Monday Book Club Titles:

December

“The Matzah Ball” by Jean Meltzer

Though the daughter of a famous Rabbi, Rachel has a secret and successful career writing Christmas romance novels. When her editor demands a Hanukkah romance, Rachel doesn’t know what to do. It’s Christmas that brings her joy, not her own life experiences. The reappearance of Jacob, the one boy who broke her heart, is serendipity. Jacob is hosting a party that can give Rachel the inspiration she needs to keep her career alive.

November

“Untamed” by Glennon Doyle

Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live.

October

“The Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood

Set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, hypothetical Christian, form of government, known as the Republic of Gilead. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the “Handmaids”: women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the “Commanders”, who are the ruling class in Gilead.  The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of women’s reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence.

September

“The Last Thing He Told Me” by Laura Dave

Before Owen Michaels disappears he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child and wants nothing to do with her new stepmother. Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

August

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini

“…a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years – from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding – that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate human terms.”

July

“Notorious RBG” by Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame—she has only tried to make the world a little better and a little freer. … the book tells a never-before-told story of an unusual and transformative woman who transcends generational divides.”

June

“Send for Me” by Lauren Fox

“An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the ceaseless push and pull of family. “

May

“Dreamland” by Nicolas Sparks

In the course of a single unforgettable week, two young people will navigate the exhilarating heights and heartbreak of first love. Hundreds of miles away, Beverly will put her love for her young son to the test. And fate will draw all three people together in a web of life-altering connections . . . forcing each to wonder whether the dream of a better life can ever survive the weight of the past.

April

“Calypso” by David Sedaris

“Sedaris’s powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.”

March

“Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson

“Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknow-ability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.”

February

“The Christie Affair” by Nina de Gramont

London, 1925: In a world of town homes and tennis matches, socialites and shooting parties, Miss Nan O’Dea became Archie Christie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Agatha Christie.

The question is, why? Why destroy another woman’s marriage, why hatch a plot years in the making, and why murder? How was Nan O’Dea so intricately tied to those eleven mysterious days that Agatha Christie went missing?

January

“Hidden Valley Road” by Robert Kolker

The heartrending story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.