The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, Janice Hallett - January 6, 2025

We'll meet at Steph's house on Jan. 6, 2025, to discuss The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, by Janice Hallett.  Let me know if you come across some discussion questions or other supplemental materials.  

Slate and pitches for 2024-2025

Here is our slate and calendar for 2024-2025:

November 25 - The Turn of the Screw, Henry James - CLASSIC
January 6 (shifted from December) - The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, Janice Hallett
January 27 - In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien
February 24 - Stolen, Ann-Helen Laestadius
March 24 - Table for Two, Amor Towles
April 28 - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
June 2 (shifted to avoid Memorial Day) - Swing Time, Zadie Smith
June 30 (5th Monday) - Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver
July 28 - Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
August 25 - Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
September 22 - Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
October 27 - Book Picking Night!!!!!

Pitches were as follows

Classics

Classics vote is the first number in parenthesis; regular vote is the second number.

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote - Ruth (12/13)
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James - Kathy (20)
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway - Julie (18/13)
Light in August, William Faulkner - Steph (13/12)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers - Katherine (17/28)

Regular

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan - Ruth (17)
No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood - Suzanne (We goofed; not included for voting)
Swing Time, Zadie Smith - Kathy (24)
Table for Two, Amor Towles - Katherine (34)
The Mysterious Case of Alperton Angels, Janice Hallett - Julie (28)
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver - Steph (36)
Stolen, Ann-Helen Laestadius - Katherine (23)
What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, Leslie ___ - Ruth (4)
Hanging Garden, Patrick White - Suzanne (We goofed; not included for voting)
Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver - Kerry (16)
Crying in H Mart - Connie (15)
In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien - Steph (26)
Piranesi, Susanne Clarke - Julie (14)
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett - Katherine (25)

Long Lists for 2024-2025

 Here's what we're considering for pitching this year. 

Connie

Table for Two, Amor Towles

From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles.

The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages

In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age

Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.

Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.

Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band – and meeting the man who would become her husband – her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Karen

A book by Anne Lemotte.  One possibility is Rosie.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Mercies; and Stitches, a wise and witty novel about motherhood.

Look out for Anne's next book, Hallelujah Anyway, coming in 2017. In Anne Lamott’s wise and witty novel, the growing pains of motherhood are portrayed with rare humor and honesty. If Elizabeth Ferguson had her way, she’d spend her days savoring good books, cooking great meals, and waiting for the love of her life to walk in the door. But it’s not a man she’s waiting for, it’s her daughter, Rosie—her wild-haired, smart-mouthed, and wise-beyond-her-years alter ego. With Rosie around, the days aren’t quite so long, but Elizabeth can’t keep the realities of the world at bay, and try as she might, she can’t shield Rosie from its dangers or mysteries.

As Rosie grows older and more curious, Elizabeth must find a way to nurture her extraordinary daughter—even if it means growing up herself.

Katherine

Tom Lake, Ann Patchett

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian

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.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

The audio book is narrated by Meryl Streep.

Has some tie ins to Our Town and has spoilers for Our Town.  

Kathy

The Book of Delights, Ross Gay

• National Book Award finalist
• National Book Critics Circle Award winner
• A New York Times Bestseller
• Named one of the Best Books of 2019 by the Washington Independent Review of Books and Shelf Awareness
• Named a best reviewed book of 2019 by Lit Hub
• Named one of five books every high schooler should read by the School Library Journal
• Named one of “8 Books We Can’t Stop Thinking About,” Vanity Fair

The New York Times bestselling book of essays celebrating ordinary delights in the world around us by one of America's most original and observant writers, award-winning poet Ross Gay.

The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyrical essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders. A genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year, the first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room.

But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything else, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world–his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis. The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

How It Went, Thirteen More Stories of the Port William Membership, Wendell Berry

Thirteen new stories of the Port William membership spanning the decades from World War II to the present moment.

For those readers of his poetry and inspired by his increasingly vital work as advocate for rational land use and the right-size life, these stories of Wendell Berry’s offer entry into the fictional place of value and beauty that is Port William, Kentucky. Berry has said it’s taken a lifetime for him to learn to write like an old man, and that’s what we have here, stories told with grace and ease and majesty. Wendell Berry is one of our greatest living American authors, writing with the wisdom of maturity and the incandescence that comes of love.

These thirteen new works explore the memory and imagination of Andy Catlett, one of the well-loved central characters of the Port William saga. From 1932 to 2021, these stories span the length of Andy’s life, from before the outbreak of the Second World War to the threatened end of rural life in America.

