Extraits

Josh pushed his round, wire-rim glasses up his nose and checked the table setting one last time before book club got underway.

Cat-shaped cookies frosted in orange rested on a plate in the center of the table. Though Josh would have preferred owl or dragon cookies, he had to work with what the store offered. He might be a Harry Potter fanboy — he’d been called obsessed a time or two in his life — but not to the extent of making specialty cookies.

The orange cats could represent Crookshanks, a cat from J.K. Rowling’s book series, he’d decided. This close to Halloween, it was cats or bats or pumpkins, so he made do. He hated to think what his options would be reduced to come Christmas season.

Wands — beef sticks to the less imaginative — were on a second paper plate. And he’d mixed up a batch of Goblet of Fire, aka fruit punch with a cinnamon kick. Some people would say that cookies, beef sticks, and punch didn’t go together, but the book club members had come to learn that Josh took the Potterheads meetups seriously. He liked to carry out the theme more than he cared about practicalities like food flavors or what paired well with what.