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Editorial Content for Fraternity: Stories

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Fraternity: Stories

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Alison Lee

Reviewer (text)

Alison Lee

Benjamin Nugent is a critically acclaimed author who has written compelling and novel short story collections. He continues his exploration into the controversial with FRATERNITY. Read More

Teaser

In a Massachusetts college town stands a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Here, we meet Newton, the beloved chapter president; Oprah, the sensitive reader; Petey, the treasurer, loyal to a fault; Claire, the couch-surfing dropout who hopes to sell them drugs; and a girl known, for unexpected reasons, as God. Though the living room reeks of sweat and spilled beer, the brothers know that to be inside is everything. FRATERNITY celebrates the debauched kinship of boys and girls straddling adolescence and adulthood: the drunken antics, solemn confessions and romantic encounters that mark their first years away from home. Beneath each episode lies the dread of exclusion.

Promo

In a Massachusetts college town stands a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Here, we meet Newton, the beloved chapter president; Oprah, the sensitive reader; Petey, the treasurer, loyal to a fault; Claire, the couch-surfing dropout who hopes to sell them drugs; and a girl known, for unexpected reasons, as God. Though the living room reeks of sweat and spilled beer, the brothers know that to be inside is everything. FRATERNITY celebrates the debauched kinship of boys and girls straddling adolescence and adulthood: the drunken antics, solemn confessions and romantic encounters that mark their first years away from home. Beneath each episode lies the dread of exclusion.

About the Book

Voiced by an off-kilter chorus of the young and desperate to belong, Benjamin Nugent’s provocative collection pries the fraternity door off its hinges, daring us to peer inside with amusement, horror and also love.

In a Massachusetts college town stands a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Here, we meet Newton, the beloved chapter president; Oprah, the sensitive reader; Petey, the treasurer, loyal to a fault; Claire, the couch-surfing dropout who hopes to sell them drugs; and a girl known, for unexpected reasons, as God. Though the living room reeks of sweat and spilled beer, the brothers know that to be inside is everything.

FRATERNITY celebrates the debauched kinship of boys and girls straddling adolescence and adulthood: the drunken antics, solemn confessions and romantic encounters that mark their first years away from home. Beneath each episode lies the dread of exclusion. The closeted Oprah’s hero worship gives way to real longing. A combat veteran offers advice on hazing. An alienated young woman searches for a sanctuary. And the shadow of assault hovers over every sexual encounter.

Audiobook available, read by Peter Ganim

July 31, 2020

I was thinking the other night how different life has been since March. Besides the fear and uncertainty that has permeated our lives, there is also a realness to these days. I feel like people are editing the way they look --- and act --- a lot less. We are seeing newscasters in their homes; on a personal note, I am broadcasting "Bookreporter Talks To" from my dining room instead of a New York office. My husband jokes that I will need to find a new spot to film before Thanksgiving (which feels like a lifetime away).

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Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics

Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened. Now they’ve retired to North Carolina, where Lil sifts through letters and notes and diary entries --- perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d hoped to keep buried.

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Alice Feeney, author of His & Hers

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

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Alex Trebek, author of The Answer Is...: Reflections on My Life

Since debuting as the host of "Jeopardy!" in 1984, Alex Trebek has been something like a family member to millions of television viewers, bringing entertainment and education into their homes five nights a week. Last year, he made the stunning announcement that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. What followed was an incredible outpouring of love and kindness. For over three decades, Trebek had resisted countless appeals to write a book about his life. Yet he was moved so much by all the goodwill, he felt compelled to finally share his story. THE ANSWER IS... combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality and philanthropy.

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Shari Lapena, author of The End of Her

Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin girls. The babies are a handful, but even as Stephanie struggles with the disorientation of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she's sure of: she has all she ever wanted. Then Erica, a woman from Patrick's past, appears and makes a disturbing accusation. Patrick had always said his first wife's death was an accident, but now Erica claims it was murder. Patrick insists he's innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. Still, Erica knows things about Patrick --- things that make Stephanie begin to question her husband. Stephanie isn't sure what, or who, to believe. As Stephanie's trust in Patrick begins to falter, Patrick stands to lose everything. Is Erica the persuasive liar Patrick says she is? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?

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Which of the following titles releasing in August are you planning to read? Please check all that apply.

July 31, 2020, 558 voters

July 31, 2020 - August 14, 2020

Here are reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of July 31 - August 14.

Joyce Brothers

The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.

Attribution

Joyce Brothers

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

HOMELAND ELEGIES blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son and the country they both call home. Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation’s unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one --- least of all himself --- in the process.

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