Swing Time, Zadie Smith

• Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction 
• Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
• A New York Times bestseller

“Smith’s thrilling cultural insights never overshadow the wholeness of her characters, who are so keenly observed that one feels witness to their lives.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“A sweeping meditation on art, race, and identity that may be [Smith’s] most ambitious work yet.” —Esquire

An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty.

Two brown girls dream of being dancers—but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.

Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.

But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, the women dance just like Tracey—the same twists, the same shakes—and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time. 

The Fraud, Zadie Smith

Written in typical Zadie Smith fashion, The Fraud is a page-turning historical novel about Victorian England.

More specifically, this entrancing new work follows the famed Tichborne Trial - a historic legal case that remains controversial, even to this day. Though Smith's novel focuses on this trial, and the turbulence surrounding it, The Fraud is, at its core, a novel about the rectification of two opposing realities: that of truth and fiction, fraudulence and authenticity, and the people that exist at the extremes of both. The perfect next read for anyone in search of a captivating historical novel with contemporary commentary, The Fraud strikes a perfect balance.

Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever.

"It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN

Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

“A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf - CLASSIC

Mrs Dalloway (1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels. 

In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, she is flooded with remembrances of the past--the passionate loves of her carefree youth, her practical choice of husband, and the approach and retreat of war. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.

With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. From the introspective Clarissa, to the lover who never fully recovered from her rejection, to a war-ravaged stranger in the park, the characters and scope of Mrs. Dalloway reshape our sense of ordinary life making it one of the most "moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century" (Michael Cunningham).

In October 2005, Mrs. Dalloway was included on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923.

This was on Katherine's long list last year.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley - CLASSIC

Originally published in 1932, Huxley's terrifying vision of a controlled and emotionless future "Utopian" society is truly startling in its prediction of modern scientific and cultural phenomena, including test-tube babies and rampant drug abuse.

Steph

The Stranger, Albert Camus -- CLASSIC

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger—Camus's masterpiece—gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach.

Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. “The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.”

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

• WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
• WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
• New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century
• An Oprah’s Book Club Selection
• A #1 Washington Post Bestseller
• A New York Times "Ten Best Books of the Year"

"Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

"May be the best novel of [the year]. . . . Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post

From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival.

Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

Despair, Nabokov -- CLASSIC

The wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.

“A beautiful mystery plot, not to be revealed.” – Newsweek

“Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” – John Updike

“One of Mr. Nabokov’s finest, most challenging and provocative novels.” – The New York Times

Despair’s protagonist, Hermann, is another masterly portrait in the fascinating gallery of living characters Vladmir Nabokov has given to world literature. In his pseudo wordliness, his odd genius, Hermann is one with such other heteroclitic neurotic Nabokovian creations as Humbert Humbert and Charles Kimbote. Rapt in his own reality, incapable of escaping or explicating it, he is as solitary in his abyss as Luzhin or Charlotte Haze of Lolita. Despair is illuminated throughout by the virtuosity and cunning wit that are Vladimir Nabokov’s hallmarks.

Light in August, William Faulkner -- CLASSIC

From the Nobel Prize winner—one of the most highly acclaimed writers of the twentieth century—a novel set in the American South during Prohibition about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality.

James, Percival Everett --- Probably can't get copies this year, but maybe the library will have oodles of copies and a book club kit for it. 

• AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
• SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
• Shortlisted for THE BOOKER PRIZE
• KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

In development as a feature film to be produced by Steven Spielberg • A Best Book of the Year of the Year so Far for 2024: The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, W Magazine, Bustle, LitHub

"Genius"—The Atlantic

"A masterpiece that will help redefine one of the classics of American literature, while also being a major achievement on its own."—Chicago Tribune

"A provocative, enlightening literary work of art."—The Boston Globe

"Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful."—The New York Times

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town.

As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien

This riveting novel of love and mystery from the author of The Things They Carried examines the lasting impact of the twentieth century’s legacy of violence and warfare, both at home and abroad. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival, his wife mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness.

Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship, Catherine Raven

• Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
• 2022 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner
• Shortlisted for the John Burroughs Medal
• Finalist for the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize
• Shortlisted for a Reading the West Book Award
• New York Times Bestseller
• A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year
• 2021 Summer Reading Pick by Buzzfeed, New York Times Book Review, Kirkus, Time Magazine, Good Morning America, People Magazine, The Washington Post 

When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone National Park. 

Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. How do you even talk to a fox? She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends.

From the fox, Catherine learned the single most important thing about loneliness: we are never alone when we are connected to the natural world. Friends, however, cannot save each other from the uncontained forces of nature.

