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Book Club Kits

bookclub kit bags

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 We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag.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

Displaying 161 - 180 of 461. Show 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 60 results per page.

Becoming

Cover of Becoming
Michelle Obama
2018

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. 
 

The Reckoning

Cover of The Reckoning
John Grisham
2018

In a major novel unlike anything he has written before, John Grisham takes the reader on an incredible journey, from the Jim Crow South to the jungles of the Philippines during World War II; from an insane asylum filled with secrets to the Clanton courtroom where upstanding citizen and World War II hero Pete Banning's defense attorney tries desperately to save him from conviction for the murder of the esteemed Reverend Bell, the most mysterious and unforgettable crime Ford County had ever known.
 

Clock Dance

Cover of Clock Dance
Anne Tyler
2018

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother, yet the prospect is dimming. So, when Willa receives a phone call from a stranger, telling her that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot, she drops everything and flies across the country to Baltimore.

Decolonizing Wealth

Cover of Decolonizing Wealth
Edgar Villanueva
2018

With great compassion--because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of healing, understanding that healing cannot occur unless everyone is part of the process-- Villanueva diagnoses the fatal flaws in financial institutions, unflinchingly drilling down to the core of colonialism and White supremacy. Integrating traditional indigenous wisdom with savvy financial experience, this book explains how money can be used to facilitate relationships, to help us thrive, and to bring things back into balance.

So You Want to Talk About Race

Cover of So You Want to Talk About
Ijeoma Oluo
2018

In this hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.

 

The Woman in the Window

Cover of The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
2018

Anna Fox lives alone -- a recluse in her New York City home, drinking too much wine, watching old movies ... and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move next door: a father, a mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble -- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. In this gripping Hitchcockian thriller, no one and nothing are what they seem.

How to Make a Life: A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern Woman They Adopted

Cover of How to Make a Life: A Tibe
Madeline Uraneck
2018

When Madeline Uraneck said hello to the Tibetan woman cleaning her office cubicle, she never imagined the moment would change her life. After learning that Tenzin Kalsang had left her husband and four children behind in a Tibetan refugee settlement in India to try to forge a better life for them, Madeline took on the task of helping her apply for US visas. When the family reunited in their new Midwestern home, Madeline became swept up in their lives, from homework and soccer games to family dinners and shared holiday traditions.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway

Cover of The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Ruth Ware
2018

On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person--but also that the cold-reading skills she's honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money. Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased...where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it. 
 

The House of Broken Angels

Cover of The House of Broken Angels
Luis Alberto Urrea
2018

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.
 

Normal People

Cover of Normal People
Sally Rooney
2018

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers--one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain.

We are Staying: Eighty Years in the Life of a Family, a Store, and a Neighborhood

Cover of We are Staying: Eighty Yea
Jen Rubin
2018

For eighty years, Radio Clinic operated on 98th and Broadway on Manhattan's Upper West Side. 'We are staying' chronicles the store's rise, struggles, and fall, and the family that owned it across those decades. Radio Clinic survived the 1977 blackout and looting but could not survive the rising rents. It is an immigrant story, a grandfather-father-daughter story, a story of a unique character a family business brings to a neighborhood, and a reflection on what has been lost as stores like these disappear.
 

Where the Crawdads Sing

Cover of Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens
2018

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.

The Person You Mean to Be

Cover of The Person You Mean to Be
Dolly Chugh
2018

Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion, but how do we stand up for those values in our turbulent world? Chugh reveals the surprising causes of inequality, and offers practical tools to respectfully and effectively talk politics with family, to be a better colleague to people who don't look like you, and to avoid being a well-intentioned barrier to equality. Being the person we mean to be starts with a look at ourselves.
 

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