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 We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag.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
Where the Crawdads Sing
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.
There There
Twelve Native Americans came to the Big Oakland Powwow for different reasons. As we learn the reasons that each person is attending--some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent--momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything.
A Place for Us
A deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging, A Place for Us follows an Indian family through the marriage of their daughter, from the parents' arrival in the United States to the return of their estranged son.
Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
An in-depth look at pregnancy through a scientific and feminist lens that challenges popular assumptions, offers help for navigating contradictions, and provides facts to aid with making informed decisions.
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America's love affair with "diversity" so often falls short of its ideals.
Nine Perfect Strangers
Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are there to lose weight, some are there to get a reboot on life, some are there for reasons they can't even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work.
But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.
Educated: A Memoir
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University.
A Spark of Light
The bestselling author returns with a powerful and provocative new novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis at a women's reproductive health services clinic.
Darius the Great is Not Okay
Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life in this young adult novel.
The Witch Elm
Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer until a night out with friends takes a turn that will change his life - he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.
The Overstory
A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.
Settlin': Stories of Madison's Early African American Families
Lifelong Madison resident Muriel Simms presents a brief history of African American settlement in Madison and a collection of oral histories from twenty-five African Americans whose families arrived, survived, and thrived here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This kit was added to the collection with support from the Madison Public Library Foundation.
The President is Missing
The White House is the home of the President of the United States, the most guarded, monitored, closely watched person in the world. So how could a U.S. President vanish without a trace? And why would he choose to do so? An unprecedented collaboration between President Bill Clinton and the world's bestselling novelist, James Patterson, The President Is Missing is a breathtaking story from the pinnacle of power.
The Immortalists
If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? In 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, four teenage siblings visit a fortune-teller who is reputed to be able to predict the date of a person’s death; this bestselling novel by Madison author Chloe Benjamin follows them across the country and through next five decades.
Becoming
In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private.
Unshakeable Confidence: The Freedom to be Our Authentic Selves: Mindfulness for Women
This warm and practical book by Madison area author, psychotherapist, and mindfulness teacher Mare Chapman, M.A., based on Chapman’s ‘Mindfulness for Women’ course, guides the reader through an intimate journey, showing how women form disempowering beliefs that cause them to lose themselves in relationships, and how to regain connection with their true selves through mindfulness.
This kit was added to the collection with support from the Madison Public Library Foundation.
The Women in the Castle
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
An unforgettable and sweeping novel about one classic film actress's relentless rise to the top, the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
After her father's death, Nikki, a modern young Punjabi woman, takes a job teaching creative writing. The Sikh widows who show up expect an English literacy course. But Nikki never expected what she would learn from them. This lively, sexy, and thought-provoking debut novel is about community, friendship, and women's lives at all ages.
Less
In this 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, after receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur Less, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.