The Life We Bury
Allen Eskens, 2015
Prometheus Books
303 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616149987
Summary
College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.
Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran—and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.
As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.
Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1962-63
• Raised—Jefferson City, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., Minnesota State University; J.D., Hamline University
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Minnesota
Allen Eskens has been a criminal defense attorney for twenty years. He honed his creative writing skills through the MFA program at Minnesota State University as well as classes at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. He is a member of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime. The Guise of Another (2015) is his follow-up novel to The Life We Bury. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Set against the backdrop of a brutal Minnesota winter, The Life We Bury is much more than a satisfying, suspenseful novel. This story kept me turning the pages, and it touched my heart. The characters are as real as my next-door neighbors, the story compelling, and the writing superb.
Suspense Magazine
(Starred review.) [A] masterful debut.... As Joe learns more about the events of [a decades-old] murder, he is faced with several threats to his own safety, yet refuses to give up his pursuit of the truth. More complications ensue, until the novel's satisfying resolution.
Publishers Weekly
Eskens’s first-person narration grabs the reader and never relinquishes its hold (Editor's Pick).
Library Journal
Eskens’ compulsively suspenseful first novel reveals that guilt takes many forms—and that getting the story right is essential.
BookPage
The tension builds to an all-stops-out finale that works on every level. Thriller fans should keep their eyes on Eskens; he’s a comer.
Booklist
A struggling student's English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.... Eskens' debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did you experience the book? Were you immediately drawn into the story—or did it take you a while? Did the book intrigue, amuse, disturb, alienate, irritate, or frighten you?
2. What aspects of the novel did the author draw from to come up with the title for The Life We Bury?
3. Which character, if any, did you identify with the most? Why?
4. Was there a particular scene that resonated with you or stayed with you after you finished the novel?
5. How did you feel about the character of Carl Iverson when he was first introduced?
6. Would you say that the story is plot driven or character driven? In other words, do events unfold quickly? Or is more time spent developing characters' inner lives? Does it make a difference to your enjoyment?
7. How does guilt affect or influence the various characters?
8. What would you say are Joe's strongest character traits?
9. If you could change the character of Joe Talbert, what would you change?
(Questions from the author's website.)
top of page (summary)
The Last Good Paradise
Tatjana Soli, 2015
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250043962
Summary
From Tatjana Soli, the bestselling author of The Lotus Eaters and The Forgetting Tree, comes a black comedy set on an island resort, where guests attempting to flee their troubles realize they can’t escape who they are.
On a small, unnamed coral atoll in the South Pacific, a group of troubled dreamers must face the possibility that the hopes they’ve labored after so single-mindedly might not lead them to the happiness they feel they were promised.
—Ann and Richard, an aspiring, Los Angeles power couple, are already sensing the cracks in their version of the American dream when their life unexpectedly implodes, leading them to brashly run away from home to a Robinson Crusoe idyll.
—Dex Cooper, lead singer of the rock band, Prospero, is facing his own slide from greatness, experimenting with artistic asceticism while accompanied by his sexy, young, and increasingly entrepreneurial muse, Wende.
—Loren, the French owner of the resort sauvage, has made his own Gauguin-like retreat from the world years before, only to find that the modern world has become impossible to disconnect from.
—Titi, descendent of Tahitian royalty, worker, and eventual inheritor of the resort, must fashion a vision of the island’s future that includes its indigenous people, while her partner, Cooked, is torn between anarchy and lust.
By turns funny and tragic, The Last Good Paradise explores our modern, complex and often, self-contradictory discontents, crafting an exhilarating and darkly satirical story about our need to connect in an increasingly networked but isolating world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Salzburg, Austria
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Warren Wilson College
• Awards—James Tait Black Prize; Dana Award
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California, USA
Tatjana Soli is an American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, The Lotus Eaters, won the 2010 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Dana Award, her second novel, The Forgetting Tree, was published in 2012, and The Last Good Paradise came out in 2015.
Soli graduated from Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) and the Warren Wilson College (Asheville, North Carolina) with an MFA. She received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is married and lives in Orange County, California.
Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Boulevard, Five Chapters, The Normal School, The Sun, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Inkwell Journal, Nimrod, Third Coast, Carolina Quarterly, Sonora Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Washington Square Review, and Web del Sol. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
[E]ach character reveal[s] hidden dimensions as the plot progresses. Perhaps Soli tries to do a bit too much here...[with] multiple plot threads.... Still, the novel has smart things to say about the frailty of human relationships [and] the importance of responsibility to others.... —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Ann and Richard experience strain in their relationship at the start of the novel, resulting from stress at work and a lack of intimacy. Do you think all couples face the same struggles to some degree? Of the two, do you think either carries more of the blame for their marital issues?
2. Dex retreats to the island in an attempt to escape his overwhelming depression and hoping to find inspiration for his next album. Do you think fame is the reason for Dex’s unhappiness, or do you think he brought it upon himself? If he had never become famous, do you think he would have treated he women in his life better?
3. Cooked and Titi, set to inherit the retreat, are strongly opposed to tourists at the start of the novel. Do you sympathize with their views of the tourists? Do you think tourism is more harmful or helpful in remote areas?
4. How do you feel about the choice Loren makes at the end of the novel? Are you able to understand why he made that decision? Do you think it was a fitting ending for his story?
5. The local islanders in the novel are wage slaves, forced to live in impoverished conditions rampant with disease, and to cater to wealthy tourists and French settlers in order to survive. What do you think about the inequalities and social injustices that less-developed civilizations are forced to endure? Whose responsibility is it to help them?
6. Loren and Ann draw shapes in the sand at two pivotal moments in the novel. What do you believe is the importance of these shapes? Did you find Ann’s drawing fitting for the occasion? What do you think it said about her personal transformation?
7. The island that Ann and Richard run away to is totally unplugged. Do you think society is too tuned into technology? Does technology really bring people together? How do you feel about the webcam in the novel?
8. All of the guests at the resort are there in an attempt to flee from issues at home. Do you think it is possible to run away from one’s problems, or do you think the only way to solve a problem is to face it? Have you ever wanted to run away to a desert island?
9. There are several cases of infidelity in this novel. Do you think the affairs in this novel should have been forgiven? How did the infidelities affect your views of the relationships in the novel? Would you forgive a partner under similar circumstances?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Last One Home
Debbie Macomber, 2015
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553391886
Summary
An inspiring new stand-alone novel about the enduring bond between sisters, the power of forgiveness, and a second chance at love.
Growing up, Cassie Carter and her sisters, Karen and Nichole, were incredibly close—until one fateful event drove them apart. After high school, Cassie ran away from home to marry the wrong man, throwing away a college scholarship and breaking her parents’ hearts.
To make matters worse, Cassie had always been their father’s favorite—a sentiment that weighed heavily on her sisters and made Cassie’s actions even harder to bear.
Now thirty-one, Cassie is back in Washington, living in Seattle with her daughter and hoping to leave her past behind. After ending a difficult marriage, Cassie is back on her own two feet, the pieces of her life slowly but surely coming together.
Despite the strides Cassie’s made, she hasn’t been able to make peace with her sisters. Karen, the oldest, is a busy wife and mother, balancing her career with raising her two children. And Nichole, the youngest, is a stay-at-home mom whose husband indulges her every whim.
Then one day, Cassie receives a letter from Karen, offering what Cassie thinks may be a chance to reconcile. And as Cassie opens herself up to new possibilities—making amends with her sisters, finding love once more—she realizes the power of compassion, and the promise of a fresh start.
A wonderful novel of perseverance and trust, and an exciting journey through life’s challenges and joys, Last One Home is Debbie Macomber at the height of her talents. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 22, 1948
• Where—Yakima, Washington, USA
• Education—high school
• Awards—Quill Award; RITA and Distinguished Lifetime Achievement (Romance Writers of America)
• Currently—Port Orchard, Washington
Debbie Macomber is a best-selling American author of over 150 romance novels and contemporary women's fiction. Over 170 million copies of her books are in print throughout the world, and four have become made-for-TV-movies. Macomber was the inaugural winner of the fan-voted Quill Award for romance in 2005 and has been awarded both a Romance Writers of America RITA and a lifetime achievement award by the Romance Writers of America.