Fox and I is a poignant and remarkable tale of friendship, growth, and coping with inevitable loss—and of how that loss can be transformed into meaning. It is both a timely tale of solitude and belonging as well as a timeless story of one woman whose immersion in the natural world will change the way we view our surroundings—each tree, weed, flower, stone, or fox.

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich - July 22, 2024

We'll meet at Connie's to discuss The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich. 

Supplemental materials:

• Penguin Reading Group Guide
• Washington Post review
• New York Times review
• Erdrich - YouTube Video of reading and discussion in a Wash. D.C. bookstore, Politics and Prose (Readings go to about the 31 minute mark in the video.  And then the discussion begins about there.)
• NPR Interview

Emma, Jane Austen - February 26, 2024

We'll meet at Kathy's house on February 26 to discuss Emma by Jane Austen.

Set in England in 1815 (Regency Era - which refers to the period (1811-1820) when George III was unfit to rule and his son, the future George IV, ruled by proxy as The Prince Regent.

Supplemental materials:

• Penguin Readers Guide
• Movie Adaptions:

• Emma (2020) with Anya Taylor-Joy
• Emma (1996) with Gwyneth Paltrow
• Emma (1996), British TV movie with Kate Beckinsale
• Clueless (1995) - modern retelling with Alicia Silverstone
• Ranking of movie adaptations

Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami - January 29, 2024

 

We'll meet January 29 at Julie's house to discuss Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami.

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee - January 8, 2024

 We'll meet January 8, 2024, at Kerry's to discuss Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

Supplemental materials:

• Character list from Book Companion
• Publisher's Reading Group Guide
• "What Min Jin Lee Wants Us to See," New Yorker article about Min Jin Lee, February 17, 2022.
• "Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko, on identify, history, and 'the defiant strength of those who resist," interview with MJL, in Musing, March 14, 2018.

Slate for 2023-2024

Here's our slate and calendar for 2023-2024!

November 27:  And the Mountains Echoed, Khalid Hosseini

January 8:  Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

January 29:  Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami

February 26: Emma, Jane Austen

March 25:  Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout

April 22:  The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman

June 3:  Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

June 24 - The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck

July 22:  - The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich

August 26:  The Art of the Wasted Day, Patricia Hampl

September 23: The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov

October 28:  BOOK PICKING NIGHT

Pitches and votes were as follows:

Classics

Short Stories, Mark Twain (Kerry) - 4

Emma, Jane Austen (Steph) - 28

The House of Spirits, Isabelle Allende - Connie - 11

Frannie and Zooey, J.D. Salinger (Kerry) - 22

The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck (Steph) - 25

Also discussed:  Our Town, Thorton Wilder (Katherine) and The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov (Katherine).  Our Town would pair well with Tom Lake by Ann Patchett which isn't readily available this year.

Regular

The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman (Ruth) - 18/19

The Art of the Wasted Day, Patricia Hempl (Suzanne) - 23

The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov (Katherine) - 18/19

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich (Kathy) - 24

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee (Steph) - 36

Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami (Julie) - 25

And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini (Connie)- 24

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Woo, Junot Diaz (Kerry) - 19/17

The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen (Suzanne) - 12

March, Geraldine Brooks (Kathy) - 19/17

Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (Julie) - 13

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr (Julie) - 36

Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout (Julie) - 26

House of Spirits, Isabelle Allende (Connie) - 6

In the Woods, Tana French (Suzanne) - 16

The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck (Steph) - 28

Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger (Kerry) - 18/18

Long Lists for 2023-2024

Julie

Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

• FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 
• WINNER OF THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION
• WINNER OF THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE

“It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future… At once terrifying and … oddly hopeful.” —Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review “Moving, audacious, and indelibly human.” —Entertainment Weekly, “A” rating 

An astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands, from the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the forthcoming The Last White Man. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.

When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . . Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are.

Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

Anything is Possible, Elizabeth Strout

• Winner of The Story Prize 
• A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book 
• One of USA Today’s top 10 books of the year 

 Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.

Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.

Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout

• NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
• ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Time, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, PopSugar, She Reads
• Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown—and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart. “Strout’s understanding of the human condition is capacious.”—NPR  

With her trademark spare, crystalline prose—a voice infused with “intimate, fragile, desperate humanness” (The Washington Post)—Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic.

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire.

At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart—the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

• A National Book Award Finalist
• Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times Book Review).

Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.

In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky.

Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.

In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined.

Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.

Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami

NATIONAL BESTSELLER  - Including the story "Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award–nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author "examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers" (Barack Obama).

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone.

Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all. In Men Without Women Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic, marked by the same wry humor and pathos that have defined his entire body of work.

Katherine

Our Town, Thornton Wilder - CLASSIC

“[Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth.” — The New Yorker

Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death.

Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life during childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts—childhood, adulthood, and death—is fully realized. Widely considered one of the greatest American plays of all time, Our Town debuted on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be performed daily on stages around the world. 

Tom Lake, Ann Patchett

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian

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.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

The audio book is narrated by Meryl Streep.

Has some tie ins to Our Town and has spoilers for Our Town.  If we pick them both, we should read Our Town first.

The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov

Classic of world drama concerns passing of semifeudal order in turn-of-the-century Russia, symbolized in the sale of the cherry orchard owned by Madame Ranevskaya. Showcases Chekhov's rich sensitivities as an observer of human nature.

Kathy

The Night Watchman, Louis Erdrich

• WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
• NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature.

Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

March, Geraldine Brooks

• Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2006

A powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord.

From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd).

With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.

A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.

Ruth

Our Missing Hearts, Celest Ng

• An instant New York Times bestseller
• A New York Times Notable Book of 2022
• Named a Best Book of 2022 by People, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily, and more 
• A Reese's Book Club Pick 
• New York Times Paperback Row Selection

From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes the inspiring new novel about a mother’s unshakeable love. “It’s impossible not to be moved.” —Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review “Riveting, tender, and timely.” —People, Book of the Week “Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching . . . I was so invested in the future of this mother and son, and I can’t wait to hear what you think of this deeply suspenseful story!” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him.

Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice.

It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.

The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah

From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.

“My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family.” Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak.

Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.

In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family. The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it—the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots.

A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

Turtles All the Way Down, John Green

The critically acclaimed, instant #1 bestseller by John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and The Fault in Our Stars

“A tender story about learning to cope when the world feels out of control.” —People “A sometimes heartbreaking, always illuminating, glimpse into how it feels to live with mental illness.” – NPR

John Green, the award-winning, international bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed, returns with a story of shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship. Aza Holmes never intended to pursue the disappearance of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Pickett’s son Davis. Aza is trying.

She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman

“A luminous, Marquez-esque tale” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Museum of Extraordinary Things: a forbidden love story set on a tropical island about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro—the Father of Impressionism.

Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel’s mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel’s salvation is their maid Adelle’s belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle’s daughter. But Rachel’s life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father’s business. When her older husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frédérick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.

“A work of art” (Dallas Morning News), The Marriage of Opposites showcases the beloved, bestselling Alice Hoffman at the height of her considerable powers. “Her lush, seductive prose, and heart-pounding subject…make this latest skinny-dip in enchanted realism…the Platonic ideal of the beach read” (Slate.com). Once forgotten to history, the marriage of Rachel and Frédérick “will only renew your commitment to Hoffman’s astonishing storytelling” (USA TODAY).

Steph

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

• National Book Aware Finalist 2017
• NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017
• FINALIST FOR THE 2018 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
• WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE

Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). 

 In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.

The Weight of a Moment, Michael Bow

Readers' Favorite, a popular and respected website for book lovers, awarded the novel five stars and published the following review:

The Weight of a Moment by Michael Bowe is a compelling story that explores the depth of failure, the pain of tragedy, the beauty of friendship and how it can empower people to retake control of their lives after experiencing hopelessness. The reader is introduced to two characters who are genuinely flawed and deeply human as they struggle to reconcile with their pasts. An award-winning journalist and columnist's name quickly becomes a valuable brand for The Philadelphia Post and his articles become more trusted than those of any other journalists. But he can't forgive himself when one of his articles leads to a tragedy. His heart is filled with chagrin. He runs to Pennsylvania, escaping from his past and it is here that he meets Tom Corbett, a successful antiques dealer who has been shamed by an online video that has shattered everything he's built -- business, marriage, and family. These two men are going to experience a friendship that sets them on the path to redemption and to recreating life, not only for themselves but for others.

A beautifully written and inspiring story that is filled with realism and pathos. Told in the first person narrative voice, it captures the viewpoints of the characters with brilliance. There are insightful passages that compel readers to reflect on the human condition and the idea of meaning. The prose is excellent and it is interesting how the author captures the life of the journalist. The themes of pain, the quest for meaning, friendship, and purpose are deftly handled. The reader quickly understands that life is shaped by moments, sometimes very brief, and these moments could be "first glances, tearful goodbyes, fortunate turns, unfortunate accidents, promises kept, promises broken, triumphs, failures, and regrets." The Weight of a Moment is emotionally rich, psychologically exciting, and inspiring. Michael Bowe makes readers care about his characters and feel like a part of their world.

Contrasting elements: big cities and small towns, modern and historic, priceless and valuable, compassion and condemnation, add to the richness of the tale. Critically acclaimed, this second novel from the author of Skyscraper of a Man is a brilliant sophomore effort.

