|
|
|
Book Club in a Bag includes multiple copies of a popular book, information about the author and copies of discussion questions, all packaged in a sturdy zipper bag for you to carry. Each kit may be checked out for 8 weeks. You can view a list of titles below. Please allow some advance notice and have an alternate title choice available.
Visit or call the Adult Services Desk (224-543-1485) for more details, or to reserve a kit. This service is partially sponsored by the Friends of the Library.
Last updated: 1/16/2012
|
NEW TITLES
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
A Pulitzer Prize winner weaves together sex and celebrity, empire and politics in a story that is as contemporary as it is ancient, capturing fully for the first time the operatic power of Cleopatra's life and reign.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
African-American Constable Silas Jones must confront his white former friend Larry Ott, who has lived under suspicion for twenty years since a girl disappeared while on a date with him, after another girl disappears and Larry is blamed once again.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she grows up that she is not their child, a situation that causes her to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter.
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Newlyweds Viktor and Liesel live in decadence in their new, modern home which they name the "Landauer House," until the Germans' destructive procession across Europe force them to leave for America. Brimming with barely contained passion and cruelty, the precision of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession, and the fear of failure - the Glass Room contains it all.
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees
Stuck in small-town New Hampshire in 1855, Louisa finds herself torn between a love that takes her by surprise and her dream of independence as a writer in Boston. Mixing fact and fiction, McNees imagines a love affair that would threaten Louisa's writing career-and inspire the story of Jo and Laurie in Little Women .
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
In 1974 Manhattan, a radical young Irish monk struggles with personal demons while making his home among Bronx prostitutes, a group of mothers share grief over their lost Vietnam soldier sons, and a young grandmother attempts to prove her worth.
Little Heathens: Hard Times and High spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
A memoir from a schoolteacher of growing up in the heart of the Midwest during the Great Depression describes her close family life on an Iowa farm during a time of endless work and resourcefulness, with no tolerance for idleness or waste.
Manhunt: The Twelve-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson
A fascinating and vivid account of the escape of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, takes readers along on the intensive search from the streets of Washington, D.C., through the swamps of Maryland, into the forests of Virginia, and into the lives of the men who pursued him.
Mudboundby Hillary Jordan
In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms.
Told in riveting personal narratives , the members of the McAllan and Jackson families strive for love and honor in a brutal time and place, becoming players in a tragedy on the grandest scale and finding redemption where they least expect it.
Room by Emma Donohughe
Five-year-old Jack and his Ma live, eat, play and sleep in one room--an 11×11-foot space that is their prison--captives of the terrifying man Jack calls Old Nick. But as Jack grows older and more curious, it becomes clear that the room will not be able to hold him and Ma forever.
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
Former Bolshoi ballerina Nina Revskaya auctions off her jewelry collection and becomes overwhelmed by memories of her homeland, the friends she left behind amidst Stalinist aggression, and the dark secret that brought her to a new life in Boston.
Someone Knows My Nameby Lawrence Hill
Dreaming daily of escaping her life of slavery in South Carolina and returning to her African home, slave Aminata Diallo is torn from her family when she is sold and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War, during which she helps create a list of black people who have been honored for their service to the king.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Working side-by-side for a record label, former punk rocker Bennie Salazar and the passionate Sasha hide illicit secrets from one another while interacting with a motley assortment of equally troubled people from 1970s San Francisco to the post-war future.
A startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption and the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner.
PREVIOUSLY ADDED TITLES
- Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin
From a pampered childhood in Oxford to her difficult years as a widowed mother, Alice Liddell looks back on a remarkable life, examining how she became who she is--and how she became immortalized as Alice in Wonderland.
- The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher's soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe's maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.
- The Believers by Zoe Heller
After civil rights attorney Joel Litvinoff suffers a stroke, his contentious family struggles with the consolations of faith and the trials of doubt as they battle their own demons and each other. Every member is called upon to decide what, if anything, they still believe in.
- Blue Nude by Elizabeth Rosner
An artist who teaches others but who has lost his own inspiration, German-born painter Danzig finds a muse in the person of a new model named Merav, the Israeli-born granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, but before they can create a new future for themselves, both artist and model must come to terms with the past.
- Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Leaving her home in post-World War II Ireland to work as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey discovers a new romance in America with a charming blond Italian man before devastating news threatens her happiness.
