Friday Afternoon Book Club Books 2023-2024
Eternal
Scottoline, Lisa, author
2021
Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart. But in the autumn of 1937, all of that begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy's Fascists with Hitler's Nazis and altering the very laws that govern Rome. In time, everything that the three hold dear is tested in ways they never could have imagined.
The four winds
Hannah, Kristin, author
2021
Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli-like so many of her neighbors-must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life.
The giver of stars
Moyes, Jojo, 1969- author
2019
In Depression-era America, the story of five extraordinary women and their journey through the mountains of Kentucky. Alice Wright marries American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who's never asked a man's permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. What happens to them--and to the men they love--becomes a classic drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. Based on a true story rooted in America's past.
Hang the moon : a novel
Walls, Jeannette, author
2023
When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out. Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That's a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.
Her hidden genius : a novel
Benedict, Marie, author
2022
Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider - brilliant, but different. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture, she can unlock the building blocks of life. Then it finally happens - the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
Lessons in chemistry
Garmus, Bonnie, author
2022
Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. But it's the 1960s and despite the fact that she is a scientist, her peers are very unscientific when it comes to equality. As events are never as predictable as chemical reactions, three years after meeting Calvin, a legend and Nobel nominee, Elizabeth is an unwed, single mother and the star of America's most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth's singular approach to cooking and independent example are proving revolutionary. Because Elizabeth isn't just teaching women how to cook, she's teaching them how to change the status quo.
The maid : a novel
Prose, Nita, author
2022
Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly Gray throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. But Molly's orderly life is turned on its head the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself very dead in his bed. Molly quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black.
Say nothing : a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland
Keefe, Patrick Radden, 1976- author
2019
