Book Groups
Great Group Reads
Camilla Gibb
This deeply observed novel of contemporary Vietnam interweaves stories of a venerable soup seller, a young Vietnamese American curator, and an enterprising tour guide in ways that will mark their lives forever.
Julie Otsuka
Otsuka's long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as picture brides nearly a century ago.
Annia Ciezadlo
Annia Ciezadlo's memoir weaves together threads of family food, and the harrowing story of life in the contemporary Middle East. This brave story of civilian life during wartime illuminates not only the daily trauma of this family's experience of sectarian violence, but also the daily rituals of domesticity.
Drusilla Campbell
Few books are as haunting and timely as this novel about a woman caught in the uncomfortable glare of her sister's arrest for attempted infanticide. This seismic event forces her to confront years of violence, lies and secrecy, while keeping her own sanity and marriage intact. A disturbing and unflinching book that arrives in the wake of the Casey Anthony case, it will be an ideal book-group pick for many.
Mira Bartòk
A gorgeous memoir about the 17-year estrangement of the author and her homeless schizophrenic mother, and their reunion.
Robin Oliveira
Mary Sutter is a brilliant, headstrong midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon in 19th-century America. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine, Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C., to pursue her medical career.
Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones's Silver Sparrow, the story of two families joined through a secret that only one of them knows, mines provocative domestic territory. The novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s two families — the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and become friends, secrets are revealed and illusions shattered.
Margaret Leroy
Margaret Leroy's latest novel, The Soldier's Wife, takes place as the action of WWII encroaches on Guernsey and one woman is forced work out the dissonance between the desires of her heart, her family and her honor.
Christie Watson
When 12-year-old Blessing's mom catches her dad cheating, she leaves their 4th-floor apartment of Better Life Executive Homes in Lagos, Nigeria, for a village in the Niger Delta. Confronting issues of race, class and religion, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away is the moving and often witty story of a broken family struggling to survive and a young girl bravely navigating new terrain. Fans of Chinua Achebe and Alexander McCall Smith take note.
Tom McNeal
In this carefully constructed collision of past and present, married L.A. film editor Judith literally tries to reconstruct the teenage life and love she left behind. A moving exploration of roads not taken, To Be Sung Underwater is the love story of a woman trying to remember, and the man who could not even begin to forget.
Heather Newton
When Martin Owenby must return to his family home in North Carolina after three decades of expatriation in New York City, he is thrust into the search for his older brother, Leon, who has gone missing. A story of regret and family, Heather Newton's Under the Mercy Trees is a novel of hard knocks and lost love.
Jean Thompson
In The Year We Left Home, prolific author Jean Thompson delivers a sweeping and emotionally powerful story of a single American family during the tumultuous final decades of the 20th century. Beginning in 1973, this is a story about the true costs and value of American freedom.
Siobhan Fallon
Author Siobhan Fallon is the wife of a soldier. Her haunting short story collection weaves together tales of army families in Fort Hood, Texas, as they deal with everyday life while waiting for the men to return, and the complex life that comes after they return from war. Her penetrating front line view of the domestic side of military service makes for a riveting debut.
Join a Book Group
- The Beauty of Humanity Movement
- Birds of Paradise
- The Buddha in the Attic
- Dance Lessons
- Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War
- The Good Sister
- The Hand that First Held Mine
- If You Knew Then What I Know Now
- The Memory Palace: A Memoir
- My Name is Mary Sutter
- Silver Sparrow
- The Soldier's Wife
- The Summer Without Men
- Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away
- To Be Sung Underwater
- Under the Mercy Trees
- The Year We Left Home
- When God Was a Rabbit
- Wingshooters
- You Know When the Men are Gone