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Home » 2014 Great Group Reads
Logo that says Great Group Reads in large font on right with National Reading Group Month and a stack of orange books on left and Women's National Book Association written at bottom

2014 Great Group Reads

2014 Great Group Reads shows all of the book jackets for the books on the list.

These titles were selected on the basis of their appeal to reading groups, which seek books that open up lively conversations about a myriad of timely and provocative topics, from the intimate dynamics of family and personal relationships to major cultural and world issues.

We hope you’ll read as many books as you can and enjoy them as we do. If you talk about them on social media, use #GreatGroupReads.

And if you are looking for a book club to join, the Bookwoman Book Club exclusively reads books from the GGR lists.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating these fantastic reads!


The book cover for All the Light We Cannot See has a blue sky with some white clouds over a body of water with a town in the foreground.

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

HC 9781476746586

Scribner

Publication Date: May 06, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, historical, war, military

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

May 2014 Indie Next List; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize; A National Book Award finalist; A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book

From Anthony Doerr, the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author of Cloud Cuckoo Land, 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, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

The book cover for Burial Rites has a dark, cloudy sky with three birds flying. A woman stands on a cliff looking out over a body of water.

Burial Rites

by Hannah Kent

TP 978-0316243926

Back Bay Books

Publication Date: April 1, 2014

Fiction

Categories: historical, literary, women, psychological thrillers

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

September 2013 Indie Next List

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution. 

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tv=ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard. 

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

The book cover for Cataract City has geometric shapes in muted colors. There appears to be abstract horses and a person among the shapes.

Cataract City

by Craig Davidson

TP 978-1555976743

Graywolf Press

Publication Date: July 8, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

On the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, life beyond the tourist trade isn’t easy. Locals like Duncan Diggs and Owen Stuckey have few chances to leave. For Duncan, that means shift work on a production line. For Owen, it means pinning it all on a shot at college basketball. But they should know better; they’ve been unlucky before. As boys, they were abducted and abandoned in the woods. Though they made it out alive, the memory of that time won’t fade.

Over the years they drift apart, but when Duncan is drawn into a chaotic world of bare-knuckle fighting and other shady dealings, Owen, now a cop, can’t look the other way any longer. Together, they’ll be forced to survive the wilderness once more as their friendship is pushed to the limit in this white-hot novel by a rising star.

Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Children of the Jacaranda Tree has a desert background, blue sky, and a very large tree with purple blossoms.

Children of the Jacaranda Tree

by Sahar Delijani

TP 978-1476709109

Atria

Publication Date: June 17, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, cultural heritage

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

July 2013 Indie Next List

Neda is born in Iran’s Evin Prison, where her mother is allowed to nurse her for a few months before an anonymous guard appears at the cell door one day and simply takes her away. In another part of the city, three-year-old Omid witnesses the arrests of his political activist parents from his perch at their kitchen table, yogurt dripping from his fingertips. More than twenty years after the violent, bloody purge that took place inside Tehran’s prisons, Sheida learns that her father was one of those executed, that the silent void firmly planted between her and her mother all these years was not just the sad loss that comes with death but the anguish and the horror of murder.

These are the Children of the Jacaranda Tree. Set in post-revolutionary Iran from 1983 to 2011, this stunning debut novel follows a group of mothers, fathers, children, and lovers, some related by blood, others brought together by the tide of history that washes over their lives. Finally, years later, it is the next generation that is left with the burden of the past and their country’s tenuous future as a new wave of protest and political strife begins.

“Heartbreakingly heroic” (Publishers Weekly), Children of the Jacaranda Tree is an evocative portrait of three generations of men and women inspired by love and poetry, burning with idealism, chasing dreams of justice and freedom. Written in Sahar Delijani’s spellbinding prose, capturing the intimate side of revolution in a country where the weight of history is all around, it is a moving tribute to anyone who has ever answered its call.

The book cover for the Commandant of Lubizec has a dark red background with part of a train track in the center.

The Commandant of Lubizec

by Patrick Hicks

TP 978-1586422202

Steerforth Press

Publication Date: March 25, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, Jewish

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, they quickly began persecuting anyone who was Jewish. Millions were shoved into ghettos and forced to live under the swastika. Death camps were built and something called “Operation Reinhard” was set into motion. Its goal? To murder all the Jews of Poland.

