Hotel Du Lac (fiction), Anita Brookner – "Instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at Hotel Du Lac with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize and established Brookner’s international reputation for framing the eternal question "Why love?" (1984)

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Hour of the Witch (fiction), Chris Bohjalian   -   Mary causes a stir in her Puritanical community when she files for divorce from her abusive husband. A twisting, tightly plotted novel of historical suspense, Hour of the Witch is a timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt in Boston, 1662. (2021)

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The House of Eve (fiction), Sadeqa Johnson  -  “1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright” (2023)

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House of Sand and Fog (fiction), Andre Dubus   –    “Ethics, logic, and love collide in a surprising and tragic tale. Dubus tells his tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Colonel Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest.” (1999)

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How Much of These Hills is Gold: A Novel (fiction), C Pam Zhang   –   Two orphaned siblings set out to properly bury their father and search for a place to call home during The Gold Rush. Long listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, this novel explores race, immigration, gender, and how memories define a family. (2020)

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How to Stop Time (fiction), Matt Haig   –   Born in 1581 France, Tom Hazard has a condition where he only ages one year every 15 years. Having lived through history, Tom struggles to cope with the pain of his memories and his inability to form lasting relationships. While trying to blend in, he searches modern day London for his daughter, who shares his unique genes. (2018)

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I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (nonfiction), Michelle McNamara   –   “Now a six-part documentary series on HBO, a masterful, true crime account of the Golden State Killer from a gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.” (2018)

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Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (biography), Rebecca Skloot   –   This is a story of faith, science and journalism. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance as well as racism and poverty. (2010)

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The Immortalists (fiction), Chloe Benjamin   –    The four Gold siblings visit a fortune teller who claims to predict the day of their death. Are their life choices their own, or based on a pre-determined destiny? (2018)

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In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss (non-fiction), Amy Bloom – “Bloom takes us on a painful journey as her husband retires from his job, withdraws from life, and finally receives a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. She recalls both the love they experienced and the love it took to stand by him as he ended his life on his own terms.” (2022)

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The Invention of Wings (fiction), Sue Monk Kidd   –   Based on the life of Sarah Grimke, an early Abolitionist, Kidd follows the lives of Grimke and Handful, the ten-year-old slave given to her for her eleventh birthday, as they each strive for a life of their own in a time when this was unheard of. (2014)

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (fiction), V.E. Schwab   –   “Addie LaRue makes a Faustian bargain in 1716 France: she will live forever, significantly shaping the course of history and art, but will be forgotten by everyone she encounters. Three centuries later, in a little Paris bookstore, a young man remembers her name. This often startlingly raw story begs the questions: What is a soul? What does it mean to be remembered? And what prize is worth giving those things up for?” (2020)

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James: A Novel (fiction), Percival Everett- “A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. James stands out for staying true to Twain's voice, tale-spinning talent and humor, while also accurately depicting what Twain failed to acknowledge: the reality of life for enslaved people. In revealing Jim's full humanity, deep thinking and love through his hero's journey, Everett has written a visionary and necessary reimagining” Discussion Questions for James or Preview the book

The Japanese Lover (fiction), Isabel Allende - A multigenerational epic of friendship and love; a bit of Same Time Next Year, a taste of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  (2016)

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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (nonfiction), Bryan Stevenson   -   Stevenson, then a 23-year-old Harvard law student, started an internship in Georgia; his first assignment was to deliver a message to a man living on death row. This led to his calling: representing the innocent, those inadequately defended, children, domestic abuse survivors, the mentally ill and prisoners. This fast-paced book reads like a John Grisham novel.  (2015)

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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (nonfiction), David Grann  -  “A finalist for the 2017 National Book Award uncovering the horrific deaths that took place on the Osage Indian Reservation in the 1920s. Members of the Osage Indian Nation once enjoyed lives of prosperity thanks to oil found on their reservation. But between 1921 and 1926, the tribe was the target of a sequence of mysterious murders. When the FBI stepped in to investigate, they uncovered a shocking plot that left more than 24 people dead” (2017)

