Book Discussion Groups
Our February read is In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Inspired by a true story, this tale of courage during the Trujillo dictatorship follows three young sisters who were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government.. Register here.
Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer
Based on the award-winning novelist’s own family history, this is a spellbinding multigenerational family saga set in a fractured rural village in WWI Austria.
Our December title is Woman of the Ashes by Mia Couto
Alternating between two voices, this novel combines folkloric prose with extensive historical research to give a spellbinding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century. REGISTER HERE.
Our November title is In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
This novel,rich with history, mythology, folklore, and emotion, will take you to the very depths of despair and reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive during the Cambodian genocide.
Our October title is Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce, which centers the female body in a radical exploration of desire, choice, and consequences and revels in the narrator’s autonomy to make choices and face the outcomes. REGISTER HERE.
Our September title is The World in Half by Christina Henriquez. A woman sets out on a search for her father, the man she hopes can heal her ailing mother-and who can help her find the pieces of her own identity. Register here.
Our June title is The Hop by Diana Clarke
A compelling feminist novel that tells the story of a poor scrappy girl from rural New Zealand who grows reluctantly into a sex icon, the face of a movement, and a mother, all at the same time.
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Our AAPI Month title is The Third Son by Julie Wu
The Third Son is a sparkling and moving story about a young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.
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Our Women’s History Month title is Girl at War by Sara Novic Haunted by the civil war that forever changed her family, a young woman returns alone to Croatia, where she must rediscover the place that was once her home and search for the ghosts of those she's lost. REGISTER.
Our Black History Month title is Mount Pleasant by Patrice Nganang
A majestic tale of colonialism and transformation, Mount Pleasant tells the astonishing story of the birth of modern Cameroon, a place subject to the whims of the French and the Germans, yet engaged in a cultural revolution. REGISTER HERE.
Our January title is The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya
In this dazzling novel, Bhattacharya captures the heady adventures of travel, the overheated restlessness of youth, and the paradoxes of searching for life's meaning in the escape from home.
Our December title is That Other Me by Maha Gargash
Gargash’s second novel is set in mid-1990s Dubai and Cairo and tells the story of how secrets and betrayals consume three members—an authoritarian father, a rebellious abandoned daughter, and a vulnerable niece—of a prominent Emirati family. REGISTER HERE.
Our November title is Small Country by Gaël Faye
An evocative coming-of-age story of a young boy, whose childhood will shatter when his country is brutally hit by civil war and genocide. Small World is a stirring tribute not only to a dark chapter in Africa’s past, but also to the bright days that preceded it. REGISTER HERE.
Our October title is Purge by Sofi Oksanen
An international sensation, Purge is a breathtakingly suspenseful tale of two women dogged by their own shameful pasts and the dark, unspoken history that binds them. REGISTER HERE.
Our Hispanic Heritage Month title is Cuban Comedy; a Novel by Pablo Medina. Full of outlandish humor and insights into an often contradictory and kafkaesque regime, Medina brings 1960s Cuba to life through the eyes of an uncanny heroine, the firewater distiller's daughter Elena. REGISTER HERE.
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh Register
An absorbing story of a world in transition, brought to life through characters who love and suffer with equal intensity.
Our May title is The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan
Written with raw intensity, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. Pasha, a Ukrainian language teacher must venture into combat zones, traverse shifting borders, and forge uneasy alliances in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue his nephew from occupied territory. REGISTER HERE.
Our March title is Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela
Lyrics Alley is the evocative story of an affluent Sudanese family shaken by the shifting powers in their country and the near-tragedy that threatens the legacy they've built for decades. REGISTER
Our Black History Month title is At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
At Night All Blood is Black is a hypnotic, heartbreaking rendering of a soldier alone in the midst of the savagery of war, whose mind is hurtling towards madness. Register here.
Our January title is The Sisters of Alameda Street by Lorena Hughes
A mix of historical fiction, romance and intrigue set in the 1960s, The Sisters of Alameda Street is a sweeping story of how one woman’s search for the truth of her identity forces a family to confront their own past. REGISTER HERE.
Our December title is Stork Mountain by Miroslav Penkov
Old ghosts come back to life and forgotten conflicts blaze anew until the past surrenders its shameful secrets in this charming, slyly brilliant debut novel.
Our November title is The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay
Ramchandra, a math tutor, engages in an illicit affair with one of his tutees. She provides for him what his wife, who comes from a privileged background, does not: desire, mystery, and a simpler life. Complicating matters are various political concerns and a small city bursting with the conflicts of modernization, a static government, and a changing population. Just as the city must contain its growing needs, so must Ramchandra learn to accommodate both tradition and his very modern desires.
Our October title is The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah
Based on true events, a story of courage, forgiveness, love, and freedom in precolonial Ghana, told through the eyes of two women born to vastly different fates.
Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century. REGISTER HERE.
Our September title is Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik
A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society’s expectations to find her voice and her destiny. Inspired by Farrokhzad’s verse, letters, films, and interviews, this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran—and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world.
Open to all.. This meeting is virtual and requires registration. REGISTER HERE.
Our June title is The Doll: A Portrait of My Mother by Ismail Kadare
In this delicate and disarming autobiographical novel, Albania’s most renowned novelist and poet explores his relationship with his mother in a wrought tale of home, family, creative aspirations, and personal and political freedom.
An Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Program
Our May title is The Crazed by Ha Jin
In this luminous novel, the National Book Award-winning author deepens his portrait of Chinese society while exploring the perennial conflicts between convention and individualism, integrity and pragmatism, loyalty and betrayal.
Our April title is Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of nineteenth-century Siam. Lives collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself.
Our March title is Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
This harrowing and beautiful novel of the travails of West African immigrants in France, followsf three women, each of whom manages an astonishing feat of self-preservation against those who have made themselves the fastest-growing and most-reviled people in Europe. In Marie NDiaye's stunning narration we see the progress by which ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength.
Our February title is Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. At once timeless and groundbreaking, Cantoras is a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn.