April 2009 Book Clubs Schedule [ Edited ]

[Maria_H]

The April 2009 Book Clubs Schedule
March 30 to May 1

Talk about Books & Authors

Center Stage

Maeve Binchy -- March 30 to April 3
Maeve Binchy joins us this week to talk about Heart and Soul. See all Maeve Binchy titles.

Cecelia Ahern -- April 6 to 10
Cecelia Ahern joins us this week for a discussion of her latest charmer, Thanks for the Memories. See all Cecelia Ahern titles.

Kate Morton -- April 13 to 17
First Look favorite, Kate Morton, talks to us about her latest novel, The Forgotten Garden. See all Kate Morton titles.

David Baldacci -- April 20 to 24
David Baldacci offers an unstoppable thriller with his latest, First Family. He joins the conversation this week. See all David Baldacci titles.

Jane Hamilton -- April 27 to May 1
Jane Hamilton joins us this week to talk about the humorous, Laura Rider's Masterpiece. See all Jane Hamilton titles.

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New Reads: The Piano Teacher with the author, Janice Y. K. Lee.

Exotic Hong Kong takes center stage in this sumptuous novel, set in the 1940s and '50s. It's a city teeming with people, sights, sounds, and smells, and it's home to a group of foreign nationals who enjoy the good life among the local moneyed set, in a tight-knit social enclave distanced from the culture at large. Comfortable, clever, and even a bit dazzling, they revel in their fancy dinners and fun parties. But their sheltered lives take an abrupt turn after the Japanese occupation, and though their reactions are varied -- denial, resistance, submission -- the toll it takes on all is soon laid bare. Enter Claire Pendleton from London. Months after her husband is transferred to Hong Kong in 1951, she accepts a position as a piano teacher to the daughter of a wealthy couple, the Chens. Claire begins to see the appeal of the sweltering city and is soon taken in by the Chen's driver, the curiously underutilized Will Truesdale. A handsome charmer with a mysterious limp, Will appears to be the perfect companion for Claire, who's often left to her own devices. But a further examination leaves her with more questions than answers.

First Look: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane with the author, Katherine Howe.

Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key secreted within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest to find out who this woman was, and to unearth a rare colonial artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge of herbs and other, stranger things. As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.

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Talk about Genres & Ideas

The Classics book club partners with Masterpiece Classic on PBS to read Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens.
Erin Delaney, Senior Post Production Director at Masterpiece! joins the discussion for the week of March 30th. And for the week of April 20th, screenwriter extraordinaire, Andrew Davies will take your questions.

The Crime book club reads House Dick by E. Howard Hunt and At the City's Edge by Marcus Sakey.

The Current Events book club reads Panic!: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity and Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis.

The Epics book club continues with Dante's The Inferno.

The Fantasy & Science Fiction reads The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling; as well as One Second After by William R. Forstchen and The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin.

The Fiction book club reads Very Valentine. The author, Adriana Trigiani, will join the discussion.

The Gardening book club plays with Lost Crafts by Editors of Chambers and toughs it out with Durable Plants for the Garden by Plant Select.

The Literature by Women book club reads Emma by Jane Austen.

The Mystery book club welcomes Rosemary Harris as she joins the converation about her latest book The Big Dirt Nap. The club will also read The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.

The Paranormal book club welcomes J.F. Lewis, the author of ReVamped and Jaye Wells, the author of Red-Headed Stepchild.

The Romantic Reads book club welcomes Shana Abe, the author of Treasure Keeper.

The Shakespeare book club reads Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare.

And be sure to visit Ande's Book Explorers board and Ilana's Literature and Life board for regular posts about the reading life.

Message Edited by Maria_H on 03-12-2009 11:00 AM