February 22, 2019, Book: 'Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster' by Stephen L. Carter

Brent is hosting February 22 and he has chosen "Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster" by Stephen L. Carter. From Amazon.com:

She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s―and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.

Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter’s grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who―together with his friend Dashiell Hammett―would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed.

“A vivid portrait of a remarkable woman.”―Kirkus Reviews

“With artful storytelling and a narrative-like delivery, Carter tells Eunice's story in the best way possible, offering a compelling, unputdownable read with as much value in social history as legal appeal. Not to be missed.”―Library Journal (starred review)

May 10, 2019: 'Everything I Never Told You' by Celeste Ng

Tifiny has graciously offered to host May 10 after some shuffling of schedules. Thank you, Tifiny! She has selected "Everything I Never Told You" by Celeste Ng. From Amazon.com:

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

We're looking forward to it -- our last meeting until August.

April 5, 2019, Book: 'Things Fall Apart' by Chinua Achebe

Anjanette is hosting on April 5 and the book is "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. From Amazon.com:

Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

A few reviews:

“A magical writer—one of the greatest of the twentieth century.” —Margaret Atwood

“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni