Keep Her Safe (Did You See Melody?, UK title)
Sophie Hannah, 2017
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062388322
Summary
She's the most famous murder victim in America. What if she's not dead?
Pushed to the breaking point, Cara Burrows flees her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can't afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied — by a man and a teenage girl.
A simple mistake at the front desk… but soon Cara realizes that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can't possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving natural life sentences for her murder.
Cara doesn't know what to trust — everything she's read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Manchester, England, UK
• Education—University of Manchester
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, England
Sophie Hannah is a British poet and fiction writer — with more than 15 novels (mostly mysteries), a dozen volumes of short stories and/or poetry, as well as several children's books. She was born in Manchester, England; her father was the academic Norman Geras and her mother the author Adele Geras. Hannah attended the University of Manchester.
At only 24, Hannah published her first book of poems, The Hero and the Girl Next Door and has gone on to publish others. In 2004, she was named one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her poems are studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK.
In 2006 she turned to writing psychological crime novels, starting with Little Face, which has sold more than 100,000 copies. That novel was the first of 10 featuring detectives Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer. Two of those novels — The Point of Rescue (2008) and The Other Half Lives (2009) were adapted into the TV series Case Sensitive, starring Darren Boyd (as Waterhouse) and Olivia Williams (as Zailer).
Recognition
From 1997 to 1999 Hannah was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 a junior research fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.
She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge where she is a Fellow Commonor of Lucy Cavendish College. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/5/2017.)
Book Reviews
Her plots are ingenious — she’s a writer in complete command of her material — and it’s O.K. if you haven’t quite kept up. She keeps you puzzled and intrigued, right until the end.
New York Times Book Review
Hannah… excels at creating credible plot twists; the two in Keep Her Safe — one at the climax, one at the denouement — evoke gasps. Deftly played and instantly addictive, Hannah’s latest novel reaffirms her excellence and further elevates her stature.
Richmond Times Dispatch
Sophie Hannah…has clearly mastered the psychological methodology [of] Gillian Flynn or Tana French. Her unreliable narrator commands our attention and even our sympathy.
NPR
[U]necessarily complex…. The present-day plot devolves into a… free-for-all, with Cara inexplicably at the center. Hannah, known for her labyrinthine plots, loses her way early on.
Publishers Weekly
As Lisa Gardner says, Hannah puts "the psycho in psychological suspense," and here's her first novel set in America, specifically, sun-bleached Arizona.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Hannah [takes]all the reassuring certitudes mystery novels take for granted and demonstrate how much fun it is to toss them overboard. There's no point in objecting to the coincidences and implausibilities required to launch this brilliant nightmare: resistance is futile.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the book, Cara Burrows has temporarily abandoned her family. Do you understand her actions? Is she is a sympathetic character?
2. Would you want to stay at the Swallowtail resort? Is it lovely and luxurious, or oppressively perfect?
3. The novel features a range of parent-child relationships, and Cara is pregnant. What point or points do you think the author is trying to make about parent-child relationships?
4. Is the media a force for good or bad in this book? Can you draw any parallels between the media as it appears here and in real life?
5. Cara Burrows is, like Sophie Hannah, British. Laws surrounding the media and criminal justice are stricter in the UK than in the USA. Does Cara’s outsider perspective affect how the concept of a free press is presented?
6. Is it possible to divide the characters into "good" and "bad"? Which characters are looking for justice?
7. Is justice finally served?
8. Did the final twist change how you thought about everything you had read before?
(Questions from the author's website.)
The Dinner List
Rebecca Serle, 2018
Flatiron Books
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250295187
Summary
“We’ve been waiting for an hour.” That’s what Audrey says. She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That’s the thing I think first. Not: Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinner, but Audrey Hepburn is annoyed.
At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner.
Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen?
These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in her utterly captivating novel, The Dinner List, a story imbued with the same delightful magical realism as One Day, and the life-changing romance of Me Before You.
When Sabrina arrives at her 30th birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together.
Delicious but never indulgent, sweet with just the right amount of bitter, The Dinner List is a romance for our times. Bon appetit. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Rebecca Serle is an author and television writer, who spends her time between New York and Los Angeles. Serle received her MFA from the New School in NYC and has written a number of young adult novels. In 2017 she co-developed the hit TV series, Famous in Love, an adaptation of her YA series.
Serle published her first adult novel, The Dinner List, in 2018, followed by In Five Years, which came out in 2020. (Adapted from the publisher).
Book Reviews
Themes of love, loss, and forgiveness weave through this intriguing mix of the real and the fanciful.
Booklist
Years ago, Sabrina did that old thing of imagining whom she'd invite to a birthday dinner if she could have any five guests, dead or alive. She never thought her fantasy dinner would really happen…. A bittersweet tale of love, loss, and living with the memories.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for THE DINNER LIST … then take off on your own:
1. Why not start with the people on your own dinner list? Who's on it? If you don't have a list, then consider putting one together and share it with the group—the whos and whys.
2. What do you make of Sabrina and Tobias's relationship, or attempt at one? Why can't they seem to make each other happy?
3. What do we learn of Sabrina's difficult connection with her father?
4. What does Professor Conrad add to the party?
5. Same for Audrey Hepburn? What role does she play? How does she connect with different chapters in Sabina's life?
6. One of the themes of The Dinner List is the way in which a tiny incident, one particular decision, which at first seems incidental, can end up having a large impact on our lives. How do you see this play out in The Dinner List—especially in Sabrina's life?
7. Talk about the ways the dinner party ends up changing Sabrina, her perspective and her relationships, especially with Tobias and her father.
8. Talk about the motifs that run throughout The Dinner List: regret, forgiveness, loss, family, and love. How do they manifest themselves during the course of the novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Night Country (Hazel Wood Series, 2)
Melissa Albert, 2020
Flatiron Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250246073
Summary
In The Night Country, Alice Proserpine dives back into a menacing, mesmerizing world of dark fairy tales and hidden doors of The Hazel Wood.
Follow her and Ellery Finch as they learn The Hazel Wood was just the beginning, and that worlds die not with a whimper, but a bang.
With Finch’s help, Alice escaped the Hinterland and her reclusive grandmother’s dark legacy. Now she and the rest of the dregs of the fairy tale world have washed up in New York City, where Alice is trying to make a new, unmagical life.
But something is stalking the Hinterland’s survivors—and she suspects their deaths may have a darker purpose.
Meanwhile, in the winking out world of the Hinterland, Finch seeks his own adventure, and—if he can find it—a way back home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984-85 (?)
• Raised—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia College of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, NY
Melissa Albert is the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com. She has written for McSweeney’s, Time Out Chicago, MTV, and more. Melissa is from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn. The Hazel Wood (2018) is her first novel; Night Country (2020) is its sequel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Albert’s legion of fans will relish her return to the bloody, terrifying, seductive world of her debut and the inventive brilliance of her storytelling.
Guardian
A lush and enchanting tale. Albert effortlessly draws on a wide range of literary references and builds a world where magic really does emerge from pages and where books are not just figurative but literal doors. Dreamy and disturbing in equal measure, it’s the perfect antidote to a grey winter’s day.
Irish Times
(Starred review) This fairy tale noir adventure blends romance and mystery with plenty of action...a must-read for fans of portal fantasies, mysteries, and readers who prefer their magic with bloody sharp edges.
School Library Journal
(Starred review) What Albert renders on the page is audacious: with resounding success, she keeps a firm grip on her characters and their stories, and her prose weaves a magic of its own, animating the ever-expanding fantastical premise through lyrical language, striking metaphor, and a mastery of tone that forces readers to feel the magic along with the underlying emotional stakes.
