March 15, 2023 @ 2:00 PM
“Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open.”
Erika Krouse begins her book this way: “I became a private investigator because of my face. It’s an ordinary-looking face, but if I asked “How are you?” sometimes people start crying. “I’m getting a divorce,” they say. “He ended our marriage by text.” … Or a man grips a packet of peas in the frozen food aisle and asks, “How do you cook these? My wife died last month.” …. Young, old, women, men, nonbinary, gay straight, rich, poor, East West – everyone tells me things.”
“[A] beautifully written, disturbing and affecting memoir. This is literary nonfiction at a high level.”―New York Times Book Review
January 18, 2023 @ 2:00 PM
What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live? Dear Edward examines this question as we follow the experiences of a twelve-year-old boy who is the sole survivor of an airplane crash. Although the premise is stark, the book is full of hope and compassion.
“A haunting novel that’s a masterful study in suspense, grief and survival . . . Napolitano’s fearless
examination of what took place models a way forward for all of us. She takes care not to
sensationalize, presenting even the most harrowing scenes in graceful, understated prose, and
gives us a powerful book about living a meaningful life during the most difficult of times.”—The New
York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
One of the best books of the year: The Washington Post and The Boston Globe,
October 12, 2022 @ 2:00 PM
In a nutshell: It’s the 1960s. Elizabeth Zott is a brilliant, unconventional woman who loves being a chemist during a time when women were expected to be housewives. While the book’s jacket suggests we might be in for a romance, we find instead a rousing comic novel that is as unconventional and quirky as Elizabeth herself.
The New York Time Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry will make you wonder about all the real-life women born ahead of their time—women who were sidelined, ignored and worse because they weren’t as resourceful, determined and lucky as Elizabeth Zott. She’s a reminder of how far we’ve come, but also how far we still have to go.”
BOOKS FROM THE 2021-2022 BOOK DISCUSSION SERIES
May 11, 2022 @ 2:00 PM
Set in Depression-era America, this novel brings to life the Kentucky Pack Horse Librarians, five women who deliver books to the most remote regions of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Washington Post: “The Giver of Stars is a celebration of love, but also of reading, of knowledge, of female friendship, of the beauty of our most rural corners, and our enduring American grit: the kind of true grit that can be found in the hills of Kentucky and on the pages of this inspiring book.”
Check back on the website closer to May 11 for more information about our discussion session.
March 9, 2022 at 2:00 PM
In her award winning historical novel, Maggie O’Farrell reimagines the plague years of the 1580s when a young Latin tutor, Will Shakespeare, meets and weds an extraordinary woman, Agnes. Very few facts are known about this part of Shakespeare’s life, but no matter: O’Farrell vividly portrays Agnes, their marriage, their young children, and especially Hamnet, the son who contracts a deadly fever.
The New York Times: “Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.”
The New Yorker: “An exceptional historical novel”
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction
January 12, 2022 at 2:00 PM via Zoom
In this “enchanting blockbuster,” we meet Nora Seed, a young woman with many gifts, few accomplishments and so many regrets that her life becomes unbearable. Then Nora discovers a library at the edge of the universe, a library that contains an infinite number of books. With the help of the librarian, Nora finds the story of her present life as well as stories about the lives she would have lived if she had made different decisions along the way.
Shortlisted for the 2021 British Book Awards “Fiction book of the year” and adapted for radio and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2020.
