This month's Food by the Book selection is Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris.

Los Angeles, 1941. Violinist Maddie Kern's life seemed destined to unfold with the predictable elegance of a Bach concerto. Then she fell in love with Lane Moritomo, an ambitious son of Japanese immigrants. Maddie was prepared for disapproval from her family and Lane's family, but when Pearl Harbor is bombed the day after she and Lane elope, the full force of their decision becomes apparent. When her husband is interned at a war relocation camp, Maddie follows, sacrificing her Juilliard ambitions. As Maddie strives for the hard-won acceptance of her new family, Lane risks everything to prove his allegiance to America, at tremendous cost.

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Thanks so much for your response in the Advance Readers' Copies for Advance Reader Comments (ARCs for ARCs) Program.  As you may remember, some of you are selected to receive complimentary Advance Readers' Copies of upcoming releases in return for your comments and Conversation Starter suggestions.  Ten groups will soon receive ARCs of Where We Belong by Emily Giffin.

Book Summary: Marian Caldwell is a thirty-six year old television producer, living her dream in New York City. With a fulfilling career and satisfying relationship, she has convinced everyone, including herself, that her life is just as she wants it to be. But one night, Marian answers a knock on the door . . . only to find Kirby Rose, an eighteen-year-old girl with a key to a past that Marian thought she had sealed off forever. As the two women embark on a journey to find the one thing missing in their lives, each will come to recognize that where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves--a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.

If you haven't already registered, and if you are willing to devote some time to listen or read an upcoming title and comment and develop a discussion question or two, please enter for this exciting program. You might be published in a Reading Group Choices' guide!

May the Road Rise Up to Meet You by Peter Troy
 
 This remarkable debut draws from the great themes of literature--famine, war, love, and family--as it introduces four unforgettable characters. Ethan McOwen is an Irish immigrant whose endurance is tested in Brooklyn and the Five Points at the height of its urban destitution; he is among the first to join the famed Irish Brigade and becomes a celebrated war photographer. Marcella, a society girl from Spain, defies her father to become a passionate abolitionist. Mary and Micah are slaves of varying circumstances, who form an instant connection and embark on a tumultuous path to freedom.


On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry

Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere's life over seventeen days, "On Canaan's Side" opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland, at the end of the First World War, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with both hope and danger. At once epic and intimate, Lilly's story unfolds as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched.


The Gathering by Anne Enright

The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him--something that happened in their grandmother's house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations, she shows how memories warp and secrets fester. The Gathering is a family epic, clarified through Anne Enright's unblinking eye. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about how fate is written in the body, not in the stars.

 
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy--exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling--does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.


Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

It began with Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, growing up, inseparable, in the village of Knockglen. Benny--the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents... Eve--the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blueblood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family to be raised by nuns. It widened at Dublin, at the university where Benny and Eve met beautiful Nan Mahlon and Jack Foley, a doctor's handsome son. But heartbreak and betrayal would bring the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision...


The Sea by John Banville

In this luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel--among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Author of the memoir Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq, Jessica Goodell is interviewed by NPR Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Penguin Publishing is offering a special book club discount when you buy five or more of a book club favorite!

Author On the Bookcase: Meg Wolitzer, author of The Uncoupling, tells us about how her new novel came to exist and what initiated the interest in researching "the way female desire changes over time."

RCG's Literary Director, Neely Kennedy, guest blogs for Ladies' Home Journal giving book club tips for the book Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner.

Author On the Bookcase: Kate Furnivall, author of The White Pearl, discusses how she thanks her note-taking skills for all of her novels.

"Box O' Books" to Rosa and The Brown Bag Book Club for offering their book club tips this month!

"The hostess put out a question. We wrote the answer and put it in a fish bowl. The answers were read and we had to guess which member wrote the answer."
Rosa, The Brown Bag Book Club, Moon Township, PA

We enjoy hearing from book club members and sharing their choices with everyone. Please let us know about your group's tips - you may win a book-related prize for every member of your reading group!

More Tips From Your Colleagues 

 

Congratulations to Pat and The Aqua Aerobics Water Babes Book Club for being selected as the Book Group of the Month for February!


"We formed the group nearly two years ago. There are 12 members, and we meet in individual homes. Hopefully, we can keep it small, because our discussions can be more intimate. Our most recent book was The Paris Wife, and the hostess had an authentic French lunch complete with Crepes. The meaning behind our name is that we all belong to a Water Aerobics class...so first we exercise, and then we read."

Pat, The Aqua Aerobics Water Babes Book Club, Chesterfield, MO  

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Aurora Reading Club, founded in 1894, is one of the oldest African American book groups in the country. They even have a group motto--"Lifting As We Climb!" The book group has had many generations of family members and friends join over the years. The great-great-niece of the group's founder is a current member. This group really enjoyed The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

 

 

 
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