Big Little Lies

Host: Christa
Book: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Meeting Date: May 23, 2015
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: Lisa's (Lodi)

Synopsis:

Sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. . . .

A murder… . . . a tragic accident… . . . or just parents behaving badly?
What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.  

But who did what?
 

Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
 

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Host: Vanessa
Book: Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Meeting Date: August 24, 2014
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Mary's (San Ramon)

Synopsis:
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle – and people in general – has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence – creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a daughter’s unflinching love for her imperfect mother.

The Husband's Secret

Host: Melissa
Book: The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
Meeting Date: February 23, 2014
Time: 1:30 PM
Location: Lisa's (Sacramento)

Synopsis: My Darling Cecilia If you're reading this, then I've died . . .
Imagine your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret - something so terrible it would destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others too. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive . . .Cecilia Fitzpatrick achieved it all - she's an incredibly successful business woman, a pillar of her small community and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia - or each other - but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband's devastating secret

The Selection

Host: Lisa Noma
Book: The Selection by Kiera Cass
Meeting Date: February 23, 2014
Time: 1:30 PM
Location: Lisa's (Sacramento)

Synopsis: For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon. But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn't want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks. Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she's made for herself—and realizes that the life she's always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.

Garden of Stones

Host: Janet
Book: Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield
Meeting Date: November 2, 2013
Time: 11:15 AM
Location: Macchia Winery

Synopsis: In the dark days of war, a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice. Lucy Takeda is just fourteen years old, living in Los Angeles, when the bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor. Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up—along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans—and taken to the Manzanar prison camp. Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever...and spur her to sins of her own. Garden Of Stones is a harrowing tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Host: Lisa Leggett
Book: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Meeting Date: August 11
Time: TBD
Location: TBD

Synopsis
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.

As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here - one of whom was his own grandfather - were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason.

And somehow - impossible though it seems - they may still be alive

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Host: Jenny Penner
Book: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Meeting Date: TBD
Time: TBD
Location: TBD

Synopsis:
Henry Lee is a 12-year-old Chinese boy who falls in love with Keiko Okabe, a 12-year-old Japanese girl, while they are scholarship students at a prestigious private school in World War II Seattle. Henry hides the relationship from his parents, who would disown him if they knew he had a Japanese friend. His father insists that Henry wear an "I am Chinese" button everywhere he goes because Japanese residents of Seattle have begun to be shipped off by the thousands to relocation centers. This is an old-fashioned historical novel that alternates between the early 1940s and 1984, after Henry's wife Ethel has died of cancer.

Firefly Lane

Host: Kristin Kennard
Book: Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
Meeting Date: October 31, 2009
Meeting Time: 10:00 AM
Location: Kristin's (Walnut Creek)

Synopsis:
In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.

From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success… and loneliness.

Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend…

For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart…and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

7 out of 11 members voted.
71% gave this book 4 Stars
28% gave this book 3 Stars

The Pillars of the Earth

Host: Christa Williams
Book: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Meeting Date: Retreat (January 30, 2009)
Metting Time: TBD
Meeting Location: Noma's Vacation Home-Tortuga(Pioneer, CA)

Synopsis
Set in 12th-century England, the narrative concerns the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. The ambitions of three men merge, conflict and collide through 40 years of social and political upheaval as internal church politics affect the progress of the cathedral and the fortunes of the protagonists.

RATINGS:
6 out of 11 members voted.
16% gave this book 5 stars
50% gave this book 4 stars
33% gave this book 3 stars

Spellman Files

Host: Darla Sorsensen
Book: The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
Meeting Date: Saturday, Sept 27, 2008
Metting Time: 10:30 AM
Meeting Location: TBD

Synopsis
Meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors -- but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.

RATINGS:
6 out of 11 members voted.
50% gave this book 5 stars
50% gave this book 4 stars
16% gave this book 3 stars

Kabul Beauty School

Host: Janet Noma
Book: Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
Meeting Date: Sunday, March 16, 2008
Metting Time: 11:30 AM
Meeting Location: Janet's (Lodi)

Synopsis
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born.

With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup.

Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style.

RATINGS:
5 out of 11 members voted.
40% gave this book 4 stars
40% gave this book 3 stars
20% gave this book 2 stars

Eating Heaven

Host: Jenny Penner
Book:Eating Heaven by Jennie Shortridge
Meeting Date: February 2, 2008
Meeting Time: TBD
Meeting Location: Angel's Camp, CA

Synopsis
Nothing gets Eleanor Samuels's heart racing like a double scoop of mocha fudge chunk. Sure, the magazine writer may have some issues aside from food, but she isn't quite ready to face them. Then her beloved Uncle Benny falls ill, and what at first seems scary and daunting becomes a blessing in disguise. Because while she cooks and cares for him-and enjoys a delicious flirtation with a new chef in town-Eleanor begins to uncover some long-buried secrets about her emotionally frayed family and may finally get the chance to become the woman she's always wanted to be.

RATINGS:
7 out of 11 members voted.
14% gave this book 5 stars
57% gave this book 4 stars
28% gave this book 3 stars

Plain Truth

Host: Mary Kennard
Book: Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
Meeting Date: September 1, 2007
Location: Mary's (San Ramon)

Synopsis
Paradise, Pennsylvania, is a jewel in Lancaster County. There, a dead infant is found in the barn of an Amish farmer. Philadelphia defense attorney Ellie Hathaway finds herself caught in a clash of wills with her client, an unmarried Amish teenager, Katie Fisher.

RATINGS:
7 out of 11 members voted.
14% gave this book 5 stars
71% gave this book 4 stars
14% gave this book 3 stars

Fingersmith

Host: Melissa Williams
Book: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Meeting Date: April 28, 2007
Location: Darla's (Elk Grove)

Synopsis
In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a country estate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalf of a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.

RATINGS:
5 out of 11 members voted.
20% gave this book 5 stars
60% gave this book 4 stars
20% gave this book 3 stars