The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Next Meeting:
Date: Feb 27
Hostess: Lesley

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. < Read More

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler Charlotte

 

Next Meeting:
Date: January 30
Hostess: Charlotte

An international bestseller

Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood--his home.

Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are... < Read More

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Next Meeting:
Date: November 28
Hostess: Lynne

It’s 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting.

Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle--an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend... < Read More

The Sardinian Story by Francesca Scanacapra

Next Meeting:
Date: October 31
Hostess: Sandra

Apennine Mountains, Italy, 1965 Leonora Bacchetti was once a happy child. But at the age of seventeen she has become a wild and rebellious young woman who leaves her parents in despair when she runs away from home with a group of itinerant travellers. In the eyes of their friends and neighbours in the tight-knit village of Montacciolo, her parents’ good name is ruined. At first, Leonora keeps in touch with her mother and father, sending letters and postcards from different countries until, very abruptly, her correspondence... < Read More 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Next Meeting:
Date: September 26
Hostess: Emma

If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple... <Read More

Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner

Next Meeting:
Date: August 29
Hostess: Tina (location TBD)

"May be the best novel of [the year]. . . . Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead 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. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves ... < Read More

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne

Next Meeting:
**Saturday, June 28 at 11am**
Hostess: Aida

**note day and time change!

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight―but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission.

Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital... < Read More