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The Kitchen House (fiction), Kathleen Grissom   -    Young, white Lavinia, orphaned during her passage from Ireland, arrives on the steps of a plantation’s kitchen house and is placed as an indentured servant under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate slave daughter. The novel unfolds in a story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds. (2010)

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Klara and the Sun (fiction), Kazuo Ishiguro   –   “Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?” (2021)

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Lady Tan’s Circle of Women: A Novel (fiction), Lisa See- “An immersive tale inspired by the historical cases of a remarkable female physician, Tan Yunxian, who defied societal restrictions during China’s Ming Dynasty.  Many of the formulas Tan transcribed in her book, the earliest recorded by a female, are more than two thousand years old and are still used today in traditional Chinese medicine.” (2023) Discussion Questions for Lady Tan's Circle of Women or Preview the book

A Land Remembered (fiction), Patrick Smith –   The story of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family who battle the hardships of the frontier to rise from a dirt–poor Cracker life to the wealth and standing of real estate tycoons. (1984) *

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The Leavers (fiction), Lisa Ko - When Deming Guo was 11, his Chinese immigrant mother, Polly, left for work at a nail salon and never returned. In alternating perspectives, this novel tells both of their stories. (2017)

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Life After Life (fiction), Jill McCorkle   –    This award–winning author takes the reader on a splendid journey through time and memory in these tales and adventures of the residents, staff and neighbors of the Pine Haven Retirement Center (from twelve–year–old Abby to eighty–five–year–old Sadie). (2013)

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Light Between Oceans (fiction), M.L. Stedman   –   When Tom Sherbourne, a lighthouse keeper, finds a baby who washed up in a rowboat, he and his young wife Isabel decide to raise the child as their own. The baby seems like a gift from God, yet years later, justice for one character will mean another’s tragic loss. (2012) *

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The Lincoln Highway (fiction), Amor Towles –  “Filled with humor, misadventures, triumphs and sorrow, The Lincoln Highway follows Emmet Watson, his kid brother, Billy, and their friends Duchess and Woolly on an epic road trip from Nebraska to New York. This sprawling, cross-country saga takes place in just 10 days, with chapters narrated by a variety of characters.” (2021) *

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The Line Becomes a River (nonfiction), Francisco Cantú –    After years of grueling experience as a US Border Patrol agent, Cantú leaves the stress behind for civilian life. When a friend is caught in the middle of crisis trying to cross from Mexico back into the US, Cantú is compelled to help him. This novel examines the violence along the Mexican border from a personal perspective and gives a face to the immigration crisis on both sides. (2018)

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The Lion Women of Tehran (fiction), Marjan Kamali – “A story of friendship and redemption set against three decades in Tehran, beginning in the 1950s when seven-year-old Ellie meets Homa. The girls bond over their shared interests and their desire to grow up to be "lion women." Class and opportunity divide them, but fate brings them together repeatedly, testing and forging-and breaking-bonds” (2024) Discussion Questions for The Lion Women of Tehran or Preview the book

Listen for the Lie (fiction), Amy Tintera – “Best friends Lucy and Savvy are the darlings of their little Texas town, with Lucy marrying her pick of beaus and Savvy boasting several. Then, on a night she cannot recall, Lucy appears covered in Savvy's blood. Years later, she finally confronts the past when a true-crime podcaster decides to revisit Savvy's murder.  A striking commentary on the insular and harmful nature of small-town prejudice and how women who don't fit a certain mold are often considered outliers, if not straight-up villains. Smart, edgy, and entertaining” (2024) Discussion Questions for Listen for the Lie or Preview the book 

Little Fires Everywhere (fiction), Celeste Ng Smith   –   A suburban family becomes entwined with their artist tenant and teenage daughter. An examination of the complexities of identity, how relationships are formed and tested, and the fluidity of motherhood. (2017)

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A Long Petal of the Sea: A Novel (historical fiction), Isabel Allende    –   “This epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.” (2020)

