Book Club

Discussion Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2014.
Follows ten-year-old Zimbabwe native, Darling, as she escapes the closed schools and paramilitary police control of her homeland in search of opportunity and freedom with an aunt in America. Kirkus 100 Best Fiction Books of 2013; New York Times Notable Books, 2013; Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Los Angeles Times Book Award; Betty Trask Prize; PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, April 24, 2014.
Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she has written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together? Booklist 100 Books of the Century award; School Library Journal's list of "One Hundred Books that Shaped the Century."

Discussion Date: Thursday, March 27, 2014.
The sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts, grandmothers, and friends in these stories shimmer with hope and love, anger and reconciliation, as they contend with their histories and their present, and what they can see of the future. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2013.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, February 20, 2014.
The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and encounters, as well as searing depictions of the American slave trade. Fiction Core Collection.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2014.
A razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq that explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. It follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders. National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Novel; National Book Award finalist; New York Times Notable Books of 2012; Washington Post 10 Best Books of 2012; ALA Notable Books, 2013.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, November 21, 2013.
When a car of inebriated guests from Carmen's wedding hits and kills a girl on a country road, Carmen and the people involved in the accident connect, disconnect, and reconnect throughout twenty-five subsequent years of marriage, parenthood, holidays, and tragedies.
New York Times Notable Books of 2012.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, October 17, 2013.
Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old love in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance. Booklist Editors Choice: Adult Fiction, 2012; Washington Post Notable Books of 2012; ALA Notable Books, 2013.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, September 3, 2013.
An American woman, Maggie Verver, marries an Italian prince, while her wealthy father marries Maggie's girlhood friend, Charlotte Stant--neither Verver being aware that the Prince and Charlotte have been (and possibly continue to be) lovers. Maggie's eventual discovery of the nature of that relationship provides the basis for an exploration of the fragility and strength of human ties and further develops what James once called that 'complex fate, being an American.' Modern Library 100 Best Novels.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, August 6, 2013.
Both a psychological self-portrait and a profound meditation upon the artistic process, Proust's seven-part masterpiece "In Search of Lost Time" changed the course of 20th-century literature. "Swann's Way," the first volume, introduces the novel's major themes and the narrator, a sensitive man drawn in his youth to fashionable society. Its focus then shifts to Charles Swann, a wealthy connoisseur who moves in high-society circles in nineteenth-century Paris and a victim of an agonizing romance. Unabridged reprint of the classic 1922 edition. Fiction Core Collection; Booklist Books of the Century award; Publishers Weekly Best Books, 2003.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2013.
A romance set in nineteenth-century Australia, where a nervous Anglican minister gambles on the instructions of the Divine to become allied with a teenage heiress who buys a glassworks to help liberate her sex. A Booker Prize-winning novel.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, June 25, 2013.
While in Lyme Regis to visit his fiancee, Ernestina Freeman, Charles Smithson, a 32-year-old paleontologist, becomes fascinated by the mysterious Sarah Woodruff. A fallen woman said to have been jilted by a French officer, Sarah is a pariah to the well-bred society that Charles and Ernestina are a part of. While searching for fossils in a wooded coastal area, Charles encounters Sarah alone, and his curiosity and pity for her soon evolve into other emotions.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, June 4, 2013.
A novel of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazon rainforest. An enthrallingly innovative tale of aspiration, exploration, and attachment in State of Wonder--a gripping adventure story and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love. YBP Core Collection; Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of 2011; Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2011; H.W. Wilson Fiction Core Collection.