Kristin Hannah is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale, Winter Garden, Night Road, and Firefly Lane. Her novel, The Nightingale, has been published in 43 languages and is currently in movie production at TriStar Pictures, which also optioned her novel, The Great Alone. Her novel, Home Front has been optioned for film by 1492 Films (produced the Oscar-nominated The Help) with Chris Columbus attached to direct. Kristin is a former-lawyer-turned writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Her novel, Firefly Lane, became a runaway bestseller in 2009, a touchstone novel that brought women together, and The Nightingale, in 2015 was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, iTunes, Library Journal, Paste, The Wall Street Journal and The Week. Additionally, the novel won the coveted Goodreads and People’s Choice Awards. The audiobook of The Nightingale won the Audiobook of the Year Award in the fiction category. (https://kristinhannah.com/about-kristin-bio/) The Netflix Original Series Firefly Lane (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9012876/) began airing on February 3, 2021.
Monthly Book Selections
Leigh Bardugo was born in Jerusalem, raised in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. She lives in Hollywood and indulges her fondness for glamour, ghouls, and costuming in her other life as makeup artist L.B. Benson. (https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/leigh-bardugo/) Netflix has adapted the book for a new original series, which begins airing on April 23, 2021. See https://www.netflix.com/title/80236319 for more details.
Shadow and Bone by ISBN: 9781250027436Publication Date: 2013-05-07Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to become the protege of the mysterious Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold.
Firefly Lane by ISBN: 9780312364083Publication Date: 2008-02-05In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the 8th 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 Tully and Kate. Inseparable. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, this is a poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. 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.
Born in London, England to Jamaican parents, Andrea Levy (1956-2019) was the author of Small Island, winner of the Whitbread Award (now Costa Award), the Orange Prize for Fiction (now Women’s Prize for Fiction), and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The BBC Masterpiece Classic television adaptation of her novel won an International Emmy for best TV movie/miniseries. (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312571146) The Long Song by Andrea Levy is the source for the new PBS adaptation airing January 31, 2021, through February 14, 2021: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/long-song/
The Long Song by ISBN: 9780374192174Publication Date: 2010-04-27The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until a recently transplanted English widow decides to move her into the great house and rename her. She remains bound to the plantation despite her "freedom." The arrival of a young English overseer dramatically changes life in the great house.
January's selection is All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott. The new miniseries adaptation began Jan. 10, 2021, on PBS and runs through February 21st: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/all-creatures-great-and-small/
All Creatures Great and Small by ISBN: 9780312330859Publication Date: 2004-08-01Dr. Herriot lovingly recounts his encounters with all manner of house pets and livestock, as well as their often eccentric owners.
