The guide should be used with the novel, not instead of it, so please pick up a copy before buying this book if you haven’t already done so. BookNotes is meant to enhance the experience of fans, and for use by book clubs. Inside you will discover: A book summary and analysis with commentary Character list A look at symbols, themes and motifs Commentary on the book as well as details on plot, settings and final thoughts BookNotes introduces a companion to A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler for fans and book clubs to enhance your reading experience.

    The dot.com boom is in full swing, and it seems as though every twenty-something has become an instant millionaire-except our narrator, who has just arrived from the Midwest without a job. Confronted with the chilling prospect of missing out on the greatest cash grab of the twentieth century, he enlists with a temp agency. That's when things start getting strange.Mistaken by the agency for an urbane homosexual instead of the ex-frat boy he really is, he is assigned to a fully-staffed mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. His new boss? Definitely not the old matron he was expecting.Bailey Phelan is the gorgeous, thirty-year-old wife of an aging billionaire, and her penchant for Prada, recreational drugs, and foreign boyfriends quickly has the narrator running in circles trying to keep her exorbitant spending and romantic misadventures under wraps. But despite all the glitz, what she might need most is a friend.As the narrator gets sucked deeper into the mansion milieu-oversexed nannies, a lovelorn gay chef, the obsessive head housekeeper, the bilious billionaire himself-he's faced with the unavoidable question: will the six-figure salary and over-the-top lifestyle of the rich and infamous corrupt him -- or will he cut and run with his soul intact?

    Christmas was coming to Saxonburg, Pennsylvania—a quaint borough of just 1,300—in three short weeks. The winter air was crisp. Colored lights sparkled on houses. He was only a block and a half from the Police Department, and this was just an average traffic stop.Until it wasn’t.The devoted husband and father of two little boys was about to meet any law enforcement officer’s nightmare. Moments later, he would lay dying in a pool of his own blood on that white winter snow, while his killer vanished like an apparition into thin air.Despite his many aliases, the true identity of the murderer was quickly found. The killer himself, was not. As State Police and FBI investigators peeled back the twisted layers of low-level mobster Donald Webb’s life, the path to the killer would wind through decades … toward a shocking conclusion. After all, secrets can only be kept for so long.

    Olson was for more than thirty years a wilderness guide in the Quetico-Superior country, and no one knew with the same intimacy the mysteries of the lakes and forests of that magnificent primitive area. To the many out-of-doorsmen who canoed and portaged with him through this wilderness, he was known honorifically as the Bourgeois--as the voyageurs of old called their trusted leaders through this same region.

    Marcia and her partner Paul, Nikitta’s father, rushed to the scene but there was nothing they could do. Firefighters had already discovered Nikitta’s body in the wreckage of the home she’d lovingly built with her childhood sweetheart. To add to their agony, Nikitta had been eight months’ pregnant. The fully formed yet unborn baby girl she’d already named Kelsey May was gone, too.But it soon became apparent Nikitta’s death was far from an accident. Within hours, the investigation became a murder inquiry and Ryan’s cousin Carl Whant was the prime suspect. Whant had been openly infatuated with Nikitta and boasted that he thought of her every time he had sex.As her world collapsed around her, Marcia could only watch in horror. Shortly after Whant was charged with murder, child destruction, rape and arson, she began charting her feelings in a searingly honest diary, the contents of which are published for the first time in this book.Marcia painstakingly recalls the agony of holding her granddaughter for the first time in a police mortuary, but being unable to see her dead daughter because of the shocking state in which Whant had left her. She charts the pain of laying them both to rest, knowing she will have to face their killer every day in court when Whant’s case comes to trial. For the first time, she opens up about her turbulent relationship with Ryan and the devastating revelations which almost cause her world to shatter for a second time. But, above all, she speaks of the indescribable hell of learning to live without the most important thing in her life.

    She shut down and sold the successful movie production company they ran together and fled the country, refusing to hear his excuses. Now she is in hiding, but is she hiding something as well? Her best friend Tracie has undergone a dramatic transformation in order to elude Angelo Gonsales, head of the Internet Crime Division of the FBI. He has discovered her identity, and tracked her location. Will she be convicted of her alleged crimes? "In-Laws and Play Cousins: Three Sides to Every Story," reunites four childhood friends, brings closure to the unfortunate circumstances and renders bittersweet justice for the true villains.

