Fast Girls: a novel of the 1936 women's Olympic team by Elise Hooper

“Fast Girls is a compelling, thrilling look at what it takes to be a female Olympian in pre-war America. Rich with historical detail and brilliant story-telling, the book follows three athletes on their path to compete – and win – in a man’s world.  Brava to Elise Hooper for bringing these inspiring heroines to the wide audience they so richly deserve.”—Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics and The House Girl

Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany.

This inspiring story is based on the real lives of three little-known trailblazing women Olympians.  Perfect for readers who love untold stories of amazing women, such as The Only Woman in the Room, Hidden Figures, and The Lost Girls of Paris.

In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.

Outside of Boston, Louise Stokes, one of the few black girls in her town, sees competing as an opportunity to overcome the limitations placed on her. Eager to prove that she has what it takes to be a champion, she risks everything to join the Olympic team.

From Missouri, Helen Stephens, awkward, tomboyish, and poor, is considered an outcast by her schoolmates, but she dreams of escaping the hardships of her farm life through athletic success. Her aspirations appear impossible until a chance encounter changes her life.

These three athletes will join with others to defy society’s expectations of what women can achieve. As tensions bring the United States and Europe closer and closer to the brink of war, Betty, Louise, and Helen must fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Nazi-sponsored 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

486 pages (July 2020)

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Reading Guide from BookMovement.

 

Discussion Guide from Author's Website

 

13 Book Club Questions to Energize Any Meetup from Bustle

 

To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Divine Miss Marble: a life of tennis, fame, and mystery by Robert Weintrab; The Peerless Four by Victoria Patterson; Speed Kings: the 1932 Winter Olympics and the fastest men in the world by Andy Bull; Tigerbelle: the Wyomia Tyus story by Wyomia Tyus; Three Seconds in Munich: the controversial 1972 Olympic Basketball Final by David Sweet; Little Wonder : the fabulous story of Lottie Dod, the worlds first female sports superstar by Sasha Abramsky; Something in the Air: the story of American passion and defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics by Richard Hoffer; Running Sideways: the Olympic champion who made track and field history by Pauline Davis; Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows; The Poppy Girls by Margaret Dickinson; and Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian--who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white--her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go--for the protection of her family and her legacy--to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.

341 pages (June 2021)

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The Personal Librarian Book Club Questions & Discussion Guide from Libro Maniacs

 

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Marie Benedict's Website 

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Authors of 'The Personal Librarian' talk about their new novel (Good Morning America):

The Belle Greene–Bernard Berenson Letters Project (The Morgan Library & Museum):

This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone; The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe; The Great Mrs. Elias by Barbara Chase-Ribould; Josephine Baker's Last Dance by Sherry Jones; Passing by Nella Larsen; The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel for Grown Ups by Jayne Allen; The Muralist by Barbara A. Shapiro; The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin; The Paris Library by Janet Skelien Charles; Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian; The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles; and The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis.

Song of a Captive Bird: a novel by Jasmin Darznik

A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing poet Forugh Farrokhzhad, who defied Iranian society to find her voice and her destiny

“Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.”—Forugh Farrokhzad

All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh is told that Iranian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel—gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother’s walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. It’s during the summer of 1950 that Forugh’s passion for poetry really takes flight—and that tradition seeks to clip her wings.

Forced into a suffocating marriage, Forugh runs away and falls into an affair that fuels her desire to write and to achieve freedom and independence. Forugh’s poems are considered both scandalous and brilliant; she is heralded by some as a national treasure, vilified by others as a demon influenced by the West. She perseveres, finding love with a notorious filmmaker and living by her own rules—at enormous cost. But the power of her writing grows only stronger amid the upheaval of the Iranian revolution.

Inspired by Forugh Farrokhzad’s verse, letters, films, and interviews—and including original translations of her poems—Jasmin Darznik has written a haunting novel, using the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran—and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world..

401 pages (February 2018)

 

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The Best Book Club Questions to Spark Discussion from The Oprah Magazine
 

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Title Read-alikes: In the City of Gold and Silver by Kenize Mourad; The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi; The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman; The Book of V. by Anna Solomon; The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg; and The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta.

The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber

The Velveteen Daughter reveals for the first time the true story of two remarkable women: Margery Williams Bianco, the author of one of the most beloved children's books of all time - The Velveteen Rabbit - and her daughter Pamela, a world-renowned child prodigy artist whose fame at one time greatly eclipses her mother's.

But celebrity at such an early age exacts a great toll. Pamela's dreams elude her as she struggles with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair, and a spectacularly misguided marriage. Throughout, her life raft is her mother.

The glamorous art world of Europe and New York in the early 20th century and a supporting cast of luminaries - Eugene O'Neill and his wife Agnes (Margery's niece), Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Richard Hughes, author of A High Wind in Jamaica - provide a vivid backdrop to the Biancos' story. From the opening pages, the novel will captivate readers with its multifaceted and illuminating observations on art, family, and the consequences of genius touched by madness.

416 pages (July 2017)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline; All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews; Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich; We Are Water by Wally Lamb; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara; The History of Love by Nicole Krauss; Motherland by Maria Hummel; A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass; The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli; Salt Houses by Hala Alyan; Miss Jane by Brad Watson; and The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy.

The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd

The year is 1739. Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family’s three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry in pursuit of his military ambitions. Tensions with the British, and with the Spanish in Florida, just a short way down the coast, are rising, and slaves are starting to become restless. Her mother wants nothing more than for their South Carolina endeavor to fail so they can go back to England. Soon her family is in danger of losing everything.

Upon hearing how much the French pay for indigo dye, Eliza believes it’s the key to their salvation. But everyone tells her it’s impossible, and no one will share the secret to making it. Thwarted at nearly every turn, even by her own family, Eliza finds that her only allies are an aging horticulturalist, an older and married gentleman lawyer, and a slave with whom she strikes a dangerous deal: teach her the intricate thousand-year-old secret process of making indigo dye and in return—against the laws of the day—she will teach the slaves to read.

So begins an incredible story of love, dangerous and hidden friendships, ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice.

Based on historical documents, including Eliza’s letters, this is a historical fiction account of how a teenage girl produced indigo dye, which became one of the largest exports out of South Carolina, an export that laid the foundation for the incredible wealth of several Southern families who still live on today. Although largely overlooked by historians, the accomplishments of Eliza Lucas influenced the course of US history. When she passed away in 1793, President George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral.

This book is set between 1739 and 1744, with romance, intrigue, forbidden friendships, and political and financial threats weaving together to form the story of a remarkable young woman whose actions were before their time: the story of the indigo girl.

342 pages (October 2017)

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Discussion Questions from Princeton Book Review.  

To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Eliza Lucas Pinckney (National Historic Site of South Carolina)

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Title Read-alikes: The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks; The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd; Varina by Charles Frazier; The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier; Washington Black by Esi Edugyan; The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen; The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden; Mrs Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini; The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros; Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer; Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon; and One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker.

The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

For much of her life, Anne Morrow, the shy daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, has stood in the shadows of those around her, including her millionaire father and vibrant older sister, who often steals the spotlight. Then Anne, a college senior with hidden literary aspirations, travels to Mexico City to spend Christmas with her family. There she meets Colonel Charles Lindbergh, fresh off his celebrated 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. Enthralled by Charles’s assurance and fame, Anne is certain the celebrated aviator has scarcely noticed her. But she is wrong.

Charles sees in Anne a kindred spirit, a fellow adventurer, and her world will be changed forever. The two marry in a headline-making wedding. Hounded by adoring crowds and hunted by an insatiable press, Charles shields himself and his new bride from prying eyes, leaving Anne to feel her life falling back into the shadows. In the years that follow, despite her own major achievements—she becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States—Anne is viewed merely as the aviator’s wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for independence, and to embrace, at last, life’s infinite possibilities for change and happiness.

Drawing on the rich history of the twentieth century—from the late twenties to the mid-sixties—and featuring cameos from such notable characters as Joseph Kennedy and Amelia Earhart, The Aviator's Wife is a vividly imagined novel of a complicated marriage—revealing both its dizzying highs and its devastating lows. With stunning power and grace, Melanie Benjamin provides new insight into what made this remarkable relationship endure.

402 Pages (January 2013)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott; The Women by T. Coraghessan Boyle; Loving Frank by Nancy Horan; Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck; The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve; Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini; Z by Therese Fowler; Against Wind and Tide by Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Private Life by Jane Smiley; Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict; Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan; Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline; and Circling the Sun by Paula McLain.

Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the “ungettable” Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn’t wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner’s, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is unimagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel—and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera—where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby’s parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous—sometimes infamous—husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott’s, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda’s irresistible story as she herself might have told it.

375 pages. (March 2013)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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"'Z' Tells The Fitzgeralds' Story From Zelda's Point Of View" (Author Interview) from npr

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Title Read-alikes: The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante; The Paris Wife by Paula McLain; Beautiful Fools by R. Clifton Spargo; What the Lady Wants by Renee Rosen; Wintering by Kate Moses; The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin; Guests on Earth by Lee Smith; Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck; The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott; Tiffany Blues by M. J. Rose; Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan; and The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty.

Profound River by John L. Gubbins

Did a nun really invent the first flies for fly-fishing? Yes. Dame Juliana Berners was a remarkable woman: devout catholic nun and the credited inventor of fly-fishing. From boar-hunting on horseback with nothing but a spear to facing off with greedy priests determined to further impoverish her convent and family of faithful sisters, Dame Juliana's story will surprise and inspire you.

Dame Juliana Berners was a devout catholic nun who used the rich decorations that adorned the ceremonial robes of her faith to create the first fishing lures, becoming the Mother of Fly-Fishing From boar-hunting on horseback with nothing but a spear to facing off against greedy priests determined to further impoverish her convent and family of faithful sisters, Dame Juliana's story will surprise and inspire you.

 

235 pages (August 2011)

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Reading Guide from BookMovement.

 

The Best Book Club Questions to Spark Discussion from The Oprah Magazine

 

To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Juliana Berners at Project Continua

Dame Juliana Berners: IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame:

Title Read-alikes: Magdalena Mountain by Robert Michael Pyle; Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams; My Last Continent by Midge Raymond; Earthly Joys by Philippa Gregory; Year of Wonders by Geradine Brooks; The Glass Ocean by Lori Baker; Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh; The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott; Illuminations by Mary Sharratt; The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett; The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader; The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro; and Antihill by Edward O. Wilson.

The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest by Kathryn Johnson

The Gentleman Poet, author Kathryn Johnson’s novel of love, danger, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is a wonderful story that imagines a series of astonishing events that just might have inspired the immortal Bard to pen his magical tale. Told from the point of view of a young servant girl who strikes up a friendship with the not yet famous playwright when they are shipwrecked in the Bermudas, The Gentleman Poet gives a delightful new spin on Shakespearean lore reminiscent of the Academy Award-winning film, Shakespeare in Love.

En route to the Americas in 1609, Elizabeth Persons, a young servant girl, sees her blinding headache as an ominous sign. Sure enough, a hurricane during the final leg of their journey tosses the ill-fated Sea Venture and its one hundred and fifty passengers and crew onto the dreaded shores of the Bermudas, the rumored home of evil spirits and dangerous natives. In the months that pass—time marked by grave hardship, mutiny, adventure, danger . . . and a blossoming love between Elizabeth and the wrecked ship's young cook—she despairs of their ever being rescued. But she finds hope and strength in a remarkable new friendship, forming a fast bond with the Sea Venture's historian, a poet traveling under the name of William Strachey. But Will is more than he seems. To many back home in England, he is known by a different name: Shakespeare. And he sees in their great shared travails the makings of a magical, truly transcendent work of theater.

319 pages (September 2010)

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Title Read-alikes: Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato; Even in Paradise by Elizabeth Nunez; A Place in His Heart by Rebecca Demarino; The Mark of the King by Jocelyn Green; The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow; A Ship for the King by Richard Woodman; Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding; Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson; John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk; The Photograph by Penelope Lively; and Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante.