The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood

On the day John F. Kennedy is inaugurated, Claire struggles over the decision of whether to stay in a loveless marriage or follow the man she loves and whose baby she may be carrying. Decades earlier, in 1919, Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer, is searching for her lover who disappeared in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. By telling the stories of the dead, Vivien learns to understand the devastation of her own terrible loss. The surprising connection between Claire and Vivien will change the life of one of them in unexpected and extraordinary ways.



The Good Life by Susan Kietzman

Ann Baron has a luxurious life, far from her homespun childhood on a farm in eastern Pennsylvania...which is why Ann is wary when her elderly parents ask to move in temporarily. Ann prepares in the way she knows best--hiring decorators and employing a full-time nurse for her dementia-stricken father. But nothing can prepare her for the transformations ahead. Soon, her children form unpredictable relationships, and even the workaholic husband finds time to be with the family. But it's Ann who must make the biggest leap and confront the choices and values that have kept her floating on life's surface for so long.

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

 For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when you get caught spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to--an act that will have repercussions. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared. He now knows that a new understanding can bring not only danger and evil--but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance

If you haven't already done so, please share with other groups the books that generated the best discussions in your group during the past year as well as your best book group experiences by completing our annual survey. It generates a one-of-a-kind list of favorite DISCUSSIBLE books for book groups!

  

For those of you in more than one book club, increase your chances to win by comleting a survey for each of your groups.  Each time you do, Reading Group Choices will enter your name into a random drawing for $100 to jazz up your next get-together -- plus a Box of Discussibles! Five lucky groups will each win the prize!

In the March Ladies' Home Journal Book Club selection, The Beginner's Goodbye, seasoned novelist Anne Tyler tells the intimate story of how a quirky publishing house editor, Aaron Woolcott, deals with the loss of his wife, Dorothy, after a tree falls on their home. Quotes taken from the book outline his often peculiar, yet honest, perspective on his wife, marriage, colleagues, and family as he moves through the classic stages of grief.

Read "Beginner's Goodbye: Dealing with Loss, A Book Club Discussion" by Reading Group Choices' Neely Kennedy for discussible topics and themes! 

Advice, confessions, reflections, fantasies, delights and flashes of brilliance from Theasa Tuohy, author of The Five O'clock Follies.

Please welcome Liza Gyllenhaal to On the Bookcase in an interview about her novel, A Place For Us!

Christine Trent tells us about the fascinating research about Victorian-era funerals and undertaking she discovered while writing her novel Lady of Ashes.

  

  

 

 

Download our Free iPad App to enhance your book club! Search "Reading Group Choices" in the App Store.

*********

 
*********

 
*********