The Literary Wineaux Society

It's our very last book club of 2025! The theme for December is Winter is Coming... and the votes are in... our December Selection is....

A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall - A whirlwind romance. When Theodora Scott met Connor―wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family―she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives. Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood. Amazon Link

Please have ready: I will be asking everyone what their favorite read of the year was. It doesn't have to be through this book club, any favorite book you read this year. So I can compile our year-end reading list. I will also have our entire checklist of books we read and nominees for you carry-on your reading until end of January when we meet again.

Location: Mise En Place
Cost: Wine Tasting $25 paid directly to Lynn, the owner. Includes tasting of 4-5 wines + light bites.

Hello Wineauxs!
We're taking flight again and this time we are heading out for our first trip to Italy!!!! Specifically SICILY!!!

Jetsetting Wineauxs: Wineauxs Around the World
- I've teamed up with Craig over at Hidden Tracks to take us on an adventure in wine each time focused on a different country or wine region. Here's how this event will work...

• Bring your play passport you received at last month's wine-tasting event. If you're new to this event I will gift you a passport (play passport) and I will stamp it with the country's stamp. Craig will guide us through the tasting by educating us on the wines, the region and so much more.

What will you share? - A FUN FACT about the country....
Keep it as short and sweet as you can, but informative. Some ideas include....

• origins of food or drink
• historical landmarks or popular events
• famous celebrities or newsmakers
• scandals throughout history
• true crime, political figures (probably the same thing, lol)
• statistical facts, random facts, weird laws

Here are the details:
Destination: Sicily, Italy
Wine Tasting Cost: $25 (paid to Hidden Tracks at the tasting)
A guided tasting of wines
Paired bites
Location: Hidden Tracks Bottle Shop (Uptown Phoenix). Sometimes we are seated outside, sometimes we are not, I leave this up to Craig to decide and will let you know ahead of time.
I am opening this up to 25 people. So I encourage you to sign up and experience our eighth destination of the Jetsetting Wineauxs Experience. Craig is an awesome host and is excited to put this on for us.

Hello Wineaxus!

So...we're switching up Buzz Books & Bubbles for December with an added MOVIE!!

Hamnet: The Movie based on the book by Maggie O' Farrell will land in theaters (wide release) on this day December 12. Most likely be wise to get tickets in advance when they go on sale and I will keep everyone up to date with that. I have no idea showtimes, etc, but thinking we will go see it at Fashion Square Mall as there are many places to eat and discuss the book afterwards.

The Movie: "A monumental cinematic experience." Watch the official trailer for HAMNET, winner of the 2025 TIFF People's Choice Award. Starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. From Academy Award® winning writer/director Chloé Zhao, Hamnet tells the powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.

Watch the Hamnet Movie Trailer

This movie is getting MAJOR OSCAR BUZZ, early predictions have it nominated as Best Picture and all the major awards that follow.

THE BOOK:
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a luminous portrait of a marriage, a family ravaged by grief, and a boy whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time. • “Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Page Count: 321
Publish Date: May 18, 2021
Audiobook: 12 hours, 42 minutes - read by author

Amazon Link to Book

RSVP'S: This is a small-group book club limited to only 8 people. So sign up early and please update your RSVP if you are unable to make it to allow someone else off the waitlist.

LOCATION AND TIMES: Exact time and location, theater and bar/restaurant will be posted as soon as I know the showtimes of the movie. Mostly like two weeks in advance. Time posted for this event is just an estimate.

1. 'Count My Lies' by Sophia Stava - Soon to be a Hulu series starring Lindsay Lohan and Shailene Woodley. A read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter into the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves. Amazon Link.
2. 'All That Life Can Afford' by Emily Everett - a modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice. Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach. Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna’s struggle to outrun her past. Amazon Link.
3. Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews- The OG cinematic nanny Julie Andrews starts this memoir with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films -- Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Amazon Link.
4. 'Turn of the Key' by Ruth Ware - When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself awaiting trial for murder. Amazon Link.
5. 'Such a Fun Age' by Kiley Reid - Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. Amazon Link.
6. 'The Lindbergh Nanny' by Mariah Fredericks - When the most famous toddler in America, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., is kidnapped from his family home in New Jersey in 1932, the case makes international headlines. Already celebrated for his flight across the Atlantic, Charles, Sr., is the country’s golden boy, with his wealthy, lovely wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, by his side. But there’s someone else in their household―Betty Gow, a formerly obscure young woman, now known around the world by another name: the Lindbergh Nanny. A Scottish immigrant deciphering the rules of her new homeland and bruised from a love affair gone horribly wrong, Betty finds comfort in caring for the child, and warms to the attentions of handsome sailor Henrik, sometimes known as Red. Then, Charlie disappears. Amazon Link.
7. 'Patsy' by Nicole Dennis-Benn - Patsy, leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting herself first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica, her daughter, Tru, ironically struggles to understand why she was left behind offering up a vital portrait of the chasms between selfhood and motherhood, the American dream and reality. Amazon Link.