Book Club Kits

A sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself, pulsing with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, as it follows four women in Nigeria and America in the midst of the pandemic.  

If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.

A year in the life of a wayward young man in New England who, by chance, becomes the caretaker for an eighty-two-year-old widow living with dementia, powering a story of friendship, loss, and how much we're willing to risk to claim one of life's most treasured mercies: a second chance.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

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.

Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. 

Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.

Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to her hometown in England after living abroad for sixty years. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss, and she retreats from the world into a life of dull routine. Then one winter night, a chance encounter with a mouse sets Helen on a surprising journey.

In this intricately woven tapestry of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance, 15-year-old Nick Chen, who cannot shake the feeling his mother is hiding something, sets out to find his biological father--a journey that raises more questions than provides answers.

Eight teenage girl boxers from different backgrounds travel to Reno, Nevada to compete against each other in a tournament to be named the best in the country in a series of raw, intense face-offs.

In 1987, the only Black person in all Swift River after her Pop disappeared seven years ago, Diamond Newberry, receiving a letter from a relative she's never met, is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, gaining a sense of her place in the world and in her family.

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.

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.

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.

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.
 

Mysterious wealthy newcomers, the Richardsons, have bought a lavish house. But when it burns to the ground and their employee goes missing, the island is in for plenty of drama.
 

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. 

Since 2013 writers for the My Life, My Story project at the US Department of Veterans Affairs have interviewed over 9,000 veterans and written short stories about their lives. Each story is reviewed and edited by the veteran, and with their approval, added to their VA medical record. Any VA provider who is caring for that veteran can easily find their story and read, in their own words, what matters to them, who matters to them, and why. This book contains 15 of their remarkable stories.

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.

A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.