The Commandant of Lubizec is a harrowing account of a death camp that never actually existed but easily could have in the Nazi state. It is a sensitive, accurate retelling of a place that went about the business of genocide. Told as a historical account in a documentary style, it explores the atmosphere of a death camp. It describes what it was like to watch the trains roll in, and it probes into the mind of its commandant, Hans-Peter Guth. How could he murder thousands of people each day and then go home to laugh with his children? This is not only an unflinching portrayal of the machinery of the gas chambers, it is also the story of how prisoners burned the camp to the ground and fled into the woods. It is a story of rebellion and survival. It is a story of life amid death.

With a strong eye towards the history of the Holocaust, The Commandant of Lubizec compels us to look at these extermination centers anew. It disquiets us with the knowledge that similar events actually took place in camps like Bełzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. The history of Lubizec, although a work of fiction, is a chillingly blunt distillation of real life events. It asks that we look again at “Operation Reinhard”. It brings voice to the silenced. It demands that we bear witness.

Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Euphoria has many vertical paintbrush strokes in a variety of colors.

Euphoria

by Lily King

HC 978-0802122551

Atlantic Monthly Press

Publication Date: June 03, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, historical

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize; Winner of the 2014 New England Book Award for Fiction; A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; June 2014 Indie Next List

National bestselling and award-winning author Lily King’s novel is the story of three young, gifted anthropologists in the 1930s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives.

English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying a tribe on the Sepik River in the Territory of New Guinea with little success. Increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when he encounters the famous and controversial Nell Stone and her wry, mercurial Australian husband Fen. Bankson is enthralled by the magnetic couple whose eager attentions pull him back from the brink of despair.

Nell and Fen have their own reasons for befriending Bankson. Emotionally and physically raw from studying the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo tribe, the couple is hungry for a new discovery. But when Bankson leads them to the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and emotional firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone’s control. Ultimately, their groundbreaking work will make history, but not without sacrifice.

Inspired by events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is a captivating story of desire, possession and discovery from one of our finest contemporary novelists.

The book cover for Everything I Never Told You has a blue background and strips of torn paper behind each word in the title.

Everything I Never Told You 

by Celeste Ng

HC 978-1594205712

Penguin Press

Publication Date: June 26, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, mystery, thriller, Asian American, family, illness, racism

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio.

Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Reading Group Discussion Guide

The book cover for Foreign Gods, Inc has a bright yellow sun with a red-orange center above a small New York City cityscape including the Statue of Liberty.

Foreign Gods, Inc. 

by Okey Ndibe

TP 978-1616953133

Soho Press

Publication Date: January 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, immigrants, racism, faith, cultural heritage, African literature

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Foreign Gods, Inc., tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery.

Ike’s plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from a major American college, his strong accent has barred him from the corporate world. Forced to eke out a living as a cab driver, he is unable to manage the emotional and material needs of a temperamental African American bride and a widowed mother demanding financial support. When he turns to gambling, his mounting losses compound his woes.

And so he travels back to Nigeria to steal the statue, where he has to deal with old friends, family, and a mounting conflict between those in the village who worship the deity, and those who practice Christianity.

A meditation on the dreams, promises and frustrations of the immigrant life in America; the nature and impact of religious conflicts; an examination of the ways in which modern culture creates or heightens infatuation with the “exotic,” including the desire to own strange objects and hanker after ineffable illusions; and an exploration of the shifting nature of memory, Foreign Gods is a brilliant work of fiction that illuminates our globally interconnected world like no other.

Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Marching to Zion has what looks like a faded color photo of a man and a woman each from their necks to bottom of legs. The man is dressed in a pinstripe suit coat and the woman in is a light colored dress.

Marching to Zion 

by Mary Glickman

TP 978-1480435629

Open Road Media

Publication Date: November 12, 2013

Fiction

Categories: historical, racsim, interracial marriage, African American, Jewish

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

National Jewish Book Award finalist

A family of Eastern European refugees finds a home in racially charged St. Louis in this sweeping historical novel.

