Exhilarating, addictive, and superbly accomplished, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything crackles with energy and intelligence and marks the debut of a knowing and very funny novelist, wise beyond her years. It’s our hope that this guide will help spark a lively conversation that will continue long after you’ve turned the last page.

Read a review at Salon.com and visit Janelle Brown’s website.

1. Discuss the epigraph by J. M. Barrie and its meaning in the novel. How are the notions of failure, success, and personal fulfillment examined in the book and are they complicated by the expectations of family, culture, and society?
2. This novel is centered on three very different women. Explore the concepts of femininity and feminism in the novel and the ways in which Janice, Margaret, and Lizzie reinforce and challenge those models.

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Filled with evocative descriptions of Cambridge, past and present, of seventeenth-century glassmaking, alchemy, the Great Plague, and Newton’s scientific innovations, Ghostwalk centers on a real historical mystery that Rebecca Stott has uncovered, involving Newton’s alchemy. A riveting literary thriller, Ghostwalk is a rare debut that will change the way most of us think about scientific innovation, our perception of time, and the force of history.

1. Before her death, Elizabeth tells Lydia, “Cambridge is just a palimpsest”–a word meaning a parchment that has been written on, scraped off, and used again. What does she mean by this? How does that metaphor figure in the construction of the novel? Could the metaphor of the palimpsest represent anything else in the novel other than the city?
2. At Elizabeth’s memorial service, Cameron reads lines from the Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”:

   When the blackbird flew out of sight
   It marked the edge
   Of one of many circles.

   How are these lines relevant to Elizabeth’s death? What edges of circles, or intersecting lives and stories, does Elizabeth now mark even though she has disappeared from sight?

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Beautifully written and taking us into an exotic land, Karen Connelly’s debut novel The Lizard Cage is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.

1. During a meditation, Teza reflects on the following Buddhist principles: Metta, Karuna, Mudita, Upekkha. These are the Four Divine Abidings. Love. Compassion. Joy in the good fortune of others. Equanimity. How are these principles depicted in the novel, and in what way do they help Teza cope with his imprisonment? Does he always succeed in living by these principles? How does he impart them to Little Brother?
2. How do Teza’s experiences inside the Lizard Cage represent the larger political turmoil in Burma (now Myanmar)? Despite the inhuman conditions, does hope still reside inside the prison?
3. “Words are like the ants. They work their way through the thickest walls, eating through bricks and feeding off the very silence intended to stifle them.” How is the irrepressibility of truth evident in The Lizard Cage? What parallels can you draw from other civil rights conflicts in the world?

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Atlantic contributor Ta-Nehisi Coates reads passages from his memoir and reflects on education, hip hop music, and his father’s powerful presence. Also, Coates expolores Bill Cosby’s transformation from TV dad to outspoken social critic in an essay entitled This is How We Lost to the White Man.

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Read reviews of The Great Derangement at DailyKos, Time Out New York, and the
Los Angeles Times.