Our Wednesday Afternoon Book Groups meets on the last Wednesday of every month from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm in the Fireplace Room. We read both fiction and nonfiction. Copies of each title are available at the Circulation Desk approximately one month prior to each meeting. Downloadable and audio editions are also made available whenever possible. New members are always welcome.
Registration is not required for in-person meetings, but is appreciated! Please register for each meeting separately, using our online calendar.
UPCOMING MEETINGS
2026
JANUARY 28
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells – taken without her knowledge – became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Her family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
FEBRUARY 25
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club.
MARCH 25
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
APRIL 29
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers how far she’ll go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
MAY 27
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor – including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother – and how she retook control of her life.
JUNE 24
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.
JULY 29
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
The story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe – and built her back up again.
AUGUST 26
The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar
While cleaning out her grandmother’s New York brownstone, Emsley Wilson finds a diary that belonged to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law, who inherited van Gogh’s paintings. The paintings were worthless, Johanna was a 28 year old widow with a baby living in Paris, and she barely spoke the language. Yet she introduced van Gogh’s legacy to the world. Emsley needs the inspiration. With her business failing, an unexpected love turning up in her life, and family secrets unraveling, can she find answers in the past?
SEPTEMBER 30
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she’d never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele – Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles – as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen’s memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a “parallel universe” set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
OCTOBER 28
Good Company by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring – the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five. Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company – Good Company – afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?
NOVEMBER 18
No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity by A. Kendra Greene
A brilliant and generous meditation on the complex wonder of being alive, on how to pay attention to even the tiniest (sometimes strangest) details that glitter with insight, whimsy, and deep humanity, if only we’d really look. In twenty-six sparkling essays, illuminated through both text and image, Greene is trying to make sense of the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness. Through a series of encounters with strangers, children, and animals, the wild merges with the domestic; the everyday meets the sublime. Each essay returns readers to our smallest moments and our largest ones in a book that makes us realize that they are, in fact, one in the same.
DECEMBER 30
Wayward Girls by Susan Wiggs
In 1968 we meet six teens confined at the Good Shepherd – a dark and secretive institution controlled by Sisters of Charity nuns – locked away merely for being gay, pregnant, or simply unruly. Wayward Girls is a haunting but thrilling tale of hope, solidarity, and the enduring strength of young women who find the courage to break free and find redemption…and justice.
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