In 1916, Mags Preacher arrives in the big city of St. Louis, fresh from the piney woods, hoping to learn the beauty trade. Instead, she winds up with a job at Fishbein’s Funeral Home, run by an émigré who came to America to flee the pogroms of Russia. Mags knows nothing about Jews except that they killed the Lord Jesus Christ, but by the time her boss saves her life during the race riots in East St. Louis, all her perceptions have changed.

Marching to Zion is the story of Mags and of Mr. Fishbein, but it’s also the story of Fishbein’s daughter, Minerva, a beautiful redhead with an air of danger about her, and Magnus Bailey, Fishbein’s charismatic business partner and Mags’s first friend in town. When Magnus falls for Minerva’s willful spirit, he’ll learn just how dangerous she can be for a black man in America.

Readers of Mary Glickman’s One More River will celebrate the return of Aurora Mae Stanton, who joins a cast of vibrant new characters in a tale that stretches from East St. Louis, Missouri, to Memphis, Tennessee, from World War I to the Great Depression. Hailed as “a powerful reminder of the discrimination and unspeakable hardships African Americans suffered,” Marching to Zion is a gripping love story, a fascinating angle on history, and a compelling meditation on justice and fate (Jewish Book Council).

The book cover for Neverhome has a yellowed piece of paper curling at the edges. A muted pastoral scene with trees takes up the lower third of the page.

Neverhome 

by Laird Hunt

TP 978-0316370134

Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: September 9, 2014

Fiction

Categories: historical, war, Civil War, cultural heritage

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

September 2014 Indie Next List

She calls herself Ash, but that’s not her real name. She is a farmer’s faithful wife, but she has left her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. Neverhome tells the harrowing story of Ash Thompson during the battle for the South. Through bloodshed and hysteria and heartbreak, she becomes a hero, a folk legend, a madwoman, and a traitor to the American cause.

Laird Hunt’s dazzling novel throws a light on the adventurous women who chose to fight instead of stay behind. It is also a mystery story: why did Ash leave and her husband stay? Why can she not return? What will she have to go through to make it back home?

In gorgeous prose, Hunt’s rebellious young heroine fights her way through history, and back home to her husband, and finally into our hearts.

Reading Group Discussion Guide


An evening blue sky takes up most of the book cover for the Orphans of Race Point. On the bottom half is the silhouette of two children running.

The Orphans of Race Point 

by Patry Francis

TP 978-0062281302

Harper Perennial

Publication Date: May 6, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, faith, family, coming-of-age

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Set on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a suspenseful page-turning saga of love, murder, and the true meaning of faith from the author of the acclaimed The Liar’s Diary.

Set in the close-knit Portuguese community of Provincetown, Massachusetts, The Orphans of Race Point traces the relationship between Hallie Costa and Gus Silva, who meet as children in the wake of a terrible crime that leaves Gus parentless. Their friendship evolves into an enduring and passionate love that will ask more of them than they ever imagined.

On the night of their high school prom, a terrible tragedy devastates their relationship and profoundly alters the course of their lives. And when, a decade later, Gus — now a priest — becomes entangled with a distraught woman named Ava and her daughter Mila, troubled souls who bring back vivid memories of his own damaged past, the unthinkable happens: he is charged with murder. Can Hallie save the man she’s never stopped loving, by not only freeing him from prison but also — finally — the curse of his past?

Told in alternating voices, The Orphans of Race Point illuminates the transformative power of love and the myriad ways we find meaning in our lives.

Reading Group Discussion Guide

Four horses of varying colors are drinking water from a river on the book cover of Painted Horses.

Painted Horses

by Malcolm Brooks

HC 978-0802121646

Grove Press

Publication Date: August 5, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, westerns, environment, historical

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

August 2014 Indie Next List

In the mid-1950s, America was flush with prosperity and saw an unbroken line of progress clear to the horizon, while the West was still very much wild. In this ambitious, incandescent debut, Malcolm Brooks animates that time and untamed landscape, in a tale of the modern and the ancient, of love and fate, and of heritage threatened by progress.

Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist on her way to Montana, with a huge task before her — a canyon “as deep as the devil’s own appetites.” Working ahead of a major dam project, she has one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood.

