Sara Shepard

Chosen

It all begins with a fantasy: the caseworker in her “signing paperwork” charcoal suit, paired with the beaming parents cradling their adopted newborn, against a fluorescent-lit delivery room backdrop. It’s this blissful picture that keeps Chloe Pinter, director of The Chosen Child’s domestic adoption program, happy juggling the high demands of her boss and the incessant needs of both adoptive and biological parents.

But the job that offers her refuge from her turbulent personal life and Portland’s winter rains soon becomes a battleground itself involving three very different couples: the Novas, college sweethearts who suffered fertility problems but are now expecting their own baby; the McAdoos, a wealthy husband and desperate wife for whom adoption is a last chance; and Jason and Penny, an impoverished couple who have nothing—except the baby everyone wants. But when a child is kidnapped, dreams dissolve into nightmares, and everyone is forced to examine what went wrong…

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Questions for discussion: Harper Collins Publishers have prepared a Reading Group Guide with questions for your Reading Group for Chosen.

Food Rec

This recipe takes a long-maligned vegetable—the Brussels sprout and aims to change what you think you know.