires the nickname "Doctor Sleep."  In the meantime, Abra Stone, a baby girl born in 2001, begins to manifest psychic powers of her own when she seemingly predicts the 9/11 attacks. She slowly and unintentionally establishes a telepathic bond with Dan. As she grows, the contact becomes more conscious and voluntary, and her shining grows stronger than his. One night, Abra psychically witnesses the ritual torture and murder of a boy by the True Knot, a group of quasi-immortals, many of which possess their own "shine" abilities, who wander across the United States and periodically feed on "steam," a psychic essence produced when the people who possess the shining die in pain. The True Knot's leader, Rose the Hat, becomes aware of Abra's existence and formulates a plan to kidnap Abra and keep her alive, so she can produce a limitless supply of steam. 

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by a longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into a wealthy and insular art community. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antique store where he works. He is alienated and in love -- and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

 

At thirty-one, Noah Calhoun, back in coastal North Carolina after World War II, is haunted by images of the girl he lost more than a decade earlier. At twenty-nine, socialite Allie Nelson is about to marry a wealthy lawyer, but she cannot stop thinking about the boy who long ago stole her heart. Thus begins the story of a love so enduring and profound it can turn tragedy into triumph, and may even have the power to create a miracle.

Jack lives with his Ma in Room, a secured single-room outbuilding containing a small kitchen, a basic bathroom, a wardrobe, a bed, and a TV set. Because it is all he has ever known, Jack believes that only Room and the things it contains (including himself and Ma) are "real." Ma, unwilling to disappoint Jack with a life she cannot give him, allows Jack to believe that the rest of the world exists only on television. Ma tries her best to keep Jack healthy and happy via both physical and mental exercises, keeping a healthy diet, limiting TV-watching time, and strict body and oral hygiene. The only other person Jack has ever seen is "Old Nick," who visits Room at night while Jack sleeps hidden in a wardrobe. Old Nick brings them food and necessities. Jack is unaware that Old Nick kidnapped Ma when she was 19 years old and has kept her imprisoned for the past seven years. Old Nick regularly rapes Ma; Jack is the product of one such sexual assault.

A week after Jack's fifth birthday, Ma learns Old Nick has been unemployed for the past six months and is in danger of losing his home to foreclosure. Feeling certain that Old Nick would kill them both before letting them free, Ma comes up with a plan to get Jack out of Room by convincing Old Nick that Jack is deathly ill. Jack is unable to conceptualize being outside of Room or interacting with other people, but Ma eventually convinces him to help her. When Old Nick refuses to take Jack to a hospital, Ma then pretends that Jack has died. Old Nick removes Jack, wrapped in a rug, from Room. Jack escapes Old Nick and manages to reach a friendly stranger who contacts the police. In spite of his inability to communicate effectively, Jack describes the route of Room to an officer to free Ma.

A stunning and suspenseful feat of storytelling, The Good Liar unravels the past of a man who lives to deceive.

Veteran con artist Roy is a born liar and when he meets wealthy widow Betty online, he knows she s an easy mark. In no time at all, he s spinning his web of duplicity and betrayal around her, even moving into her lovely cottage. He is sure his scheme will be a success: She seems ready to build a life with him, and he is ready to reel her in. He s done this before. But who is Roy, really? While this masterful narrative of literary suspense entwines Roy s and Betty s futures, it also delves deeply into their pasts. As the clock turns back and the years fall away, truth will out. Before Roy can close the deal, there is a reckoning to be made. How many lies will it take to make him finally tell the truth?

The Shining is a horror novel by American author Stephen King. Published in 1977, it is King's third published novel and first hardback bestseller: the success of the book firmly established King as a preeminent author in the horror genre. The setting and characters are influenced by King's personal experiences, including both his visit to The Stanley Hotel in 1974 and his recovery from alcoholism. 

The Shining centers on the life of Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. His family accompanies him on this job, including his young son Danny Torrance, who possesses "the shining", an array of psychic abilities that allow Danny to see the hotel's horrific past. Soon, after a winter storm leaves them snowbound, the supernatural forces inhabiting the hotel influence Jack's sanity, leaving his wife and son in incredible danger.

THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN is a heartfelt tale narrated by a witty and philosophical dog named Enzo. Through his bond with his owner, Denny Swift, an aspiring Formula One race car driver, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition and understands that the techniques needed on the racetrack can also be used to successfully navigate the journey of life. The film follows Denny and the loves of his life - his wife, Eve, their young daughter Zoe, and ultimately, his true best friend, Enzo.

Publisher Summary:

 

The second book in the Fifty Shades Trilogy. 

When a wounded Christian Grey tries to entice a cautious Ana Steele back into his life, she demands a new arrangement before she will give him another chance. As the two begin to build trust and find stability, shadowy figures from Christian's past start to circle the couple, determined to destroy their hopes for a future together.

Dont forget to check out the review of Book 1 Fifty Shades of Grey. 

Contains Spoliers

After exchanging vows before family and close friends, newlyweds, Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, set off on a lavish honeymoon around the world, lost in their marital bliss. However, an unexpected break-in at Mr Grey's enterprises will inevitably cut their trip off early.  Believing they have left behind shadowy figures from their past, newlyweds Christian and Ana fully embrace an inextricable connection and shared life of luxury. But just as she steps into her role as Mrs. Grey and he relaxes into an unfamiliar stability, new threats could jeopardize their happy ending before it even begins.  Will the sins of the past blemish the Greys' perfect future?