Book Club
Literature Lovers Book Club 
2nd Wednesday at 12:30 PM
Books are available at the Desk.
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December 2019
Wednesday, December 11 at 12:30 PM
The December book club selection will be
Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford.
From the bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a powerful novel, inspired by a true story, about a boy whose life is transformed at Seattle’s epic 1909 World’s Fair.
For twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a charity student at a boarding school, the chance to go to the World’s Fair feels like a gift. But only once he’s there, amid the exotic exhibits, fireworks, and Ferris wheels, does he discover that he is the one who is actually the prize. The half-Chinese orphan is astounded to learn he will be raffled off—a healthy boy “to a good home.”
The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam’s precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. Their friendship and affection form the first real family Ernest has ever known—and against all odds, this new sporting life gives him the sense of home he’s always desired.
But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition, and first love.
Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle’s second World’s Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.
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November 2019
Wednesday, November 13 at 12:30 PM
The November book club selection will be Carnegie’s Maid by Marie Benefict.
Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She’s not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh’s grandest households. She’s a poor farmer’s daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.
With captivating insight and heart, Carnegie’s Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie’s transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world’s first true philanthropist.
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October 2019
Wednesday, October 9 at 12:30 PM
The October book club selection will be All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot.
Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world’s most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.
In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot’s periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot’s recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.
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September 2019
Wednesday, September 11 at 12:30 PM
The September book club selection will be Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities
we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver’s riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions—religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians—trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world. Flight Behavior is arguably Kingsolver’s must thrilling and accessible novel to date, and like so many other of her acclaimed works, represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.
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August 2019
Wednesday, August 14 at 12:30 PM
The August book club selection will be My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry
by Fredrick Backman 
Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.
When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.
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July 2019
Wednesday, July 10 at 12:30 PM
The July book club selection will be A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler.
A freshly observed, joyful and wrenching funny and true new novel from Anne Tyler
“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments and carefully guarded secrets from Red’s father and mother, newly-arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.
Brimming with all the insight, humour and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.
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June 2019
Wednesday, June 12 at 12:30 PM
The June book club selection will be
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. 
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
Now an HBO® Film starring Oprah Winfrey and Rose Byrne
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May 2019
Wednesday, May 8 at 12:30 PM
The May book club selection will be
The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir by Jennifer Ryan.
The village of Chilbury in Kent is about to ring in some changes.This is a delightful novel of wartime gumption and village spirit that will make your heart sing out.
Books are available at the Desk.
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April 2019
The April book club selection will be The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom.
Books are available at the Desk.
A Spanish war orphan born in a burning church and raised by a blind guitar teacher, Frankie Presto was gifted with extraordinary musical abilities that shape not only his life but the lives of those around him. At nine years old, Frankie meets the love of his life, Aurora; that same day, civil war tears apart his home and he is sent to America, smuggled in the bottom of a boat with only guitar and six strings imbued with …
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March 2019
- 2nd Wednesday at 12:30 PM
A novel of unsentimental charm, humor, and profound insight into the thoughts and feelings we all bury deep within our hearts, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry introduces Rachel Joyce as a wise – and utterly irresistible – storyteller.
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything …
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February 2019
February 13 @ 12:30 pm – 2:00 pmThe February book club selection will be The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
In the spirit of Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, acclaimed novelist Melanie Benjamin pulls back the curtain on the marriage of one of America’s most extraordinary couples: Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
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January 2019
Wednesday January 9, 2019 at 12:30 PM
book club selection will be Evicted by Matthew Desmond.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 non-fiction book by the American author Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, …
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Posted 11/14/18
December 2018
Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 12:30 PM
The November book club selection will be A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
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Posted 10/22/18
November 2018
Wednesday, Nov.14 at 12:30 PM
The November book club selection will be Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
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Posted 9/20/18
October 2018
Wednesday, Oct. 10 at 12:30 PM
The October book club selection will be The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
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Posted 8/20/18
September 2018
Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 12:30 PM
September book club selection will be Commonwealth by Ann Patchett.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
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Posted 7/20/18
August 2018
Wednesday, August 8 at 12:30 PM
August book club selection will be The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani.
Books are available at the Reception Desk.
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