The Confession
John Grisham, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
418 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780739377895

Summary 
An innocent man is about to be executed. Only a guilty man can save him.

For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn’t understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn’t care. He just can’t believe his good luck. Time passes and he realizes that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He is relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed.

Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donte Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.

Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donte is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess.

But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia

John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.

Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.

As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.

Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.

As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.

It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.

His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.

He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.

He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.

Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.

With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.

Writing
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.

Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.

Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.

In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.

In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.

Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.

Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."

Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.

Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.

In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)

Book Reviews 
[T]he kind of grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story that demands to be inhaled as quickly as possible. But it's also a superb work of social criticism in the literary troublemaker tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.... For more than a decade, in his novels...and on editorial pages, Grisham has ruminated over the efficacy and morality of the death penalty. The Confession bangs the gavel and issues a clear verdict. As an advocacy thriller, it will rile some readers, shake up conventional pieties and, no doubt, change some minds. Whatever your politics, don't read this book if you just want to kick back in your recliner and relax.
Maureen Corrigan - Washiangton Post

Grisham's recent slump continues with another subpar effort whose plot and characters, none of whom are painted in shades of gray, aren't able to support an earnest protest against the death penalty. In 2007, almost on the eve of the execution of Donte Drumm, an African-American college football star, for the 1998 murder of a white cheerleader whose body was never found, Travis Boyette, a creepy multiple sex offender, confesses that he's guilty of the crime to Kansas minister Keith Schroeder. With Drumm's legal options dwindling fast and with the threat of civil unrest in his Texas hometown if the execution proceeds, Schroeder battles to convince Boyette to go public with the truth—and to persuade the condemned man's attorney that Boyette's story needs to be taken seriously. While the action progresses with a certain grim realism, Schroeder's superficial responses to the issues raised undercut the impact. As with The Appeal, the author's passionate views on serious flaws in the justice system don't translate well into fiction.
Publishers Weekly

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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Confession:

1. How is your reading of this novel affected by the knowledge that much in the book is based on actual events, not just in Texas but in other states as well?

2. What evidence is used to charge and convict Donte Drumm of Nicole Yarber's murder?

3. Enumerate the flaws in the justice system that Grisham's book illuminates, starting with the police officers and their technique of attaining Drumm's confession.

4. What other parts of the system come under Grisham's criticism?

5. What are the pressures that come to bear on the legal system when a murder takes place—pressures that might force an indictment and conviction unfairly?

6. Do you find the sections dealing with Drumm's years on death row believable? Talk about this revealing passage:

You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half....

But Drumm's thoughts end with "no one really wants to die," even if his life is so miserably confined. Talk about the will to live despite life's circumstances.

7. What role does race play in this story?

8. Was this book suspenseful? Was the ending—with all the twists & turns along the way—surprising or predictable? Did you have an idea of how it would end? (Okay, be honest: did you skip ahead to read the ending?)

9. At one point, Schroeder wonders whether he would believe in the death penalty if Boyette rather than Drumm were scheduled for execution. What do you think?

10. Grisham has received criticism that his characters are one-dimensional—either all good or all bad, depending on which side of the death penalty issue they fall on. Do you agree? Or do you feel his characters are fully drawn? What about Keith Schroeder?

11. Grisham has also been criticized for straying from his signature suspense fiction to push his views on the death penalty. Do you agree with those critics? Should Grisham, as a writer of fiction, stay away from hot button political issues? Or should he to use his popularity as a fiction writer to speak out? Does your answer to that question align with your attitude toward the death penalty?

12. Have you learned anything new about the working of the legal system in this country? Do you see it in a different light because of Grisham's book?

13. What are your views regarding the death penalty? Has your perspective been changed by reading this book? Do you see Grisham's book as a fair—or unfair—portrayal of the legal system and death penalty issue?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 
Mark Haddon, 2003
Random House
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400032716

Summary  
Winner, 2003 Whitbread Prize and Commonwealth Writer's Prize

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic.

Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher’s carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing.

Christopher decides that he will track down the real killer and turns to his favorite fictional character, the impeccably logical Sherlock Holmes, for inspiration. But the investigation leads him down some unexpected paths and ultimately brings him face to face with the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. As he tries to deal with the crisis within his own family, we are drawn into the workings of Christopher’s mind.

