Book Club Kits
We Have Your Book Club Kit in the Bag!
Are your book club members on the same page with book selections? Have difficulty getting books? Need discussion ideas and questions? We’re here to assist with librarian-curated kits.
Expand your literary comfort zone, enjoy time with other book lovers and have fun!
What’s In a Kit
Each book club kit contains:
- 9 copies of the book
- one audiobook on CD, when available
- discussion guide
- book discussion how-tos and best practices
When available, the library provides access to one electronic book and one downloadable audiobook in Libby.
Borrowing Guidelines
Reservations and Checkouts
- To reserve a book club kit, call Sally Jones, Public Services Librarian, at 276-676-6391.
- You can also use our Ask a Librarian form to request a book kit.
- Only WCPL library card holders are eligible to reserve book kits.
- Book kits may be checked out for 35 days.
- They are not renewable.
- You can reserve more than one kit at a time.
- The kit will be checked out on the library card of the book club member picking up the kit. That patron is responsible for the bag and all of its contents.
Returns
- The Book Club kit must be returned, with all its contents, at the same time.
- You may return the kits to any of our libraries.
- Kits must be returned inside the library. Please do not put them in a book drop.
A star ★ indicates unlimited copies are available in Hoopla Digital.
Available Kits
Miss Eliza's English Kitchen ★
Before Mrs. Beeton and well before Julia Child, there was Eliza Acton, who changed the course of cookery writing forever. Through the art of food, Eliza and her assistant Ann develop an unusual friendship and break the mold of traditional cookbooks by adding elegant descriptions and ingredient lists, that are still used today.
Pride and Predjudice ★
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows us the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
Chasing Shadows (Inspirational) ★
The Nazi invasion propels three women onto paths that cross in unexpected, sometimes-heartbreaking ways. Yet the story that unfolds illuminates the surprising endurance of the human spirit and the power of faith and love to carry us through.
If I Were You (Inspirational) ★
A remarkable novel of sisterhood, self-discovery, and romance set against the backdrop of WW2. Audrey Clarkson leaves England for a fresh start in America with her young son. She needs the support of her American in-laws, whom she has never met. But she arrives to find that her longtime friend Eve Dawson has been impersonating her for the past four years.
Beartown
Beartown is slowly losing ground to ever-encroaching forest. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil.
Horse
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
Cold Sassy Tree ★
A timeless, funny novel about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy’s passage through the momentous year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century.
My Ántonia ★
One of the most winning heroines in American fiction, a woman whose calm, undemonstrative strength and robust high spirits make her emblematic of the virtues Cather most admired in her country. Ántonia Shimerda is the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents struggling with the oceanic loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. We follow Ántonia from farm to town as she survives hardships both natural and human, from poverty to a failed romance—and not only survives, but triumphs.
O Pioneers! ★
O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-Americans immigrants in Nebraska at the turn of the 20th century. Alexandra Bergson inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when many other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie.
The Family Chao
Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, this novel offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese-American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.
Between the World and Me
The author presents a history of racial discrimination in the United States and a narrative of his own personal experiences of contemporary race relations, offering possible resolutions for the future. A profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son.
American Dirt
Lydia Quixano Pérez runs a bookstore in Acapulco, Mexico, where she lives with her husband, Sebastián, who is a journalist, and their son, Luca. When a man starts visiting her store, buying books and striking up a friendship, she has no idea initially that he will be responsible for turning her life upside down. But Lydia and Luca will have to flee Acapulco, setting them on a journey they will share with countless other Central and South Americans-turned migrants.
White Fragility
White Fragility explores the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
A Christmas Carol ★
Charles Dickens' timeless novella, A Christmas Carol, is a ghost story that celebrates the Christmas spirit through its iconic characters–Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.
The Language of Flowers
After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, Victoria is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life.
Rebecca ★
The unassuming young heroine of Rebecca finds her life changed overnight when she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome and wealthy widower whose proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. De Winter whisks her off to Manderley, his estate on the Cornish coast—but there things take a chilling turn.
The Walk (Inspirational) ★
What if you lost your job, your home, and the love of your life—all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christoffersen, he decides to take a walk. But not any ordinary walk. Taking with him only the essentials, Alan heads for Key West, Florida. The people he meets along the way have much to teach him.
The Cul-de-Sac War ★
Bree Leake lives in Abingdon, Virginia. She doesn’t want to be tied down. She’s had more jobs than she can count, and she plans to move as soon as the curtains fall on her less-than-minor stage role at The Barter—the oldest live performance theater in the US. But just when it’s time to move on again, Bree’s parents make her an offer: hold steady for a full year, and they will give her the one thing she’s always wanted—her grandmother’s house. Her dreams are coming true . . . until life at the theater throws her some curve balls. And then there’s Chip McBride—her handsome and infuriating next-door neighbor.
