Here you can find information on the many titles housed in the Millcreek Community Center Library's book club collection. We have summaries of each book, as well as links to our catalogue, and other resources for reading groups. All titles can be checked out singly or as a set to anyone with a Salt Lake County Library card.
Urgent, propulsive, and sharp as a knife, The Other Black Girl
is an electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young
Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City
book publishing.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is
tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the
isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred
Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only just
started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of
uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left
in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as
Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she
soon realizes that there's a lot more at stake than just her career.
A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is
perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or
overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
Ann Patchett, the New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and State of Wonder,
returns with her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story
that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of
their childhood, and a past that will not let them go.
"'Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it
actually was?' I asked my sister. We were sitting in her car, parked in
front of the Dutch House in the broad daylight of early summer."
At
the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a
single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire,
propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order
of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs
outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house
sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The story is
told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly
acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they
grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back
into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they
have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between
them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House
is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their
past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only
truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives they
return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage.
But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them
behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his
ever-protective sister is finally tested.
The Dutch House
is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into
questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see
ourselves and of who we really are. Filled with suspense, you may read
it quickly to find out what happens, but what happens to Danny and Maeve
will stay with you for a very long time.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for
the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library
card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn't recognize calls out to him. To Kelly’s shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly’s closest friends in high school—and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, skinny, white, and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: After years of immersing himself in black culture, he’s had a plastic surgeon perform “racial reassignment surgery”—altering his hair, skin, and physiognomy to allow him to pass as African American. Unknown to his family or childhood friends, Martin has been living a new life ever since.
Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his new identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Kelly, still recovering from the death of his wife and child and looking for a way to begin anew, agrees, and things quickly begin to spiral out of control.
Inventive and thought-provoking, Your Face in Mine is a brilliant novel about cultural and racial alienation and the nature of belonging in a world where identity can be a stigma or a lucrative brand.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for
the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library
card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
"First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later."
When fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a bank, his sense of a happy, knowable life is forever shattered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life across a threshold that can never be uncrossed.
His parents' arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American, whose suave reserve masks a dark and violent nature.
Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew and loved. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.
A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare elegant prose, resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for
the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library
card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
In her best-selling debut, Commencement, J. Courtney Sullivan explored the complicated and contradictory landscape of female friendship. Now, in her highly anticipated second novel, Sullivan takes us into even richer territory, introducing four unforgettable women who have nothing in common but the fact that, like it or not, they’re family.
For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials “A.H.” At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface.
As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.
By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for
the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library
card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