And herein lies the key to the brilliance of Mark Haddon’s choice of narrator: The most wrenching of emotional moments are chronicled by a boy who cannot fathom emotion. The effect is dazzling, making for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing is a mind that perceives the world literally.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the freshest debuts in years: a comedy, a heartbreaker, a mystery story, a novel of exceptional literary merit that is great fun to read. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—September 26, 1962
• Where—Northampton, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Currently—lives in Oxford, UK


Mark Haddon was born in Northampton and educated at Uppingham School and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied English.

In 2003, Haddon won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and in 2004, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best First Book for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a book which is written from the perspective of a boy with Asperger syndrome. Haddon's knowledge of Asperger syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum, comes from his work with autistic people as a young man. In an interview at Powells.com, Haddon claimed that this was the first book that he wrote intentionally for an adult audience; he was surprised when his publisher suggested marketing it to both adult and child audiences.

His second adult novel, A Spot of Bother, was published in September 2006, and The Red House in 2012.

Mark Haddon is also known for his series of Agent Z books, one of which, Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars, was made into a 1996 Children's BBC sitcom. He also wrote the screenplay for the BBC television adaptation of Raymond Briggs's story Fungus the Bogeyman, screened on BBC1 in 2004. In 2007 he wrote the BBC television drama Coming Down the Mountain.

Haddon is a vegetarian, and enjoys vegetarian cookery. He describes himself as a 'hard-line atheist'. In an interview with The Observer, Haddon said "I am atheist in a very religious mould". His atheism might be inferred from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time in which the main character declares that those who believe in God are stupid.

In 2009, he donated the short story "The Island" to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Haddon's story was published in the Fire collection. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
On page 1 Christopher Boone (15) finds his neighbor’s dog stabbed with a garden fork.  Over the next 119 pages, he attempts to solve the mystery of its murder.  On page 120, he finds the answer; 101 pages later, the book ends.  There are 45 drawings, 17 charts and graphs, 12 equations, 16 lists, and 1 photo.  And that’s not counting the 3-3/4 page appendix. —And It took me 2:57:45 hours to finish the book. That's pretty much the way our young narrator negotiates his world.
A LitLovers LitPick  (April '07)

In choosing to make Christopher his narrator, Mr. Haddon has deliberately created a story defined and limited by his hero's very logical, literal-minded point of view. The result is a minimalistic narrative—not unlike a Raymond Carver story in its refusal to speculate, impute motive or perform emotional embroidery.
Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times

The essence of good writing is a sort of cataloguing, if you will, with the author supplying the details of the world he wants to evoke and the reader supplying the nuances of interpretation. Thanks to the brilliance of Haddon's prose, this back-and-forth works extremely well in The Curious Incident.... In this striking first novel, Mark Haddon is both clever and observant, and the effect is vastly affecting.
Nani Power - The Washington Post

Haddon's book is a bit like watching a DVD with a commentary track. There is the story that Christopher relates as he understands it alongside the story that he doesn't fully grasp. His favorite book is The Hound of the Baskervilles—that's where the title comes from—and he's aware of the demands of the mystery genre. One ongoing device is his comically self-conscious deployment of hard-boiled police procedural phrases, as when he notes of a suspect, "I might have more evidence against him, or be able to Exclude Him From My Investigation."
Tom Peyser - The Los Angeles Times

Curious Incident meticulously imagines the frustrations of an autistic's world, where sensory intake is heightened but the capacity to process information diminished. The hero's brain chemistry is the book's best safeguard against cuteness. He keeps his distance because he has no other option, an unwitting hardass to the end.
The Village Voice

The fifteen-year-old narrator of this ostensible murder mystery is even more emotionally remote than the typical crime-fiction shamus: he is autistic, prone to fall silent for weeks at a time and unable to imagine the interior lives of others. This might seem a serious handicap for a detective, but when Christopher stumbles on the dead body of his neighbor's poodle, impaled by a pitchfork, he decides to investigate. Christopher understands dogs, whose moods are as circumscribed as his own ("happy, sad, cross and concentrating"), but he's deaf to the nuances of people, and doesn't realize until too late that the clues point toward his own house and a more devastating mystery. This original and affecting novel is a triumph of empathy; whether describing Christopher's favorite dream (of a virus depopulating the planet) or his vision of the universe collapsing in a thunder of stars, the author makes his hero's severely limited world a thrilling place to be.
The New Yorker

Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. Though Christopher insists, "This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them," the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. The result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.
Publishers Weekly

Sometimes profound characters come in unassuming packages. In this instance, it is Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic savant with a passion for primary numbers and a paralyzing fear of anything that happens outside of his daily routine. When a neighbor's dog is mysteriously killed, Christopher decides to solve the crime in the calculating spirit of his hero, Sherlock Holmes. Little does he know the real mysteries he is about to uncover. The author does a revelatory job of infusing Christopher with a legitimate and singularly human voice. Christopher lives in a world that is devoid of the emotional responses most of us expect, but that does not mean he lacks feelings or insights. Rather than being just a victim, he is allowed to become a complex character who is not always likable and sometimes demonstrates menacing qualities that give this well-trod narrative path much-needed freshness. The novel is being marketed to a YA audience, but strong language and adult situations make this a good title for sophisticated readers of all ages. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. —David Hellman, San Francisco State Univ. Lib.
Library Journal

Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who's also a math genius. Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor's dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he "would like to read himself"-and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears's dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can't stand to be touched-any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what's going to happen next). Christopher's father bails him out but forbids his doing any more "detecting" about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother's "death," his father's own part in it-and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds-his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced "maths" in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly. A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.
Kirkus Reviews 

Discussion Questions 
1. How do you think this novel bridges the gap between literature for adults and children?

2. What do you think Haddon's illustrations add to the story and to our understanding of Christopher's character?

3. Although seemingly ill equipped as the narrator of a book, Christopher's character succeeds in eliciting a wide range of emotions in the reader. How do you think Haddon uses his protagonists voice to touch his audience in such a way?

4. Discuss the relationship between father and son in the novel. How well do you think Christopher's father copes with his son's condition?

5. The author has used his extensive knowledge of Asperger's syndrome to allow us to see the world through Christopher's eyes, how do you think the story further enhances our attachment to the character and our enjoyment of the book in general?

6. How far do you think the author has used Christopher's alienating condition to expose intricate truths about our modern lives? Do you think this was his intention in Christopher's exposure of his parent's secret?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Jane Austen Book Club
Karen Joy Fowler, 2004
Penguin Group USA
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452286535


Summary
In California's central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships. Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 07, 1950
• Where—Bloomington, Indiana, USA
• Education—B.A., The University of California, Berkeley;
  M.A., The University of California, Davis, 1974
• Currently—lives in Davis, California

Karen Joy Fowler, A PEN/Faulkner and Dublin IMPAC nominee, is the author of Sarah Canary, The Sweetheart Season, Black Glass: Short Fictions, and Sister Noon.

More
A genre such as science fiction, with its deeply committed fans and otherworldly subject matter, tends to stand apart from the rest of the book world. So when one writer manages to push the boundaries and achieve success with both sci-fi and mainstream fiction readers, it's a feat that signals she's worth paying attention to.

In terms of subject matter, Karen Joy Fowler is all over the map. Her first novel, 1991's Sarah Canary, is the story of the enigmatic title character, set in the Washington Territory in 1873. A Chinese railway worker's attempt to escort Sarah back to the insane asylum he believes she came from turns into more than he bargained for. Fowler weaves race and women's rights into the story, and it could be another historical novel — except for a detail Fowler talks about in a 2004 interview. "I think for science fiction readers, it's pretty obvious that Sarah Canary is an alien," Fowler says. Yet other readers are dumbfounded by this news, seeing no sign of it. For her part, Fowler refuses to make a declaration either way.

Sarah Canary was followed in 1996 by The Sweetheart Season, a novel about a 1950s women's baseball league that earned comparisons to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon works; and the 2001 novel Sister Noon, which Fowler called "a sort of secret history of San Francisco." For all three novels, critics lauded Fowler for her originality and compelling storytelling as she infused her books with elements of fantasy and well-researched history.