Beginning writer
Although Debbie Macomber is dyslexic and has only a high school education, she was determined to be a writer. A stay-at-home mother raising four small children, Macomber nonetheless found the time to sit in her kitchen in front of a rented typewriter and work on developing her first few manuscripts. For five years she continued to write despite many rejections from publishers, finally turning to freelance magazine work to help her family make ends meet.
With money that she saved from her freelance articles, Macomber attended a romance writer's conference, where one of her manuscripts was selected to be publicly critiqued by an editor from Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. The editor tore apart her novel and recommended that she throw it away. Undaunted, Macomber scraped together $10 to mail the same novel, Heartsong, to Harlequin's rival, Silhouette Books. Silhouette bought the book, which became the first romance novel to be reviewed by Publishers Weekly.
Career
Although Heartsong was the first of her manuscripts to sell, Starlight was the first of her novels to be published. It became #128 of the Silhouette Special Edition category romance line (now owned by Harlequin). Macomber continued to write category romances for Silhouette, and later Harlequin. In 1988, Harlequin asked Macomber to write a series of interconnected stories, which became known as the Navy series. Before long, she was selling "huge" numbers of books, usually 150,000 copies of each of her novels, and she was releasing two or three titles per year. By 1994, Harlequin launched the Mira Books imprint to help their category romance authors transition to the single title market, and Macomber began releasing single-title novels. Her first hardcover was released in 2001.
In 2002, Macomber realized that she was having more difficulty identifying with a 25-year-old heroine, and that she wanted to write books focusing more on women and their friendships. Thursdays at Eight was her first departure from the traditional romance novel and into contemporary women's fiction.
Since 1986, in most years Macomber has released a Christmas-themed book or novella. For several years, these novels were part of the Angel series, following the antics of angels Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. Macomber, who loves Christmas, says that she writes Christmas books as well because "Every woman I know has a picture of the perfect Christmas in her mind, the same way we do romance. Reality rarely lives up to our expectations, so the best we can do is delve into a fantasy."
In general, Macomber's novels focus on delivering the message of the story and do not include detailed descriptive passages. Her heroines tend to be optimists, and the "stories are resolved in a manner that leaves the reader with a feeling of hope and happy expectation." Many of the novels take place in small, rural town, with her Cedar Cove series loosely based on her own hometown. Because of her Christian beliefs, Macomber does not include overly explicit sexual details in her books, although they do contain some sensuality.
Over 170 million copies of her books are in print throughout the world. This Matter of Marriage, became a made-for-tv movie in 1998. In 2009, Hallmark Channel broadcast "Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle," their top-watched movie of the year. The next year Hallmark Channel aired "Call Me Mrs. Miracle," based on Debbie's novel of the same name, and it was the channel's highest rated movie of 2010. In 2011 Hallmark premiered "Trading Christmas," based on Debbie's novel When Christmas Comes (2004).
Debbie also now writes inspirational non-fiction. Her second cookbook, Debbie Macomber's Christmas Cookbook, and her second children's book, The Yippy, Yappy Yorkie in the Green Doggy Sweater (written with Mary Lou Carney), were released in 2012. There is also a Debbie Macomber line of knitting pattern books from Leisure Arts and she owns her own yarn store, A Good Yarn, in Port Orchard, Washington.
Now writing for Random House, Debbie published two Ballantine hardcovers in 2012, The Inn at Rose Harbor and Angels at the Table (November). The same year also saw the publication of two inspirational non-fiction hardcovers, One Perfect Word (Howard Books) and Patterns of Grace (Guideposts April). Starting Now, the ninth in her Blossom Street series, was issued in 2013.
Recognition
Macomber is a three-time winner of the B. Dalton Award, and the inaugural winner of the fan-voted Quill Award for romance (2005, for 44 Cranberry Point). She has been awarded the Romantic Times Magazine Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award and has won a Romance Writers of America RITA Award, the romance novelist's equivalent of an Academy Award, for The Christmas Basket. Her novels have regularly appeared on the Waldenbooks and USAToday bestseller lists and have also earned spots on the New York Times Bestseller List. On September 6, 2007 she made Harlequin Enterprises history, by pulling off the rarest of triple plays—having her new novel, 74 Seaside Avenue, appear at the #1 position for paperback fiction on the New York Times, USAToday and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. These three highly respected bestseller lists are considered the bellwethers for a book's performance in the United States.
