August 16th, 7:00 pm Brunonia Barry dreamt she saw a prophecy in a piece of lace, a vision so potent she spun it into a novel. The Lace Reader retains the strange magic of a vivid dream, though Barry’s portrayal of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts–with its fascinating cast of eccentrics–is reportedly…
Tuesday, July 19th, 7:00 pm With the subtitle “Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression,” this charming memoir was voted one of the 10 Best Books of 2007 by the New York Times. Kalish lived with her siblings, mother and grandparents both in a…
Tuesday, June 21, 7:00 pm If Washington, D.C. housewife Eliza Benedict sometimes seems preoccupied, it’s easy to imagine why: As a teenager a quarter century ago, she was kidnapped by a serial rapist and murderer. That maniac is now sitting on death row and he is making one last macabre…
Tuesday, May 17, 7:00 pm In this stunning first novel, Mary Sutter is a brilliant, headstrong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine-and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak- Mary leaves home and travels to…
Tuesday, April 19, 7:00 pm In the years preceding the United States’ entrance into World War II, radio journalist Frankie Bard broadcasts from London during the air raids. Among her listeners are several residents of a small Cape Cod town. Writing in starkly descriptive prose, novelist Blake offers a revealing…
Tuesday, March 22, 7:00 pm Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking is about grieving for her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne. The couple had been married since 1964 when Dunne died of a heart attack at the end of 2003. His death came suddenly, just as the…
Tuesday, February 22, 7:00 pm Olive Kitteridge, the 2008 “novel in stories” by Elizabeth Strout won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The title character appears in all thirteen stories in the book in a variety of ways following the flow of her life from middle age into old age.…
Tuesday, January 18th, 7:00 pm The Corrections is a 2001 novel of social criticism by American author Jonathan Franzen. The satirical family drama drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book revolves around the troubles…
Tuesday, November 16th, 7:00 pm Drawn together by their love of books and affection for each other, the unforgettable characters of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society collectively tell a moving tale of endurance and friendship. Through the chorus of voices they have created, Mary Ann Shaffer and…
Tuesday, October 19th, 7:00 pm Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the…