In 2004, Fowler released her first contemporary novel, The Jane Austen Book Club. It dealt with five women and one man reading six of Austen's novels over a six-month period, and earned still more praise for Fowler. The New York Times called the novel shrewd and funny; the Washington Post said, "It's...hard to explain quite why The Jane Austen Book Club is so wonderful. But that it is wonderful will soon be widely recognized, indeed, a truth universally acknowledged." Though Fowler clearly wrote the book with Austen fans in mind — she too loves the English author of classics such as Pride and Prejudice—knowledge of Austen's works is not a prerequisite for enjoyment.

Readers who want to learn more about Fowler's sci-fi side should also seek out her short story collections. Black Glass (1999) is not a strictly sci-fi affair, but it is probably the most readily available; her Web site offers a useful bibliography of stories she has published in various collections and sci-fi journals, including the Nebula Award-winning "What I Didn't See."

Fowler also continues to be involved with science fiction as a co-founder of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, designed to honor "science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender." The award has spawned two anthologies, which Fowler has taken part in editing.

Whether or not Fowler moves further in the direction of mainstream contemporary fiction, she clearly has the flexibility and skill as a writer to retain fans no matter what. Her "category" as a writer may be fluid, but it doesn't seem to make a difference to readers who discover her unique, absorbing stories and get wrapped up in them.

Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:

• The first thing I ever wanted to be was a dog breeder. Instead I've had a succession of eccentric pound rescues. My favorite was a Keeshond Shepherd mix, named Tamara Press after the Russian shot-putter. Tamara went through college with me, was there when I married, when I had children. She was like Nana in Peter Pan; we were a team. I'm too permissive to deal with spaniels or hounds, as it turns out. Not that I haven't had them, just that I lose the alpha advantage.

• I take yoga classes. I eat sushi. I walk the dog. I spend way too much time on email. Mostly I read. I have cats, too. But I can't talk about them. They don't like it.

• I'm not afraid of spiders or snakes, at least not the California varieties. But I can't watch scary movies. That is, I can watch them, but I can't sleep after, so mostly I don't. Unless I'm tricked. I mention no names. You know who you are.

• I loved the television show The Night Stalker when it was on. Also The Greatest American Hero. And I Spy. And recently Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except for the final year.

• I do the crossword puzzle in the Nation every week. I don't like other crossword puzzles, only that one. It takes me two days on average."

• When asked what novel most influenced her life as a writer, here is her answer:

The Once and Future King by T. H. White. I read this book first when I was about 12. I've reread it a dozen times since. I was very imprinted by the narrative voice—omniscient shading into limited and back out. I tend to use that voice myself.

It's a very digressive book—literature, tilting, hawking, archeology, cricket. It combines history with deliberate anachronisms. The emotional range is enormous, from silly to tragic to lyrical to analytical. Parts of it are carefully documented and painstakingly realistic. Parts of it are utter fantasy. You can tell that White had a great time writing it; it's showy, and rompish. I think this book persuaded me that a writer is allowed to do absolutely anything. And that it could be fun. (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
One man and five women, all great readers who are passionate about literature, get together to read Jane Austen's six works. We're invited to join in...in the club and also in members' lives.
A LitLovers LitPick  (May '08)

The thoughts are more than literary discussion. They bring out the characters and emotions of the participants along with the tensions and sympathies that flit and filter among them. Ms. Fowler has the genial notion to see in the book club—that newish American cultural phenomenon—a society resembling nothing so much as one of those sets of country gentry among which Austen constructed a social comedy where irony stiffens sentiment, and pain is a cool afterthought.
Richard Eder - New York Times

In her portrait of a California reading group, Karen Joy Fowler turns a mirror on the gawking, voyeuristic presence that lurks in every story: the reader. What results is Fowler's shrewdest, funniest fiction yet, a novel about how we engage with a novel. You don't have to be a student of Jane Austen to enjoy it, either. At the end are plot synopses of all six Austen novels for the benefit of the forgetful, the uninitiated or the nostalgic.
Patricia T. O'Conner - New York Times Book Review

It's just as hard to explain quite why The Jane Austen Book Club is so wonderful. But that it is wonderful will soon be widely recognized, indeed, a truth universally acknowledged.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post

