GPLD Book Club Bash - September 2024

"January 1918. Laura Iven was a field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, Laura receives word of Freddie's death, but something doesn't make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. November 1917. Freddie Iven finds himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with an enemy soldier....

"From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby...

"When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens' Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she'll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively...

"From the New York Times bestselling author of Woman on Fire, the harrowing and ultimately triumphant tale of a Jewish WWII assassin turned Hollywood star. In 2005, Siena Hayes is Hollywood's latest It Girl, but she has her sights set higher than the screen, she wants to be behind the camera. So when Siena meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous actor from decades past, Siena sees her big break. Siena wants to direct Lena's biopic-but...

"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...

"'Women can be heroes, too.' When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances Frankie McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins...

"Utterly original and compulsively readable, a detective story about a woman who uses her uncanny ability to analyze words and speech patterns to help solve crimes. Maggie Moore--tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess--is a word genius, able to solve any linguistic puzzle. When she's talent-scouted from the top of her forensic linguistics class and asked to analyze harrowing notes left by a stalker-turned-rapist, she's all over it. And she succeeds....

"After twenty-two years together, Danielle and Alex are getting a divorce. Once fiercely in love, they can barely stand the sound of each other's voice. To save money during the separation process, they decide to share a nesting apartment, swapping days with their two boys at the family home. In the apartment, Dani and Alex, on their own, begin to reflect on the last two decades - why they fell in love, and why the marriage fell, spectacularly, apart....

"From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go. For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and--thanks to the cottage's ancient plumbing--septic too....