The Stranger in the Woods
In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. Many people dream of escaping modern life, but most will never act on it. A true story of a man who lived alone in the woods for 27 years, making this dream a reality; not out of anger at the world, simply because he preferred to live on his own.
Never Let Go (Inspirational) ★
Gorensic genealogist Willow Anderson is on a quest for answers about a baby abducted from the hospital more than twenty years ago. Someone makes an attempt on her life to keep her from discovering the truth. Ex-FBI agent—and Willow's ex-flame—Austin McKade readily offers his help to protect the woman he never should have let get away.
Skipping Christmas
Luther and Nora Krank are fed up with the Christmas chaos. Where has all the joy gone? With their only child off in Peru, they decide that just this once, they’ll skip the holidays. But a vacation from Christmas isn’t much of a vacation at all, and skipping the holidays has consequences the Kranks didn’t bargain for.
What the Eyes Don’t See
The inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water—and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world.
The Dry ★
Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.
The House of the Seven Gables ★
Hawthorne’s classic focuses on whether families can break the chain of their inherited warped values and grow better natures, letting the love and light in. Can the curse on the family and upon the House of the Seven Gables be broken?
The Scarlet Letter ★
Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.
The Paper Palace
It is a perfect August morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace”—the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. Elle cheats on her husband with her oldest friend Jonas, whose spouse is also at the Paper Palace, and Elle has some difficult choices to make.
A Farewell to Arms
The unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway’s frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto—of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized—is one of the greatest moments in literary history.
Evvie Drake Starts Over
When washed-up baseball pitcher Dean Tenney moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie Drake's house in a sleepy seaside Maine town, they make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and their unexpected friendship turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts.
Fly Girl
In 1978, in the tailwind of the golden age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamor and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world―and maybe, one day, write about it―Ann Hood joined their ranks. After a grueling job search, Hood survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy and learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen, and stay calm no matter what the situation. An excellent memoir!
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Meet Eleanor Oliphant. She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes that the only way to survive is to open your heart.
Riverbend Gap (Inspirational) ★
When Katelyn Loveland’s car veered off a winding Appalachian Mountain road, she thought she was done for. That is until Cooper Robinson, local sheriff’s deputy, came to her rescue. And though Katie narrowly escaped her brush with death, she still fell hard for the young policeman.
The Haunting of Hill House
Hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House.
Go and Come Again
Local author and educator Jerry Jones writes about the history and culture of Glade Spring during the era of segregated schools and Jim Crow. Jones writes about his family’s struggles; teachers and students; the transitions of the early 1960s; his experiences at a historically black college; his work as a high school teacher; and his experiences as a professor, first at a community college and then at a small, church-affiliated liberal arts college near his birthplace.
An American Marriage ★
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.
A Common Life (Inspirational)
Mitford’s Lord’s Chapel is the home to the most joyful event in years: the wedding of Father Tim Kavanagh and Cynthia Coppersmith. 6th in the series.
A Light in the Window (Inspirational)
His attractive neighbor is tugging at Father Tim's heart-strings. A wealthy widow is pursuing him with hot casseroles. And his red-haired Cousin Meg has moved into the rectory, uninvited. 2nd in the Mitford series.
At Home in Mitford (Inspirational)
It’s easy to feel at home in the charming village of Mitford, but Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won’t go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that’s sixty years old. First in the Mitford series.
A New Song (Inspirational)
Mitford’s longtime Episcopal priest, Father Tim, has retired. But new challenges and adventures await when he agrees to serve as interim minister of a small church on Whitecap Island. 5th in the series.
Out to Canaan (Inspirational)
Millions of readers have come home to Mitford, the little town with the big heart, whose endearing and eccentric residents have become like family members. But now change is coming to the hamlet. 4th in the series.
These High, Green Hills (Inspirational)
At last, Mitford's rector and lifelong bachelor Father Tim has married his talented and vivacious neighbor Cynthia. Now, of course, they must face love's challenges: new sleeping arrangements for Father Tim's sofa-sized dog, Cynthia's urge to decorate the rectory Italian-villa-style, and the growing pains of the thrown-away boy who's become like a son to the rector. 3rd in the Mitford series.
The Girls of Atomic City
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, consumed more electricity than New York City, yet did not appear on any map. Thousands of civilians, many of them young women from small towns, were recruited to this secret city. What were they actually doing there? Very few knew.
Writers & Lovers ★
Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. She is determined to live a creative life in the midst of total chaos, including falling for two different men at the same time.
The Chance (Inspirational)
Years ago, the day before Ellie moved from Georgia to California, she and her best friend Nolan sat beneath the Spanish moss of an ancient oak tree and wrote letters to each other, sealing them in a rusty old metal box. The plan was to return eleven years later and read them in 2013, the year Nolan’s time traveling books say all the mysteries of the world will be understood.