With its many section breaks and point-of-view shifts, Fowler's newest book (following Sister Noon) poses significant challenges for a single narrator. But stage actress Schraf overcomes these obstacles with ease, her voice taking on just a touch of haughtiness for the chapters told from the "we" perspective and then switching back to an unassuming tone for the third-person sections. It may take listeners a short while to grasp the story's structure, but once they do, they'll be hopelessly snared by this witty look at the lives and loves of six people, all members of Central Valley, California's "all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club." As the members discuss Austen's stance on marriage, social status and love, the narrative meanders, touching on defining moments in the characters' lives and then drifting back to describe their current dilemmas: single, middle-aged Jocelyn has never been in love; French teacher Prudie can't stop thinking about men other than her husband; chatty Bernadette has decided to "let herself go"; warm-hearted Sylvia still loves her soon-to-be-ex-husband; emotional Allegra has left her girlfriend; and sci-fi aficionado Grigg is infatuated with someone who may not share his affection. Through subtle alterations of tone and inflection, Schraf neatly conveys the emotions and idiosyncrasies of each character, from Prudie's impossibly pretentious French asides to Bernadette's airy, endless storytelling. Playful and intelligent, this audiobook embodies the best of both the written and aural worlds.
Publishers Weekly

Fowler's book, for all intents and purposes, is a character study of six people who meet regularly over several months to discuss six of Austen's works. Jocelyn, in her 50s and never married, is the originator of the club, a control freak who handpicked all the members; Sylvia, her good friend, is in a funk because her husband of 32 years has just left her for another woman; Sylvia's daughter, Allegra, is an attractive 30-year-old lesbian who recently broke up with her lover; Prudie is a twentysomething high school French teacher; the much-married Bernadette, 67, is now single; and Grigg, in his 40s, would love to get married. The group sits around drinking and making aimless, often pointless, conversation about Austen, and into these light, roundabout discussions Fowler intertwines some clever and funny stories. There is not much depth to the characters, the plots are weak, and little happens until the last chapter. Read by Kimberly Schraf, this atypical but deliberate novel is recommended for larger public libraries. —Carol Stern, Glen Cove P.L., NY
Library Journal

The estimable Fowler (Sister Noon, 2001, etc.) offers a real delight as she follows the lives of six members of a book club. Not a moment passes without its interest as we meet Jocelyn (who raises Rhodesian Ridgebacks); her best friend since girlhood, Sylvia (nee Sanchez); Sylvia's daughter Allegra, an artist who's now 30 and a lesbian; high-school French teacher, Prudie, 28 and flighty; the talkative Bernadette, turning 67 and the oldest; and the only man, Grigg Harris, unmarried, in his 40s, new to the neighborhood-and a science-fiction buff who's never read Jane Austen. Month by month, the group meets at one house or another to discuss the agreed-upon book, and all the while Fowler keeps things moving with a fine and inventive dexterity, lingering in the present at one moment, dipping way back into the adolescent years of Jocelyn and Sylvia at another (Sylvia marries Jocelyn's boyfriend; Jocelyn remains single), sometimes touching on the life of Austen herself, then popping back to escort us through Grigg's plain but fascinating history (he had three sisters, no brother), or to let us in on what makes Prudie flighty, how many husbands Bernadette had, or what happened when Allegra jumped from an airplane. Much of the charm lies in the book discussions themselves-never dry, ever revealing, always on the psychological mark-and much indeed also lies in the many perfect Austen-esque moments, situations, misunderstandings, recognitions, and reversals that make up the web and woof of the novel. We learn early that after 30 years of perfect marriage Sylvia's husband has left her. That event, in one way or another, will touch on everyone, and before the end there'll be a positively lovely re-sorting of relationships, places, and positions, all done in today's most perfect emulation of Jane that you could ever imagine. Bright, engaging, dexterous literary entertainment for everyone, though with many special treats and pleasures for Janeites.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The author opens the novel with a quote from Jane Austen, part of which reads, "Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure." Do you agree with this sentiment? Why do you think the author chooses to open the novel with this quote? How might this statement apply to each of the characters in the book?

2. When the group is first being formed, Bernadette suggests that it should consist exclusively of women: "The dynamic changes with men. They pontificate rather than communicate. They talk more than their share. ' (page 3). What do you think of her statement? How does Grigg affect the group’s dynamic? How would things have been different without him?

