Book Club Books From 2022

Book Summary

Through the true story of a racehorse named Lexington, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks manages to weave a tale of spirit and injustice over 150 years of American history.

The book has three timelines. In 1850, you’ll meet an enslaved horse groomer, Jarrett, in Kentucky, who has a special bond with Lexington. There is also a young artist who paints images of the horse. When the Civil War erupts, the artist fights for the union and runs into the young groom and stallion again far from the track.

In 1954, a gallery owner on Martha’s Vineyard takes a special interest in a 19th-century equestrian old painting, even though the artist and provenance are unknown.

In 2019, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia and a Nigerian-American art historian unexpectedly connect through a common interest in the painting as they look for clues to the origin.

Book Summary

This novel reimagines the story of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter.

In the early 1800s, young seamstress Isobel sailed to the New World from Scotland. Her husband, Edward, has become addicted to opium, so they are trying to leave their secrets and debts behind. However, shortly after arriving in Salem, Edward leaves Isobel alone when he joins a ship as a medic.

When Isobel meets Nathaniel Hawthorne, they grow close. One is a muse, and one is a dark storyteller, but which is which?

Book Summary

On Mallow Island, off the coast of South Carolina, sits an old cobblestone building in the shape of a horseshoe. It’s called the Dellawisp, named after the tiny turquoise birds who reside there alongside its human tenants. The building has an air of magical secrecy.

When 19-year-old Zoe inherits her late mother’s apartment at the Dellawisp, she meets the quirky and secretive neighbors, including a henna artist, a lonely chef, middle-aged sisters (one of whom is a hoarder), and three ghosts. The property is overseen by Frasier, who has a special affinity for the birds.

When one of the residents turns up dead, the other neighbors search for answers, but each is also hiding secrets of their own. The investigation leads to the island’s famous but reclusive author and to a long-lost relative of the sisters.

Book Summary

Olivia has been raising her son, Asher, as a single mom ever since she fled her seemingly perfect marriage that was not as it appeared from the outside. When she left her abusive marriage to protect her son, she brought him to her small hometown in New Hampshire. Once home, she moved into her childhood house and took over her father’s beekeeping business.

Like Olivia, Lily is also familiar with starting over. She and her mom recently relocated to New Hampshire to give Lily a fresh start in her final year of high school.

Olivia and Lily’s lives cross paths when Asher begins dating and falls in love with the new girl in town. A few months later, Olivia is shocked to receive a phone call from Asher that he’s at the police station and Lily is dead. Asher is the only suspect in the case, but he insists he didn’t do it. Olivia is willing to give up everything she has to defend her son. But as the case moves toward trial, and as she discovers that Asher has hidden more from her than she realized, Olivia begins to question what traits her son may have inherited from his father.

Book Summary

Revisit the glittering Jazz age with this atmospheric novel that reimagines The Great Gatsby from the perspective of three alternating female voices. When Jay Gatsby was found shot dead in his swimming pool in August of 1922, and a local mechanic was found dead in the woods nearby, the police viewed it as an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide. 

But then a diamond hairpin is found in the bushes around the pool, and three women suddenly become suspects – Daisy Buchanan, who once thought she’d marry Gatsby; Jordan Baker, who has a secret that could derail both her golf career and her friendship with Daisy; and Catherine McCoy, a suffragette who’s fighting for women’s rights and to protect her own sister from a terrible marriage.

This is a tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately murder.

Book Summary

In 1989, Communist regimes were falling throughout Eastern Europe, but Romania was still under the control of a tyrant – Nicolae Ceaușescu. Seventeen-year-old Cristian wants to be a writer, but writing freely is not possible in his world.

When Cristian is forced to work as an informer for the secret police, he must decide whether he’s willing to betray those he loves or if he can use the terrible situation to help bring down Ceaușescu.

Book Summary

Elizabeth Zott is a quirky and brilliant female chemist working with an all-male team at the Hastings Research Institute. But her scientific qualifications don’t stop the “good old boys” from being frustrated that she won’t get coffee or make copies for them. When Elizabeth meets Calvin Evans, another scientist at the Institute, another type of chemistry results.

