Book Clubs

Peters, Amanda. The Berry Pickers.
Fiction

July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries; weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie vanishes mysteriously, last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe. Joe will remain deeply affected by his sister's disappearance for years to come.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road.
Fiction

Apocalypse grips the earth; wildlife has disappeared; and starvation prevails. Amidst this bleak backdrop, a man and his young son slowly make their way toward the coast. Avoiding roves of marauding cannibals and fighting off starvation, they gain hope and stamina in knowing they are some of the remaining few virtuous people.

Grissom, Kathleen. Crow Mary.
Fiction

In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.

And Then There Were None Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None.
Fiction

Ten houseguests, trapped on an isolated island, are the prey of a diabolical killer. A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion: Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine--When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale?

Philbrick, Nathaniel.  In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. 
Nonfiction

Recounts the story of the 1820 wreck of the whaleship Essex, which inspired Melville's classic Moby-Dick, and describes its doomed crew's ninety-day attempt to survive whale attacks and the elements on three tiny lifeboats.

Allende, Isabel. The Wind Knows My Name.
Fiction

Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children: five-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and seven-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S. where she's separated from her mother.

Desmond, Matthew. Poverty, by America. 
Nonfiction

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor.

Bohjalian, Chris.
The Red Lotus.
Fiction

Falling in love with a wounded former patient and accompanying him on a cycling trip to Vietnam, an emergency-room doctor uncovers a bizarre series of deceptions that culminate in her boyfriend's unexplained disappearance.

Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake.
Fiction

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage, and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Deb Miller. A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton.
Nonfiction

The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shockwaves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Georgia like few other crimes before it. The neighborhood was simply not the kind of place where women were gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight.

Quinn, Kate. The Diamond Eye.
2022, 435 p. Fiction

Known as Lady Death - a lethal hunter of Nazis, Mila Pavlichenko, sent to America on a goodwill tour, forms an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a connection with a silent fellow sniper, offering her a chance at happiness until her past returns with a vengeance.

Doughty, Caitlin. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
2014, 254 p. Nonfiction

The blogger behind the popular Web series "Ask a Mortician" describes her experiences working at a crematory, including how she sometimes got ashes on her clothes and how she cared for bodies of all shapes and sizes.

Michaelides, Alex. The Silent Patient.
2018, 336 p. Fiction

Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, is determined to get an artist who shot her husband and then never spoke another word to talk, which takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations--a search for the truth that threatens to consume him.

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
1927, 138 p. Fiction

When a rope bridge near Lima, Peru breaks in 1714, a Franciscan who witnesses the accident feels compelled to learn about the lives of the five people who were killed.

McTiernan, Dervla. What Happened to Nina?
2023, 328 p. Fiction

Two families are pitted against each other--one seeking justice in the disappearance of their daughter, the other desperate to clear their son's name.

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
1847, 307 p. Fiction

Heathcliff, an orphan, is raised by Mr Earnshaw as one of his own children. Hindley despises him but wild Cathy becomes his constant companion, and he falls deeply in love with her. When she will not marry him, Heathcliff's terrible vengeance ruins them all - but still his and Cathy's love will not die...

Marton, Kati. The Chancellor.
2021, 400 p. Nonfiction

The Chancellor is at once a riveting political biography and an intimate human story of a complete outsider - a research chemist and pastor's daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany - who rose to become the unofficial leader of the West.

Friss, Evan. The Bookshop: A history of the American Bookstore.
2024, 352 p. Nonfiction

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many.

Cambron, Kristy. The Paris Dressmaker.
021, 384 p. Fiction

Based on true accounts of how Parisiennes resisted the Nazi occupation-from fashion houses to the city streets-The Paris Dressmaker weaves a story of two courageous women who risked everything to fight an evil they couldn't abide.

Burks, Ruth Coker. All the Young Men.
2020, 304 p. Nonfiction

A gripping and triumphant tale of human compassion follows a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who was driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis, becoming a pivotal activist in America's fight against AIDS.