3. While the group is reading Sense and Sensibility and discussing Mrs. Dashwood, Sylvia mentions that "the problems of older women don’t interest most writers" (page 46) and is thrilled that Austen seems to care. Do you agree with this, that most writers aren’t interested in older women? What about society in general? How does Fowler approach older women? Later, Prudie says that "An older man can still fall in love. An older woman better not." (page 47) Do you agree? How does Fowler deal with this issue?

4. On page 228 Sylvia asks, "Why should unhappiness be so much more powerful than happiness?" How would you answer her? How does each character find her/his own happiness in the novel?

5. The book club meets from March through August. How does the group change over these six months? "I always like to know how a story ends," Bernadette says on page 199. How do you think this story ends (the "epilogue to the epilogue")? Does Bernadette have a happy marriage with Senor Obando? Do Allegra and Corinne stay together? How about Jocelyn and Grigg? Daniel and Sylvia?

6. At the end of the novel, Jocelyn reluctantly agrees to read some science fiction, including the work of Ursula Le Guin, and really likes it. What other authors do you think the group might like? Although they would have to change the name of their group, what author would you suggest for the Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club to read next? What do you suggest for your own group?

7. If you’re new to Jane Austen, are you now interested in reading her work? Based on what you’ve learned from Karen Jay Fowler, which novel would you go to first? If you are already a "dedicated Janeite," how has reading The Jane Austen Book Club made you feel about your favorite author? How would you describe your own "private Austen"? What novel would you recommend to first-time readers of Austen?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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North Star Conspiracy (A Glynis Tyron Mystery)
Miriam Grace Monfredo, 1993
Penguin Group USA
353 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425147207

Summary
The year is 1854. In Seneca Falls, New York, everyone is busy with the opening of a new theater, no one notices the death of a freed slave. As a supporter of the Underground Railroad, Glynis hears information that raises her suspicions, and soon discovers more than she wants to know about some of the so-called sympathizers.

Glynis Tryon, the delightful Seneca Falls, New York, librarian introduced in Seneca Falls Inheritance, returns, still balancing her own life against the momentous events of the times. With sure authenticity, the author evokes the atmosphere of 1854, seven years before the Civil War, and brings to life the vivid cast of characters involved. A local election is pending, from which Glynis and Elizabeth Cady Stanton hope will come gains for women's rights. A wealthy resident has started Seneca Falls's first theater, and its production of Macbeth looms large in the story.

Glynis herself faces a wrenching decision: Constable Cullen Stuart wants her as his wife when he moves west to become a Pinkerton man. Warm as her regard for Cullen may be, Glynis is reluctant, knowing how her life must change after marriage. Meanwhile, Seneca Falls has become an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Fugitive slaves following the North Star to Canada find support from many of the town's inhabitants, including Glynis.

It is a difficult commitment at best, and when complicated by murder, a perilous one as well. Once again, Miriam Grace Monfredo has combined historical events, a moving personal story, and an engrossing mystery in a work of extraordinary interest.

North Star is the second of six books in the Seneca Falls Mystery Series. The series includes (in order): Seneca Falls Inheritance, North Star Conspiracy, Blackwater Spirits, Through a Gold Eagle, The Stalking Horse, and Must the Maiden Die. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Miriam Grace Monfredo, a former librarian and a historian, lives in Rochester, New York. This is the second "Seneca Falls Mystery" series. A previous "Seneca Falls Mystery," The Stalking Horse, was chosen by the Voice of Youth Advocacy as one of 1998’s best adult mysteries for young adults and received a “best” review in Library Journal’s young adult section. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Fresh, original and creative, this lively [work] brings together a cross section of women from Seneca Falls in 1848—a librarian, women's rights activist, former slave, brothel keeper, plantation wife/slave owner and town cultural advocate—each with strong opinions that will reflect on the history of activism prior to the Civil War.
Syracuse Post-Standard