- The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
In 1959, Haruko marries the Crown Prince of Japan, becoming the first commoner to enter the mysterious and reclusive world of Japanese royalty, confronting the cruelty and suspicions of the court, until, three decades later, she helps arrange the marriage of her son.
- The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
Shortly after relocating to Oregon, Nate and Irene Stanley’s 15 year old son is murdered in their home. A story of love and redemption, The Crying Tree is about the unbreakable bonds of family and the transformative power of forgiveness.
- Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.
- Day After Night by Anita Diament
A tale inspired by the post-Holocaust experience is set in an immigrant holding camp in 1945 Palestine, where four women, refugees from Nazi Europe, find healing in the bonds of friendship that are forged while recounting their losses.
- Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.
- Gardens of Water by Alan Drew
The lives of two families living on the outskirts of Istanbul are changed by a massive earthquake that brings them together in a dangerous intimacy in which forbidden love blossoms between Irem, a Kurdish Muslim girl, and Dylan, a young American.
- Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate.
- Half-Broke Horses : a true-life novel by Jeannette Walls
Presents a novel based on the life of the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed five hundred miles as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children.
- Homer & Langley by E. L. Doctorow
One of America’s greatest living writers gives us a fictionalized account of New York’s fabled Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley. Recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, they struggle to survive wars, political movements, and the technological advancements of the last century.
- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.
- The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
A relationship blossoms between a brilliant math professor suffering from short-term memory problems following a traumatic head injury and the young housekeeper, the mother of a ten-year-old son, hired to care for him.
- If Today be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar
A middle-aged widow struggles to decide whether she will live in her native India or immigrate to America, where her son and his wife live in suburban Ohio and where the widow struggles with her cultural identity and need to bring happiness into the family.
- The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.
- The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
Working as an indentured servant alongside slaves on a tobacco plantation, Lavinia, a 7-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, finds her light skin and situation placing her between two very different worlds that test her loyalties.
- Lit: a memoir by Mary Karr
The author reveals how, shortly after giving birth to a child she adored, she drank herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide before a spiritual awakening led her to sobriety.
- Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
A retired Major leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?
- Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Tells the story of the fifty-year marriage of barrister Filth and his wife Betty, which is filled with secrets and hidden desires.
- Old Filth by Jane Gardam
Filth is an acronym (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong) and the affectionate nickname for Sir Edward Feathers, whose distinguished career, as an advocate and judge, began in Hong Kong in 1947. His colleagues saw an "untroubled and uneventful life." Boy, were they wrong.
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The world of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher in a small coastal town in Maine, is revealed in stories that explore her diverse roles in many lives, including a lounge singer haunted by a past love, her stoic husband, and her own resentful son.
- The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland
Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, and Genoa, The Passion of Artemisia chronicles the extraordinary life of post-Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, the first woman to make a significant contribution to art history.
- The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman with a troubled past who lives in a remote nineteenth-century Wisconsin town, has advertised for a reliable wife; and his ad is answered by Catherine Land, a woman who makes every effort to hide her own dark secrets.
- The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps her cooking students create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of their lives.
- Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Feeling at the top of her game when she is suddenly diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease, Harvard psychologist Alice Howland struggles to find meaning and purpose in her life as her concept of self gradually slips away.
- Swim to me by Betsy Carter
Young Delores Walker flees the Bronx and ends up taking a part as a mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs, an underwater show in Florida. She becomes the star of the show, but a park opened nearby by Disney begins to overshadow the long-running tourist attraction.
- These is My words: the Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine 1881-1901 by Nancy E. Turner
In 1881, Sarah Agnes Prine, 17, goes from New Mexico to Texas and back, protecting her family with her rifle, and then becoming ranch manager while her second husband serves as a Texas Ranger.
- Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Summary: When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.
- This is Where I Leave You by by Jonathan Tropper
Judd Foxman is thrown together with his dysfunctional family when his father dies, while at the same time coping with his wife's infidelity and the end of his marriage.
- Up from Orchard Street by Eleanor Widmer
A story of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family living on New York's Lower East Side follows the lives of three generations of Roths, who live together in a crowded tenement flat.
- The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
This first novel looks at life in Wales during World War II. Seventeen-year-old Esther Evans assists her widowed father with their sheep and works in a pub where she falls in love with a young English soldier. Their remote community has been turned into a POW camp.
- White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life-- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
- Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Documents the story of a long-time New Orleans resident who was forced to stay behind during Hurricane Katrina while the rest of his family evacuated, describing how he spent days after the storm traveling by canoe to feed abandoned animals before he was inexplicably arrested.
|
