GenevaBookClub: The narrative drive of Stowe's classic novel is often overlooked in the heat of the controversies surrounding its anti-slavery sentiments. In fact, it is a compelling adventure story with richly drawn characters and has earned a place in both literary and American history. Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christianity and how Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery.

GenevaBookClub: 'Paradise': Worthy Women, Unredeemable Men. “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, her first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 -- addresses the same great themes of her 1987 masterpiece, "Beloved": the loss of innocence, the paralyzing power of ancient memories and the difficulty of accepting loss and change and pain. It deals with the blighted legacy of slavery. It examines the emotional and physical violence that human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another. And it suggests that redemption is to be found not in obsessively remembering the past but in letting go.