Rose Harbor in Bloom by Debbie Macomber - Date: Sunday, January 24th 2016

Next book club, - Rose Harbor in Bloom; Debbie Macomber
Hosted by Joanne Smith.
Date: Sunday, January 24th 2016 (updated!)

 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Hailed as “the reigning queen of women’s fiction” (The Sacramento Bee), Debbie Macomber is renowned for her novels of love, friendship, and the promise of fresh starts. Now Macomber returns to the charming Rose Harbor Inn, where each guest finds a second chance and every room comes with an inspiring new view.

 Since moving to Cedar Cove, Jo Marie Rose has truly started to feel at home, and her neighbors have become her closest friends. Now it’s springtime, and Jo Marie is eager to finish the most recent addition to her inn. In memory of her late husband, Paul, she has designed a beautiful rose garden for the property and enlisted handyman Mark Taylor to help realize it. She and Mark don’t always see eye-to-eye—and at times he seems far removed—yet deep down, Jo Marie finds great comfort in his company. And while she still seeks a sense of closure, she welcomes her latest guests, who are on their own healing journeys.

 Annie Newton arrives in town to orchestrate her grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. While Annie is excited for the festivities, she’s struggling to move on from her broken engagement, and her grandparents themselves seem to be having trouble getting along. Worse, Annie is forced to see Oliver Sutton, with whom she grew up and who has always mercilessly teased her. But the best parties end with a surprise, and Annie is in for the biggest one of all.

 High-powered businesswoman Mary Smith, another Rose Harbor Inn guest, has achieved incredible success in her field, yet serious illness has led her to face her sole, lingering regret. Almost nineteen years ago, she ended her relationship with her true love, George Hudson, and now she’s returned to Cedar Cove to make amends.

Compassion and joy await Jo Marie, Annie, and Mary as they make peace with their pasts and look boldly toward their futures. Rose Harbor in Bloom is Debbie Macomber at her heartwarming best.

Spring 2016 !!!

- March  27th

- May 22nd or June  5th

The Inn at Rose Harbor: A novel by Debbie Macomber Nov. 22nd 2015

The Inn at Rose Harbor:  A novel by Debbie Macomber
Jo Marie Rose first arrives in Cedar Cove seeking a fresh start. A young widow coping with the death of her husband, she purchases a local bed-and-breakfast—the newly christened Rose Harbor Inn—ready to begin her life anew. Her first guest is Joshua Weaver, who has come home to care for his ailing stepfather. The two have never seen eye to eye, and Joshua has little hope that they can reconcile their differences. Jo Marie’s other guest is Abby Kincaid, who has returned to Cedar Cove to attend her brother’s wedding. Back for the first time in twenty years, she almost wishes she hadn’t come, the picturesque town harboring painful memories. And as Abby and Joshua try to heal from their pasts, and Jo Marie dreams of the possibilities before her, they all realize that life moves in only one direction—forward.

Praise for Debbie Macomber and The Inn at Rose Harbor review


Next Book Club ......  November 22nd - ..Sylvia Pepin

Go Set a Watchman : A Novel" by Harper Lee - September - Sunday, September 27th

Update: Due to busy schedules we have reduced the number of meetings and hope more people will be able to find the time to read and join us to discuss our books.

Our next meeting is ............................. Sunday, September 27th, - 7pm
Our next hostess is   ............................Kathy LeBlanc
Our next Book Club selection......." Go Set a Watchman : A Novel"  by Harper Lee

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—"Scout"—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can only be guided by one's own conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor, and effortless precision—a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context, and new meaning to an American classic.

Next Book Club,... 

November 22nd - ..Sylvia Pepin --- Book to be announced

Winter/ Spring 2016
- January  31st
- March  27th

- May 22nd or June 5th 

The Rosie Project " by Graeme Simsion June 28th

Upcoming book club ...

Our next meeting is ............................. Sunday, June 28th 

Our next hostess is   ............................Penny Munsey

Our next Book Club selection......." The Rosie Project " by Graeme Simsion  

The Rosie Project " by Graeme Simsion -  THE ART OF LOVE IS NEVER A SCIENCE MEET DON TILLMAN, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you. Arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, Graeme Simsion’s distinctive debut will resonate with anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of great challenges. The Rosie Project is a rare find: a book that restores our optimism in the power of human connection.


Other news ....To be finalized  - See email from Laurie

July and August will be a pass.

Fall of 2015,... will have only two meetings.

September 27th

November / December 6th

This is a brief look at the spring as far as months go.

Spring 2016 ( I have not looked up the dates yet )

January

March

May

If you like this idea and how it will work see Laurie's email and we can discuss at out June meeting!

