Book Club Kits

An Iraqi-American is the chef at a small Los Angeles café, where Arab-Americans come to feel at home. A folkloric family story is interwoven with this contemporary tale of love, food and home.

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them.

Lillian Leyb, survivor of a Russian massacre, immigrates to New York in 1924.  Upon learning her 3-year-old daughter may still be alive, she journeys across North America through the Yukon wilderness and over the Bering Strait to find her.

Kingsolver and her family eat only local food for a year, including home-raised turkeys and chickens and garden grown and canned veggies.

The story of Jan Zabinsky, the director of the Warsaw zoo, and his wife Antonina, who sheltered 300 Jews and Polish resisters in the zoo's cages and sheds during WWII.

Sweet ghetto nerd Oscar dreams of being a famous writer… and of falling in love. He may not get either wish, due to a curse that’s dominated his Dominican family for generations. A Pulitzer Prize winner.

A ‘fantasy’ nonfiction book by a science writer that explores what would happen to the earth’s flora and fauna, as well as our built environment, if suddenly all humans disappeared.

Perry Crandall (IQ 76) narrates his life after the death of his Gran, who raised him after his parents abandoned him. When he wins a $12 million lottery, his avaricious family schemes to appropriate his prize.

A Honduran young man rides the tops of trains through Mexico to the U.S. to reunite with his mother as chronicled by Pulitzer Prize winning author Nazario. From his family’s life of poverty in Honduras to life-risking attempts to cross the border to political realities in Mexico and the U.S., this highly engaging work is sure to challenge some of our beliefs about immigration. Chosen as UW's 2011 Go Big Read selection.

This nonfiction book is a compelling history of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's, showing how years of heat and drought combined with the destruction of native prairie to cause terrible destruction to the land and misery to the farmers in Oklahoma.

The author chronicles a year spent restoring an old pickup, gardening, and falling in love. This memoir is filled with eccentric characters, keen observation, and humorous storytelling.

Narrated by Death, this novel for adults and teens tells the story of Liesl Memeinger, a German girl living through the Holocaust who finds strength and wisdom in the books she steals.

Bryson's own childhood in 1950s America is the focus this time.

In this darkly comic novel, the family patriarch mistakenly believes he is dying of cancer (it’s really eczema) while his wife and grown children swirl around him getting ready for a wedding.

Winner of the Booker Prize, this novel has two story threads: a granddaughter in the Himalayan foothills fall in love with her tutor, and an immigrant from the same place tries to make it in NYC.

Walls recalls growing up in a dysfunctional yet creative family with a brilliant, charismatic father, who was destructive and dishonest when he drank, and a free-spirited artist mother, who hated domesticity and the responsibility of raising a family.

An Indian-American researcher arrives in a remote area of India to study the freshwater dolphins and meets two very different men, each important to her work and life there.

Private detective Jackson Brodie investigates three cases: two disappearances from long ago and a search for a witness to a murder. In typical fashion for this series, however, Brodie's personal life shares center stage with the detective work.

In this collection of humorous essays, David Sedaris discusses childhood, family and relationships, revealing that "normal" is truly a relative term.

Dumas chronicles her life in America with a collection of zany-but-true family stories.

Two events focused attention on Chicago in 1893: the World’s Fair with it’s hundreds of newly built structures (all white), and the investigation into the crimes of Dr. Henry Holmes, reputedly the first American serial killer.

Claire and Henry have a loving, passionate marriage with one big problem:  Henry is a time traveler, involuntarily dropping in and out of time.  This unusual love story follows Claire and Henry's relationship, as the two meet out of sync, with different memories of each other or none at all, testing the strength of their devotion in a world which could change in an instant. 

A college-aged woman is faced with difficult decisions when her boyfriend dives off a pier and becomes a quadriplegic. Set in Madison, with many small details local readers will love.

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is an intersex person, a situation with roots in her grandparent's desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

A rich, layered family saga triptych that spreads over Greece, Scotland, New York City and Long Island during three summers. The family patriarch and his son are the focus of this 2002 National Book Award winner.

Found in a box on the doorstep of the richest woman in town, a newborn baby brings the parallel worlds of 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' together.

Two boys are sent to the countryside to be re-educated in this fable set during China's Cultural Revolution. They discover hope through forbidden western literature, but find hope can be cruel and corrupting.

In this multi-layered novel, a dying octogenarian recalls her past, including her forced marriage, her sister's suicide, and the publication of her sister's science fiction novel, The Blind Assassin.