The Literary Wineaux Society

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 April's French 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 bring? Each person must bring an interesting factoid about the country -- arts, culture, politics, scandal, history, anything you find that can contribute to being immersed in the country. You will have up to two minutes to share your facts. Here are some examples:

• origin of a famous dish or chef
• historical figures in politics
• famous personalities, actors, performers
• seldom heard facts on historical landmarks
• Art and artists, books/authors
• scandals, true crime
• trends and movements - political/religious/fashion/architecture
• please do not bring any facts about wine

Here are the details:
Destination: Portugal
Wine Tasting Cost: $25 (paid at tasting)
A guided tasting of wines
Paired bites
Location: Hidden Tracks Bottle Shop (Uptown Phoenix)

I am opening this up to 25 people. So I encourage you to sign up and experience our second destination of the Jetsetting Wineauxs Experience. Craig is an awesome host and is excited to put this on for us.

'Wild Dark Shore' by Charlotte McConaghy - (fiction) A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. Amazon Link

Published: March 4, 2025
Page Count: 325
Audio: 9 hours, 35 minutes

Further Reading and Viewing:

• Read: Q&A with Author
• Watch: Behind the Stack Interview with Author

Location

• Mise En Place, Scottsdale
• $25 per person wine tasting + charcuterie bites to share

1. 'The Names' by Florence Knapp - In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, 'The Names' explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing. Amazon Link.

2. 'The Bee Sting' by Paul Murray - The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away. If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda’s wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man? Amazon Link.

3. 'The Bright Years' by Sarah Damoff - Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall. When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them or herself while there’s still time.
   Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love. Amazon Link.

4. 'Run For The Hills' by Kevin Wilson - Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely, she sometimes admits, and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Mostly. Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half-siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.
   As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with every new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm? Amazon Link.

5. 'Shuggie Bain' by Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good—her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamorous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion’s share of each week’s benefits—all the family has to live on. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,” a boy. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her—even her beloved Shuggie. Amazon Link.

6. 'The Emperor of Gladness' by Ocean Vuong - One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink. Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Amazon Link.

7. 'Down the Drain' by Julia Fox - famous for many things: such as her breakout role in the film Uncut Gems; her trendsetting style, including bleached eyebrows and cutout dresses; her mastery of social media, But all these share the trait for which she is most famous: unabashedly and unapologetically being herself. Fox recounts her turbulent path, her parents’ volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist”; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Amazon Link.