religion

Around the Bend
Galore by Michael Crummey

Around the Bend is an On the Bookcase Feature bringing attention to upcoming reading group-appropriate titles.

Publisher Summary

When a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon.

Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine’s Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud.

Around the Bend
Prophecy by S. J. Parris

Around the Bend is an On the Bookcase Feature bringing attention to upcoming reading group-appropriate titles.

Man Booker Prize Part Six
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

'He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one…’ Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they’ve never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czech always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results.

Author On the Bookcase
Laura Morowitz

I'm thrilled to speak to Laura Morowitz, co-author with Laurie Lico Albanese, of The Miracles of Prato. Art in a book -- love these historical novels centered around real-live artists and their lifes! It helps me learn about past artists and the history and politics that surrounded them.

The Miracles of Prato brings to life glorious Italy in the era of the Medici —as it tells the story of an illicit love affair between the renowned painter Fra Filippo Lippi and his muse, a beautiful convent novitiate named Lucrezia Buti. Lippi, the chaplain for Convent Santa Margherita sees in Lucrezia's flawless face inspiration for countless Madonnas and he brings the her to his studio to serve as his model.