Book Club in a Bag

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

A poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country— this is a riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale that reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby

Beauregard "Bug" Montage: husband, father, honest car mechanic. But he was once known as the best getaway driver on the East Coast. Just like his father, who disappeared many years ago. After a series of financial calamities, worsened by the racial prejudices, Bug reluctantly takes part in a daring diamond heist to solve his money troubles - and to go straight once and for all. However, when it goes horrifically wrong, he's sucked into a grimy underworld which threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear.

Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold dear.

After the death of their father, siblings, Danny and Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother and are thrust into poverty. A dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past.

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother. The 2022 Reading Across Rhode Island selection.

During one of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

A transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

A breathtaking story of five extraordinary packhorse librarians and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.

A desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behavior found in human nature.

Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

An enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V. E. Schwab

In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Like science, life is unpredictable. Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show. 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.

The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

This powerful and lyrical debut novel tells the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and an adventurous mapmaker’s apprentice—coming of age in perilous times.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever...A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.

The Nine by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg

Both a coming-of-age novel and a portrait of an evolving mother-son relationship, The Nine is the story of a young man who chooses to expose a corrupt world operating under its own set of rules―even if it means jeopardizing his mother’s hopes and dreams.

A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. An astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself.

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. But one night she shoots her husband five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Her silence propels her into notoriety and into the care of Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist obsessed with uncovering her motivations.

With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, Daisy Shoemaker should be content. While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she receives misdirected emails meant for another woman. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and quickly become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who is this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

TRUE BIZ (adj./exclamation; American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf told from three perspectives: Charlie, the rebellious transfer student; Austin, the school's golden boy; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another's—and changed forever. The 2023 Reading Across Rhode Island selection.

Follows the lives of the identical, black Vignes twin sisters over several decades and generations. One sister lives in the same southern town she tried to escape from while the other passes for white in the city. Looking well beyond issues of race, the novel considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America. Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.

Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another.

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her. The story juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.

In Viola's memoir, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever. Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. Viola's hope is that her story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

A beautiful and eye-opening graphic memoir about American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us told through conversations.

In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives. Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is a thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books.

A rich, historical narrative that documents the young women who toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium, and the astonishing legacy they left behind.

A young poet tells the story of his harrowing migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this memoir. He leaves behind all that he knows and loves to reunite with his mother. Selected as the 2024 Reading Across Rhode Island title.