December Club Picks by Kiwi

December Club Picks

Reese’s Book Club

“Get cozy because you won't be able to put this one down…This story combines suspense, international intrigue and the murder of an entire family aboard a ship... following the one woman who may just have all the answers.”

Conviction by Denise Mina

Conviction Released: May 16, 2019
Publisher: Harvill Secker
Kiwi Rated It: TBR
View Title On: Goodreads
Get A Copy: Amazon , Barnes & Noble or Kobo/Walmart

Conviction stars a strong female protagonist who is obsessed with true crime podcasts and decides, one day, to investigate one of the unsolved crimes herself.

It’s just a normal morning for Anna McDonald. Gym kits, packed lunches, getting everyone up and ready. Until she opens the front door to her best friend, Estelle. Anna turns to see her own husband at the top of the stairs, suitcase in hand. They’re leaving together and they’re taking Anna’s two daughters with them.

Left alone in the big, dark house, Anna can’t think, she can’t take it in. With her safe, predictable world shattered, she distracts herself with a story: a true-crime podcast. There’s a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean, multiple murders and a hint of power and corruption. Then Anna realizes she knew one of the victims in another life. She is convinced she knows what happened. Her past, so carefully hidden until now, will no longer stay silent.

This is a murder she can’t ignore, and she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, her past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.

Conviction is the compelling and unique new thriller from multiple award-winner and author of THE LONG DROP, Denise Mina.


#ReadWithJenna

Jenna Bush Hager is back on the Today Show and this month brings us a book that's gearing up to be an American classic.

"It’s beautiful and it is a slower pace but I kind of loved that at the end of the year," Jenna said. "We end with something slow and reflective and gorgeous."

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss Released: Jul 09, 2019
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Kiwi Rated It: TBR
View Title On: Goodreads
Get A Copy: Amazon , Barnes & Noble or Kobo/Walmart

From New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family--and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.

Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents--her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father--and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child's transition to caregiver.

And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds--the natural one and our own--"the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love's own twin."

Gorgeously illustrated by the author's brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut.


Barnes and Noble

This month’s pick is one I've already read and loved and I hope you do too! As always, check out B&N for exclusive content, including a podcast with Lisa Jewell and find dates and locations for the in-store book club discussions!

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

The Family Upstairs Released: Nov 05, 2019
Publisher: Atria Books
Kiwi Rated It:
View Title On: Goodreads
Get A Copy: Amazon , Barnes & Noble or Kobo/Walmart

From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone and Watching You comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.

Be careful who you let in.

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.



For now, other well-known clubs haven't released their picks but I will update as soon as they're out there.

For now ... enjoy these reads!

Birdy went byebye! Find me @bookish on Post News or Mastadon.nz.