{ "item_title" : "The Mars Room", "item_author" : [" Rachel Kushner "], "item_description" : "TIME'S #1 FICTION TITLE OF THE YEAR - NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 FINALIST for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD LONGLISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room earned tweets from Margaret Atwood--gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled--and from Stephen King--The Mars Room is the real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny. It's 2003 and Romy Hall, named after a German actress, is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: her young son, Jackson, and the San Francisco of her youth. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, portrayed with great humor and precision. Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars Room is wholly authentic...profound...luminous (The Wall Street Journal), one of those books that enrage you even as they break your heart (The New York Times Book Review, cover review)--a spectacularly compelling, heart-stopping novel about a life gone off the rails in contemporary America. It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined and affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best novelists (Entertainment Weekly).", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/47/675/658/1476756589_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "17.99", "online_price" : "17.99", "our_price" : "17.99", "club_price" : "17.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "17.99" } }

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Book Clubs: May 2019

TOP PICK
Sheila Heti’s brave, unflinching novel Motherhood tells the story of one woman’s indecision about having children. The book’s unnamed narrator, a writer approaching the age of 40, is surrounded by friends who are starting families. She lives in Toronto with Miles, her boyfriend, who has a daughter from another relationship. In the midst of this domesticity, she’s plagued by uncertainty about reproducing. She’s honest about her ambivalence but fearful that she’ll one day regret not having kids of her own. Heti combines poignant first-person storytelling with a compassionate consideration of the traditions and implications of motherhood. The novel is a rich meditation on society’s expectations, personal agency and the evolving roles of women. Selected as a best book of 2018 by the New York Times and NPR, this provocative novel is sure to resonate with female readers, regardless of parental status.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson
Enlisted by England’s MI5 at the age of 18, Juliet Armstrong becomes enmeshed in a web of espionage and betrayal that will haunt her for a lifetime in Atkinson’s thrilling World War II novel.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
When Romy Hall kills her stalker, she gets slapped with two life sentences. The story of her transition to life in a California correctional facility makes for a riveting read in Kushner’s latest novel.

Severance by Ling Ma
In Ma’s haunting, satirical take on the apocalypse, a young Chinese-American woman continues to live and work in Manhattan despite a fever that spreads across the globe and turns victims into zombies.

There There by Tommy Orange
Orange’s impressive debut chronicles the struggles and triumphs of 12 Native American characters in California, offering a complex, compelling look at contemporary Native life.