May 15. Once Upon a Wardrobe by Pattie Callahan 320 pp – Norma will lead the discussion. Margaret Devonshire (Megs) is a seventeen-year-old student of mathematics and physics at Oxford University. When her beloved eight-year-old brother asks Megs if Narnia is real, logical Megs tells him it’s just a book for children, and certainly not true. Homebound due to his illness, and remaining fixated on his favorite books, George presses her to ask the author of the recently released novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a “Where did Narnia come from?Despite her fear about approaching the famous author, who is a professor at her school, Megs soon finds herself taking tea with C. S. Lewis and his own brother Warnie, begging them for answers.
June 19. Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. 416 pp (Vermont Reads selection). Free copies are available. The discussion will be led by Suzanne Brown thanks to the Vermont Humanities Council. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.
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Suggestions for July and beyond to be voted on at the May 15 meeting.
NOTE: If you have additional book suggestions, let Julie Haupt know. She will and add them to the list below. We will voted on our choices at the next meeting.
Foster by Claire Keegan 90 pp. Recommended by Jan Day An Irish story by award winning Irish author. Short and sweet about a young girl.
The Chancellor by Katie Marton 368 pp Recommended by Joy Haupt The remarkable rise and political brilliance of Angela Merkel, ex-chancellor of Germany, from her East German childhood to her leadership of the West. Merkel was hailed as the world’s most trusted leader in 2020.
Transcription, a novel by Kate Atkinson 352 pp. Recommended by Nancy Schoerke. In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the coming and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the work of those years have been relegated to the past forever. Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her pat….Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, an d she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequences. A dramatic story of WWII espionage, betrayal, and loyalty….a modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. 360 pp. Recommended by Kathy W . An exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus. (*Hardcover until March 2025)
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmis 390 pp. Recommended by Suzanne. Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your 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 approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by 380 pp (Suzanne K). In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community-heaven and earth-that sustain us.
Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver 560 pp. Recommended by Dawn 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. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, 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.
The Storied Life of AJ Fikery by Gabrille Zevin 260 pp. Recommended . by Suzanne A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly. And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. An unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances.
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown 404 pp Recommended by Laura Ashbrook. The dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics. Tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936. The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 487 pp, Recommended by Gudrun. Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets–an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.