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We will meet on Thursday March 24th at 7PM PST for Virtual Horror Book Club and discuss Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester.About the book:
A deeply unsettling and shocking feminist horror novel from a bold new talent, Kristi DeMeester.
A biting novel from an electrifying new voice, Such a Pretty Smile is a heart-stopping tour-de-force about powerful women, angry men, and all the ways in which girls fight against the forces that try to silence them.
There’s something out there that’s killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don’t know when to shut up.
2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she’s seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother—the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice—until she is punished for using it.
2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape—both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waives her “problem” away with pills. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can’t understand.
As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.
TO ATTEND:
1) Purchase the book club book with us:
Through our main website www.booksaroundthecorner.com (we receive a bigger profit, signed copies are available at times and if it's backordered on our Bookshop page)
OR
Through our Bookshop page https://bookshop.org/shop/booksaroundthecorner Email us a screencap of your purchase and we'll email you the link and password a day or two before the book club.
OR
2) If you already own the book you may sponsor a stack for $15 FOR PAPERBACKS OR $25 FOR HARDCOVERS to attend here: Sponsor a Stack – Books Around the Corner. Then email us which book club you bought the stack for and we'll email you the link and password.
***ANY BOOK CLUBS THAT FEATURE SIGNED COPIES WILL BE RESERVED FOR LOCAL CUSTOMERS ONLY SINCE THEY CANNOT BE SHIPPED THROUGH OUR WEBSITE
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Books Around the Corner, 52 NW 2nd Street, Gresham, OR 97030, United States