Shades of Blue (Inspirational) ★
(Inspirational) Friends since childhood, Brad and Emma became a couple in high school—before their relationship was forever altered by a single decision. Haunted by the past and confused about the future, Brad turns to God seeking forgiveness and redemption for the choice he and Emma made long ago.
Unlocked (Inspirational)
Despite his quiet ways and quirky behaviors, Holden Harris is very happy and socially engaged—on the inside, in a private world of his own. But Holden is an eighteen-year-old with autism. Ella Reynolds steps in to save him from bullies.
Demon Copperhead ★
Kingsolver takes a literary classic and makes it her own, peering into the dark corners not of Dickensian England, but of present day in the neglected hollers of Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains. Her writing is arresting and illuminating; in baring Demon’s soul on the page she gives voice and visibility to a place and its people where beauty and desperation live side by side.
Yellowface
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel.
The Dead Don't Dance (Inspirational) ★
In a sleepy rural town in South Carolina, Dylan and Maggie Styles are a young couple in love, preparing eagerly for the birth of their first son. But events take a tragic turn in the delivery room, and their child is delivered stillborn. When Maggie hemorrhages and slips into a coma, Dylan holds vigil at his beloved wife’s bedside.
The Letter Keeper (Inspirational) ★
Murphy Shepherd has made a career of finding those no one else could—survivors of human trafficking. His life’s mission is helping others find freedom . . . but then the nightmare strikes too close to home. (2nd in the series).
The Record Keeper (Inspirational) ★
Murphy Shepherd’s last rescue mission very nearly cost him his life. He’d like nothing more than to stay close to his wife and daughters for a while. But Bones’s nemesis must be stopped, and there are so many who still need to know they are worth rescuing. (3rd in the series).
The Water Keeper (Inspirational) ★
Murphy Shepherd is a man with many secrets. He lives alone on an island, tending the grounds of a church with no parishioners, and he’s dedicated his life to rescuing those in peril. When he pulls a beautiful woman named Summer out of Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway, his life takes a dangerous turn. Drawn to Summer, and desperate to find her missing daughter, Murph is pulled deeper and deeper into the dark and dangerous world of modern-day slavery. (First in the series).
When Crickets Cry (Inspirational) ★
It begins on the shaded town square in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. But the little girl’s pretty yellow dress can’t quite hide the ugly scar on her chest.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
“A compelling novel, compellingly written, and not to be missed . . . McBride takes a mash-up of plots and over a dozen main characters, each with his or her own history, and weaves them together seamlessly with humor, empathy, and a determined sense of justice. . . . [He] ends the novel with so much poignancy and heartfelt sympathy for his characters that readers will be hard-pressed not to be moved.”–Library Journal
Once There Were Wolves
Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska. Propulsive and spell-binding, Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable story of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves—if she isn’t consumed by a wild that was once her refuge.
Oona Out of Order ★
At the countdown to the New Year, Oona Lockhart faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that on each New Year’s Eve she will leap to another random age of her life.
Hello Beautiful
A story of family—the ones we’re born to, the ones we marry into, and the ones we make—and how despite pain and fractured relationships, hope can be found. Napolitano writes with gusto and compassion about the transition from idyllic youth to the complexities of adulthood: love and loss, cutting words and secrets, which both hold people together and tear them apart.
Little Fires Everywhere
Now a hit TV series, Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.
Hamnet
A deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son Hamnet, a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th-century Britain. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time.
Where the Crawdads Sing
Kya Clark is a young woman who has grown up in near isolation in the wild marshlands outside Barkley Cove, North Carolina. When Kya is suspected of murder in 1969, at the age of 23, we learn her fascinating backstory. A deeply atmospheric portrayal of a place and time.
The Dutch House ★
A richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are.
Tom Lake
Ann Patchett has once again crafted a novel that beats with the pulse of family and the tug of nostalgia. Over the course of a pandemic summer’s cherry harvest, a mother recounts to her grown girls what happened one summer when she became a little bit famous and fell in love with an actor that became very famous.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek ★
Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman’s belief that books can carry us anywhere―even back home.
Bridge to Haven (Inspirational) ★
Hollywood feels like a million miles from Haven, and naive Abra quickly learns what’s expected of an ambitious girl with stars in her eyes. But fame comes at a devastating price. She has burned every bridge to get exactly what she thought she wanted. Now all she wants is a way back home.
The Masterpiece (Inspirational)
Francine Rivers returns to her romance roots with this unexpected and redemptive love story, a probing tale that reminds us that mercy can shape even the most broken among us into an imperfect yet stunning masterpiece.
The End of Your Life Book Club
An inspiring story of a son and his mother who start a book club that brings them together as her life comes to a close. Over the next two years they discuss an eclectic array of books and a shared passion for reading.
