National Reading Group Month, October 11, 2014

Books, Inc., Opera Plaza 601 Van Ness Ave., SF 94107

Come meet this year’s award-winning mystery authors as they discuss their new novels over wine and snacks catered by Max’s Opera Cafe. Giveaway raffle of all books presented. Moderated by Tracy Guzeman.

Co-sponsored by Women’s National Book Association,
San Francisco Chapter & LITQUAKE

Katie Crouch, Abroad: A Novel

The New York Times bestselling author Katie Crouch (Girls in Trucks) explores the delights and dangers of studying overseas in the gripping literary thriller Abroad. Inspired by the horrifying details of the Amanda

Katie Crouch

Knox trial, Crouch imagines the sinister situations a young woman far from home can fall victim to while discovering her new intoxicating independence. Not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have we been treated to such an addictive tale of tumultuous adolescence.

The city of Grifonia, Italy, is swarming with secrets—thousands of years of grim, murderous secrets. Taz, an Irish student who has just arrived for her year abroad, thinks that she will spend her time in Italy sipping wine and taking in the rolling Umbrian hills. But she soon falls in with a cabal of posh, reckless girls—the B4—who turn her quaint fantasies into an erotic and perilous rush through the darkest realms of friendship and love.

Alice LaPlante

Alice LaPlante, Circle of Wives: A Novel


When Dr. John Taylor is found dead in a hotel room in his own hometown, the local police find enough incriminating evidence to suspect foul play. Detective Samantha Adams, whose posh Palo Alto beat usually covers small-town crimes, is thrown into a high-profile murder case that is more intricately intertwined than ever imagined. A renowned plastic surgeon, a respected family man, and an active community spokesman, Dr. Taylor was well loved and admired. But he led a secret life—in fact, multiple lives. Dr. Taylor was married to three very different women in three separate cities, and when these three unsuspecting women show up at his funeral, suspicions run high. Detective Adams soon finds herself tracking down a murderer through a deceitful web of lies, marital discord, and broken dreams.

A CIRCLE OF WIVES is a thought-provoking tale of love and marriage in all its incarnations. LaPlante presents four colorful, sympathetic female protagonists: Samantha, the edgy trainee detective both intimidated and exhilarated by her first big case; Deborah, Dr. Taylor’s icy high-society first wife, obsessed with keeping up appearances; MJ, the second wife, an earth-mother, hippie accountant with a passion for gardening and a troubled past; and Helen, an ambitious pediatric oncologist, who married Dr. Taylor just six months before his mysterious death.

Spphie Littlefield

Sophie Littlefield, The Missing Place: A Novel

Set against the backdrop of North Dakota’s oil boom, this darker take on women’s fiction follows two very different mothers as they form an uneasy alliance to find their missing sons who have vanished from an oil rig. Despite reassurances that the police are on the case, the two women suspect the oil company is covering up the disappearances.

Overtaxed by worry, exhaustion, and fear, the unlikely pair—Colleen, a wealthy wife from a Massachusetts suburb and Shay, a hard-bitten single mother from California—question each other’s methods and motivations, but must work together against the town of strangers if they have any hope of finding their lost boys.

Inspired by a People magazine article about the real-life migration of unemployed men looking for work in the booming oil business of North Dakota, Sophie Littlefield captures the loneliness of the men who leave behind their families to work in unsafe conditions, and the heartbreak of those family members left in the wake.  Sure to please fans of Sandra Brown and Gillian Flynn, THE MISSING PLACE is a moving chronicle of survival, determination, and powerful bonds forged in the face of adversity.  

Tracy Guzeman

Moderator: Tracy Guzeman, The Gravity of Birds: A Novel


Sisters Natalie and Alice Kessler were close, until adolescence wrenched them apart. Natalie is headstrong, manipulative—and beautiful; Alice is a dreamer who loves books and birds. During their family’s summer holiday at the lake, Alice falls under the thrall of a struggling young painter, Thomas Bayber, in whom she finds a kindred spirit. Natalie, however, remains strangely unmoved, sitting for a family portrait with surprising indifference. But by the end of the summer, three lives are shattered.

Decades later, Bayber, now a reclusive, world-renowned artist, unveils a never-before-seen work, Kessler Sisters—a provocative painting depicting the young Thomas, Natalie, and Alice. Bayber asks Dennis Finch, an art history professor, and Stephen Jameson, an eccentric young art authenticator, to sell the painting for him. That task becomes more complicated when the artist requires that they first locate Natalie and Alice, who seem to have vanished. And Finch finds himself wondering why Thomas is suddenly so intent on resurrecting the past.

Hosted by Books, Inc., Opera Plaza

Silver Sponsors/Premier Sponsors 

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Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction & Nonfiction 

Reading Group Choices — Selections for lively book discussion

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