What are we reading?
This group of amazing advocates will be sharing their favourite book of the month. Check out the July & August 2025 editions!
Wide Sargasso Sea
I have always wondered why Mr. Rochester kept his wife in the attic. She was crazy after all, and he probably could have shipped to an asylum. And then she wouldn’t have burned down his house! It seems that the prolific short story writer, Jean Rhys must have wondered the same thing because she created a masterpiece shedding light on the back story of this madwoman.
Wide Sargasso Sea introduces us to the young Creole woman, Antoinette Conway, of Jamaica. A sensual and protected woman, she is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Their nuptials are a cornucopia of deceit, bribery and a society driven by hatred and revenge. This masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, Rhys delivers a new heroine, replete with reputation, beauty, wisdom and an unlikely victim to end up in an attic in the cold and barren British countryside.
The question is…was this heroine mad before her husband locked her away? Or did the loneliness and isolation drive her to lose her mind?
August 2025
Jody Sanderson
There are no female publishing CEOs in 1960's New York. And that is exactly what savvy, ambitious Bernadette Swift plans to change.
Bernadette Swift, a young copyeditor at Lenox & Park Publishing, is determined to become the first female CEO in the publishing industry. But first she needs to take the next step up that ladder with a promotion that her boorish and sexist boss wants to thwart. Seeking a base of support, Bernadette joins a feminist women's book club at the New York Public Library, and soon, she's inspiring her fellow members to challenge the male gatekeepers and decades of ingrained sexism in their workplaces and pursue their personal and professional dreams.
And that is precisely what Bernedette does on a daily keeps her eye on the prize—equality for women in the workplace, and a promotion—while fending off the ire of her boss and the sabotaging efforts of a jealous coworker. With the support of her book club buddies and a certain charismatic editor at Lenox & Park who has completely fallen for her, maybe, just maybe, Bernadette will prove able to claim victory for herself and the young women coming after her.
July 2025
Jody Sanderson
Get in touch!