From the moment she arrives, nothing is familiar — the vastness of the canyon itself mocks the contained, artifact-rich digs in post-Blitz London where she cut her teeth. And then there’s John H, a former mustanger and veteran of the U.S. Army’s last mounted cavalry campaign, living a fugitive life in the canyon. John H inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark landscape, and her heart opens to more than just the vanished past. 

Painted Horses sends a dauntless young woman on a heroic quest, sings a love song to the horseman’s vanishing way of life, and reminds us that love and ambition, tradition and the future, often make strange bedfellows. It establishes Malcolm Brooks as an extraordinary new talent.

The book cover for Prayers for the Stolen has a bunch of small cactus flowers and one big flower with red petals. In the center of the flower is the face of a woman with her eyes closed.

Prayers for the Stolen

by Jennifer Clement

TP 978-0804138789

Hogarth

Publication Date: November 4, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, women, Hispanic, cultural heritage

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, Winner The Sara Curry Humanitarian Award

A haunting story of love and survival that introduces an unforgettable literary heroine.

Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny and smart. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester. In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they “make them ugly” — cropping their hair, blackening their teeth — anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight.

While her mother waits in vain for her husband’s return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity and fun in the face of so much tragedy. When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there. But when a local murder tied to the cartel implicates a friend, Ladydi’s future takes a dark turn.

Despite the odds against her, this spirited heroine’s resilience and resolve bring hope to otherwise heartbreaking conditions. An illuminating and affecting portrait of women in rural Mexico, and a stunning exploration of the hidden consequences of an unjust war, Prayers for the Stolen is an unforgettable story of friendship, family, and determination.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for The Promise has an old time feel. There is a person walking next to what are probably cable car tracks on a street lined with trees and houses.

The Promise 

by Ann Weisgarber

HC 978-1629142364

Skyhorse Publishing

Publication Date: April 1, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, historical

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Longlisted for the Orange Prize; Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; Finalist for the Spur Award for Best Western Historical Fiction; Finalist for the Ohioana Book Award for Fiction

1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him, but when Catherine travels to Oscar’s farm on Galveston Island, Texas—, a thousand miles from home—, she finds she is little prepared for the life that awaits her.

The island is remote, the weather sweltering, and Oscar’s little boy Andre is grieving hard for his lost mother. And though Oscar tries to please his new wife, the secrets of the past sit uncomfortably between them. Meanwhile for Nan Ogden, Oscar’s housekeeper, Catherine’s sudden arrival has come as a great shock. For not only did she promise Oscar’s first wife that she would be the one to take care of little Andre, but she has feelings for Oscar which she is struggling to suppress. And when the worst storm in a generation descends, the women will find themselves tested as never before.

Reading Group Choices Guide

A bright yellow colored cover adorns the Rosie Project. In the bottom left-hand corner, there is an image of a man next to a bike wearing a helmet. Talking to him is a woman.

The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion

HC 978-1476729091

Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: October 1, 2013

Fiction

Categories: romantic comedy

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

The international bestselling romantic comedy “bursting with warmth, emotional depth, and…humor,” (Entertainment Weekly) featuring the oddly charming, socially challenged genetics professor, Don, as he seeks true love.

The art of love is never a science: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. 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 possesses all these qualities. Don easily disqualifies her as a candidate for The Wife Project (even if she is “quite intelligent for a barmaid”). But Don is intrigued by Rosie’s own quest to identify 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 “navigates the choppy waters of adult relationships, both romantic and platonic, with a fresh take (USA TODAY). “Filled with humor and plenty of heart, The Rosie Project is a delightful reminder that all of us, no matter how we’re wired, just want to fit in” (Chicago Tribune).

Reading Group Guides

The book cover for the Storied Life of AJ Fikry shows the front door and window of a bookstore. In the window are books on display. The front door is bright red and has a sign hanging from the door that says A Novel.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

by Gabrielle Zevin

HC 978-1616203214

Algonquin Books

Publication Date: April 4, 2014

Fiction

Categories: general, bookstores/bookselling

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. He lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival gives Fikry the chance to make his life over — and see everything anew.   

Reading Group Discussion Guide

The book cover for An Untamed State has a yellow background with a large palm frond taking on the left and a woman looking backward. Her hair is flying up in part which gives the impression that she is running.

