The Literary Wineaux Society

Happy 2026!!!

Our first book club of the year, and we're starting off with wonderful randomness! Our theme for January is ....THE NANNY DIARIES - You voted and the January LWS Book Club Selection is...
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'Count My Lies' by Sophia Stava . Amazon Link.

“The very definition of a page-turner! This smart, original, twisty story had me gripped from the first to the last page.” —Liane Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

• A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
• SOON TO BE A HULU TELEVISION SERIES STARRING LINDSAY LOHAN, KIT HARRINGTON, 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. For the millions of us still chasing those gone girls, this is perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Lucy Foley, and Laura Dave.

Sloane Caraway is a liar.

Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.

So, when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself—she tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl’s foot.

With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart—the perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.

But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.

The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins an “utterly gripping and unputdownable” (Amy Tintera, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.

Careful what you lie for.

BOOK DETAILS:
Page Count: 336 pages
Published: March 4, 2025
Audiobook: 10 hours, 49 minutes. Narrated by Andrew Eiden (The Perfect Marriage), Devon Sorvari (The Gallery Assistant), Emily Tremaine (The Cloisters)

Location:
Wine Tasting at Mise En Place. $25 p/person includes 4+ wines and light charcuterie bites.

Please update your RSVP if you are unable to make it!

It's the first Buzz Books & Bubbles of the Year and I don't have a crystal ball to tell what will be buzzing in January - I'll take a safe bet it will be ,...
The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave.

This book is a sequel to "The Last Thing He Told Me". You should have enough time between now and January 30 meeting to either read this book or watch the Apple TV+ series of the same name that stars Jennifer Garner. The series adaptation is a true adaptation of the novel as it was written by the author's husband, Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Post).

I don't think you need to read the book or watch the series (it would help), just be familiar with the first story ahead of time.

The series is currently streaming on Apple TV, and Season 2, which will coincide with this second novel, will premiere on Apple TV on February 20.

Synopsis: (note: spoilers ahead if you haven't watched the series or read the first book)

The First Time I Saw Him
- Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they've forged a relationship with Bailey's grandfather Nicholas and are putting the past behind them. But when Owen shows up at Hannah's new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again. As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety—and finds there just might be one way back to Owen.. Amazon Link

Page Count: 288 Pages
Publish Date: January 6, 2026
Audiobook: 7 hours, 16 minutes (read by author)

Location: Phoenix Wine of Scottsdale at 6pm
I love this place. They have good prices on wines by the bottle and personal or shareable charcuterie boards. You can purchase wines by the glass or bottle, they will cork the bottle for you to take home. The staff is awesome, too.

RSVPs
This is a small group book club, just 8 people, so please check your RSVP and update it in case you are unable to make it.

Howdy Wineauxs!

We are embarking on a new bookish frontier - THE WILD WEST!!!
Yee-Haw!

The following seven nominees all take place in the Wild West/Gold Rush era. Let's lasso in these books and choose one to discuss and drink wine at the old saloon (aka Mise En Place). Dressing up in some cowgirl/cowboy attire is encouraged, but totally not required. Come as the outlaw you already are!

Choose your MOST WANTED book in the comments below. I've added Amazon Links for further research and uploaded the book covers in photos.

And the following nominees are...

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: Book Tok is going crazy over this book. "It change my life, I'll never be the same!" What!? I'm intrigued. Celebrating it's 40th anniversary, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is an epic western of the frontier, a grand novel written about the last defiant wilderness. Journey to the dusty little town of Lonesome Dove, where retired Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call undertake one last adventure, a perilous cattle drive to the untamed plains of Montana. Along the way, they face danger, adventure, and an unforgettable cast of characters. Richly authentic and beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a story of love, loss, and the unyielding spirit of the American West. Amazon Link

2. Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton - The Wild West meets Jurassic Park? Sonnabitch, I'm in! The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars. Amazon Link.

3. 'The Rush' by Beth Lewis - In a lawless land stricken with gold fever, the struggle for survival and fortune takes a turn towards murder in this gripping western crime novel. Gold fever has taken him. I believe he means to kill me...
Canada, 1898. The Gold Rush is on in the frozen wilderness of the Yukon. Fortunes are made as quickly as they're lost, and Dawson City has become a lawless settlement. In its midst, three women are trying to find their place on the edge of civilization. When a woman is found murdered, Kate, Martha and Ellen find their lives, fates and fortunes intertwined. But to unmask her killer, they must navigate a desperate land run by dangerous men who will do anything for a glimpse of gold... Amazon Link.

4. Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West by Tom Clavin - (non-fiction) I've had this on my TBR forever. Turns out my ancestors passed through this town and wrote about it in their diaries. Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the West. Amazon Link.

5. Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones - (yes, that's two hunters!) Interview with an Indigenous vampire is what one critic called this book, a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones. Amazon Link

6. God's Country by Percival Everett - From the author of "James" our December 2024 LWS read, One of the earliest works anchoring Percival Everett’s illustrious career, God’s Country is by turns funny, shocking, and devastating. The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. Unfortunately, he’s a coward. When he sees a band of “Injun impersonators” pillaging his home, he has “half a mind to ride down that hill and say somethin’, but it was just half a mind after all.” It’s 1871, and he’s lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder enlists the help of the best tracker in the West: a Black man named Bubba. Amazon Link.

7. How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang - Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, this electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home. Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story. Amazon Link.