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Beauty Tips from Alexander McCall Smith’s The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon
In this excerpt from The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, while enjoying Mma Soleti’s ministrations and learning about skin care, Mma Ramotswe reflects on the workings of outer—and inner—beauty.
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Discover New Reads With The 2014 Reading Group Planner
Our 2014 Reading Group Planner will inspire a lively discussion among diverse groups of readers! Chock-full of content, it is a resource that will allow you to organize your book club meetings, discover new reads, and enrich your understanding of the books.
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Sarah Bird on Researching Above the East China Sea
Setting Above the East China Sea on the island of Okinawa meant that author Sarah Bird had to carry out a great deal of research. In this exclusive essay for the Reading Group Center, she recalls an entertaining story about one of the ways in which she familiarized herself with the local culture of the Ryūkyū Islands.
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J. Courtney Sullivan on Love and Marriage in The Engagements
In this essay exclusive to the Reading Group Center, J. Courtney Sullivan talks about how interweaving the four couples’ storylines in The Engagements allowed her to tell a more complex tale about what is means to find—and keep—“the one.”
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Recipe by the Book: Granny’s Irish Soda Bread
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Instructions for a Heatwave, about an Irish family at a crossroads in 1976 England, opens with a scene of quiet, comforting routine. O’Farrell’s main character, Gretta, sets out to bake soda bread—a recipe for which the author has shared with us today.
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The Lure of the Sea: Real-Life Inspiration for The Rathbones’ Unique Setting
A beautifully spun tale of haunted family history and high-seas adventure, The Rathbones starts off at the shores of Naiwayonk, Connecticut. In this exclusive essay for the Reading Group Center, Janice Clark talks about the real-life basis for the book’s unique setting.
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Dave Eggers’s The Circle Is a Critical Hit
That reviewers have raved about Dave Eggers’s latest bestselling novel The Circle, new in paperback from Vintage, comes as no surprise. Eggers’s tale about a Big Brother–like Internet giant is a timely reminder of the threat technology poses to individual privacy and society as a whole.
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Recipe by the Book: Kate Christensen’s Spinach Pie
After six novels and a PEN/Faulkner Award, writer Kate Christensen has turned to memoir in Blue Plate Special—a poignant, food-centric account of her life story. “To taste fully is to live fully,” she writes in the prologue.
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Armchair Adventurer: Visit the Tuscany of Chris Bohjalian’s The Light in the Ruins
We are thrilled that Chris Bohjalian has shared a personal note about what inspired his spellbinding novel, The Light in the Ruins. Read on to delve into the historical background of the book and learn more about Tuscany during World War II.
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Recipe by the Book: Olive Oil Bundt Cake
Mona Simpson, the award-winning author of My Hollywood, is back with a beguiling new novel about a boy working to uncover the mysteries of his unraveling family.
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