She threw out the first pitch in Seattle Mariners games at Safeco Field in 2007 and 2012. The Romance Writers of America presented Debbie with their prestigious 2010 Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award.
Personal
Macomber has mentored young people, is the international spokesperson for World Vision’s Knit for Kids and serves on the Guideposts National Advisory Cabinet. She was appointed an ambassador for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America national office in 1997.
Debbie and her husband, Wayne, raised four children and have numerous grandchildren. They live in Port Orchard, Washington and winter in Florida. When not writing, she enjoys knitting, traveling with Wayne and putting on Grandma Camps for her grandchildren, for whom she has built a four-star tree house behind her home in Port Orchard. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
Meet the Palmer sisters: rock-steady eldest Karen, who followed up perfect grades with a perfect spouse and children; wild middle sister Cassie, who got pregnant right out of high school; and free-spirited Nicole, the baby of the family. They're hardly speaking, but their mother's untimely death brings them together.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
A Small Indiscretion
Jan Ellison, 2015
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812995442
Summary
A Small Indiscretion fixes an unflinching eye on the power of desire and the danger of obsession as it unfolds the story of one woman's reckoning with a youthful mistake.
At nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in her washed-out hometown for a London winter of drinking to oblivion and yearning for deliverance. Some two decades later, she is married to a good man and settled in San Francisco, with a son and two daughters and a successful career designing artistic interior lights.
One June morning, a photograph arrives in her mailbox, igniting an old longing and setting off a chain of events that rock the foundations of her marriage and threaten to overturn her family's hard-won happiness.
The novel moves back and forth across time between San Francisco in the present and that distant winter in Europe. The two worlds converge and explode when the adult Annie returns to London seeking answers, her indiscretions come to light, and the phone rings with shocking news about her son. Now Annie must fight to save her family by piecing together the mystery of her past—the fateful collision of liberation and abandon and sexual desire that drew an invisible map of her future.
A Small Indiscretion is a riveting debut novel about a woman's search for understanding and forgiveness, a taut exploration of a modern marriage, and of love -- the kind that destroys, and the kind that redeems. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1965-66
• Raised—Tujunga, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., San Francisco State University
• Awards—O. Henry Prize
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Jan Ellison is the author of the debut novel, A Small Indiscretion, which was both a San Francisco Chronicle Book Club Pick and an Oprah Editor’s Pick. Jan’s essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere, and her first story to appear in print won a 2007 O. Henry Prize.
Jan grew up in Los Angeles, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband of twenty years and their four children. When her children were small, she spent seven years taking classes at San Francisco State and finally earned her MFA. She had a brief career in her twenties at a Silicon Valley startup, marketing risk management software to derivatives traders. The company went public, Jan became a mother, and instead of leaning in she leaned out, became a stay-at-home mom, and began to write.
Before that, Jan abandoned a job in investment banking before she even started it to spend two years waitressing in Hawaii, temping in Australia, and backpacking through Southeast Asia. Her college days were spent at Stanford, where a degree in History taught her about stories, as did her creative writing classes. She left Stanford for a year at nineteen to live on a shoestring in Paris and work in an office in London. She scribbled notes on yellow legal pads, and years later those notes provided the inspiration for her debut novel. (From the author's website.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Jan on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Delicious, lazy-day reading.... [Jan] Ellison describes her various love triangles in lavish prose...the real strengths of this novel are the foggy, intimate flashbacks that so perfectly capture the sexual and romantic confusion of a young woman in a foreign land (Editor’s Pick).
Leigh Newman - Oprah.com
Ellison is a tantalizing storyteller, dropping delicious hints of foreshadowing and shifting back and forth in time....moving her story forward with cinematic verve.... [She] masterfully captures the confusing and powerful moment when a young woman realizes her effect on men. Compellingly sympathetic characters bring the London chapter of Annie’s story to dramatic life. If you are clinging to a stash of letters and ticket stubs from old lovers, Indiscretion may have you rethinking the cost of holding on to the past rather than basking in the virtues of the present.
