Book Group Best Bets
Looking for fiction that will spark conversation? Try one of these recent novels from a variety of genres for your next book group discussion. Annotations from NoveList, unless otherwise noted. (Updated February 2024)
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
When a skeleton is unearthed in the small, close-knit community of Chicken Hill, Pennsylvania, in 1972, an unforgettable cast of characters, living on the margins of white, Christian America closely guard a secret, especially when the truth is revealed about what happened and the part the town's white establishment played in it.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Stolen Coast
A Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, Jack, who, in a sleepy coastal Massachusetts town, moves people on the run from powerful enemies, finds his routine existence thrown off course by the arrival of his former flame -- and a dedicated hustler -- who draws him into her latest scheme.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Bee Sting
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's car business is going under, but instead of doing anything about it, he's out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world. Meanwhile his wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking local wrongun Big Mike. Their teenage daughter Cass, usually top of her class, seems determined to drink her way through the whole fiasco. And twelve year old PJ is spending more and more time on video game forums, where he's met a friendly boy named Ethan who never turns his camera on and wants PJ to run away from home.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Terraformers
As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, Destry is dedicated to terraforming the planet Sask-E until she discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, and as she uncovers more about their past, she starts to question the mission she's devoted her life to.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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We All Want Impossible Things
When Edith, her best friend of 42 years, succumbs to ovarian cancer, spending her last days at a hospital near her, Ashley, stumbling around into heartbreak, helps Edith celebrate her life as they reminisce, hold on and try to let go.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Shamshine Blind
In an alternate 2009 where "psychopigments" -- colorful chemicals that produce almost any human emotion upon contact -- are both pharmaceutical cure-alls and popular recreational drugs, Psychopigment Enforcement Agent Kay Curtida, while working on a career-making case, is led to an overdue reckoning with the truth of her own emotions.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Celebrants
A Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises—especially to ourselves.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Memphis
Told over the course of 70 years, this spellbinding debut novel traces three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter, who, channeling her rage into art, discovers with the power of her paint brush, she can change her family’s legacy.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Good Night, Irene
After D-Day, two heroic Red Cross women, Irene Woodward and Dorothy Dunford join the Allied soldiers streaming into France where they are embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald, and where Irene learns to trust again through their friendship.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Let Us Descend
In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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