Owl's Nest Bookstore

O.W.L.S. Book Club: Luster by Raven Leilani

Thursday October 07, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:30PM

Attend our literary book club discussion in person at Owl's Nest Books or click here to register to attend virtually via Zoom.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Winner of the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
Winner of the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel
Finalist for the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize
Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Named Best Book of the Year by O: the Oprah Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Town and Country, Amazon, Indigo, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Kirkus Reviews, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping

Sharp, comic, disruptive, and tender, Luster sees a young Black woman fall into art and someone else's open marriage.

Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She's also, secretly, haltingly, figuring her way into life as an artist. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric's family life, his home. She becomes a hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only Black woman who young Akila knows.
Razor-sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.

O.W.L.S. Book Club: A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

Thursday November 04, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Click here to register for our literary book club discussion held via Zoom. All are welcome!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE

New York Times bestselling author Mary Lawson, acclaimed for digging into the "wilderness of the human heart", is back after almost a decade with a fresh and timely novel that is different in subject but just as emotional and atmospheric as her beloved earlier work.

A Town Called Solace, the brilliant and emotionally radiant new novel from Mary Lawson, her first in nearly a decade, opens on a family in crisis. Sixteen-year-old Rose is missing. Angry and rebellious, she had a row with her mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Left behind is seven-year-old Clara, Rose’s adoring little sister. Isolated by her parents’ efforts to protect her from the truth, Clara is bewildered and distraught. Her sole comfort is Moses, the cat next door, whom she is looking after for his elderly owner, Mrs. Orchard, who went into hospital weeks ago and has still not returned.

Enter Liam Kane, mid-thirties, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, who moves into Mrs. Orchard’s house—where, in Clara’s view, he emphatically does not belong. Within a matter of hours he receives a visit from the police. It seems he is suspected of a crime.

At the end of her life, Elizabeth Orchard is also thinking about a crime, one committed thirty years previously that had tragic consequences for two families, and in particular for one small child. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies.

Told through three distinct, compelling points of view, the novel cuts back and forth among these unforgettable characters to uncover the layers of grief, remorse, and love that connect them. A Town Called Solace is a masterful, suspenseful, darkly funny and deeply humane novel by one of our great storytellers.

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