Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier

 January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria’s death: Two families visit neighboring graves in a fashionable London cemetery. One is decorated with a sentimental angel, the other an elaborate urn. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions; the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. To their mutual distaste, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones. And worse, befriend the gravedigger’s son.

As the girls grow up and the new century finds its feet, as cars replace horses and electricity outshines gas lighting, Britain emerges from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values to a golden Edwardian summer. It is then that the beautiful, frustrated Mrs Coleman makes a bid for greater personal freedom, with disastrous consequences, and the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses are changed forever.

A poignant tale of two families brought reluctantly together, Falling Angels is an intimate story of childhood friendships, sexual awakening and human frailty. Yet its epic sweep takes in the changing of a nation, the fight for women’s suffrage and the questioning of steadfast beliefs.

Historical background, character lists and Reviews

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Chevalier alternates the narrative point of view to reveal the layered complexities of characters, events, and issues. Which character's perspectives were the most revealing? Which characters do you relate to the most? How does having so many characters affect how you perceive the story?
   
2. The turn of the century found England in a state of transition. How did the death of Queen Victoria signify a new era, a more modern climate? How do the conflicting opinions on death and mourning define the characters? In what ways do these differing attitudes indicate the social changes to come?
   
3. When the Waterhouses and Colemans first meet in the cemetery, what do the characters' first impressions of each other—and of the other family's grave ornament—expose about themselves?
   
4. How do the issues the female characters face differ with those women are facing now, a century later? What obstacles still exist? How might this story differ if it were set now?
   
5. While the entries from the male characters are concise and limited in number, these narratives reveal a good deal about their impressions of their wives, their neighbors, and other individuals and events. Discuss the various excerpts "penned" by Albert Waterhouse, Richard Coleman, and Simon Field. Which of these characters relates best to his female counterparts? Do they all view women in a similar way?
   
6. The peripheral characters of Jenny Whitby, Simon Field, and Dorothy Baker play key roles in several events. How do these individuals affect the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses?
   
7. The cemetery is a curious place to set a novel. On the one hand, it mirrors the outside world, with rigid rules of conduct that mourners are expected to follow. On the other hand, both children and adults experience a degree of freedom there. How does the making and breaking of rules there reflect on and affect the characters?
   
8. Lavinia, Simon, and Maude appear to represent the past, present, and future respectively. Does this change at all throughout the novel? Do they learn from each other?
   
9. What is Ivy May Waterhouse's role in the book? Why does she meet such a fate?
   
10. They say and Englishman's home is his castle. How do Kitty's and Gertrude's houses reflect their characters and class differences?
    
11. Does this book have a heroine? If so, who is it?
    
12. None of the characters is perfect—all have their flaws and irritations. Does this help or hinder the narrative?    -penguingroup.com

2013 Proposed Reading List

Proposed Reading List – 2013
Sugg. by       Book                                 Author                         Rating
1    CM    A Grown Up Kind of Pretty    Joshilyn Jackson         4.25
2    LR     And Ladies of the Club    Helen Hooven Santmyer    4.25
3    CM    Arcadia    Lauren Groff                                               4
4    CM    Beautiful Ruins:  A Novel    Jess Walter                     4
5    LR    Captains and the Kings    Taylor Caldwell                   5
6    SL    Catherine the Great:  Portrait of a Woman    Robert K. Massie    4.25
7    JA    Dear Life    Alice Munro   
8    LR    Empire Falls    Richard Russo                                      4
9    JA    Flight Behavior    Barbara Kingsolver                          4.25
10  AR    Franny and Zooey    J. D. Salinger                              4
11  CM   Garden of Evening Mists    Tan Twan Eng                 4.25
12  CM  Gone Girl    Gillian Flynn                                           3.25
13  SL  Half the Sky:Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women 
             Sheryl WuDunn, Nicholas D. Kristof                           5
14    SB  House Rules    Jodi Picoult                                         3.5
15    SB    Killing Lincoln    Bill O’Reilly                                 3.5
16    JA    La Seduction    Elaine Sciolino                                  4
17    SL    Learning to Swim    Sara J. Henry                             4
18    LG    Maude Brown’s Baby    Richard Cunningham         5
19    LF    Peace Like a River    Leif Enger                                4.3
20    AR    Player Piano    Kurt Vonnegut                                  4
21    SB    Rainwater    Sandra Brown                                       4.25
22    SB    Savannah Blues    Mary Kay Andrews                     4.25
23    SB    South of Broad    Pat Conroy                                    3.25
24    SL    State of Wonder    Ann Patchett                                3.25
25    SL    Sweet Tooth    Ian McEwan                                      4
26    LF    The Almond Picker    Simonetta Agnello Hornby    4.4
27    SB    The Boy Who Became Mark Twain  Harold Holbrook    4
28    SL    The Casual Vacancy    J. K. Rowling                        3
29    SB    The Choice    Nicholas Sparks                                  4
30    LG    The Diary of Mattie Spenser    Sandra Dallas          4.25
31    LR    The Far Pavilions    M.M. Kaye                                5
32    LG    The Good Dream    Donna VanLiere                        5
33    LG    The Kitchen House    Kathleen Grissom                  4.5
34    LG, LR    The Language of Flowers    Vanessa Diffenbaugh    4.5
35    LG, SL    The Light Between Oceans    M. L. Stedman    4.25
36    AR    The Metamorphosis    Frank Kafka                          4
37    JA    The Prizefighter and the Playwright    Jay R. Tunney & Christopher Newton    4.25
38    LR    The School of Essential Ingredients    Erica Bauermeister    4.25
39    CM    The Secret Keeper    Kate Morton                           4.25
40    LF    The Space Between Us    Thrity Umrigar                 4.3
41    JA    The Stockholm Octavo    Karen Engelmann             4.25
42    JA    The Swerve    Stephen Greenblatt                             4
43    LF    Time of My Life    Allison Winn Scotch                  4
44    LR    Watership Down    Richard Adams                          4.25
45    LF     When We Were the Kennedys    Monica Wood      4.7

Soul Catcher

by Michael White

In the tradition of Cold Mountain and Widow of The South comes an epic novel of love, freedom and a country on the brink of war.

Cain is a scarred, but proud man haunted by a terrible skill--the ability to track people who don't want to be found.

Rosetta is a runaway slave fueled by the passion and determination only a mother can feel. And she will risk everything for the promise of freedom.

In the perilous years before the Civil War, their fates will intertwine in an extraordinary adventure--one of hardship and redemption that will take them from Virginia to Boston and back. it is an odyssey that will change them forever.


For book club discussion topics:
B&N Community Discussion Board  
Discussion of Soul Catcher

The Cat's Table

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

In the early 1950s, an 11-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: One man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator’s elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself “with a distant eye” for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another cat’s table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.

As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy’s adult years, it tells a spellbinding story—by turns poignant and electrifying—about the magical, often forbidden discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage. -Amazon

NY Times book review

NPR Interview

Michael Ondaatje's Facebook Page 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (L'élégance du hérisson)

by Muriel Barbery

Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society's expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this facade lies the real Renee: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renee lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever. By turn moving and hilarious, this unusual novel became the top-selling book in France in 2007 with sales of over 900,000 copies to-date.
-Amazon

Reading Group Guide (pdf)

NY Times book review

List of Characters (from Wikipedia)

Renée Michel
A spiky haired hedgehog sits in the grass, facing the camera.
Paloma refers to Renée as having the elegance of the hedgehog.

Renée Michel is a 54-year-old widowed concierge. She has never been to college because she considers herself to always have been poor, discreet, and of no significance. Renée, however is self-taught; she reads works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (and even names her cat "Leo"), disdains the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, adores 17th-century Dutch paintings, likes Japanese art-house films by Yasujirō Ozu, and listens to the music of composers Henry Purcell and Gustav Mahler.

Renée, who conceals her true self to conform to the lowly image of typical concierges, introduces herself as "a widow, short, ugly, chubby", with "bunions on my feet and, on certain difficult mornings, it seems, the breath of a mammoth". Her outward appearance is summarized by The Guardian reviewer Ian Samson as "prickly and bunioned". When Paloma eventually discovers Renée's identity, she describes the latter in her journal as having the "elegance of the hedgehog"—although like the spines of the hedgehog, she is covered in quills and prickly, within, she has in the words of the English translation of the book quoted by Viv Groskop "the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary—and terribly elegant". -Paloma Josse

Paloma Josse, an advanced twelve-year-old, belongs to one of the conventional families living in the posh apartment building where Renée works. Daughter of an important parliamentarian father (a former government minister), and a Flaubert-quoting mother, Paloma has a penchant for absurdism. She regards her sister's scholarship as "cold and trivial" and deems her mother's culture as conventional and useless.[9] Paloma herself values Japanese works, and reads manga, haiku, and tanka. She keeps two diaries, one called "Journal of the Movement of the World" to record her observations of the world around her, and the other called "Profound Thoughts" to record her many and wide-ranging reflections on art, poetry, people, etc. She has a sadistic mind almost, and is always criticizing people, including her own family.
Minor characters

Other characters developed by Barbery in the novel include Kakuro Ozu, the cultured Japanese businessman, and Manuela, a Portuguese cleaner. Ozu, a tenant, shares Paloma's fascination with Renée's masked intelligence and brings her out of her shell (and also happens to set the entire book in forward motion), while Manuela is responsible for cleaning the apartments' toilets and is Renée's only real friend.

