CPF Book Discussion Group’s Picks for 2024

CPF Book Discussion Group’s Book List for 2024

  • January 8, 2024 — Summer Sistersby Judy Blume (1998) is a coming-of-age novel about two friends, Caitlin Somers and Victoria “Vix” Leonard, who spend every summer together as teenagers. The girls are polar opposites, Caitlin being beautiful, lively and popular while Vix is a shy but intellectual wallflower. As the years progress the girls become closer and closer but soon find their friendship strained.
  • February 12 — The Book Woman’s Daughter(2022) by Kim Michele Richardson (2022) A powerful and beautifully rendered story that picked up sixteen years after The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek left off.
  • March 11 — The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing Worldby Tenzin Gyatso, the 14thDalai Lama (2016) It’s about a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Pat said it was really thought-provoking and she loved it. (non-fiction) Read and recommended by Pat Rittenhouse.
  • April 8 — Homecoming by Kate Morton (2023) The secrets around the Turner-Bridges women—Nora; her daughter, Polly; and granddaughter, Jess—are real doozies. Those secrets start to emerge, tendril by tendril, after Nora suffers a fall and Jess flies from her London home to Sydney to be with her. Neither Nora nor Jess is close with Polly, and Nora has named Jess as her next of kin, rather than her daughter. Odd, but not unheard of.
  • May 13 — Double Bindby Chris Bohjalian (2007) Laurel Estabrook, social worker at Crocker’s shelter, discovers something else among them: a snapshot of herself riding a bike, just as she had, seven years before, when savaged by two thugs. The attack scarring her, she’d retreated into PTSD therapy, affairs with comforting, if noncommittal, father figures and a life less of ambition than service. Crocker’s photos provide Laurel clues to their strangely interconnected pasts—and she sets out to decode them. Had the homeless man actually been to the manor born, son of Tom and Daisy Buchanan of fabled West Egg? Laurel feels compelled to investigate his past.
  • June 10 — The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Societyby Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (2008) Historical Drama – In 1941, on the island of Guernsey, four friends are stopped by soldiers for breaching curfew during German occupation. To avoid arrest, they say they were returning from a meeting of their book club, hastily named “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.”
  • July 8 — Horseby Geraldine Brooks, (2022) A rich tapestry that combines horse racing, race relations, art, love, greed, ego, slavery, betrayal, and ambition into a memorable story. The book spans many generations, from the 1800’s to current day, where interconnectedness seems serendipitous.
  • August 12 — The Last Thing He Told Meby Laura Dave (2021) Hannah Hill, a 40-year-old woodturner who makes furniture for upscale clients, narrates this novel. The reader is privy to Hannah’s interior life: her emotions, her memories, and her interpretations of events and estimations of other people. The events take place over four days and in two locations: Sausalito, California and Austin, Texas. The chapters toggle between the present and the past, allowing the reader to develop an understanding of both the relationship between Hannah and her husband, Owen, but also of Owen himself, despite the fact that he is physically absent throughout the novel.
  • September 9 — Rosemary – The Hidden Kennedy Daughterby Kate Clifford Larson (2015) Rosemary, the oldest Kennedy daughter was kept in a home in Wisconsin for decades.  Sue said it is a fairly fast read and she found it very informative. She always found the large family fascinating.
  • October 14 — The Woman in Cabin 10by Ruth Ware (2016) A psychological thriller set at sea from an essential mystery writer in the tradition of Agatha Christie.
  • November 11 — The Secret Life Of Sunflowers– by Marta Molnar and Dana Marton (2022) A gripping, inspiring novel based on the true story of Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law.
  • December 9 — Killers of the Flower Moonby David Grann (2017-non-fiction) The book investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s—after big oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. After the Osage are awarded headrights in court to the profits made from oil deposits found on their land, the Osage people prepare to receive the wealth to which they are legally entitled from sales of their oil deposits.

Have a book recommendation to share?