DISCUSSION GUIDES

When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruiz’s father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. A novel about waking up and standing up, and what happens when you stop seeing your dad as your hero—while the whole country is watching.

A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.

Over the course of one summer that begins with a shocking tragedy, three generations of the Adler family grapple with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets in this stunning debut novel.

The story of one tough-as-nails girl whose choices are few but whose imagination is boundless, and whose coping becomes a battle cry for everyone around her.

Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.

Meet Dovey Johnson Roundtree—the trailblazing civil rights attorney who “proved . . . a single individual can turn the tides of history,” as Michelle Obama said—and discover the remarkable true story of a visionary woman we should all know more about.

On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come. A daughter's tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of 2020
A SLJ Best Book of 2020
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2020
A 2020 BCCB Blue Ribbon List title

"Move over, Louisa May Alcott! Samantha Mabry has written her very own magical Little Women for our times." --Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

In a stunning follow-up to her National Book Award-longlisted novel All the Wind in the World, Samantha Mabry weaves an aching, magical novel that is one part family drama, one part ghost story, and one part love story.

The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister's memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house: mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana really is haunting them, trying to send them a message--and what exactly she's trying to say.

In a stunning follow-up to her National Book Award-longlisted novel All the Wind in the World, Samantha Mabry weaves an aching, magical novel that is one part family drama, one part ghost story, and one part love story.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of DEACON KING KONG.

In Ordinary Girls—one of the most anticipated books of the year—Jaquira Díaz writes a fierce and eloquent memoir of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. Her family split apart. Her mother battled schizophrenia and addiction. Her own life was upended by violence and sexual assault. And she searched for support for her burgeoning sexual identity. But with refreshing honesty and vivid lyricism, Jaquira Díaz maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.