The Briar Club

by Kate Quinn

Not that the house is terribly surprised by that; it’s held enough holidays to know that when you throw all that family together and mix with too much rum punch and buried resentment, blood is bound to be shed sometimes.

“I make it a policy never to believe more than a third of what men tell me,” Mrs. Grace said with her amused, half-lidded smile. “At work or anywhere.

“Pete. The Founding Fathers did not create this great nation of ours so that we could let them down by combining canned tuna with instant mushroom soup. That is not a casserole, that is a war crime.

“A successful dinner party needs just one person all the others loathe, Pete—it gives everyone something to unite against.”

“Our people all spoke different languages and maybe still do; we look different; we live in every possible location from cities to towns, mountains to plains. But”—she waved at the Bill of Rights, including its sister documents off in the Library of Congress—“this unites us. A government established for an articulated principle, not tribal allegiances or lines drawn on a map.”