    

    Attitudes surface and personalities clash as struggles, secrets, and obsessions emerge. Follow the lives of eight quilters from Chicagoland as they gather once a month to play Bunco, the popular no-skills dice game. The last thing Lettie wants is for a member to quit the Bunco Club, but a well-guarded hoarding obsession may cause that very thing to happen. When Nancy’s one-love contacts her after twenty years, she shares tidbits each month about the devastating breakup along with news of a possible reunion and she finds there is no shortage of opinions from the women of the Bunco Club. Follow the members as their stories are revealed and woven together through the bond of friendship—from a heart stopping discovery of a national historic treasure, to a 39-year-old secret, to a mom whose child is devastated from being bullied. Eight women capture the hearts of readers who will long to be members of The Bunco Club.Show more Show less

    These are stories of ambition and young love, insecurity and awkwardness, where a poor boy with energy and intelligence can break into the upper classes and become a glittering success. This selection brings together the best of Fitzgerald's St Paul stories -- some virtually unknown, others classics of short fiction. Patricia Hampl's incisive introduction traces the trajectory of Fitzgerald's blazing celebrity and its connections to his life in the city that gave him his best material. Headnotes by Dave Page provide specific ties between the stories and Fitzgerald's life in St Paul.

    She would, she thought, base her book on the frank disclosures of others on the subject, but she was soon disabused of her presumption when forced to confront the fact that “the conversation” in her own family had not been forthright. Norris unearthed painful family secrets that compelled her to question her own self-understanding: from her father’s shooting by a Birmingham police officer weeks after his discharge from the navy at the conclusion of World War II to her maternal grandmother’s peddling pancake mix as an itinerant Aunt Jemima to white farm women in the Midwest. In what became a profoundly personal and bracing journey into her family’s past, Norris traveled from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South to explore the reasons for the “things left unsaid” by her father and mother when she was growing up, the better to come to terms with her own identity. Along the way she discovered how her character was forged by both revelation and silence. Extraordinary for Norris’s candor in examining her own racial legacy and what it means to be an American, The Grace of Silence is also informed by rigorous research in its evocation of time and place, scores of interviews with ordinary folk, and wise observations about evolving attitudes, at once encouraging and disturbing, toward race in America today. For its particularity and universality, it is powerfully moving, a tour de force.

    The book begins with a description of the extraordinary setting of Brimnes, a small fishing village on the Arctic Circle. From his house, Holm captures Iceland’s warmth and genuine community, its secularism, pacifism, and love of nature, poetry, and music. Writing of the America to which his ancestors fled only two generations before, he wonders whether the compelling dream of liberty, freedom, and inquiry still animates his native country. For the legions of Bill Holm fans as well as for those yearning for some straight if often comical reflection on the state of America today, this book provides a memorable experience.

    Three plays from Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright August Wilson: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

    The stories of Raghbir Dhillon delight, entertain, and educate as they offer a glimpse into Indian culture, its sects, gods, and social rules and practices, but beyond this cultural veneer universal human qualities shine through and elevate these narratives beyond the simple elements of fiction.

    Patrick is a struggling restaurateur who wishes he could spend more time with his wife. As they drift apart, Jane decides she wants more from her relationship than friendship, and so at age thirty-six she sets off on a journey to find what it takes to complete her life. She travels to India where she falls rapturously in lust with her tour guide, Rajiv. Meanwhile Patrick falls for baby-faced American food critic Stella, who could lose him more than his peace of mind; she could lose him his restaurant. Both affairs are disastrous and as their lives spiral toward disaster, Patrick and Jane reassess the decisions they’ve made. Has Jane thrown away true love with both hands?Prue Leith, one of England’s top chefs, displays her expertise in her insider’s details of the restaurant business and the breathtaking food of India. In Leaving Patrick, Leith has created a well-written and moving story with wry humor and intelligence about the real choices adults have to make once they start taking stock of their lives.