Reese Witherspoon is turning to the world of fantasy for her latest book club pick.
The actor’s latest selection for her club is Alix E. Harrow’s Starling House, a novel about Opal, a small-town Kentucky woman who is obsessed with The Underland, a book by E. Starling, an author who disappeared a century earlier. When Opal gets the chance to work at Starling’s mysterious mansion, she’s unable to resist.
Starling House, published Tuesday by Tor Books, is the third full-length novel from Harrow, following The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches. In an interview with BookPage, Harrow said that the novel’s setting was inspired by John Prine’s song “Paradise,” which is about an economically depressed Kentucky town ravaged by strip mining and corporate greed.
“It’s like a tiny little Kentucky Chernobyl,” Harrow said of the town of Paradise. “Now it’s dead financially and ecologically. So, I was like, ‘What if it had survived? And what if it was haunted more literally? And what about the people who would still kind of cling on and love it despite everything?’”
Witherspoon announced the novel’s selection in a video on Instagram, which features her whipping up a batch of seasonal treats. “It is strange and spooky.…It’s perfect to sit down and read with a cup of coffee and maybe a pumpkin cookie.” (In the text accompanying the video, Witherspoon provides the cookie recipe. You’ll need chocolate chips and two kinds of brown sugar.)
Harrow reacted to her book’s selection on Instagram, writing, “You see that yellow sticker on the cover?? That’s the biggest secret I’ve ever had to keep in my LIFE. babes.....it’s a Reese’s Book Club pick. like, there is a video out there right now on god’s own internet of reese witherspoon holding a book that i wrote.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
