BOOK CLUB LIST 2024-2025
September 10: The Perfumist of Paris by Aika Joshi
October 7: The Women by Kristan Hannah
November 11: 54 Miles by Leonard Pitts. Jr.
January 14: The Fire Keeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
February 11: Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murders by Jesse Q. Sutanto
March 11: The Measure by Nikki Erlick
April 8th: The Briar’s Club by Kate Quinn
May 13th: The Frozen River by Ariel Laswon
From the NY Times bestselling author of I was Anastasia and Code Name Helene comes a gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Marth Ballard, a renowned 18th-centrury midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Marth documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town's most respected gentlemen-one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
June 10th: The Nightengale by Kristin Hannah
The unforgettable novel of love and strength in the face of war has enthralled a generation. France 1939 - In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband Anthoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France....but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.
July 8th: Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley
Angeline Boulley takes us back to Sugar Island in this high-stakes thriller about the power of discovering your history. Perry Firekeep-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-stakes profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.
Aug. 12th: How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Poole
A senior citizens' center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from this NY times best selling author. When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens' Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she'll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign - but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide. When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door - as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog - to save the building. Together, this group's unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don't catch up with them first.
Sept. 8th: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
Another heart-stopping WWII story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of East-End London poverty, works the legendary code-breaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.
1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter—the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger—and their true enemy...