HALLIE EPHRON: If you're in the Boston area, I might be able to visit with your group in person. If not, there's Skype! Or FaceTime. Just go to my web page and click on CONTACT and send me a message about when you were thinking of and what your group will read.
My latest book, YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR, just was featured on the New York Public Library's Summer Pick for Adults List.
Two suggestions from me, domestic suspense, all now in paperback:
YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR - Mary Higgins Clark Award finalist and Earphones Award winner. A little girl and the porcelain portrait doll her mother made for her went missing... 40 years later, the doll comes back. THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN - Mary Higgins Clark Award finalist, NY Times bestseller. A ninety-one-year-old woman, living on the water in the Bronx, thinks she may be losing her mind... a much younger woman, the daughter of her neighbor, could save her.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Thank heavens for Skype! I've used it to converse with small gatherings in peoples' homes and with large crowds at universities and libraries. Book club members, if you'd like to do a video chat with an author but are worried about the logistics - will we be able to see her? Will she be able to hear us? - I suggest you contact your local library. Many libraries are equipped with AV resources that make it easy for a group to interact online. And libraries love book clubs!
My picks? If you want to discuss current issues such as veterans reentering society and the effects of America's wars, ONE WAS A SOLDIER. On a warm September evening in the Millers Kill community center, five veterans sit down in rickety chairs to try to make sense of their experiences in Iraq. What they will find is murder, conspiracy, and the unbreakable ties that bind them to one another and their small Adirondack town. You can find a downloadable reading guide here.
If you want to escape the heat with an adventure in the frozen north, IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, which won the Agatha, Anthony, Barry, Dilys, Macavity and Gumshoe awards. When a newborn baby is abandoned on the church stairs and a young mother is brutally murdered, Reverend Clare Fergusson has to pick her way through the secrets and silence that shadow that town like the ever-present Adirondack mountains. Want a downloadable reading guide? Here! RHYS BOWEN: I'm always happy to Skype with a book group. I'm not so comfortable attending in person, first because I really
don't have the time and second because I don't feel the members can be honest about the book if I'm there. (Imagine sitting in a room with twelve people who trash your book!) I am often asked to send discussion questions to a book club. Two books of mine I can recommend are the latest big stand-alones: In Farleigh Field is a novel of
espionage among the upper class in World War 2 and The Tuscan Child is also set in WWII but has parallel stories that take place in 1944 and in 1973, mainly in Tuscany. It's more than a war story: it's about family, healing through food.LUCY BURDETTE: I LOVE talking to book clubs, hearing readers' reactions and discovering questions I never considered about the books I've written.
The two I'd recommend as starting points are the first book in the series, AN APPETITE FOR MURDER, and the fourth, MURDER WITH GANACHE. APPETITE introduces Hayley Snow and her gang and the bigger character, Key West. Here are some questions to jumpstart the discussion.
And here's the story of a whole Key West themed
dinner party that one club did for AN APPETITE FOR MURDER, And for Murder with Ganache, here are both questions and a recipe for noccialato fudge to feed your group while you talk.
INGRID THOFT: Book groups are one of the perks of the job, as far as I’m concerned! I love talking to groups in person—in the Seattle area and also the Boston area, where I visit a few times a year.
Skype is also a wonderful tool for connecting with readers. To arrange a visit, IRL or virtual, just send me a line and you can check out the book group guides on my website.
Given that my books are a series, I always recommend readers start with the first, LOYALTY. The book introduces Fina Ludlow, a private investigator in Boston who tangles with the city’s criminal element and her family of personal injury attorneys. Juggling family, business, cops and crooks is no problem for Fina, but when her sister-in-law disappears, she’s caught up in a case unlike any she’s encountered before.
Prefer to jump into the series? BRUTALITY won the Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel and finds Fina immersed in the world of college sports and the debate about sports-related concussions. What price are we willing to pay for entertainment? What happens when tradition collides with the prospect of serious injury? What are we willing to sacrifice for personal glory? Fina wrestles with these questions while uncovering a murderer and navigating the perils of her own family.
HANK PHILIPPI RYAN: Can you tell we are all about book clubs? What could be more wonderful? I love doing them, too, adore it, and am always completely wowed by the wonderful questions and terrific insight. Invite me! On Skype or in person, I'm there.
The newest Jane Ryland thriller, SAY NO MORE , is a Library Journal Best Thriller of the year, and offers some wonderful book club discussions about very contemporary issues: campus sexual assault, eyewitness identification, and personal sacrifice. Here's the list of questions my editor and I came up with. But don't read it unless you've read the book.
And, say no more, I can now help you with that, and give you a
bargain in the meantime! SAY NO MORE ebook is now $2.99 on all platforms. AND you get the first five chapters of my new standalone TRUST ME too! (Here's the link for that short-term offer.)Speaking of which, I would be honored for you to read and discuss TRUST ME. There is so much to talk about, from what makes a "good" mother, to what makes a "true" story, to how many versions of the same story can exist.
It's a psychological cat and mouse game between two strong women--but which one is the cat, and which one is the mouse? I dare you to find the liar. It comes out August 28, but, as we say, it is now available for pre-order! And one reviewer whose name you will recognize will soon publish a review saying: "It could be this summer's Gone Girl." (One can only hope.)
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, isn't Skype great?? I love talking to book groups and library groups on Skype! But as there are 17 books (so far) in my Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Scotland Yard detectives series, it's so hard to know what books to suggest.
It is always fun to start readers on the very first book in the series, A SHARE IN DEATH. This introduces Duncan and Gemma, who as partners are just getting to know each other, and is a proper British mystery set in a time share in the brooding Yorkshire Moors.
But for books that offer a little meatier book group discussion topics, I'd recommend two later novels in the series. WHERE MEMORIES LIE is set in west London, Notting Hill and Chelsea. The contemporary story, which centers around the auction of a rare Art Deco piece of jewelry, is interwoven with a historical backstory that deals with the difficulties encountered in London by Jewish refugees escaping Hitler's purges at the beginning of WWII.
Then, there is NO MARK UPON HER, a more recent book, that deals not only with the post traumatic stress suffered by a British army veteran, but with the sexual abuse of female police officers by a superior officer. It also has Olympic caliber rowing and search and rescue dogs, so there is lighter fare to discuss!
JENN MCKINLAY: Yes, I’ll Skype or show up in person! I love book clubs. It’s a meeting of book lovers - my people! - plus, there’s usually food. A book I’d recommend? Trevor Noah’s BORN A CRIME. I just finished it and it is fascinating, wonderfully written, and if you do audio, Trevor reads it, which is a treat. For one of my own books,
I have no idea. I’ve written forty so you have plenty to choose from, mystery or rom-com. I have both happening. LOL. HALLIE: So who out there's in a book group, and what are you reading?