North Star Conspiracy is a reasonably serious mystery that is also a good bit of fun, set in 1854. With her friends Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls librarian Glynis Tryon also works on such feminist issues as suffrage. Glynis is no dilettante; when she has an opportunity early in the book to marry a man she truly cares for, she turns him down. To assent would man the end of her career. Fully involved in the life of the community, Glynis becomes caught in a web of intrigue that includes murder and shows herself a capable ratiocinator. Like other entries in the series, the novel features historical notes at the end detailing people, places, and things the reader meets or hears about in the course of the story. A bit too much late-20th-century sensibility manifests itself in Glynis Tryon's point of view, but the story remains enjoyable.
Grant Burns - Librarians in Fiction, A Critical Bibliography

In 1854, six years after her adventures with Elizabeth Cady Stanton described in Seneca Falls Inheritance, librarian Glynis Tryon returns for a suspense-filled adventure based on the northward escape of fugitive slaves. Women's rights' advocate Glynis rejects the marriage proposal of her friend Constable Cullen Stuart, who leaves Seneca Falls, N.Y., to join the Pinkertons. Missing him, she busies herself in the planning of the town's new theater and the upcoming campaign for state assembly of a banker who favors women's rights. She is puzzled by both the recent suspicious death of a freed slave from Virginia and the murder of a slave-catcher who was last seen with a woman from the theater group. Then Niles, her landlady's son, returns from Virginia to announce his plans to marry Kiri, a slave whom he has convinced to run away. Glynis's role in helping Kiri farther along the Underground Railroad and her observations at Niles's trial in Virginia for abetting the slave's escape mesh seamlessly with details of the librarian's personal life in this intricately plotted, historically vivid, thoroughly satisfying mystery.
Publishers Weekly

Unmarried (by choice) librarian Glynis Tryon (Seneca Falls Inheritance) learns firsthand of the iniquities of slavery when her boardinghouse landlady's son Niles returns to their western New York home with Kiri—a beautiful mulatto slave he helped escape from a Virginia plantation. A slave-catcher is on their trail, and though Glynis manages to get Kiri to her sister's house in Rochester, a stop on the Underground Railroad, Niles is captured and returned to Virginia to stand trial. In Richmond to help Niles's lawyer, Glynis learns that three recent murders back home all tie in with Kiri—and with the murder of her fleeing family 13 years before by a villainous overseer, now living up north under another identity. With help from Constable Sundown and Cullen Stuart, a Pinkerton detective, Glynis and Kiri bait a trap for the villain and spring it during the debut performance of Macbeth at Seneca Falls's just-opened theater. Stimulating fare (despite a subplot or two too many) that effectively parallels the powerlessness of slaves and women—the disenfranchised—building to a dramatic courtroom sequence. Sojourner Truth, Matthew Brady, et al., appear in memorable cameos.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

   • Generic Discussion Questions
   • Read-Think-Talk About a Book

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for North Star Conspiracy:

1. Why does Glynis refuse to marry Cullen Stuart, despite her fondness for him? In what ways would her life have changed as a married woman? You might use that question to segue into a discussion of the conditions for women in the mid-19th century. Does Monfredo make any connection between the powerlessness of white women and their slave counterparts?

2. On what basis does Glynis decide to help Kiri flee her captors? To what extent is an individual free—or compelled—to disobey laws that violate the conscience? ? Who decides when laws are unjust?

3. What is the effect of Monfredo's inserting real-life historical figures into her fictional world? Why might she use that technique? Does Monfredo's treatment of those historical individuals make them, or the era in which they lived, come alive for you?

4. Did Monfredo's book enable you learn more about the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movement? Monfredo has been praised for her historical accuracy, which brings up an interesting question—is the ability to appreciate history enhanced through fictional tellings? How useful did you find the mini-encyclopedia at the back of the book?

5. As has been said, "the past is never past. In what way does Kiri's past come back to haunt her?

6. What does the journey to Richmond reveal about the era's political divisiveness between northern abolitionists and southern slaveholders?

7. How does Glynis arrive at her courtroom revelation? What steps lead her to uncover the key evidence?

8. Does the entrapment of Thomas Farley make for a good ending...or an unrealistic one, forced or tacked on?

9. This is a mystery after all. Talk about how Monfredo buries clues, misleads the reader, uses plot twists, builds suspense, and reveals the solution? How well does she do all that? Did you find the revelation surprising...or predictable?

10. Finally, consider Monfredo's use of a theatrical production, Macbeth. How does it function in the story (think about role playing...)?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)

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