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Loving Frank (fiction), Nancy Horan   –    “Horan's Loving Frank describes Frank Lloyd Wright's passionate affair with a woman named Mamah Cheney. Both of them left their families to be together, creating a Chicago scandal that eventually ended in inexplicable violence.” (2007)

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Mad Honey (fiction) Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan - “This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily’s journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require. A riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves” (2022) *

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The Maid (fiction) Nita Prose - Molly is a likable, neurodivergent narrator in this outstanding debut. The character-rich mystery ends with several twists that will appeal to fans of Eleanor Oliphant and other sympathetic heroines. (2021)

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Making Rounds with Oscar (nonfiction), David Dosa    –   The story of a doctor who at first doesn't always listen, of the patients he serves, of their caregivers, and, most importantly, of a cat who teaches by example, embracing moments of life from which so many of us shy away. (2010)

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A Man Called Ove (fiction), Fredrik Backman  -  Ove, the grumpiest man in the world, trundles from his well-ordered solitary world into one of unkempt cats, unlikely friendships and a community’s unexpected reassessment of the one person they thought they had all figured out. A thoughtful and charming read. (2015) *

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Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (nonfiction), Ilyon Woo - One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2023, New York Times Bestseller, named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, and Oprah Daily.  The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his” slave” (2023) Discussion Questions for Master Slave Husband Wife or Preview the book 

The Measure (fiction), Nikki Erlick - “Would you choose to know how long you’ll live? It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise? As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?” (2022) Preview the book

The Memory Police: A Novel (fiction), Yoko Ogawa (Stephen Snyder, translator).    –   “On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. The island’s inhabitants live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten, with only a few people with the power to recall the lost objects.” (1994)

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Moonglow (fiction), Michael Chabon - From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to New York’s Wallkill prison, the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. (2016)

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The Muralist (fiction), B.A. Shapiro   -  This fine-art detective story blends the early years of the abstract expressionist movement, the Roosevelts, institutionalized anti-Semitism that denied American visas to Jewish refugees, the relentless run-up to World War II, and the generational losses of the Holocaust. Mystery and historical fiction lovers will find this an inviting read.  (2015)

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Next Year in Havana (fiction), Chanel Cleeton   –  A Cuban-American woman travels to Havana to scatter her grandmother’s ashes and experiences the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. Here she discovers the roots of her identity and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution. (2019)

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The Nickel Boys (fiction), Coleson Whitehead –    Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children. The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist confronting racial prejudices and true-life atrocities. (2019)

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Night Road (fiction), Kristin Hannah   –    For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children’s needs above her own. After she and her family befriend a youthful stranger, decisions they make change the course of all of their lives. (2011) *

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Norwegian By Night (fiction), Derek Miller  –  Sheldon Horowitz is a grumpy, guilt–driven 82–year old war vet who lives in New York and is recently widowed. His grand–daughter insists that he come to live with her and her Norwegian husband in Oslo. How will he adjust? And should he interfere when he hears a violent argument erupting from the upstairs flat where a woman and her son are clearly in terrible trouble? To his mind, Europe turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the Jews' plight in the Second World War; he is not going to make the same mistake. Instead, he makes another. (2012) *

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Ordinary Grace (fiction), William Kent Krueger–The narrator, Frank Drum, writes as a middle–age man looking back on a summer in 1961 when he was 13 and death, in five different instances, shook his family and their community. The first death is that of Frank’s sometime friend Bobby Cole. The proximate cause was a train, but the mystery is whether Bobby stood in front of that train, or was pushed or placed there. More deaths follow, one of which rips apart Frank’s family. This novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. (2013)

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Orphan Train (fiction), Christina Baker Kline–Teenage Molly Ayers expected her Community Service project would have her clearing out an elderly woman’s attic. Instead, the recollections of the woman put Molly on an Orphan Train, one of many which for nearly a century took children from cities to the Midwest where they were adopted by farm families and made to work for them. (2013) *

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Pachinko (fiction), Min Jin Lee - Sunja, a Korean woman living in Japan during World War II, lives with the impact of racism as a "Zainichi," or non- Japanese. She has persevered through random misfortunes determined to shape her destiny. A family saga of epic proportions detailing strong, passionate characters through four generations. (2018)

