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 We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag.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 320 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 266-6300 or visit the Central Library 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
Freedom
The personal dynamics and moral compromises of a married Midwestern couple, their son Joey, and their rock star friend Richard Katz are explored against a backdrop of contemporary American issues including ecological degradation and war profiteering.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
The novel on which the popular movie was based, this account of four women's lives in the Depression-era South is humorous, while also threaded with the more serious themes of racism, feminism, and domestic violence.
Fruit of the Drunken Tree
A mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both.
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
Dumas chronicles her life in America with a collection of zany-but-true family stories.
The Garden of Evening Mists
Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of the brutal Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II, discovers a beautiful garden tended by the emperor’s exiled former gardener Aritomo. Haunted by the death of her sister during the war, Yun Ling asks Aritomo to help her build a garden in memory of her sister. But as she learns more about the garden’s intricacy and beauty, its connection to the pain and deceit of the past are also revealed.
A Gate at the Stairs
In this pre- and post-9/11 novel Tassie, a student at thinly veiled UW-Madison, hires on as a nanny for the owner of a pricey French restaurant who adopts a mixed-race child.
A Gentleman in Moscow
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
The Girl on the Train
Rachel, whose life has spiraled into depression and alcoholism, becomes intrigued by a couple she dubs Jess and Jason who she spots from her commuter train every day. One day as she is passing their home, she sees Jess kissing a man who is not her husband. Shortly after, Jess disappears entirely. Told from the intersecting perspectives of Rachel, Jess and Anna, Jess’s neighbor, an intriguing thriller unfolds. But who is telling the truth?
Girl with a Pearl Earring
A maid in the house of the artist Vermeer inspires the painter to do a portrait of her wearing his wife's pearl earring, causing a scandal that changes the young woman's life.
The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo
Comedian and actress Schumer offers candid essays in her signature style about her experiences in comedy, relationships and the joys and perils of being a woman unafraid to speak her mind or bare her soul.
The Girls
In this novel, set in Northern California in 1969, and based loosely on the stories of Charles Manson’s followers, a disaffected and lonely teenager meets a group of girls who follow a manipulative, charismatic, and dangerous man, and joins them.
The Girls from Ames
The true story of a 40-year friendship among 11 childhood friends through college, careers, marriage, motherhood, divorce, illness, and the mysterious death of one.
The Glass Castle: A Memoir
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.
The Glass Devil
A police procedural mystery set in Sweden, where Inspector Huss solves violent crimes, yet manages a happy home life including teenage twin daughters and a husband.
Go Set a Watchman
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.
The Goldfinch
In this literary novel, a 13-year-old-boy survives a terrorist explosion at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which kills his mother. He then finds himself the owner of a seventeenth century Dutch painting called “The Goldfinch,” and drawn into the dark and mysterious underworld of art dealing.
Gone Girl
On the fifth anniversary of a seemingly ideal couple, wife Amy disappears and her husband Nick becomes the chief suspect. The novel alternates between Nick's point of view and Amy's (via her diary entries), engaging the reader in which version of events is accurate-- if any.
The Great Alone
Leni and her troubled family embark on a new way of life in Alaska’s wilderness in 1974 – hoping this is finally the solution for her troubled POW father. In Alaska, Leni and her family are tested and when change comes to their small community her father’s anger threatens to explode and divide the town. (from LibraryReads)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
A novel in letters about the WWII German occupation of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between France and England. An often sweet and funny book, with tinges of sadness.
H Is for Hawk
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.
Half Broke Horses
A fictionalized biography of the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who was a mustang breaker, school teacher, bootlegger, poker player, racehorse rider, bush pilot, ranch wife and mother.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Two Pulitzer Prize winning authors issue a call to arms against the oppression of women in the developing world. The book highlights individuals working to effect change -- covering topics such as sex slavery, maternal mortality, and gender-based violence.
Handle With Care
A daughter born with a severe bone disease is the central focus of the family, to the detriment of her older sister and her parents’ marriage. When her mother pursues a suit against her obstetrician best friend, the family implodes.