Booklist
This follow-up to the astonishing The Hazel Wood (2018) displays the same lush prose, dizzying imagination, and macabre sensibilities…. Alternating… plots don’t intersect until the surreal, shattering climax.… [A] necessary read for Hinterland fans (16-adult).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for NIGHT COUNTRY … and then take off on your own:
1. To what degree, if any, have either Alice or Ellery—or both—changed since their appearances in The Hazel Wood, this book's prequel. Are they different? If so how?
2. Do you find the city of New York a fitting milieu for the dark enchantment of this fantasy? Did you find the urban setting for the Alice chapters as mesmerizing as the Hinterland? How does the author depict the city to conform to her fairytale ethos.
3. Alice frequently questions her own humanity, her goodness. What do you think about her following observation regarding her soul?
To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve even got a soul. If a soul is what makes you human, then I probably don’t. Unless a soul is something you can grow, like, after the fact. And I don’t think it is. So. No Soul.
4. Alice believes that, despite her yearning, she'll never quite achieve normalcy. She says she is doomed by "the loneliness of singularity." How so? How does she differ from the "junk drawer of ex-Story oddballs" in the novel? What do they hope for and why?
5. Discuss Alice's transformation toward the end of the book. How does she gain control of her life?
5. Ellery is tasked with his own project. Talk about role in this dark tale.
6. How does Night Country compare with The Hazel Wood? Do you prefer one over the other? Does the sequel fulfil the
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Did you See Melody?
Sophie Hannah, 2017
See our Reading Guide for Keep Her Safe — the book's U.S. title.
The Yellow Bird Sings
Jennifer Rosner, 2020
Flatiron Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250179760
Summary
In Poland, as World War II rages, a mother hides with her young daughter, a musical prodigy whose slightest sound may cost them their lives.
As Nazi soldiers round up the Jews in their town, Roza and her 5-year-old daughter, Shira, flee, seeking shelter in a neighbor’s barn.
Hidden in the hayloft day and night, Shira struggles to stay still and quiet, as music pulses through her and the farmyard outside beckons. To soothe her daughter and pass the time, Roza tells her a story about a girl in an enchanted garden:
The girl is forbidden from making a sound, so the yellow bird sings. He sings whatever the girl composes in her head: high-pitched trills of piccolo; low-throated growls of contrabassoon. Music helps the flowers bloom.
In this make-believe world, Roza can shield Shira from the horrors that surround them. But the day comes when their haven is no longer safe, and Roza must make an impossible choice: whether to keep Shira by her side or give her the chance to survive apart.
Inspired by the true stories of Jewish children hidden during World War II, Jennifer Rosner’s debut is a breathtaking novel about the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter.
Beautiful and riveting, The Yellow Bird Sings is a testament to the triumph of hope—a whispered story, a bird’s song—in even the darkest of times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jennifer Rosner is the author of If A Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard (2010), a memoir about raising her deaf daughters in a hearing, speaking world. Her children's book, The Mitten String (2014), is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable.
Jennifer's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Massachusetts Review, Forward, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts with her family. The Yellow Bird Sings (2020) is her debut novel and is being published around the world. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Satisfying and sweet…. Love, empathy and fear―as well as a yellow songbird―wind through this tale of an unbreakable bond between mother and child. The novel demonstrates Ms. Rosner’s deep understanding of the terrors of the Holocaust.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jennifer Rosner hooks readers from the onset…. Readers will have empathy for Roza and Shira, and admire Roza’s courage and persistence as she faces life without her daughter, releasing her to save her, like a bird freed from a cage.
Missourian
A study of music, imagination and the power of a mother’s love.
Parade
[M]oving if unsurprising…. Rosner switches between points of view to craft a wrenching chronicle of their separate journeys, though the conclusion suffers from schmaltz. This will offer few surprises to avid readers of Holocaust fiction.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Memoirist and award-winning children's author Rosner challenges the Holocaust with a touch of magic (the yellow bird appears throughout), clarifying a dangerous time and place even as she offers a vibrant, affecting portrait of the mother-daughter relationship.
