<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[title results for Book Club Discussion.]]></title><description><![CDATA[title results for Book Club Discussion.]]></description><link>https://gateway.bibliocommons.com/v2/libraries/hpl/rss/search?query=Book%20Club%20Discussion.&amp;searchType=title&amp;origin=core-catalog-explore&amp;view=grouped</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:25:31 GMT</lastBuildDate><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection. But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white - her complexion is dark because she is African American. The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go-for the protection of her family and her legacy-to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives"-- Provided by publisher.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C766915</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C766915</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Benedict, Marie]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/766915125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Personal Librarian : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late. Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.--Amazon.ca]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C792989</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C792989</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Van Pelt, Shelby]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/792989125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Remarkably Bright Creatures : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Jack McMaster seemingly has it all. A beautiful house, a loving son of many talents (including cooking, which is great news for Jack, if not for his waistline), even a special bond with his buddies in his ball hockey league. But he's also learning to live with loss, leaving a gaping hole in his life--a life that will never be the same as before. Jack passes his days knowing he has the support of his family and his friends, but he can't shake the feeling that his life has gone gray, and that time is slipping by so quickly. Then, a short and shocking video from an unexpected source gives him the gumption to make a change and maybe even haul himself out of his melancholia. Inspired by his lifelong fascination with 1920s Paris, Jack finally visits the City of Light, following in the footsteps of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and wandering the Left Bank. Slowly, the colour seeps back into his life, aided by a chance encounter in a café that leads Jack into the art world, and a Paris mystery nearly a century old.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873613</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873613</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Fallis, Terry]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/873613125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>A New Season : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[From bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn, a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles. San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace. His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.--Goodreads.com.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C827302</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C827302</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Quinn, Kate]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/827302125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Phoenix Crown : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[In a small town in Sweden it appears to be an ordinary day. But look more closely, and you'll see a mysterious masked figure approaching a bank. A bank robber on the run locks himself in with an over-enthusiastic estate agent, two bitter IKEA-addicts, a pregnant woman, a suicidal multi-millionaire and a rabbit. In the end the robber gives up and lets everyone go, but when the police storm the apartment it is empty.  In a series of dysfunctional testimonies after the event, the witnesses all tell their version of what really happened and it's clear we have a classic locked-room mystery on our hands -- How did the robber manage to escape? Why is everyone so angry? And -- What is wrong with people these days?]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C855162</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C855162</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Backman, Fredrik]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/855162125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Anxious People</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence--until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he's been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako's life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru. An unusual man who has always pursued something of an unconventional life, especially after his wife Momoko left him out of the blue five years earlier, Satoru runs a second-hand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo's famous book district. Takako once looked down upon Satoru's life. Now, she reluctantly accepts his offer of the tiny room above the bookshop rent-free in exchange for helping out at the store. The move is temporary, until she can get back on her feet. But in the months that follow, Takako surprises herself when she develops a passion for Japanese literature, becomes a regular at a local coffee shop where she makes new friends, and eventually meets a young editor from a nearby publishing house who's going through his own messy breakup. But just as she begins to find joy again, Hideaki reappears, forcing Takako to rely once again on her uncle, whose own life has begun to unravel. Together, these seeming opposites work to understand each other and themselves as they continue to share the wisdom they've gained in the bookshop."-- Provided by publisher.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822432</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822432</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Yagisawa, Satoshi]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/822432125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Days at the Morisaki Bookshop : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles on the Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband. His gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their beloved twins, Hamnet and Judith, are afflicted with the bubonic plague, and, devastatingly, one of them succumbs to the illness."--from cover.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873612</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873612</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[O'Farrell, Maggie]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/873612125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Hamnet &amp; Judith</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself--shadowed and luminous at once--we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey--through facts, recollection, and imagination--that he narrates in this masterwork."-- Provided by publisher.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C485683</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C485683</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ondaatje, Michael]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/485683125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Warlight</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena's a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song, complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C823262</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C823262</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Kuang, R. F.]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/823262125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Yellowface : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url>https://secure.