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 We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag.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 608-315-5151 (toll free 888-266-7805) 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
Holding the Net: Caring for My Mother on the Tightrope of Aging
Written for anyone who has or anticipates caring for an aging loved one, Holding the Net, the author’s story of caring for her own mother as a hospice consultant, offers practical details about caregiving and challenges the notion that anyone can be an expert when it comes to caring for an aging parent; all we can do is our best.
Homegoing
This novel follows the fate of two half-sisters born in eighteenth century Ghana, and their descendants. One sister marries the British head of a slave trading colony, while the other is captured in the same colony and sold into American slavery.
Homeland Elegies
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
A chance discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II causes Henry Lee, a Chinese-American and recent widower, to reflect on his first romance with Keiko, which ended when her family was evacuated.
The House of Broken Angels
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. This indelible portrait of a complex family reminds us of what it means to be the first generation and to live two lives across one border.
House Rules : a novel
Jacob Hunt, a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, becomes a suspect in a terrible murder which shines the spotlight on his family. This medical courtroom drama deals with issues of what it means to be different, how autism affects the family, and how the legal system can fail people who cannot communicate well.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Interwoven stories of four Latina sisters chronicling their assimilation into the United States and their visits back to the Dominican Republic.
How to Be an Antiracist
Bestselling author and scholar Ibram X. Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas--from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities--that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves in this essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.
The Hungry Tide
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.
The Husband's Secret
In this novel by Australian Moriarty, three women are caught up in marital strife and murder when one of them finds, and reads, a letter meant to be opened after her husband’s death.
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Shot in the head on her way home from her Pakistan school, Malala was targeted by the Taliban because she publicly advocated for girls education and attended school herself. In her book, Malala blends the politics and the personal into a story not just of what happened to her, but also the difficulties-- both politically and otherwise-- in Pakistan today. Chosen as UW-Madison's 2014 Go Big Read selection.
I Feel Bad About My Neck
A candid, wry, amusing collection of essays on women getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests---and life itself.
If You're Willing
After witnessing the love prosper between her friends, Jah and Jazmin, Cassie longs for her own loving relationship. Hoping that things would evolve, Cassie gives longtime friend Rock a try. Sit back, buckle up and enjoy the ride as Cassie tries to figure out her life with the support of her friends and family—the ones she actually can stand.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American cancer patient, wife and mother, and of her cells, known as HeLa cells. HeLa cells are used daily in labs worldwide, yet Lacks' family was unaware of their use until more than 20 years after her death.
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.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
A tough, witty discourse on why food is more than the sum of its nutritional parts.
In the Garden of Beasts: love, terror, and an American family in Hitler's Berlin
This non-fiction page turner, set in Berlin during the rise of Adolph Hitler, tells the story of the American ambassador and his daughter, whose many love affairs blinded her to the increasing menace of the new Germany.
In the Unlikely Event
This novel, based on true events in the author’s childhood, portrays the community of Elizabeth, New Jersey in the early 1950’s, when it was hit by three major plane crashes within a few months, leaving residents to struggle with the repeated tragedies.
The Inheritance of Loss
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.
Into the Water
The drowning pool at Beckford had been a spot where accused witches were ‘tried’—drowned to prove their innocence. Lately the pool has claimed more women, ostensibly from suicide. But when women of the town and relatives of the dead women begin to suspect a more sinister motive behind the deaths, they reveal deceptions and betrayals at the core of their small town.
The Invention of Wings
Sarah Grimke, a well-to-do daughter of antebellum Charleston receives a ten-year old slave girl, Hetty ‘Handful’ Grimke, on her eleventh birthday. Both women know they are meant to do more in the wider world, and yearn to escape the respective paths of life they were born to. Over the course of their thirty-five year relationship, their destinies overlap and intertwine through slavery, freedom and the complexities of love, against the backdrop of the abolition and early women’s movements.
An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting With Destiny
On a wet day in 1986, businesswoman Laura Schroff passed Maurice, an 11-year-boy panhandling for spare change. She walked on, but something made her stop and go back. That day, recounted in this true story, marked the beginning of a life-changing friendship that enriched both Schroff and Maurice, and underscores how one moment of kindness can have lasting benefits.
Isaac's Storm
An account of the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas and killed 6,000 people. Larson uses personal papers, letters, newspapers and government archives as the source material for this engrossing tale.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
The haunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade--and of the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the cas
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.