May 20

The God of War
by Marisa Silver

In this beautifully written coming-of-age story, 12-year old Ares lives near the Salton Sea in the California desert with his mother and severely autistic brother. Ares’ conflicting desires to protect his brother and to move out of the confines of his family make this an absorbing novel.

A London Scrapbook
by Polly Grose

This is a story of a mid-life Minneapolis working woman who bids farewell to her family and friends to launch a new life in London. What possessed a firmly rooted community leader to make such a decision? Combine one part adventure, one part risk-taking, one part anglophilia, and several parts of falling in love with an Englishman to find the answer. Polly will be with us as we discuss her book.

June 17

The Cellist of Sarajevo
by Steven Galloway

A spare and haunting, wise and beautiful novel about the endurance of the human spirit and the subtle ways individuals reclaim their humanity in a city ravaged by war.

July 1

Mudbound
by Hillary Jordan

In this novel, prejudice takes many forms. It’s 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm — a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not — charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

July 17

The Moonflower Vine
by Jetta Carleton

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive—and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.

July 23

Undiscovered Country
by Lin Enger

While hunting in the cold northern Minnesota woods, seventeen-year-old Jesse Matson's life is forever changed when he discovers his father, dead by a self-inflicted rifle wound to the head. But would easygoing Harold Matson really kill himself? Haunted by the ghost of his father, Jesse searches deeper into the secrets his family holds, and must decide what he will and will not take into his own hands. Written with a simple elegance, Undiscovered Country is a hair-bristling story of betrayal, revenge, and the possibilities of forgiveness — and the riveting portrait of a young man trying to hold his family together in a world tipped suddenly upside down. Lin Enger will join us at a joint potluck with the evening group. Call the store for time and location.

July 29

The Great Man
by Kate Christensen

Oscar Feldman, the "Great Man," was a New York City painter of the heroic generation of the forties and fifties. When he died in 2001, he left behind a wife, an autistic son, a sister who was notable abstract painter and his mistress and their twin daughters. Now two rival biographers, book contracts in hand, are circling around Feldman's life story, and each of the three women will have a chance to tell the truth as she experienced it.

August 12

Still Alice
by Lisa Genova

With grace and compassion, Lisa Genova writes about the enormous white emptiness created by Alzheimer's in the mind of the still-too-young and active Alice. A kind of ominous suspense attends her gathering forgetfulness, and Genova puts us, sympathetically, right inside her plight. She portrays Alice’s family's loving response, and hints at the other hopeful, helpful response that science will eventually provide.

August 26

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery

In an elegant apartment building in Paris, Renee and Paloma are brought together by their mutual fascination with the building's new tenant, Kakuro Ozu, who sees through their carefully constructed identities — which he does simply by refusing to believe that a concierge and a child are second-class citizens. Between the three of them, their appreciation for the whole of art — literature, painting, film, even fine food — allows them to transcend the walls of class, race, age, and gender.

September 9

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
by Mary Ann Schafer and Annie Barrows

In 1946, London writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. As she begins to exchange letters with a man who lives on the island of Guernsey, Juliet is drawn into the wonderfully eccentric world of this man and his friends.The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

September 16

The Art of Racing in the Rain
by Garth Stein

Enzo, a dog with the soul of a philosopher, recounts his life with Denny, an aspiring race-car driver. Enzo has come to see that driving techniques provide guidance for life. The story is both heart wrenching and funny. We’ll discuss the book at a potluck lunch with the evening group. Call the store for time and location.