The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

 Next Meeting
When: January 27

Hostess: Lucy

From Amazon: "The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."--Publishers Weekly

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows....  < Read More

Ironmum by Karine Fragnière

Next Meeting

When: November 25

Hostess: Carina

From Amazon:

The inspiring story of a champion and mother of four!

Karine Fragnière, a lifelong athlete and “mom of steel” recounts the peak experiences of her life, and the joy and pain that inspired her lifelong quest for wellbeing and harmony.

After winning her age group at IronmanZurich, cheered on by her four children, Karine decided to share her passion and her dreams with others, passing on the lessons learned during her “swim, bike, run” life as a triathlete.

Karine, a devoted mother ... < Read More

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Next Meeting

When: October 29 ** (exception: meeting on Saturday)
Hostess: Katrin

From Amazon.com:

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life … here is a novel … so gorgeously written that it transports you.” —The Boston Globe

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever... < Read More

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Next Meeting
When: September 30
Hostess: Helen

From Amazon.com:

"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will...< Read More

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Next Meeting

When: August 26
Hostess: Cristina

From Amazon.com:

"Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. 

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual... < Read More

The Foundling by Stacey Halls

Next Meeting
When: June 24
Hostess: Maya

From GoodReads: "Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London's Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst - that Clara has died in care - the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed - by her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl - and why. Less than a mile from Bess' lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse... < Read More

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Next Meeting
When: May 27
Hostess: Charlotte

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is the universally acclaimed novel—winner of the Booker Prize and the basis for the award-winning film.

This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey... < Read More

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

Next Meeting
When: April 29
Hostess: Anne

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. 

Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men....< Read More

Billy Summers by Stephen King

 

Next Meeting
When: March 19 (**special date change)
Hostess: Eva

"Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about everything.

This spectacular can't-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to.... < Read More

The Thursday Murder Club: A Novel by Richard Osman

Next Meeting
When: February 25
Hostess: Ruth

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together, they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. 

When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph... < Read more