Book Club Kits

Grace and Hope are identical twin sisters born with the ability to time-cross together between 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and 1912 New York City. As their twenty-fifth birthday approaches, they will have to choose one life to keep and one to leave behind forever--no matter the cost. In 1692, they live and work in their father's tavern, where they must watch helplessly as the witch trials unfold in their village, threatening everyone. With the help of a handsome childhood friend, they search for the truth behind their mother's mysterious death, risking everything to expose a secret that could save their lives--or be their undoing. In 1912, Hope dreams of becoming one of the first female pilots in America, and Grace works as an investigative journalist, uncovering corruption and injustice. After their parents' orphanage is threatened by an adversary, they enter a contest to complete a perilous cross-country flight under the guidance of a daring French aviator. The sisters have already decided which timeline they will choose, but an unthinkable tragedy complicates the future they planned for themselves. As their birthday looms, how will they determine the lives---and loves--that are best for both of them? (8/7)

Estelle Esmeralda, a fortune teller in a suffocating, small-scale carnival, is unable to predict her own future, much less discover where her missing husband has gone. With their precocious eleven-year-old daughter riding along, Estelle sets out on a road trip to search for Tony, a charismatic tightrope walker who disappeared suddenly on a quest to rectify his past. Interspersed between Estelle and Tony’s chapters are secret journal entries by the spunky Ariel, who fills the pages with creative observations about her life within the unique and sometimes puzzling confines of the carnival. The Wonders of the Little World explores the thin lines between truth and lies, between who someone is and who they want to be. Part road trip across 1960s America, part love story, and part illumination of a family struggling to heal itself, this novel immerses the reader into a world that is not only entertaining but also moving and, ultimately, enlightening. (8/7)

For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands--and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising place: the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman. Determined to find the baby and the artist, hopeless romantic Jenny and curmudgeonly Nick must reckon with regret, betrayal, and the lives they’ve left behind.

Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except... Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up. Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him--charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too--brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all. When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet, the key to making peace with their past--and themselves--might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she’s been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir--to a chain of home-style diners--and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation? (8/7)

Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it's now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They'll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other's out, and they'll both go on to find the love of their lives. It's a bonkers idea... and it just might work. Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka. It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected--including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?

Richmond, Virginia 1811. It's the height of the winter social season. The General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia's gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city's only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that's done looking for enlightenment in a church. On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes, sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn't give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater's managers, he'll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he'll have to buy her freedom first. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined. (8/7)

During the last year of the Civil War, the Eighth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment traveled more miles and served under more extreme conditions than any other unit in the Union Army. From the Yellowstone River all the way to North Carolina, the soldiers endured dehydration, hunger, and exhausting marches, often while exposed to scorching heat or bitter cold. They fought against foes led by Sitting Bull and General Nathan Bedford Forest, but came away victorious each time. Drawn from among the first settlers of the newly-formed state of Minnesota, the soldiers from Company E, the focus of this book, were tough frontiersmen and also proud patriots who enlisted with the determination to be good soldiers in service of their country. Fiercely independent, the men had little patience for bureaucracy and despised injustice. When unfairly treated, they didn't just grin and bear it--they actively rebelled, sometimes with humorous results. Meticulously researched, Sherman's Woodticks for the first time brings together the full story of the men of the Eighth Minnesota Volunteers who gave up so much for their country, from their enlistment in 1862 until they mustered out in 1865. (8/7)

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring--she's happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she'd long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher--to help evacuate Britain's children overseas. 1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily's humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away. When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other--one on land, the other at sea--will quickly become one another's very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined. (8/7)

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak. What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. (8/7)

Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father's daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother's son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out. Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That's a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger. (8/15)

The not-so-proud owner of a dead-end job and a cheating boyfriend, Minneapolitan Mira James jumps at the chance for a fresh start in rural Battle Lake. She almost immediately lands two part-time jobs in her new town, one at the library and another at the local newspaper. When her jobs bring her in contact with Jeff, the ultimate sexy nerd, she starts to wonder if she's finally made a good decision. And then Jeff turns up dead between the library's reference stacks. Anxious to learn more about the man who briefly stole her heart, Mira delves into the mysteries of Battle Lake, including an old land deed obscuring ancient Ojibwe secrets, an octogenarian crowd with freaky social lives, and a handful of thirty-something high school buddies who hold bitter, decades-old grudges. Mira soon discovers that unknown dangers are concealed under the polite exterior of this quirky town, and revenge is a hotdish best served cold. (8/15)

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. He braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind. (8/15)

It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob's wife, Naomi, as well. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town's most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents, who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives. A tender examination of male friendship and rivalry as well as a riveting, page-turning novel of familial devotion, The Caretaker brilliantly depicts the human capacity for delusion and destruction all too often justified as acts of love. (8/30)

Ian Gray isn't supposed to have a dog, but a lot of things that shouldn't happen end up happening anyway. And Gather, Ian's adopted pup, is good company now that Ian has to quit the basketball team, find a job, and take care of his mom as she tries to overcome her opioid addiction. Despite the obstacles thrown their way, Ian is determined to keep his family afloat no matter what it takes. And for a little while, things are looking up: Ian makes friends, and his fondness for the outdoors and for fixing things lands him work helping neighbors. But an unforeseen tragedy results in Ian and his dog taking off on the run, trying to evade a future that would mean leaving their house and their land. Even if the community comes together to help him, would Ian and Gather have a home to return to? (8/30)