The Island of Sea Women
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they join their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As baby divers, they begin a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom. The New York Times describes this title as “A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this ‘whip-smart and divinely funny’ novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett.”
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
In the aftermath of World War II, a writer forms an unexpected bond with the residents of Guernsey Island when she decides to write a book about their experiences during the war.
Silver Alert
This funny and endearing novel of family, secrets, and aging follows an elderly man who heads off on a joyride with a new young friend—who may have some secrets of her own.
Liar’s Winter (Inspirational) ★
Lochiel Ogle was born with a red-wine birthmark. Folks in East Tennessee called it “the mark of the devil.” Abused and abandoned by the only people she knows as family, Lochiel is rescued by a peddler and given the first glimpse of love she has ever known. The truth of her past is gradually revealed, and she is still hunted by a brother driven to see her dead. Will Lochiel continue to run, or will she face her past and accept the heartbreaking secrets it reveals?
What Momma Left Behind (Inspirational) ★
(Inspirational) Worie Dressar is 17 years old when influenza and typhoid ravage her Appalachian community in 1877, leaving behind a growing number of orphaned children. Worie’s mother has been secretly feeding these little ones on Sourwood Mountain. But when Momma dies suddenly, Worie must fight to save her home and the orphaned children now in her begrudging care, while plagued with two good-for-nothing brothers. Along the way, she will discover the beauty of unconditional love and the power of forgiveness as she cares for all of Momma’s children.
The Women in Black
The women in black, named for the frocks they wear while working at Goode’s department store in 1959 Sydney, sell ladies’ dresses during the holiday rush. A pitch-perfect comedy of manners, the novel conjures the energy of a city on the cusp of change and celebrates the importance of female friendship.
Ramp Hollow
Ramp Hollow recasts the story of Appalachia as a complex struggle between mountaineers and profit-seeking forces from outside the region, drawing powerful connections between Appalachia and other agrarian societies around the world.
The Sea Before Us (Inspirational) ★
In 1944, American naval officer Lt. Wyatt Paxton arrives in London to prepare for the Allied invasion of France. He works closely with Dorothy Fairfax, a "Wren" in the Women's Royal Naval Service. Despite the consequences the two are drawn together under the backdrop of a world war.
The Hate U Give ★
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor black neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced by the Bolsheviks to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, lives in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s door. His reduced circumstances unveil a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Rez Life ★
Treuer illuminates misunderstood issues like sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation. Through the eyes of students, teachers, government administrators, lawyers, and tribal court judges, he shows how casinos, tribal government, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have transformed the landscape of Native American life.
Educated
This best-selling memoir traces the author’s experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family’s paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn an acceptance into a prestigious university and the world beyond.
Ethan Frome ★
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a ‘hired girl’, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
The House of Mirth ★
The story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to high society in Gilded Age New York around the turn of the last century. As Lily turns 30, she has some choices to make about how to maintain her social standing and expensive tastes. How does a high-spirited lady both rebel against and conform to the harsh dictates of society?
The Professor and the Madman ★
A memoir about how the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled by James Murray and the invaluable contributions over a 20 year period by Dr. William Minor, a person who turned out to be a criminally insane murderer and prisoner at Broadmoor.
All the Little Hopes ★
Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is precocious and itching for adventure. Then Allie Bert Tucker wanders into her North Carolina town, an outcast from Appalachia with a puzzling past. Lush with Southern atmosphere, this is the story of two girls growing up as war creeps closer, blurring the difference between what’s right, what’s wrong, and what we know to be true. Their quiet town, seasoned with honeybees and sweet tea, becomes home to a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. More men go missing. And together, the girls embark on a journey to discover if we ever really know who the enemy is.
If the Creek Don't Rise ★
Sadie Blue has been a wife for fifteen days. That's long enough to know she should have never hitched herself to Roy Tupkin, even with the baby. Sadie is desperate to make her own mark on the world, but in remote Appalachia, a ticket out of town is hard to come by and hope often gets stomped out. When a stranger sweeps into Baines Creek and knocks things off kilter, Sadie finds herself with an unexpected lifeline...if she can just figure out how to use it.
The Choice (Inspirational) ★
Even as a pregnant, unwed teen in 1974, Sandy Lincoln wanted to do the right thing. But when an ageless woman approached her in a convenience store with a mysterious prophecy and a warning, doing the right thing became even more unclear. She made the best choice she could . . . and has lived with the consequences.
Trial and Error (Inspirational) ★
A small-town lawyer has been searching for his daughter for eighteen years. Now a local girl has gone missing, and he’s determined to find them both—no matter the cost.
Before We Were Yours
Based upon the infamous Tennessee Children’s Home Society child trafficking racket, this is a heartrending tale of two girls, two generations, and the power of family love. A story about children taken from their parents through kidnapping or subterfuge and then placed for adoption, for a price.