Other topics discussed ....
checkout Sequel - Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee, Author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Is to Publish a Second Novel
A few years ago we read To Kill A Mocking Bird By Harper Lee
For more than half a century, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has stood apart as a singular American literary masterpiece, a perennial best seller that has provoked countless classroom discussions about racial and social injustice. It brought instant and overwhelming fame to its enigmatic author, Harper Lee, who soon retreated from the spotlight to her native Monroeville, Ala. She never published another book, leaving her millions of fans yearning for more. Now, at age 88, Ms. Lee has revealed that she wrote another novel after all — a sequel of sorts to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” featuring an aging Atticus Finch and his grown daughter, Scout. Continue reading the main story RELATED IN OPINION Harper LeeOp-Ed Contributor: Don’t Do It, Harper Lee
FEB. 5, 2015 On Tuesday, Ms. Lee’s publisher announced its plans to release that novel, recently rediscovered, which Ms. Lee completed in the mid-1950s, before she wrote “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

The 304-page book, “Go Set a Watchman,” takes place 20 years later in the same fictional town, Maycomb, Ala., and unfolds as Jean Louise Finch, or Scout, the feisty child heroine of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” returns to visit her father. The novel, which is scheduled for release this July, tackles the racial tensions brewing in the South in the 1950s and delves into the complex relationship between father and daughter. Although written first, “Go Set a Watchman” is a continuation of the same story, with overlapping themes and characters. But Ms. Lee abandoned the manuscript after her editor, who was captivated by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, told her to write a new book from the young heroine’s perspective and to set it during her childhood.  More details here .

Winter People " by Jennifer McMahon

"Winter People  " by Jennifer McMahon  
A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.

Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she’s not the only person looking for someone that they’ve lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.

Our next Book Club selection....... "Winter People " by Jennifer McMahon "
Our next meeting is ........... Sunday, May 31st , 7p.m.
Our next hostess is   ............................Paula Mansour   - TBD

Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers

Our next book is:
Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers
Next meeting is ........ Sunday, April 26th, 7pm
Hostess .....Sue Torosian and Kay Wood , 71 Kendall Hill
Book selection ...."Falling off the Wind" by Richard Meibers

Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers - At 50, Clement Scheutz has been there, done that. He's raised two now-successful sons, been married and divorced, and spent the last seven years wandering the Caribbean with his luscious, much younger girlfriend, Samantha. You'd think the carefree life would be everything a man like Clem could want, but after all this time he's having second thoughts. There are storm clouds on the horizon. He and Samantha aren't getting along that well, and he's beginning to question the validity of the life he's chosen. He feels empty, homeless, and all sense of meaning seems to have disappeared from his existence. Culebra, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico, is well known as a sheltered "hurricane hole," but that's not why Clem and Samantha have brought "Panacea", their 65 foot wooden schooner there. They've come because they need to nurse their meager supply of cash. Make them flat broke. Clement visits "El Tapon," a small restaurant run by Migdala, thirty-something granddaughter of the owner. He's seen her before, even danced with her during a party five years earlier. There's something in her face when she looks at him... Later, she makes him an offer; in return for his help in the kitchen, he can have the leftover food at the end of each day.

Soon after, Samantha announces she's leaving. Just in time, too, because there's another storm building. Hurricane Hugo strikes Culebra with 150 knot winds, devastating the village and driving ashore most of the boats hunkered down in the harbor, including "Panacea." The wind also lifts "El Tapon's" roof and carries it away. The place is all but destroyed. And when Migdala hires Clement to help rebuild he discovers that termites have eaten the wood framework from the inside out. The structure will need to be completely rebuilt. This, and the drive to restore his broken boat, serve as metaphors for Clement's need to rethink his life, and as the construction proceeds and his feelings for Migdala deepen, he endures, as does the reader, several bouts of deep self-examination.

All the light we cannot see : a novel " by Anthony Doerr - March 29th

Update - Our next meeting is .......... Sunday, March 29th, 7pm Our next hostess is ...........................Dee Zarella Our next Book Club selection........ "All the light we cannot see"  a novel " by Anthony Doerr ( Laurie's book choice February )

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Socitey" by Mary Ann Shaffer ( Kelly's book choice January )

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2014

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.

Update 2/6/2016  "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Next book club - February 22nd 2015 / Hostess -  Laurie Roy

Other dates:
March 29th ..........Dee Zarella
April 26th............Sue Torosian
May 31st............Julie Bigelow
June 28th

Cancelled - Original Request - NOT IN STOCK
Don't Let Me Go - by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Former Broadway dancer and current agoraphobic Billy Shine has not set foot outside his apartment in almost a decade. He has glimpsed his neighbors—beautiful manicurist Rayleen, lonely old Ms. Hinman, bigoted and angry Mr. Lafferty, kind-hearted Felipe, and 9-year-old Grace and her former addict mother Eileen. But most of them have never seen Billy. Not until Grace begins to sit outside on the building’s front stoop for hours every day, inches from Billy’s patio. Troubled by this change in the natural order, Billy makes it far enough out onto his porch to ask Grace why she doesn’t sit inside where it’s safe. Her answer: “If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And then nobody will help me.” Her answer changes everything. By the bestselling author of WHEN YOU WERE OLDER and PAY IT FORWARD, DON’T LET ME GO is the heart-breaking, funny, and life-affirming story of a building full of loners and misfits who come together to help a little girl survive—and thrive—against all odds.