Sept. 15, 2017: 'Ordinary Grace' by William Kent Krueger

Kris is hosting our September 2017 book, and it is (drumroll please): "Ordinary Grace" by William Kent Krueger. Here is a description from Amazon.com:

“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Intriguing, isn't it?

A few reviews:

“A pitch-perfect, wonderfully evocative examination of violent loss. In Frank Drum's journey away from the shores of childhood—a journey from which he can never return—we recognize the heartbreaking price of adulthood and its 'wisdoms.' I loved this book.” (Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Live by Night and The Given Day)

“Krueger’s elegy for innocence is a deeply memorable tale.” (Washington Post)

August 18, 2017 Book: 'The Husband's Secret' by Liane Moriarty

We're back to the great author Liane Moriarty with "The Husband's Secret" chosen by Christy for the August 18 meeting. (Previously August 4 but we've had a date change.)

Here's a description from Amazon.com:

Imagine your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not only the life you have built together, but the lives of others as well. And then imagine that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive...

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything—and not just for her. There are other women who barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they, too, are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

A few reviews:

“Spellbinding...A knockout!”—Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author

“The Husband’s Secret is so good, you won’t be able to keep it to yourself.”—USA Today

“Brilliant.”—Sophie Hannah, international bestselling author of The Wrong Mother

“Lip-smacking and sharply intelligent.”—Entertainment Weekly

May 12, 2017, Book: 'Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania' by Erik Larson

The May 12, 2017, book is hosted by Anjanette and will be "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania" by Erik Larson. A synopsis from Amazon.com:

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.

Some reviews:

"Larson is one of the modern masters of popular narrative nonfiction...a resourceful reporter and a subtle stylist who understands the tricky art of Edward Scissorhands-ing narrative strands into a pleasing story...An entertaining book about a great subject, and it will do much to make this seismic event resonate for new generations of readers."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Larson is an old hand at treating nonfiction like high drama...He knows how to pick details that have maximum soapy potential and then churn them down until they foam [and] has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail."
—The New York Times

"In his gripping new examination of the last days of what was then the fastest cruise ship in the world, Larson brings the past stingingly alive...He draws upon telegrams, war logs, love letters, and survivor depositions to provide the intriguing details, things I didn't know I wanted to know...Thrilling, dramatic and powerful."
—NPR