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=9780063250833/MC.GIF&amp;client=hamip&amp;type=xw12&amp;oclc=</image_url></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler's forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and blackout curtains that she finds on her arrival were not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she'd wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed--a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873609</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873609</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Martin, Madeline]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/873609125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Last Bookshop in London : A Novel of World War II</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie are icons of the Canadian imagination. Yet most of what we know of these to English gentlewomen who spent their adult lives struggling to survive in Britain's hardscrabble colony comes from their own self-consciously crafted writings and from other writers' sometimes fanciful depictions of them. But what were the women behind the authorial voices really like?]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C83945</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C83945</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Gray, Charlotte]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 31 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/83945125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Sisters in the Wilderness : the Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a "wonderful" husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical, most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver, yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie, and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C342359</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C342359</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Simsion, Graeme C.]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/342359125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Rosie Project</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after. Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.--Amazon.ca.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C859258</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C859258</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Atwood, Margaret]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/859258125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Old Babes in the Wood : Stories</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia. Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, she now finds herself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in hospital. At Nora's house, Jess discovers a true crime book chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. It is only when Jess skims through its pages that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this notorious event--a murder mystery that has never been satisfactorily resolved. An epic story that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, how we protect the lies we tell, and what it means to come home. Above all, it is an intricate and spellbinding novel from one of the finest writers working today.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C786314</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C786314</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Morton, Kate]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/786314125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Homecoming : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J.D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead-very dead-on the hotel's tea room floor. When Detective Stark, Molly's old foe, investigates the author's unexpected demise, it becomes clear that this death was murder most foul. Suspects abound, and everyone wants to know: Who killed J.D. Grimthorpe? Was it Lily, the new Maid-in-Training? Or was it Serena, the author's secretary? Could Mr. Preston, the hotel's beloved doorman, be hiding something? And is Molly really as innocent as she seems? As the case threatens the hotel's pristine reputation, Molly knows that she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer's identity. But that key is buried deep in her past-because long ago, she knew J.D. Grimthorpe. Molly must comb her memory for clues, and revisit her childhood and the mysterious Grimthorpe mansion where her dearly departed Gran once worked. With Molly and her colleagues under investigation, she knows she must solve the mystery post-haste. And if there's one thing she knows for sure, it's that dirty secrets don't stay buried forever...]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822428</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822428</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Prose, Nita]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/822428125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Mystery Guest : A Maid Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Fight Night is told in the unforgettable voice of Swiv, a nine-year-old living in Toronto with her pregnant mother, who is raising Swiv while caring for her own elderly, frail, yet extraordinarily lively mother. When Swiv is expelled from school, Grandma takes on the role of teacher and gives her the task of writing to Swiv's absent father about life in the household during the last trimester of the pregnancy. In turn, Swiv gives Grandma an assignment: to write a letter to "Gord," her unborn grandchild (and Swiv's soon-to-be brother or sister). "You're a small thing," Grandma writes to Gord, "and you must learn to fight." As Swiv records her thoughts and observations, Fight Night unspools the pain, love, laughter, and above all, will to live a good life across three generations of women in a close-knit family. But it is Swiv's exasperating, wise and irrepressible Grandma who is at the heart of this novel: someone who knows intimately what it costs to survive in this world, yet has found a way--painfully, joyously, ferociously--to love and fight to the end, on her own terms.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C877916</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C877916</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Toews, Miriam]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/877916125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Fight Night</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C877391</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C877391</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Makkai, Rebecca]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/877391125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Great Believers</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[On June 5, 1944, as dawn rises over a small town on France’s Normandy coast, Emmanuelle is baking the bread that has sustained her fellow villagers in the dark days since the Germans invaded her country. Only twenty-two, Emma learned to bake at the side of a master, Ezra Kuchen. Apprenticed to Ezra at thirteen, Emma watched with shame and anger as her mentor was forced to wear the six-pointed yellow star on his clothing. She was powerless to help when Ezra was pulled from his shop at gunpoint, the first of many villagers stolen away and never seen again. In the years that her sleepy coastal village has suffered under the enemy, Emma has silently, stealthily fought back. Each day, she receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves—contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. Under the watchful eyes of armed soldiers, she builds a clandestine network of barter and trade that she and the villagers use to thwart their occupiers.But her gift to the village is more than these few crusty loaves. Emma gives the people a taste of hope—the faith that one day the Allies will arrive to save them. Stephen P. Kiernan paints a brilliant and vivid tableau of humanity during one of the most harrowing points of modern history.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C435108</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C435108</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Kiernan, Stephen P.]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/435108125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Baker&apos;s Secret : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[An attack in London left Ann Walmsley unable to walk alone down the street, and shook her belief in the fundamental goodness of people. A few years later, when a friend asked her to participate in a bold new venture in a men's medium security prison, Ann had to weigh her curiosity and desire to be of service against her anxiety and fear. But she signed on, and for eighteen months went to a remote building at Collins Bay, meeting a group of heavily tattooed book club members without the presence of guards or security cameras. There was no wine and cheese, no plush furnishings. But a book club on the inside proved to be a place to share ideas and regain a sense of humanity. From The Grapes of Wrath to The Cellist of Sarajevo, Outliers to Infidel, the book discussions became a springboard for frank conversations about loss, anger, redemption, and loneliness. The books changed the men and the men changed Walmsley. Written with compassion and humour,The Prison Book Club is an eye-opening look at inmates and the penal system, and the possibilities of redemption.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C756291</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C756291</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Walmsley, Ann]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/756291125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Prison Book Club</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[This is the story of a family falling apart, only to be brought back together again by an unlikely champion--a 1,000-pound aquatic mammal named Pebble. Lauren's life is a mess. She has a storage unit full of candles she can't sell, a growing mountain of debt, and a teenage daughter, Dove, who barely speaks to her. Then her husband sends her a text that changes everything. Eager to escape her problems, she drives herself and Dove south to her late mother's rundown trailer in Florida. While keeping her eccentric new neighbours at Swaying Palms at bay, Lauren begins to untangle the truth about her estranged mother. How did world-famous portrait photographer Imogen Starr end up at Swaying Palms? And what happened to her fortune and her photographs? Meanwhile, Dove has secrets of her own. A mysterious photograph leads her to discover the abandoned Flamingo Key Aquarium and Tackle, where she meets Pebble, the world's oldest manatee in captivity. It is Pebble, a former star attraction, and her devoted caretaker, Ray, who will hold the key to helping Lauren and Dove come to terms with Imogen's unexpected legacy. Darkly funny and sharply observed, Pebble & Dove is a moving novel about the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters, and learning how to choose between what's worth saving and what needs to be let go.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822417</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822417</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Jones, Amy]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/822417125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Pebble &amp; Dove : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by refugees from the slave-owning states of the American south—whose agents do not always stay on their side of the border. One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned. But Cash doesn't want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States; of Indigenous peoples from a wide swath of what is called North America and of the Black men and women brought here into slavery and their free descendents on both sides of the border. As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed not only about the complicated tapestry of her nation, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny. Sweeping along the path of the Underground Railroad from the southern States to Canada, through the lands of Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black communities of southern Ontario, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.--Amazon.ca.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822415</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C822415</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas, Kai]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/822415125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>In the Upper Country</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[The entire world knows Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, the teenage sidekick of Doc Brown in Back to the Future; as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties; as Mike Flaherty in Spin City; and through numerous other movie roles and guest appearances on shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Diagnosed at age 29, Michael is equally engaged in Parkinson’s advocacy work, raising global awareness of the disease and helping find a cure through The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the world’s leading non-profit funder of PD science. His two previous bestselling memoirs, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up, dealt with how he came to terms with the illness, all the while exhibiting his iconic optimism. His new memoir reassesses this outlook, as events in the past decade presented additional challenges. In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, Michael shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality. Thoughtful and moving, but with Fox’s trademark sense of humor, his book provides a vehicle for reflection about our lives, our loves, and our losses. Running through the narrative is the drama of the medical madness Fox recently experienced, that included his daily negotiations with the Parkinson’s disease he’s had since 1991, and a spinal cord issue that necessitated immediate surgery. His challenge to learn how to walk again, only to suffer a devastating fall, nearly caused him to ditch his trademark optimism and “get out of the lemonade business altogether.” Does he make it all of the way back? Read the book.--Amazon.ca.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C860302</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C860302</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Fox, Michael J.]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/860302125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>No Time Like the Future : An Optimist Considers Mortality</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA[Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it's the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later, Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship. Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the wilderness of remote British Columbia, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873659</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C873659</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Mandel, Emily St. John]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/873659125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Glass Hotel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders--Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C874160</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C874160</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Donoghue, Emma]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/874160125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>The Pull of the Stars : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book Club Kit]]></title><description><![CDATA["A major work by one of our most beloved and esteemed writers, the novel is based on real events that happened between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite community where more than 100 girls and women were drugged unconscious and raped in the night by what they were told were "ghosts" or "demons." Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. It takes place over 48 hours, as eight women hide in a hayloft while the men are in a nearby town posting bail for the perpetrators. They have come together to debate, on behalf of all the women and children in the community, whether to stay or leave before the men return. Taking minutes is the one man invited by the women to witness the conversation--a former outcast whose own surprising story is revealed as the women talk. By turns poignant, furious, witty, acerbic, tender, devastating, and heartbreaking, the voices in this extraordinary novel are unforgettable."-- Provided by publisher.]]></description><link>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C786035</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S125C786035</guid><category><![CDATA[BOOK_CLUB_KIT]]></category><category><![CDATA[eng]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Toews, Miriam]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><comments>https://hpl.bibliocommons.com/item/comment/786035125</comments><format>BOOK_CLUB_KIT</format><subtitle>Women Talking : A Novel</subtitle><language>eng</language><image_url/></item></channel></rss>