We know how difficult it is to choose a book for your next book group meeting, and to find enough copies for all the members of your group. We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag. We've included discussion questions and information about each author in a folder for each collection.
There are at least 8 copies of the book in each kit. At this time we have over 400 kits for you to choose from.
Printable lists of titles are also available, without cover art, sorted by title and by author.
How can we get a kit?
Call us at 608-266-6300 and we will help you check out a kit. The kit will be checked out on the library card of the person picking them up. The person checking out the kit may choose a due date for the kit, up to 3 months from the day they pick it up. Due to high demand, please take only one or two kits at a time. Kits can be shipped to any library in Madison as well as any public library in the South Central Library System.
What if a book is lost?
If your group happens to lose a book, we ask that you replace it with another copy of the book, new or second hand, that is clean and readable.
Search our collection of kits
The Women
Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
Sandwich
While on her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod, Rocky, sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, relives the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers, coming face-to-face with her family's history and future and accepting she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.
The Waters
Spending the days searching for truths on an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp, eleven-year-old Dorothy Zook, the granddaughter of an herbalist and eccentric healer, finds her childhood upended by family secrets, passionate love, and violent men where the only bridge across the water is her wayward mother.
The Mighty Red
In North Dakota farming country in 2008, Gary Geist is about to marry young Kismet Poe. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet, and he is determined to steal her and is eager to be a homewrecker. Meanwhile, Kismet's mother also works for the farm and has dark visions for their futures.
The Great Divide
A novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, following the intersecting lives of the local families fighting to protect their homeland, the West Indian laborers recruited to dig the waterway, and the white Americans who gained profit and glory for themselves.
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America
Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories
When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives.
Northwoods
Working for his mother, the sheriff of an idyllic resort town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, Eli North, when the body of a teenage boy is found in the lake, is drawn into an investigation related to America's opioid epidemic that becomes much more than just a hunt for a killer.
Polostan
Born in the American West, Dawn Rae Bjornberg spent her early years in Russia before growing up as a teenager in Montana, where she's drawn into gunrunning and revolution. When a surprising revelation puts her in the crosshairs of US authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.
Wandering Stars
In this masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel, There There, Tommy Orange extends his constellation of narratives into the past and future, tracing the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-century Wisconsin
Strangers No Longer reframes the history of Latinos in Wisconsin by revealing religion's central role in the settlement experience of immigrants, migrants, and refugees.
The God of the Woods
In 1975, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from her family’s Adirondack summer camp, fourteen years after her brother similarly disappeared, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds, unveiling the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow.
James
A harrowing and ferociously funny retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view, showing his agency, intelligence and compassion in a radically new light.
Be a Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--and How You Can, Too
Showing how people across America are working to create change for intersectional racial equity and illustrating various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live; this book is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.
Chain-Gang All-Stars
Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel.
I Could Live Here Forever
A gripping portrait of the tumultuous, consuming relationship between Leah, a graduate student at UW-Madison, and Charlie, a recovering heroin addict.
Birnam Wood
An abandoned farm cut off from the Korowai Pass on New Zealand's South Island by a landslide is a thrilling opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerilla gardening group that grows crops anywhere they can; however, American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the remote land. After he buys it to begin construction on an end-times bunker and catches Mira, the group’s leader, trespassing on the property, he’s willing to make a deal with the group to share the space... but at what cost? And can they trust him?
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
A skeleton at the bottom of a well, unearthed in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1972, leads to the revelation of long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
Brush
A glittering new adaptation of an ancient folktale, Brush is the story of two strangers. Chris is a successful entrepreneur who gets his hands on a magic paintbrush. Jo is a woman with secrets who lives above her quaint store on Main Street. Their lives intersect during one transformative year, in a mysterious journey punctuated by delightful detours. (All copies of this title are in Large Print format.)
Small Mercies
An Irish American teenage girl goes missing and a young Black Man is found dead in Boston in the summer of 1974. The two events seem unconnected. But the girl’s mother begins asking questions that bother the chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don't take kindly to any threat to their business.