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The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle

September 2018

One of the oft-asked questions is “What five people would you invite to a dinner party?”

For Sabrina, in THE DINNER LIST by Rebecca Serle, she arrives at dinner on her 30th birthday to find her best friend, her estranged father, her college professor, her former boyfriend of nearly a decade, and Audrey Hepburn. Why those five guests? Each has something to share with Sabrina that will bring insight to her life on this milestone birthday. They are gathered together for one dinner --- and one dinner only, which will end at midnight --- so in these few hours, many stories will be told, truths will be uncovered, coincidences will be rewound, and Sabrina will make sense of so many things that she never quite understood.

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The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman

September 2018

I confess that I do not remember reading LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov, though I know I did at some point. That took nothing away from my reading Sarah Weinman’s THE REAL LOLITA. I have long respected Sarah as a journalist, and I know her reporting and interviews are always thought-provoking and in-depth. So when I read this book to interview her for the Author Buzz panel at BookExpo, I knew I was in for both strong storytelling and a no-holds-barred investigation in this true-crime work.

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The Mars Room (Audiobook) by Rachel Kushner

September 2018

I listened to THE MARS ROOM by Rachel Kushner, which is also narrated by her. The print copy had been on my shelf for a while, so I was happy to have an opportunity to listen to it on audio, a medium that has allowed me to augment my reading time. In fact, I think the book was even more powerful to me for having listened to it.

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Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

September 2018

In Gary Shteyngart’s LAKE SUCCESS, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen is coping --- well, actually he is not coping well at all --- with an SEC investigation and his three-year-old son Shiva’s diagnosis of autism. So what does he do? He flees town. But he does not take a private jet, helicopter or Maserati like his typical bros might. No, he jumps on a Greyhound bus after disposing of not just his black American Express card, but all of his credit cards. He also trashes his cell phone. He is a man with a plan --- to track down his college sweetheart and a time when life was simpler, leaving behind his wife, Seema, who is smart and wise (there is a difference).

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The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams

September 2018

If you read a book about the Lusitania, you can be pretty sure that at least one plotline is not going to have a happy ending. That said, I can imagine some very happy times when three bestselling authors --- Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White --- got together to plot and write THE GLASS OCEAN. Each wrote a section, and they are not sharing who wrote which, so it will be up to you to figure it out, should you so desire.

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Vox by Christina Dalcher

September 2018

I heard Christina Dalcher talk about VOX at a breakfast at BookExpo. Interestingly, she has taught linguistics, phonics and phonology, which gives her expertise about voice and being heard. In VOX, women in this country have been told that they are not allowed more than 100 words a day; by comparison, the average person speaks about 16,000 words (though somewhere I saw that women speak 20,000). Each woman wears a wristband, which has been calibrated to capture the modulation of her voice. At word 101, a shock is delivered to the wrist, which escalates exponentially as more words are shared. Soon there are more and more restrictions on women as they realize that, without their voices, the circle of their lives gets smaller, leading to desperate measures by many of them.

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Trust Me by Hank Phillippi Ryan

September 2018

With TRUST ME, Hank Phillippi Ryan has written her first stand-alone novel, which challenges an author as she steps away from writing her series character. I like it when authors challenge themselves. I like it even better when they brilliantly succeed. The protagonist, Mercer Hennessey, is a journalist who is grieving the loss of her husband, Dex, and daughter, Sophie. Her grief is raw. She wakes up each day, and in the steam on the bathroom mirror notes the number of days since they passed away. At the start we know they died in a car accident; later we learn more about this. Mercer’s own grief makes her vulnerable. What can draw her from the fog that has overshadowed her life?

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Make Me Even and I'll Never Gamble Again by Jerrold Fine

August 2018

MAKE ME EVEN AND I’LL NEVER GAMBLE AGAIN by hedge fund pioneer Jerrold Fine is a coming-of-age novel set in the 1960s and ’70s that has a lot of heart and soul. I love the voice of the book’s protagonist, Rogers Stout. He’s a Midwest guy who finds his way to Wharton and then to Wall Street after an internship in Cincinnati. Along the way, he does not forget his values or his roots as he begins to play the financial game. At the start, he’s playing poker at an invite-only game; he learned poker at Sunday night suppers with his dad, but at this table the stakes are a lot higher. The way he plays and strategizes, he takes on the energy of a poker game in Molly’s Game, albeit in a cool, calculated way. Rogers is in control and ready to run the table, with nerves of steel.

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The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis

August 2018

I have been a longtime fan of Fiona Davis’ books, so I was excited to read her third novel, THE MASTERPIECE. Fiona does a fabulous job of weaving history (always two different periods) and iconic New York City locations together. She links her protagonists together, giving readers a rich reading experience that immerses them in the history of the property and conveys a strong sense of each time period.

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Ghosted by Rosie Walsh

August 2018

GHOSTED by Rosie Walsh is the kind of book that you want to have time to just sit, read and enjoy. While I was reading it, there were many times that I had to control myself from flipping to see how it ended. On one level, it begins as an often-told story of girl meets boy, they fall for one another, boy disappears and girl wonders why.

Sarah meets Eddie; they click and clearly have strong feelings for one another. I guess one could say it’s love. It’s definitely mutual. Eddie is heading for a long-planned vacation, and promises to call and to meet up again. But when he does not call, or otherwise get in touch, Sarah is perplexed. She cannot believe she read this relationship wrong.

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