The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

Here at the Stimuli Magazine offices, we are fans of the simple, heartwarming novels of best-selling author Nicholas Sparks. Many of his books have been made into blockbuster movies and his newest release, The Best of Me, just may be the next one with the rights already sold to Warner Bros.

Here's the description as per Nicholas Spark's website:

The Best of Me is the heart-rending story of two small-town former high school sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks. Now middle-aged, they’ve taken wildly divergent paths, but neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever altered their world. When they are both called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter, they will be forced to confront the choices each has made, and ask whether love can truly rewrite the past.

The Best of Me is available at Chapters in-store for $28.99 or online for $15.94. The ebook version for the Kobo and Kindle app is $12.99.

CONTEST:

Stimuli Magazine is giving away a copy of The Best of Me. To enter for a chance to win, please post a comment on this editorial. The winner will be announced on Friday, October 28, 2011.

Posted under Book Club •

The Lost Girls

Written by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett and Amanda Pressner

Website Synopsis:

With their 28th birthdays looming, three friends quickly rocketing towards management positions, mortgages, and marriages, all share a similar fear: Is this what they want, or what they think they should want?

Feeling in serious need of perspective, they decide to leave it all behind, quit their jobs, and begin an epic search for meaning and enlightenment. Traveling 60,000 miles around the world, from the mountains and jungles of South America to the beaches of Australia, passing through Kenya, India, Southeast Asia, and New Zealand along the way, the trio will not only find themselves, but a lifelong friendship.

The Lost Girls is available both online and in-store at Chapters and Black Bond Books.

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When God was a Rabbit

Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, loss of innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love and life. Stripped down to its bare bones, it''s about the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.

Check out the book review by Cynthia MacDonald of The Globe and Mail.

Posted under Book Club •

Secret Daughter

Our book club choice this month is Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda.

Here's the synopsis as per the author's website:

Somer's life is everything she imagined it would be — she's newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco — until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children.

The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter's life by giving her away. It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again.

Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinities of these two women. We follow both familes, invisibly connected until Asha's journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.

Compulsively readable and deeply touching, SECRET DAUGHTER is a story of the unforeseen ways in which our choices and families affect our lives, and the indelible power of love in all its many forms.

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The Paris Wife

Our choice for April's Great Read is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

Synopsis as per the book cover and website:

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time—Paris in the twenties—and an extraordinary love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

In Chicago in 1920, Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and finds herself captivated by his good looks, intensity, and passionate desire to write. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group of expatriates that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

But the hard-drinking and fast-living café life does not celebrate traditional notions of family and monogamy. As Hadley struggles with jealousy and self-doubt and Ernest wrestles with his burgeoning writing career, they must confront a deception that could prove the undoing of one of the great romances in literary history.

CLICK HERE to read an exerpt from the book.

Posted under Book Club •