The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa

Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.

She is an astute young Housekeeper—with a ten-year-old son—who is hired to care for the Professor. 

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities—like the Housekeeper's shoe size—and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

“Gorgeous, cinematic . . . The Housekeeper and the Professor is a perfectly sustained novel . . . like a note prolonged, a fermata, a pause enabling us to peer intently into the lives of its characters. . . . This novel has all the charm and restraint of any by Ishiguro or Kenzaburo Oe and the whimsy of Murakami. The three lives connect like the vertices of a triangle.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither, Sara Baume

• Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
• Winner of the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year Award 
• Short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award
• Long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize
• Long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award 2015, Readers’ Choice
• Long-listed for the Warwick Prize for Writing 2015
• Long-listed for 2015 Edinburgh First Novel Award

A critically acclaimed debut novel praised as "unbearably poignant and beautifully told" (Eimear McBride), this captivating story follows a misfit man who adopts a misfit dog.

It is springtime, and two outcasts—a man ignored, even shunned by his village, and the one-eyed dog he takes into his quiet, tightly shuttered life—find each other, by accident or fate, and forge an unlikely connection. As their friendship grows, their small seaside town falsely perceives menace where there is only mishap—and the duo must take to the road. Gorgeously written in poetic and mesmerizing prose, 

Spill Simmer Falter Wither is one of those rare stories that utterly and completely imagines its way into a life most of us would never see. It transforms us in our understanding not only of the world, but also of ourselves.  “A deeply attuned portrait of the human mind…An unsettling literary surprise of the best sort.”—Atlantic “This book is like a flame in daylight: beautiful and unexpected.”—Anne Enright “A man-and-his-dog story like no other.”—San Francisco Chronicle “[Spill Simmer Falter Wither] hums with its own distinctiveness.”—Guardian (UK)

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

Probably too new for copies to be readily available.  But will check on that before pitching.  And a candidate for future years, if we can't consider it this year.

• Pulitzer Prize co-winner 2023
• Women's Prize for Fiction winner 2023

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.

Emma, Jane Austen - CLASSIC

The culmination of Jane Austen's genius, a sparkling comedy of love and marriage.

Beautiful, clever, rich—and single—Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected.

With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.

The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck - CLASSIC

In this remarkable novel of human courage and defiance, Steinbeck celebrates democracy and the power of the individual against tyranny. A North European country has been invaded. In one small town the people's initial confusion crystallizes into a silent, sullen anger that gradually undermines the conquerors until they too come to know what fear means.

The Moon is Down had extraordinary impact as Allied propaganda in Nazi-occupied Europe. Despite Axis attempts to suppress it (in Fascist Italy, mere possession of a copy of the book was punishable by death) thousands of copies circulated throughout Europe, bearing witness to the power of ideas in the face of terror and brutality.

Suzanne

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World - A Pedestrian in Paris, John Baxter

“Splendid... Reading The Most Beautiful Walk in the World is the next best thing to a Paris vacation.” –Boston Globe

“Anyone who loves Paris and loves to walk will feel this book was written just for them.” –USA Today 

 In this enchanting national bestseller, acclaimed author and long-time expat Paris resident John Baxter draws on his experience guiding "literary walking tours" through the city to proved a delightful walker's guide to France's capital. Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past. Along the way, he tells the history of Paris through a brilliant cast of characters: the favorite cafés of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce; Pablo Picasso's underground Montmartre haunts; the bustling boulevards of the late-nineteenth-century flâneurs; the secluded "Little Luxembourg" gardens beloved by Gertrude Stein; the alleys where revolutionaries plotted; and finally Baxter's own favorite walk near his home in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Too Much and Not the Mood, Durga Chew-Bose

Named a best book of 2017 by NPR, The Guardian, Slate, NYLON and The Globe and Mail (Canada) 

From Durga Chew-Bose, “one of our most gifted, insightful essayists and critics” (Nylon), comes "a warmly considered meld of criticism and memoir" (New Yorker), a lyrical and piercingly insightful debut collection of essays about identity and culture.

Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words “too much and not the mood” to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the “cramming in and the cutting out.” She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth.

Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.

The Netanyahus - An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, Joshua Cohen

• WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
• 2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER
• A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021
• A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021
• A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021

"Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever." —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

 

In The Woods, Tana French

• Edgar Award Winner

The bestselling debut, with over a million copies sold, that launched Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher and “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post).

“Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting.” —The New York Times

Now airing as a Starz series.

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Richly atmospheric and stunning in its complexity, In the Woods is utterly convincing and surprising to the end.