Best first lines from new novels

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/The-Best-First-Lines-from-New-Novels

This is a great peek into new novels

City of Thieves

by David Benioff

As wise and funny as it is thrilling and original - the story of two young men on an impossible adventure. A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won't talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds. Lev Beniov considers himself built for deprivation. He's small, smart, and insecure, a Jewish virgin too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter with friends from his building. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible. A search that takes them through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and the devastated surrounding countryside creates an unlikely bond between this earnest, lust-filled teenager and an endearing lothario with the gifts of a conman. Set within the monumental events of history, City of Thieves is an intimate coming-of-age tale with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

List of Characters

Lev Abramovich Beniov: Lev is a Jewish teenager living alone in Leningrad with his peers. He feels insecure about himself sometimes, but is also a brave, streetsmart, and intelligent youth. The story is read from his perspective. Being a teenage boy his thoughts aren't always the purest, but he has good intentions and a kind heart.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Vlasov: Companion of Lev's, "Kolya" is a soldier charged with desertion.
Markov: One of the partisans in Vika's and Korsakov's group.
Olesya: A girl with pigtails, living with Nina, Lara and Galina, but who never speaks.
Lara: Half Spanish-Russian (though she looks Chechen) girl who lives with Nina and Galina, all who are reserved for the German invaders' pleasure.
Galina: One of two sisters that Lev and Kolya encounter on their circuitous trek to Mga. After realizing they were going the wrong way, they seek shelter from Nina and Galina. Young and brunette.
Nina: One of two sisters that Lev and Kolya encounter on their circuitous trek to Mga. After realizing they were going the wrong way, they seek shelter from Nina and Galina.
Vika: Vika is a young tom-boyish girl working with a group of partisans fighting Germans. She hides her identity by posing as a man. She learned to shoot from her father and is an incredible marksman. Very cynical most of the time, she has a rough exterior. She seems very guarded, but is also one of the braver characters.
Pavil: Ferret-faced young man friend of Sonya's
Timofei: Leningrad surgeon who occasionally sleeps at Sonya's home with other physicians and nurses not on shift at local hospital.
Vera Osipovna: A talented cellist who is Lev's neighbor at the Kirov
Sonya Ivanovna: Kolya's friend and occasional lover.
Korsakov: The leader of the partisan group; rough, smart and penetrating. He seems often suspicious of other characters but maintains a strong leader role to the other partisans.
General Abendroth: The intimidating and all-powerful German general who challenges Lev to a game of chess. He is the only German in the story the reader becomes really acquainted with. He fully encompasses the characteristics of Nazis as we think of them; prejudiced, rude, cruel and scary.

Setting

St. Petersburg, 1942 (Russian Federation)

Quotes

    “There is a place beyond hunger, beyond fatigue, where time no longer seems to move and the body's misery no longer seems fully your own.”-Lev Beniov

    “Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.”-David Benioff

Readers Guides

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/city_of_thieves.html
http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/202-city-of-thieves-benioff?start=3

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

 Who, you might ask, is Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) and why is she the subject of a book? On the surface, this short-lived African American Virginian seems an unlikely candidate for immortality. The most remarkable thing about her, some might argue, is that she had ten children during her thirty-one years on earth. Actually, we all owe Ms. Lacks a great debt and some of us owe her our lives. As Rebecca Skloot tells us in this riveting human story, Henrietta was the involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumors that have been cultured to create an immortal cell line for medical research. These so-called HeLa cells have not only generated billions of dollars for the medical industry; they have helped uncover secrets of cancers, viruses, fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. A vivid, exciting story; a 2010 Discover Great New Books finalist; a surprise bestseller in hardcover. -Barnes & Noble

Go here for Discussion Questions, Timeline, Cast of Characters, Complete reader’s guide

HeLa

John Hopkins University Article

Character list

Immediate Lacks Family
David “Day” Lacks—Henrietta’s husband and cousin
David Jr. “Sonny” Lacks—Henrietta and Day’s third child
Deborah “Dale” Lacks—Henrietta and Day’s fourth child
Eliza Lacks Pleasant—Henrietta’s mother. She died when Henrietta was four.
Elsie Lacks (born Lucille Elsie Pleasant)— Henrietta’s second born and eldest daughter. She was institutionalized
due to epilepsy and died at age fifteen.
Gladys Lacks—Henrietta’s sister, who disapproved of Henrietta’s marriage to Day
Johnny Pleasant—Henrietta’s father. He left his ten children when their mother died.
Lawrence Lacks—Henrietta and Day’s firstborn child
Loretta Pleasant—Henrietta’s birth name
Tommy Lacks—Henrietta and Day’s grandfather who raised both of them
Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman (born Joe Lacks)— Henrietta and Day’s fifth child. Henrietta was diagnosed with
cervical cancer shortly after his birth.
Extended Lacks Family
Albert Lacks— Henrietta’s white great-grandfather. He had five children by a former slave named Maria and left
part of the Lacks plantation to them. This section became known as “Lacks Town.”
Alfred “Cheetah” Carter—Deborah’s first husband. The marriage was abusive and ended in divorce.
Alfred Jr.—Deborah and Cheetah’s firstborn child and Little Alfred’s father
Bobette Lacks— Lawrence’s wife. She helped raise Lawrence’s siblings after Henrietta’s death and advocated
for them when she discovered they were being abused.

