Shelf Indulgence Book Club

  A Conversation with Sarah Vaughan  Q:   What inspired you to write about a medical ethical dilemma? A: I wanted to write another novel in which a professional woman has to make a tough call that will have a dramatic impact on others. Having created a female barrister in  Anatomy of a Scandal , I decided to write about a female pediatrician whose judgment would have a profound effect on a child in her care. I was also inspired by my surgeon husband, who has come home from being on-call having had to make similar safeguarding decisions. The decision to refer a child to social services may seem quite straightforward but there’s always the awareness of how emotionally distressing and disruptive this will be for a family who could be entirely innocent. I imagined how much more difficult that might be if the professional knew the family involved. Q:   What kind of research did you have to do in order to write from Liz’s perspective? A: Some of the day-to-day informa...

We were so lucky today to have Kathleen Barber join us for our discussion of Truth Be Told (Are You Sleeping). We wanted to share the discussion with those that couldn't make it but may have loved the book as much as we did:  Play Video Enjoy!

Today we were lucky enough to have our second author appearance of the year. Kathleen Barber joined our book club discussion!! It was an honor to meet her and to discuss this book, Are You Sleeping.  About the book: The only thing more dangerous than a lie...is the truth. Josie Buhrman has spent the last ten years trying to escape her family’s reputation and with good reason. After her father's murder thirteen years prior, her mother ran away to join a cult and her twin sister Lanie, once Josie’s closest friend and confidant, betrayed her in an unimaginable way. Now, Josie has finally put down roots in New York, settling into domestic life with her partner Caleb, and that’s where she intends to stay. The only problem is that she has lied to Caleb about every detail of her past—starting with her last name. When investigative reporter Poppy Parnell sets off a media firestorm with a mega-hit podcast that reopens the long-closed case of Josie’s father’s murder, Josie’s world begins to ...

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a Zoom book talk presented by Lana Whited, PhD, English professor at Ferrum College in Virginia. I was primarily interested in attending because Lana and I were colleagues and friends at Ferrum in the early '90's (we did a lot of our interacting as founding members of an organization we called Women on Campus). But I was also quite interested in the book itself, Murder, In Fact: Disillusionment and Death in the American True Crime Novel.  I really appreciated hearing Lana's academic presentation on the history of the true crime novel (and began to learn the differences between Realistic and Naturalistic fiction). With the exception of a long-ago required undergraduate class, I haven't formally studied literature. I have over the years read several of the books in her analysis; the most memorable ones for me were An American Tragedy by Theorore Dreiser (haunting) and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (incredibly well crafted). I...

In November our club will be reading the Final Girl Support Group and Grady has graciously agreed to join our discussion. I know the ladies and I of Shelf Indulgence are SO excited to read this and meet him. But this is big news for Grady!! It hasn’t even been published yet but we’ve learned today via  Deadline  that  Grady Hendrix ‘s new novel  “The Final Girl Support Group”  has been set for a series adaptation. The series is being developed by Annapurna, who acquired the rights to the novel. “Both an homage to and subversion of iconic slasher films,  The Final Girl Support Group  is billed as a fresh new take on the beloved horror sub-genre, while also capturing the cultural zeitgeist around true crime stories.”   “The women in the Final Girl Support Group have been in therapy together for decades – ever since one was attacked by a cannibal family in Texas, by a machete wielding maniac at summer camp, by an older brother who returned to settle ...

Our Book Club read the book about the Golden State Killer, I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, so I wanted to keep you up to date on all things about this case and found this interesting... America’s busiest retired detective,  Paul Holes , is joining the reboot of  America’s Most Wanted,  a new season of which is premiering on Fox on March 15th. Holes will be joining host, journalist Elizabeth Vargas, as an official expert. “I’m excited to be part of the iconic  America’s Most Wanted   family and to continue to contribute in any way, utilizing my own experience and expertise to help the AMW team catch criminals who are evading justice,” Holes tells   Rolling Stone . Holes made his name hunting the infamous  Golden State Killer  through the Nineties and ’00s, a serial rapist and murderer suspected of committing at least 12 murders, 50 rapes, and 100 burglaries in California between 1974 and 1986. Retired cop Joseph DeAngelo was arrested in 2018 on the stren...

  Tonight I attended the Hendrick Hudson Free Library event with Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. This event was to celebrate the launch of their paperback version of You Are Note Alone. Greer Hendrick's 5th grade teacher, who is acknowledged in their first book was a part of our zoom meeting tonight. We got to learn about the book and hear an excerpt read by the authors themselves.  The question of the night, who believes in love at first site? More than half of Americans believe in love at first site. 4 in 10 Americans say they have fallen in love at first site. 3/4 of Americans believe in one true love.  Some things we learned... The Author Team Sarah Pekkanen has written 8 novels on her own, and  You Are Not Alone  is the third book she co-authored with Greer Hendricks. When Sarah and Greer first met they found they had a  lot in common.  They both studied psychology, are not the best cooks and have brothers named Robert. They subscribe to psych...

Bayles and Orland shared a simple framework from Henry James. I haven’t read  The Art of Fiction  (yet), and wasn’t familiar with his three questions to evaluate an artist’s work, which are:  1.       What was the artist trying to achieve? 2.       Did he or she succeed? 3.       Was it worth doing?    The first questions are objective; they don’t involve personal taste at all. You don’t need to  like  a work to identify what the artist was trying to achieve, and if they succeeded. Ah, but the third question: this is the one that “opens the universe,” the authors say—because it invites you to   respond   to the work, to assign a value to it, to weigh its worth.   “Critical reflection of some kind is inevitable, so it would behoove us to do it well. The best guide I know to readerly judgment is our old friend   Auden, who graciously summed up a lifetime of thi...