Fast forward a few years. It’s 1961, and Elizabeth is a 30-year-old single mother and her career has been detoured. Instead of working for Hastings, she’s now (somewhat reluctantly) the star of a much-loved cooking show called Supper at Six. Her cooking methods are unusual (“combine one tablespoon of acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”). As her popularity grows, it turns out she’s not just teaching women to cook, she’s also daring them to change the status quo.

Book Summary

The Winners picks up two years after our all-time favorite books, Beartown. The locals are still trying to come to terms with the events that tore the community apart. However, change is on the way.

The book catches up with the original characters. We see Peter, Kira, Maya, Benji, Amit, and others continue to be haunted in different ways. But their story is intertwined with several new characters integral to the plot of The Winners.

From a midwife, her fireman husband, and their four children to a con man and two other children with rough starts to life, you’ll feel the emotions and motivations of these characters in classic Backman style. The rivalry between Beartown and Hed is as fierce as ever, which plays out in unexpected ways.

Book Summary

In this 2022 memoir, poet Javier Zamora recounts his 3,000-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador to the US.

When he was just five years old, his mother left for the United States and told Javier that one day he’d “take a trip” to join her and his father there. At the age of nine, Javier left behind his grandparents and aunt and set out to reunite with his parents.

This was no “trip” through – it was a two-month-long treacherous journey with a group of strangers and a coyote hired to lead the way. Javier somehow survived the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, and other dangers at every turn. Throughout this life-altering experience, the strangers he traveled with became like family, encircling him, protecting him, and guiding his way with unexpected kindness and love.

Book Summary

One summer night in 1985, young Dr. Wilf comes across the scene of a car accident that will follow him for decades. Three neighborhood teens had been drinking, and the accident shook Division Street to the core. In the Wilf home, the true circumstances of the accident become a dark and painful secret. 

Time moves on, and when the Shenkmans move to Division Street over 30 years later, the young couple has no idea what happened in the past. Waldo, the Shenkman’s son has an incredible ability to connect things and people together. He befriends the now-retired Dr. Wilf. As Dr. Wilf struggles to care for his wife, Waldo’s friendship brings the past hurling back into the present.

Book Summary

Lillian was one of the most sought-after artist models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing famous landmarks throughout the city – from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge. After losing her mother to the Spanish Flu outbreak, however, Lillian feels lost in the world.

Her work has mostly dried up, so when she’s offered a job as a personal secretary at the Frick mansion—a building that, ironically, bears her own visage—Lillian is eager to accept the opportunity. Working closely with Helen Frick, daughter of industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick, pulls Lillian into a privileged world and a tangled web of romantic trysts, stolen jewels, and family drama that might prove to be life or death.

Five decades later, in the 1960s, Veronica, an English model, is working in the former Frick residence, which has since been converted into one of New York City’s most impressive museums. After being dismissed from a Vogue shoot, she finds herself snowed into the mansion. When she and a young art curator stumble upon a series of hidden messages in the museum, they might discover the truth behind a decades-old murder.

Book Summary

Sneha was lucky to find a job after graduating in the midst of a recession. Her entry-level corporate job in Milwaukee is tough, but she desperately needs it for herself and for her family back home in India. She’s thrilled to finally be able to pick up the tab with friends and when she helps her college friend get hired as a colleague. 

Her life takes a complicated turn when she develops a crush on a woman, a dancer named Marina. A downward spiral of job trouble and evictions lead to a radical plan by her friend Tig. Will it work to save them all?

Book Summary

In this epistolary-style novel, you’ll experience grief and PTSD through the eyes of the main character, Lucus, as he writes letters to his former therapist after a tragic event. Lucus believes that his deceased wife, Darcy, is visiting him every night as an angel.

When Eli, an ostracized 18-year-old, begins camping in Lucas’ backyard, they begin to form an unlikely alliance that will help heal their neighbors and themselves.

Book Summary

This novel opens in present-day California shortly after Eleanor’s death. She has left behind a voice recording for her two adult children – Byron and Benny. She’s also left them a traditional Caribbean black cake that she tells them to share “when the time is right.”

Her children, it turns out, only know a small part of their mom’s life story. Posthumously, Eleanor is finally ready to share her truth so that Byron and Benny can truly know and understand their family history.