USA Today
Astonishing.... This voice is alive. It knows something. It will take us somewhere. The magic is accomplished so fast, so subtly, that most readers hardly notice.... A Small Indiscretion is rich with suspense.... Delectable elements of this terrific first novel abound: Its characters are round and real.... Ellison gives us an achingly physical sense of family life.... Lovely writing guides us through, driven by a quiet generosity.... This voice knows something, and by the end of the novel, so do we.
San Francisco Chronicle
Rich and detailed.... The plot explodes delightfully, with suspense and a few twists. Using second-person narration and hypnotic prose, Ellison’s debut novel is both juicy and beautifully written. How do I know it’s juicy? A stranger started reading it over my shoulder on the New York City subway, and told me he was sorry that I was turning the pages too quickly.
Flavorwire
Are those wild college days ever really behind you? Happily married Annie finds out.
Cosmopolitan
An impressive fiction debut....both a psychological mystery and a study of the divide between desire and duty.
San Jose Mercury News
A novel to tear through on a plane ride or on the beach.... I was drawn into a web of secrets, a
world of unrequited love and youthful mistakes that feel heightened and more romantic on the cold winter streets of London, Paris, and Ireland.
Bustle
Annie Black is a flawed heroine whose impulses we may distrust, but whose voice is compelling, drawing us in with her ruminating self-awareness and lively observations of those around her.... Ellison renders the California landscape with stunning clarity.... She writes gracefully, with moments of startling insight.... Her first novel is an emotional thriller, skillfully plotted in taut, visual scenes. The stakes are high from the start.... As Ellison pulls the thread that unravels the past, she weaves a rich tapestry of memory and desire, secrets and omissions, and exposes the knotted wages of love.... A Small Indiscretion resolves in an astonishing plot twist that offers both destruction and self-discovery.
Rumpus
The book is a page-turner but the crazy connections are too orchestrated to be believable, and the epistolary format doesn't fit. Would a mother really tell her son all the sordid details of her sexual past, even if it did reveal something about his patrimony?
Publishers Weekly
The author's prose repeatedly catapults readers from the present to the past by employing a second-person point of view that is often difficult to follow....Part romance novel, part coming-of-age story, and part family drama, this somber book about a perpetually flawed woman is a challenging and thought-provoking read. —Samantha Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY
Library Journal
Hard to put down.... O. Henry Prize winner Jan Ellison’s debut novel is a puzzle with the outside pieces finished. Reading it is like compulsively fitting all those revealing middle pieces together. . . . Skillfully weaving two plots, Ellison unveils the details of each, piece by tantalizing piece
BookPage
[A] cleverly constructed debut....crafted, absorbing novel that peels back the layers of Annie’s character as it reveals the secrets of her past and present.
Booklist
Ellison keeps the mystery going by switching among Annie's life in London at age 20, parts of the recent past, and present-time diary-type chapters....that fiendishly answers only one question at a time. Connoisseurs of domestic suspense will finish this book in a few breathless sittings, then wait eagerly for Ellison's next trick.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the beginning of the novel, Annie writes: "Between those bookends was a family whose happiness might still be intact if only I’d been able to see the threats to it more clearly." Is Annie responsible for Robbie’s accident, and for her family’s unraveling? Is it in her power to protect them?
2. There is more than one indiscretion in the novel. Which do you think the title refers to, or might it refer to more than one?
3. On page 302, Annie writes that it is "easier to blame the impulsiveness of youth than the wanton self-indulgence of a grown woman." How can this statement be assessed in the context of Annie’s story? Why does Annie confess to Jonathan upon her return from London?
4. After Jonathan moves out, Clara and Polly are passed between their parents "like a restaurant desert." Is Jonathan’s decision to move out defensible? How are the girls’ childhoods altered by the events of the summer? How might they look back on this period in their lives?
5. The novel takes the form of a confessional letter from Annie to Robbie. It also moves back and forth across two decades and spans three continents. How did this structure affect your reading experience? Does the structure remind you of any other novels?
6. Annie’s youthful relationship with Patrick is tortured and unfulfilling, yet she continues to yearn for him for more than twenty years. What causes this obsession? And why does it fade once Annie finally meets Patrick in London as an adult?