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Peace Like a River (fiction), Lief Enger – To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben "Rube" Land, an asthmatic 11–year–old boy. Rube recalls the events of his childhood in small–town Minnesota, circa 1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic, verbal stoicism of the northern Great Plains. "Here's what I saw," Rube warns his readers. "Here's how it went. Make of it what you will." And Rube sees plenty. (2001)

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The Pecan Man (fiction), Cassie Dandridge Selleck - The Pecan Man is a work of Southern fiction whose first chapter was the First Place winner of the 2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition in the Unpublished Novel category. In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When the police chief's son is found stabbed to death near his camp, the man Ora knows as Eddie is arrested and charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man. In narrating her story, Ora discovers more truth about herself than she could ever have imagined. This novel has been described as To Kill a Mockingbird meets The Help. (2012)*

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The Perfume Thief (fiction), Timothy Schaffert – “Clementine, a reformed con artist, opens a perfume shop for the ladies of the cabarets in Nazi occupied Paris. She is convinced to do one last job of thievery and rebellion to find the diary of a Jewish perfumer before it reveals crucial information to the Nazis.” (2021)

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A Piece of the World (fiction), Christina Baker Kline - A story of friendship, passion and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting Christina’s World. (2017)

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Postmortem (mystery), Patricia Cornwell   – A gruesome killer moves through Richmond, Virginia, leaving few clues behind. Newly appointed Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta faces a maze of politics and sabotage in the biggest challenge of her life. First in a mystery series. (2017)

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Project Hail Mary (science fiction), Andy Weir   –   “Hugo Award Finalist and one of the Year’s Best Books. A lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster on a desperate, last-chance mission and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish, except he doesn’t know this yet” (2023)

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The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (fiction), Katarina Bivald   -   Sara, a young Swedish woman, comes to visit her pen pal Amy in Broken Wheel, but Amy has just died. Sara uncovers Amy’s stash of books and decides to open a bookstore, sparking a renaissance in Broken Wheel as the residents come together to help the store become a success.  This fish-out-of-water story will remind you why you’re a booklover. (2015)

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Red at the Bone (fiction), Jacqueline Woodson.    –  Two urban families become permanently inter-twined and discover the roles that history and community play in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of families. (2019)*

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Remarkably Bright Creatures (fiction), Shelby Van Pelt   – “Poet and short story writer Van Pelt has written an irresistibly wonderful, warm, funny, heartbreaking first novel, full of gentle people (and one octopus) bravely powering through their individual scars left by lives that have beaten them up but have not brought them down” (2022)

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The Revisioners (fiction), Margaret Wilkerson-Sexton.    –  The powerful tale of a New Orleans family’s escape from slavery, with tales of a “mind magic” that fixes the present, sees into the future and calls out from the past. In alternating chapters, two women who refuse to be bound by society share their frightening and inspiring stories of liberty, heritage, and sisterhood. (2019)*

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The Rosie Effect (fiction), Graeme Simsion   – Don Tillman employs his unique research methods when he finds out his wife is pregnant but soon finds himself in trouble. A hilarious and charming sequel picking up where The Rosie Project left off. (2014)

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The Rosie Project (fiction), Graeme Simsion   -   Don Tillman, a brilliant, socially inept professor of genetics, decides it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Then he meets Rosie. (2013)

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Rough Sleepers (nonfiction), Tracy Kidder   –   “Drawing on five years' worth of reporting, Kidder vividly portrays life on the streets and in the program's health clinics, and sheds light on various legal and policy matters, though the focus is less on the institutional forces that contribute to chronic homelessness than on the individual lives it touches. Keenly observed and fluidly written, this is a compassionate report from the front lines of one of America's most intractable social problems” (2023)

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* Book Kits with asterisks are gifts from St Lucie County Book Clubs or individuals.

Annotations in quotation marks have been summarized from reviews found on Amazon.com.

For more information or to book your kit, please call 772–462–2190.