Portals Publishing, an imprint of Denouement Literary Agency, LLC will work with book clubs to provide 25 or more copies of this book at 40% off the retail value as listed on Amazon. Contact Books (at) PortalsPublishing (dot) com.

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Portals Publishing
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0692518908
• ISBN-13: 978-0692518908
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces

The bumpff states:

Laughing Humans are the descendants of a colonizing ship that crashed on the planet Bicanthra III 500 years earlier, and have been raised as animals in a zoo by the indigenous sentient beings of that planet. Their speech has atrophied because of their severe religious belief (one only speaks to praise god), but they laugh, giving rise to their name. They are a strongly female-dominated clan.
Hunter Rogue has lived her entire life providing food for her troupe of two dozen Laughing Humans and trying to escape from the zoo where she and her troupe are exhibits. She hates being confined by taboos or walls. She loves to explore and try new things. She longs to be allowed to speak like the Bicanthran gods, to be mated despite her troupe’s strict laws on monogamy, and to teach her troupe that they are no longer zoo specimens.

Captain Angus McFarlan is one year away from retiring from a military career which confined him with its rules and regulations. In order to keep him from ruining his career in its twilight hours, he is given the dubious honor of rescuing and repatriating the troupe of Laughing Humans. Angus is fierce, dominant, and always in control, until he meets Hunter. Hunter and Angus must lead the Laughing Humans into an existence delightfully different from their previous life. Speech, sex, and equality are all new concepts to which they must adapt.

Discussion Guide questions for Book Clubs
1. Value (What lessons were presented throughout the story? What lesson did you take away?)

2. Attitude (How closely did the attitude of the story itself match with your attitude about life?)

3. Authenticity (Were there any characters or situations which seemed very realistic or very unrealistic? How so?)

4. Point of View (Who told this story? Why?)

5. Cause & Effect (What was the initial event which caused the biggest motivation for the character and the plot to develop? Discuss the chain of events which were a direct effect of this cause.)

6. What if… (Find an event which, if it had not occurred, the major events would not have unfolded. How would the story have changed? How might it have stayed the same?)

7. Conflicts in characters (With whom does the main character have the most conflict? Within the main character, what are her conflicts? How are these resolved?)

8. Conflicts in setting (How does the setting – location, time, socio-ecological circumstances – create conflicts? How are these resolved?)

9. Conflicts along plot line (Where do the most conflicts arise? Are they all resolved by the denouement?)

10. Compare/contrast (Choose two characters or two major conflicts and compare how the author developed them. How are they alike? How do they differ? How would the story have been different if these two things were not developed in this fashion?)

11. Main idea established by title and book cover (When you first saw the cover and read the title, what were your thoughts about the main idea? Were those thoughts supported or changed over the course of reading the book? How so?)

12. Main idea established by values/morals (Do the values and the morals expressed in this book support the main idea? Conversely, does the main idea of this novel support the values and morals expressed?)

13. Main idea established by supporting details (Think of this book as a building. Which supporting details would be considered weight-baring so that if they were removed, the whole infrastructure would collapse?)

14. Genre – (What parts of the story are pure Science Fiction? What parts determine the subgenre Romance? How significantly would the story change if it were not this particular genre?)

15. Plot – Premise (What part of the premise drew you in and made you want to keep reading?)

16. Plot – Rising Action (Consider and discuss the pace of the rising action and developing conflicts.)

17. Plot – Climax (Was the climax what you expected? Were you satisfied by it or did you wish something else had happened?)

18. Plot – Falling Action (Consider and discuss the pace of the falling action and resolutions of the conflicts.)

19. Plot – Denouement (In what ways did the story’s characters and conflicts end up? What was left unanswered? What had you wished happened differently?)

20. Validity and accuracy of information (What things were inaccurate or invalid?)

21. Flow and fluency of language (Quote three of your favorite parts of the story. Discuss the flow and fluency of the language used.)