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2024-2025 Book Selections
September 17, 2024
Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder. Nonfiction, 280 pages
After Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would O’Connell defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s work. In this book, we travel with O’Connell as he navigates Boston, offering medical care, socks, soup, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens, emphasizing a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.” We get to know his patients not as problems but as human beings in their true complexity-difficult and charming, self-destructive and brave.
Led by Jeanne Paige
October 15, 2024
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Fiction, 400 pages
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman, but it’s the early 60’s 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.
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 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.
Led by Nancy Goddard
November 19, 2024
The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Historical Fiction, 370 pages.
A novel about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, an unlikely friendship that changed the world. The story of two different, yet equally formidable, passionate, and committed women and the way in which their singular friendship helped form the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.
Led by Susie Mitchler
December 17, 2024
Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride. Fiction, 512 pages
The novel takes place on Chicken Hill, a dilapidated neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side. It was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived, where Moshe integrated his theater, and Chona ran the Heaven and Earth grocery store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at the theater, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America 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.
Led by Grant Gilfeather
January 21, 2025
The Women by Kristen Hannah. Historical Fiction, 480 pages
In 1965, Nursing student Frankie McGrath joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother as he ships off to Vietnam. She is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has often been forgotten.
Led by Vicki Johnson
February 18, 2025
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Fiction, 560 pages
Inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and set in Appalachia, it 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. Demon narrates the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves and crushing losses. Through it all, he confronts his own invisibility in a culture where even superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
Led by Mary Lofgren
March 18, 2025
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer. Historical Fiction. 759 pages.
Paris, 1937. Andras Levi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter’s recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his and his family’s history. From the small Hungarian town of Konyar to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of the Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour.
Led by Susie Mitchler
April 15, 2025
Absolution by Alice McDermott. Historical Fiction, 336 pages
American wives have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War; but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmates” to their ambitious husbands with their own impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking account of that pivotal year, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery-of politics, history, war, and their husbands’ convictions-were shaped and burdened by the same unintended consequences that followed America’s interference in Southeast Asia.
Led by Margot Richardson-Corlett
May 20, 2025
James by Percival Everett. Fiction, 320 pages
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decided to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narratives pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, in this novel Jim’s agency and intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
Led by Susan Gilfeather
June 17, 2025
The Secret History of Audrey James by Heather Marshall. Historical Fiction, 432 pages
Berlin 1938-British pianist Audrey James and her best friend Isle face the imminent threat of Nazi oppression. When Ilse’s family disappears and Nazi officers confiscate their home, Audrey becomes the housekeeper and Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic. As borders close and rumors of death camps swirl, Audry joins the resistance and risks everything to protect her loved ones.
Alnwick 2010-After a tragic accident, Kate Mercer moves to a guest house near the Scottish border and becomes entangled in the secretes of her elderly proprietor. A captivating story about the unbreakable bonds of friendship and family.
Led by Nancy Goddard
Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder. Nonfiction, 280 pages
After Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would O’Connell defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s work. In this book, we travel with O’Connell as he navigates Boston, offering medical care, socks, soup, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens, emphasizing a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.” We get to know his patients not as problems but as human beings in their true complexity-difficult and charming, self-destructive and brave.
Led by Jeanne Paige
October 15, 2024
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Fiction, 400 pages
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman, but it’s the early 60’s 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.
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 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.
Led by Nancy Goddard
November 19, 2024
The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Historical Fiction, 370 pages.
A novel about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, an unlikely friendship that changed the world. The story of two different, yet equally formidable, passionate, and committed women and the way in which their singular friendship helped form the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.
Led by Susie Mitchler
December 17, 2024
Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride. Fiction, 512 pages
The novel takes place on Chicken Hill, a dilapidated neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side. It was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived, where Moshe integrated his theater, and Chona ran the Heaven and Earth grocery store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at the theater, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America 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.
Led by Grant Gilfeather
January 21, 2025
The Women by Kristen Hannah. Historical Fiction, 480 pages
In 1965, Nursing student Frankie McGrath joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother as he ships off to Vietnam. She is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has often been forgotten.
Led by Vicki Johnson
February 18, 2025
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Fiction, 560 pages
Inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and set in Appalachia, it 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. Demon narrates the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves and crushing losses. Through it all, he confronts his own invisibility in a culture where even superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
Led by Mary Lofgren
March 18, 2025
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer. Historical Fiction. 759 pages.
Paris, 1937. Andras Levi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter’s recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his and his family’s history. From the small Hungarian town of Konyar to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of the Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour.
Led by Susie Mitchler
April 15, 2025
Absolution by Alice McDermott. Historical Fiction, 336 pages
American wives have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War; but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmates” to their ambitious husbands with their own impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking account of that pivotal year, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery-of politics, history, war, and their husbands’ convictions-were shaped and burdened by the same unintended consequences that followed America’s interference in Southeast Asia.
Led by Margot Richardson-Corlett
May 20, 2025
James by Percival Everett. Fiction, 320 pages
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decided to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narratives pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, in this novel Jim’s agency and intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
Led by Susan Gilfeather
June 17, 2025
The Secret History of Audrey James by Heather Marshall. Historical Fiction, 432 pages
Berlin 1938-British pianist Audrey James and her best friend Isle face the imminent threat of Nazi oppression. When Ilse’s family disappears and Nazi officers confiscate their home, Audrey becomes the housekeeper and Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic. As borders close and rumors of death camps swirl, Audry joins the resistance and risks everything to protect her loved ones.
Alnwick 2010-After a tragic accident, Kate Mercer moves to a guest house near the Scottish border and becomes entangled in the secretes of her elderly proprietor. A captivating story about the unbreakable bonds of friendship and family.
Led by Nancy Goddard