Friday Afternoon Book Club 2022-2023
All the quiet places
Isaac, Brian Thomas, author
2021
It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch the sunset and listening to the wind in the grass. But when tragedy strikes, Eddie returns home grief-stricken, confused, and lonely. Eddie's life is governed by the decisions of the adults around him. His father returns to the family after years away only to bring chaos and instability. Isabel and Ray join them in an overcrowded house. Only in his grandmother's company does he find solace and true companionship. In his teens, Eddie's future seems more secure, but every time things look up, circumstances beyond his control crash down around him.
Fly girls : how five daring women defied all odds and made aviation history
O'Brien, Keith, 1973- author
2018
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. While male pilots were lauded as heroes, the few women who dared to fly were more often ridiculed--until a cadre of women pilots banded together to break through the entrenched prejudice.
The island of missing trees : a novel
Shafak, Elif, 1971-, author
2021
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.
Never
Follett, Ken, author
2021
In the Sahara Desert, two elite intelligence agents are on the trail of a powerful group of drug-smuggling terrorists. In China, a senior government official battles against the older Communist hawks in the government. And in the United States, Pauline Green, the country's first woman president, navigates terrorist attacks and illegal arms trading. But when one act of aggression leads to another, the most powerful countries in the world are caught in a complex web of alliances they can't escape. And once all the sinister pieces are in place, can anyone stop the inevitable?
A town called Solace
Lawson, Mary, 1946- author
2021
A family in crisis: their rebellious teenage daughter, Rose, has disappeared. Weeks have passed with no word, but still Rose's little sister, Clara, keeps a daily vigil at the living-room window, hoping that Rose will come back. Feisty and fierce, Clara is not only missing Rose; she is also missing her elderly friend and next-door neighbour, Mrs. Orchard, a retired schoolteacher who is away in hospital. While standing at the window, Clara keeps an eye out for Rose and an eye on Mrs. Orchard's house. Then, one afternoon, a strange young man in a strange car pulls into Mrs. Orchard's driveway and proceeds to move into the house as if he owns the place. Which it turns out he does: Mrs. Orchard has died and left it to him. Soon we discover that Clara's beloved Mrs. Orchard has a complicated and tragic past, and the real mystery at the heart of this novel is what happened between her and Liam, the man in the car.