The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.
But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.
Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather’s final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. On their weekly trips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with “the deathless man,” a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. “These stories,” Natalia comes to understand, “run like secret rivers through all the other stories” of her grandfather’s life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.

Reader's Guide (from Random House)

Characters
    Mother Vera: Natalia's great-grandmother.
    Barba Ivan: Father of the priest caring for the orphans in Brejevina whom Natalia and Zora stay     with.
    Dari: Leader of the family digging in Barba's vineyard.
    Natalia: Doctor, granddaughter, teller of the story somewhat.
    Shere Khan: Tiger in "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling. Also the name given to the tiger near Galina by Natalia's grandfather.
    Nada: Wife of Barba and mother of the priest caring for the orphans.
    Grandfather: Natalia's grandfather
    Dariša: Darisa the Bear, hunter, taxidermist, tries to help the village by trapping and killing the tiger but is unsuccessful.
    Grandmother: Natalia's grandmother
    Marko Parovi: Last living member of Natalia's grandfathers village who remembers the tiger incident.
    Hassan Effendi: Father of Alanna and the tiger's wife
    Dominic
    Bako: Nickname or name for Natalia's grandmother.
    Mr. Bogdan: Taxidermist who trains Darisa the Bear.
    Duré
    Zóra: Natalia's friend since childhood who is also a doctor
    Mowgli: Main character in "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling.
    Fra Antun: The priest taking care of the orphans in Brejevina.
    Fedrizzi: The Magnificent Fedrizzi!! The skull of which is purchased by Natalia and Zora for the medical classes.
    Blind Orlo: A hustler and a scammer who taught the apothocary how to read people.
    Zdrevkov: Village where Natalia's grandfather dies.
    Gavran Gailé: Someone in Natalia's grandfather's past.
    The Apothecary: From her grandfather's village, one of few who he actually liked to be around and probably influenced him to become a doctor.
     Luka: The butcher of Galina who beats his deaf-mute wife.

A Two Book Month

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox 
 by Maggie O’Farrell

 In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—where she has been locked away for more than sixty-one years.
A gothic, intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox will haunt you long past its final page.

 Discussion guide

and

The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch, with Jeffrey Zaslow

On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

Watch the lecture that inspired the book.

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

—Randy Pausch

 http://www.thelastlecture.com/

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall

If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close.

With these words Edgar Mint, half-Apache and mostly orphaned, makes his unshakable claim on our attention. In the course of Brady Udall’s high-spirited, inexhaustibly inventive novel, Edgar survives not just this bizarre accident, but a hellish boarding school for Native American orphans, a well-meaning but wildly dysfunctional Mormon foster-family, and the loss of most of the illusions that are supposed to make life bearable.

- Barnesandnoble.com

Brady Udall: The Powells.com Interview

Discussion Questions

• Edgar: Main protagonist.
• Barry Pinkley: Doctor who saves Edgar's life and then obsessively follows him throughout his life
• Nelson Norman: Sadistic bully at the Willie Sherman School.
• Lana
• Cecil: Edgar's best friend at school, fellow victim of the bullies, wise child.
• Jeffrey
• Rosa
• Grandma Paul
• Arnold
• Willie Sherman

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to the internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other could be kept. Now, forty years alter, Henry explores the hotel's basement doe the Okabe family's belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifice he has made for family, for love, for country.
- Shelfari

*Meeting  Discussion Questions*

List of Characters:

• Henry Lee: main character through which the story is told. He is an American of chinese descent, trying to fit in.
• Keiko Okabe: Main character - Female, second generation American, of Japanese descent.
• Sheldon: Henry's lifelong friend - a sax player with his own struggles, both with being African-American in the '40s and with breaking into the professional jazz scene in Seattle.
• Marty Lee: Henry's son.
• Chaz Preston: Neighborhood bully at Rainier Elementary.
• Mrs. Beatty: School lunchroom lady
• Samantha: Marty's fiancee
• Mr.Lee: Henry's father who is stubborn and strict Chinese nationalist
• Mrs Lee: Henry's mother who is kind and forgiving to Henry's ways, but bound to her husband's dictates by tradition.
• Ethel Lee, neé Chen: Henry's late wife; who died of lung cancer.

Next Meeting March 7th

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart. -B&N

Reading Group Guide from Oprah's Book Club