Library Journal
This stunning debut novel sings with the power of a mother’s love and the heartbreaking risks she’ll endure.
Booklist
[A] Room-like twist, one that also deftly examines the ways in which art and imagination can sustain us…. [This] is impressive. A mother and her child-prodigy daughter struggle to survive the Holocaust by telling stories and remembering the power of music.
Kirkus Review
(Starred review) This stunning debut novel sings with the power of a mother’s love and the heartbreaking risks she’ll endure.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of Shira’s bird? How does it aid her? Do you think its original color, yellow, is important or telling? In what ways does the bird’s evolution mirror or not mirror Shira’s?
2. In the barn, Roza has to keep Shira—five years old and a musical prodigy—silent and still. What are her most effective strategies? Do you think she would have an easier time if Shira was younger or older?
3. When Roza asks Krystyna outright why she is helping them, Krystyna responds, "In God’s eyes your child is no different than mine. She deserves every chance to live. "What are Krystyna’s motivations for harboring Roza and Shira and, later, for arranging Shira’s transport to the convent? Do you think Krystyna knows of Henryk’s advances on Roza? If so, why doesn’t she send Roza and Shira away sooner?
4. How would you describe the relationship between Henryk and Roza? Does it change over time? From our twenty-first-century perspective, would we call it rape? Would Roza? Do you think she has any agency in their relationship? Is it still possible to think of Henryk’s decision to protect Roza and Shira, despite the risk, as heroic?
5. Judaism is fairly absent from the novel, despite it being the reason Roza’s and Shira’s lives are in danger. Why do you think that is the case? Why does Roza rarely reference her religion?
6. In the barn, Shira eats her own portion of food and whatever her mother saves for her. She also eats the special foods Krystyna gives her on outings. How does hunger, satiety, and the storing of food play out later, specifically with regard to her feelings of guilt?
7. In the convent, Zosia is permitted to speak but stays largely silent. As she grows more comfortable playing the violin, she comes to think of the sound as "safer even than silence." What does the author mean by that phrase? Discuss the importance of music in the novel. What can music express that words (or silence) can’t?
8. Although the nuns dye Zosia’s hair and teach her Catholicism, she still feels like an outsider. Discuss the various ways in which the girls, the nuns, and Pan Skrzypczak treat her otherness, and the forms of prejudice and kindness she encounters. Do you think they suspect that she is Jewish?
9. Discuss Roza’s relationship with the sisters, Miri and Chana, and Zosia’s relationship with Kasia at the convent. How is female friendship portrayed in this novel? How is it different from the relationship between mother and daughter?
10. At the camp in the woods, Roza is heartbroken to realize that other families remained intact: "Here are mothers, in the woods, in winter, who did not part from their children.They kept them with them and their children survived." Do you think she still made the right decision in sending Shira away? What would you have done in her place?
11. Roza cannot bear to hold Issi, a young child at the camp. Issi’s mother doesn’t understand, and the narrator explains, "What is whole does not comprehend what is torn until it, too, is in shreds." Do you agree that there is an inevitable limit to our empathy? Can novels like The Yellow Bird Sings expand our capacity to empathize? If so, how?
12. Over the course of the novel, Shira becomes Zosia and then Tzofia. What does she lose with each name change? In her author’s note, Jennifer Rosner rites of the hidden children who inspired her novel:
If you remember me, if there is anyone out there who recognizes me and can tell me about my family, my name, then I might discover my history, my roots: my self. For refugees of current wars and violence, children displaced and torn from their families, this question echoes on.
—Do you agree that Shira’s experiences continue to resonate today, with the global refugee crisis?
13. Why do you think Roza decides not to try to have more children once she moves to America? Do you think that was a selfish decision? Was it fair to Aron to keep it from him, or does she have the right to make that choice for herself?
14. What did you think of the novel’s ending? Do you believe that Shira and Roza will have a future together?
(Question issued by the publisher.)
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