{"id":47360,"date":"2023-05-09T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=47360"},"modified":"2023-05-02T16:10:07","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T21:10:07","slug":"mays-celebrity-book-club-picks-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/mays-celebrity-book-club-picks-2\/","title":{"rendered":"May’s Celebrity Book Club Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! As a bonus, Oprah Winfrey has also announced a new selection! While Reese and Jenna generally announce a new title each month, Oprah\u2019s selections are more sporadic. Reminder that if you join Simply Held<\/a>, these titles will automatically be put on hold for you.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jenna Bush Hager has selected\u00a0Chain-Gang All-Stars<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for her May pick.<\/p>\n

Curious what Chain-Gang All-Stars<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.<\/p>\n

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America\u2019s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black.<\/em><\/p>\n

She felt their eyes, all those executioners\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara \u201cHurricane Staxxx\u201d Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America\u2019s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It\u2019s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.<\/em><\/p>\n

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE\u2019s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar\u2019s path have devastating consequences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system\u2019s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a \u201cnew and necessary American voice\u201d (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Reese Witherspoon has selected\u00a0<\/a>Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Crystal Smith Paul as her May pick.<\/p>\n

Curious what Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/a>is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.<\/p>\n

A multigenerational saga that traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern-day showbiz<\/em><\/p>\n

When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions.<\/em><\/p>\n

A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty\u2019s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty\u2019s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could\u2014and between a cheating fianc\u00e9 and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty.<\/em><\/p>\n

The truth behind Kitty’s ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those closest to them.<\/em><\/p>\n

As Elise digs deeper into Kitty’s past, she must also turn the lens upon herself, confronting the gifts and burdens of her own choices and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living. Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? is a sprawling page-turner set against the backdrop of the Hollywood machine, an insightful and nuanced look at the inheritances of family, race, and gender\u2014and the choices some women make to break free of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Oprah Winfrey has selected The <\/em><\/strong>Covenant of Water<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Abraham Verghese.<\/p>\n

Curious what The Covenant of Water <\/em><\/strong><\/a>by Abraham Verghese is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.<\/p>\n

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.<\/em><\/p>\n

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India\u2019s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning\u2014and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala\u2019s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl\u2014and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi\u2014will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.<\/em><\/p>\n

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.<\/em><\/p>\n

Join\u00a0Simply Held<\/a>\u00a0to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese\u2019s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! As a bonus, Oprah Winfrey has also announced a new selection! While Reese and Jenna generally announce a new title each month, Oprah\u2019s selections are more sporadic. Reminder that[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,1,8],"tags":[6910,6905,6909,6908,6907,5267,6906,2538,1765],"class_list":["post-47360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-abraham-verghese","tag-chain-gang-all-stars","tag-covenant-of-water","tag-crystal-smith-paul","tag-did-you-hear-about-kitty-karr","tag-jenna-bush-hager","tag-nana-kwame-adjei-brenyah","tag-oprah-winfrey","tag-reese-witherspoon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-cjS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47360"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47653,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47360\/revisions\/47653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}