As the story unfolds, everything that her children thought they knew about their lineage and themselves will be rocked to the core, and by the time they finally share the black cake, another person will be joining them at the table.

Book Summary

Civil is fresh out of nursing school and has dreams of making a big difference in her post-segregation African American community. She works for the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, and she’s sent to a rural cabin during her first week on the job. When she arrives, Civil is shocked to find that her patients are children, only 11 and 13 years old.

The girls, Erica and India, are innocent and not even thinking of boys. However, because they are poor and Black, those handling their benefits have requested the children be on birth control. Civil struggles with this unexpected aspect of her new career. Despite the shocking reason for meeting the sisters, Civil is endeared to them and their family. However, one day when she arrives for her visit, something unthinkable has happened, and Civil soon finds herself involved in a legal case.

You’ll also see Civil years later, at the end of her career, with a daughter of her own, as she tries to find peace without forgetting those she encountered along the way.

Book Summary

Cara assumed she’d have her factory job forever, but in the midst of the 2008 Great Recession, she’s laid off. Now in her mid-50s, Cara finds herself back in the job market for the first time in decades. When she’s set up with a job counselor, she ends up sharing her life story instead of her career ambitions.

Cara’s story is told in over twelve sessions, from love affairs and financial strain to her difficult relationship with her son. Full of heart and humor, you’ll fall in love with this character amid her tales of life’s ups and downs.

Book Summary

In this charming debut novel, Widower Tova works at the Sowell Bay Aquarium to occupy her mind and time. She takes pride in cleaning perfectly every night, even though she doesn’t need the money. She loves all the aquarium life but forms a special bond with the intelligent (and curmudgeonly) octopus named Marcellus.

He’s just as surprised to feel friendly toward this human who visits him nightly. Soon, he connects the sadness he sees in her with something he saw in the ocean long ago. Can he help her solve the mystery of her son’s disappearance 30 years ago?

Book Summary

This novel imagines a United States where a nationalistic law called PACT, Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act, rules the land. While it was sold as a way to preserve American values after an economic collapse, it’s being used as an excuse for violence and discrimination against minorities. 

The book is largely told from the perspective of Bird, a twelve-year-old boy, who lives with his father after his Chinese-American mother left when he was nine. They live in a small dorm room at the college where his father was a professor and is now a librarian. However, the library is missing many books that have been banned under PACT, including basic history and cultural works. 

When Bird receives a letter from his mother, he sets out to find her and discovers an America he didn’t want to see. Along the way, you’ll see chapters from her perspective and explore how art can help heal.

Book Summary

Albert Entwistle is a 64-year postal worker in the UK. He has no plans of retiring but receives a letter informing him that his mandatory retirement is just around the corner on his 65th birthday.

Albert’s only friend is his cat, and although he isn’t chatty with others at work or on his routes, he still dreads being home alone without a job. When he’s reminded of his only romantic relationship, which happened 50 years prior, something begins to stir in Albert. Perhaps it’s not too late to find happiness after all?

With the help of some unexpected new friends, Albert sets off to find George, the man he hasn’t seen since they were teenagers.

Book Summary

If you could find out exactly how many years you have left to live, would you want to know?

On the same day, all around the world, every person over the age of 22 receives an identical box. Inside each is a string. At first, no one knows what the strings mean, but it soon becomes apparent that a long string means long life and a short string foretells a life cut short.

As society responds to the revelation of the boxes, each person must make a choice – do you want to know how long you will live? If so, what will you do with that knowledge? And what if your choice is different from those you care about most?

These are the dilemmas facing the eight protagonists in The Measure, whose fates become interwoven as their individual stories unfold.

Book Summary

Set at the River Valley School for the Deaf, this novel transports you into the Deaf community. It gives insight into a culture that hearing families rarely get a chance to understand, with compelling characters along the way.

New student Charlie is stuck between the worlds of hearing and Deaf. She’s never been around other deaf people before and is trying to figure out what choices are right and wrong for her.

Meanwhile, the school’s headmistress is a CODA (child of deaf adult) who has her own problems, including a mother with dementia and an unhappy wife.