Books of the Month | Month of the Books #14
“THE WEDDING DATE”
BY JASMINE GUILLORY
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist. On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend… After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other… They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party, Royal Holiday, and Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time. She lives in Oakland, California.
“A THOUSAND SHIPS”
BY NATALIE HAYNES
In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.
This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them.
In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash… The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all...
Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Haynes (b. 1974) is a writer, broadcaster, and classicist. She was once a stand-up comic, but retired when she realised she preferred tragedy to comedy. She has published three novels, The Amber Fury (The Furies - US) in 2014, The Children of Jocasta (2017) and A Thousand Ships (2019), which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. She has also published two non-fiction book, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life (2010) and Pandora’s Jar (2020). Haynes also has a radio series, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, which is available on BBC Sounds and Audible.
“THE WOMEN”
BY T.C. BOYLE
Welcome to the troubled, tempestuous world of Franck Lloyd Wright. Scandalous affairs rage behind the closed doors, broken hearts are tossed aside, fires rip through the wings of the house and paparazzi lie in wait outside the front door for the latest tragedy in this never-ending saga. This is the home of the great architect of the twentieth century, a man of extremes in both his work and his private life: at once a force of nature and an avalanche of need and emotion that seeps aside everything in its path. Sharp, savage and subtle in equal measure, The Women plumbs the chaos, horrors and uncontainable passions of a formidable American icon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T.C. Boyle (b. 1948) is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published twenty-eight books of fiction (novels and short stories). His novels include “The Road to Wellville”, about John Harvey Kellogg, the eccentric nutritionist and inventor of cornflakes; “The Inner Circle”, about sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey; “World’s End”, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award; “Drop City”, a National Book Award finalist; and “The Tortilla Curtain”, winner of France’s Prix Médicis Étranger. Boyle has also published eight collections of short fiction, and his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and the Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Awards annual volumes. He currently lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife and three children.
“THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE”
BY BETTY FRIEDAN
One of the most influential non-fiction books of the twentieth century. - The New York Times
When Betty Friedan produced The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she could not have realized how the discovery and debate of her contemporaries’ general malaise would shake up society. Victims of a false belief system, these women were following strict social convention by loyally conforming to the pretty image of the magazines, and found themselves forced to seek meaning in their lives only through a family and a home. Friedan’s controversial book about them - and every woman - would ultimately set Second Wave feminism in motion and begin the battle for equality.
This groundbreaking and life-changing work remains just as powerful, important and true as it was nearly seventy years ago, and is essential reading both as a historical document and as a study of women living in a man’s world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Betty Friedan (1921-2006) was an American feminist best known for her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), which explored the causes of the frustrations of modern women in traditional roles. With this book, Friedan broke new ground by exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles. She also helped advance the women’s rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women.
The Feminine Mystique quickly became a sensation, creating a social revolution by dispelling the myth that all women wanted to be happy homemakers and marking the start of what would become Friedan’s incredibly significant role in the women’s rights movement. The work is also credited with spurring second-wave feminism in the United States.
Besides The Feminine Mystique (1963), Friedan authored It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (1976), The Second Stage (1982), The Fountain of Age (1993), Beyond Gender (1997) and her autobiography Life So Far (2000).
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