7. On page 250, Patrick defines art as "whatever stands in the world with no other purpose than to move us." Annie in turn suggests that art should at least be beautiful. Do you agree with either of these definitions? What other scenes and situations in the novel speak to the themes of art and beauty?
8. Early in the novel, Annie writes: "The heart is large, and there is more than one material in the bucket we call love." How does the novel address the theme of the nature of love? How do notions or definitions of love evolve as the novel progresses, and Annie matures?
9. Alcoholism runs in Annie’s family, yet when she finds herself abroad at nineteen, she begins to drink heavily. How might Annie’s upbringing have influenced this behavior? What leads to Annie’s "bargain" with herself in the clinic in San Francisco, as described on page 209?
10. The letter Annie receives from Emme’s uncle contains a major revelation. Did this revelation come as a surprise? What previous scenes hint at this revelation? Is Emme justified in holding Annie responsible for the shaping of her own history?
11. Annie posits that a memory is "by its nature a revision.... shaped by the waves of time, and by the history that has rushed against it since..." How does the novel interrogate the nature of memory? Is Annie a reliable narrator? How would the story be different if it were told from Jonathan’s point of view? Or Robbie’s? Or Emme’s?
12. On page 273, Annie realizes that if she expects to be forgiven, she must "forgive indiscriminately" from now on. Which characters, besides Annie, seek forgiveness? Which characters are ultimately redeemed, and which, if any, are not?
13. The novel concludes without describing what happens when Annie flies to Paris to reveal to Robbie the truth about his paternity and about Emme’s motivations. How do you imagine events unfolding between Annie and Robbie, and ultimately, between Robbie and Emme?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Playing Mrs. Kingston
Tony Lee Moral, 2014
Zharmae
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781937365677
Summary
It’s the '50s in New York City, and Catriona Benedict has big dreams, but when her first promising gig as an actress is a flop, she has to figure out some other way to make a living in the big city.
Enter Miles Kingston, a rich and influential playboy who, for reasons of his own, asks Catriona to take on the biggest role of her life. . . as his wife. Despite her boyfriend’s misgivings about the arrangement, Catriona knows that this could easily be the most lucrative acting job she’s ever had.
All she has to do is keep up the act for a few weeks, and she’ll walk away with thousands. When tragedy strikes, the whole arrangement threatens to strangle Catriona.
She quickly realizes that living with the Kingston family is a much more delicate and dangerous affair than she ever could have guessed. And if she isn’t convincing in the role of Mrs. Kingston, much more than just her acting career will be at stake.
Author Bio
• Birth—May 5, 1971
• Where—Hastings, England, UK
• Education—BSc, University of Reading
• Currently—lives in London, England
Tony Lee Moral is an author and documentary film maker who has written three books on Alfred Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock's Movie Making Masterclass (2013) published by MWP books; The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds (2013) published by Kamera Books, and Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie (2005) published by Scarecrow Press.
Visit the author's website.
Follow Tony on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Playing Mrs. Kingston is a suspense thriller filled with intrigue and sizzling tension. The plot was solid and the unexpected twists and turns throughout the book will keep you on the edge of your seat. Enjoyable read!
Stephanie Lasley - The Kindle Book Review
I thoroughly enjoyed this clever and engrossing read. I highly recommend Playing Mrs. Kingston to mystery fans as well as anyone looking for a well-written and entertaining escape.
Jennifer Leigh Wells, Author of "Rebecca: The Making of a Hollywood Classic"
An entertaining romp. There is a touch of high society and a dash of the criminal underworld which all come together to provide an enjoyable few hours of escapism.
Crimesquad.com
Discussion Questions
1. What are the themes in Playing Mrs. Kingston? eg; disguise, duplicity, imitation. Consider the title of the book, what does it mean?
2. How does the art world background mirror the moods of the central characters?
3. How do you see the influence of Alfred Hitchcock in this work? In characterisation or suspense building?
4. Describe the main character of Catriona. What personality traits do you like/dislike about her?
5. What character types do you recognise in the book? eg; heroine, wrongfully accused man, psychopath
6. Has Catriona learned anything or changed by the end of the book?
7. How did the author create suspense?
8. How did the author use New York as an integral part of the plot?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)