Book Club Kits

In this National Book Award-winning memoir, journalist Coates recounts his experience growing up black and offers penetrating insight into the state of race relations in America today. 

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court.
 

An earlier written sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird set in the 1950s, Go Set a Watchman casts the beloved characters of Scout and Atticus in a new light, and poses the question of how far we have really come in the battle against discrimination. 

In the summer of 1944, most of the men have been shipped off to war, and Door County’s cherry harvest is threatened.  Faced with the possibility of losing their livelihood, the Christiansen family lobbies to use Germans housed at a nearby POW camp for labor.  But when friendships are sparked between enemies and former servicemen begin coming home with an intense hatred of Germany, the prospects for trouble are inevitable.  

A teenage boy struggling with schizophrenia in this deeply powerful and personal novel from one of today's most admired writers for teens.

Beryl Markham has grown up in the wilds of 1920s Kenya, raised by her British father and members of the local tribes.  Her unlikely upbringing gives her a boldness that helps her become a pioneering aviator and author, as well as a deep appreciation for the beautiful and wild spirit of Africa.  But affairs of the heart are a different matter, challenging even a woman as independent and strong as Markham. 

This novel, based on true events in the author’s childhood, portrays the community of Elizabeth, New Jersey in the early 1950’s, when it was hit by  three major plane crashes within a few months, leaving residents to struggle with the repeated tragedies.

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts--and shapes--their family's future.

While modern medicine has developed breathtaking advances in the pursuit to extend life, the ability of doctors treat the realities of aging and dying often runs counter to the best interests of the patient.  Surgeon Gawande examines the limitations of medicine at the end of life, and speaks with those in the profession who are turning ‘a good death’ into a quality life to the very end. 

This is a graphic memoir by a New Yorker cartoonist, both hilarious and horrifying,  in which she uses cartoons, hand-written text, and photographs to recount the story of her parents' last years and to explore  her difficult relationship with them.

Left for dead after an accident, astronaut Mark Watley is stranded on the surface of Mars.  Left with only enough food and supplies for a few months, Watley has to rely on his wits and ingenuity to survive.

Sarah Grimke, a well-to-do daughter of antebellum Charleston receives a ten-year old slave girl, Hetty ‘Handful’ Grimke, on her eleventh birthday.  Both women know they are meant to do more in the wider world, and yearn to escape the respective paths of life they were born to.  Over the course of their thirty-five year relationship, their destinies overlap and intertwine through slavery, freedom and the complexities of love, against the backdrop of the abolition and early women’s movements.   

Inspired by events in the life of anthropologist, Margaret Mead, this is the fictional story of a love triangle among three anthropologists working in New Guinea, who display three completely different approaches to studying other cultures.

Ove has always lived his life according to strict principles, earning him the status of lead curmudgeon in his neighborhood.  But when life threatens to overwhelm even the firmly stoic Ove, a comedic cast of characters comes to the rescue—and proves that help can come from the most surprising of sources. 

This novel tells the story of five friends who grew up together in the fictional small town of Little Wing, Wisconsin: a famous musician, a wealthy commodities trader, a former rodeo star, and a married couple who stayed in the community as farmers.

Blind Marie-Laure has escaped war-torn Paris for the French seaside town of Saint-Malo along with her father and a precious jewel, determined to keep it out of Nazi hands.  German boy Gunther’s talent with radios makes him a valuable asset to the Nazi war effort, but he struggles to cope with the human cost of his intelligence.  By the end of the war, the two children’s stories intertwine as they try to hold on to their humanity in Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller. 

The Post family and friends embark on a celebratory two-week vacation in the island paradise of Mallorca.  But humorous revelations of secrets and infidelities promise to turn their holiday into one they’ll never forget. 

A childhood Halloween prank with horrible consequences comes back to haunt a man and his family in this Madison-set thriller.  

In this National Book Award-nominated novel, a rag-tag group of traveling Shakespearean actors struggle to survive in a landscape that has been decimated by a global pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population.  In flashbacks, members of the group recall their lives during the pandemic and what it took for them to survive, with some surprising connections. 

British naturalist Macdonald undertakes the training of a goshawk as a means of working through the grief at the sudden loss her father, himself a falconer.