An Untamed State

by Roxane Gay

TP 978-0802122513

Black Cat

Publication Date: May 6, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, women, African American

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

In this debut novel, Roxane Gay delivers a powerful, unflinching story of a Haitian American woman kidnapped for ransom, the privilege that made her a target, and the strength she must draw on to survive. Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port-au-Prince estate.

Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As her father’s standoff with the kidnappers stretches out into days, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.

An Untamed State is a novel of wealth in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.

The book cover for What is Visible has the a drawing of a woman. Over the drawing's head is a photograph from the 1800s. The lower half of the woman is a birdcage. The woman is holding a paper with a man's portrait.

What Is Visible 

by Kimberly Elkins

HC 978-1455528967

Twelve

Publication Date: June 3, 2014

Fiction

Categories: biographical historical, LGBTQ+, literary

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

A vividly original literary novel based on the astounding true-life story of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person who learned language and blazed a trail for Helen Keller.

At age two, Laura Bridgman lost four of her five senses to scarlet fever. At age seven, she was taken to Perkins Institute in Boston to determine if a child so terribly afflicted could be taught. At age twelve, Charles Dickens declared her his prime interest for visiting America. And by age twenty, she was considered the nineteenth century’s second most famous woman, having mastered language and charmed the world with her brilliance.

Not since The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has a book proven so profoundly moving in illuminating the challenges of living in a completely unique inner world. With Laura — by turns mischievous, temperamental, and witty — as the book’s primary narrator, the fascinating kaleidoscope of characters includes the founder of Perkins Institute, Samuel Gridley Howe, with whom she was in love; his wife, the glamorous Julia Ward Howe, a renowned writer, abolitionist, and suffragist; Laura’s beloved teacher, who married a missionary and died insane from syphilis; an Irish orphan with whom Laura had a tumultuous affair; Annie Sullivan; and even the young Helen Keller.

Deeply enthralling and rich with lyricism, What is Visible chronicles the breathtaking experiment that Laura Bridgman embodied and its links to the great social, philosophical, theological, and educational changes rocking Victorian America. Given Laura’s worldwide fame in the nineteenth century, it is astonishing that she has been virtually erased from history. What is Visible will set the record straight.

Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Where Somebody Waits shows an old fashioned Ferris wheel.

Where Somebody Waits 

by Margaret Kaufman

TP  978-1589880894

Paul Dry Books

Publication Date: October 15, 2013

Fiction

Categories: short stories, women, family, historical

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Where Somebody Waits instantly transports you to small-town Arkansas more than a half-century ago — a world of catfish and bourbon-and-Coke; of tent revival meetings and less boisterous discussions about heaven and hell; of finding love or just dreaming about it. A neighborly community, but with its share of intrigues.

And instantly you’re under the spell of Ruby Davidson, the magnetic central character of Where Somebody Waits. Self-assured, kind, always willing to take a stand for people less fortunate, at “five foot ten inches, with masses of red hair and a pompadour that increases her stature to six feet,” she’s also strikingly beautiful. Ruby loves her husband, adores her nephews and nieces, and more or less dutifully respects the tightly knit Jewish family into which she has married. Her life is filled with triumphs and failings, joy and sadness, lived with all possible grace, and told in a spirit of admirable and honest reflection.

A full life, yes, but not an untroubled one, because Ruby also still loves her high-school sweetheart. How she comes to terms with this old, old conundrum and how it affects the lives of everyone around her shape the heart of Where Somebody Waits.

Reading Group Choices Guide

A stark gray background highlights a glass sphere with flowers inside which is in the center of the book cover for The World of Rae English.

The World of Rae English

by Lucy Rosenthal

TP 978-1937854393

Black Lawrence Books

Publication Date: January 15, 2014

Fiction

Categories: literary, women

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Rae English, a smart and witty young woman, is drawn to secretive men. It is the still straitlaced early sixties, the era of Mad Men where women are expected to be married and pretty. After a divorce from a disgraced politician, Rae relocates to Iowa City, hoping to find or conceal herself as a writer and to rediscover love.

Reading Group Choices Guide

About Great Group Reads

Started as an initiative in 2009 for the Women’s National Book Association’s National Reading Group Month program, Great Group Reads is a list of recommended books perfect for shared reading. The list is released annually in time to celebrate National Reading Group Month in October.

“Booklist and the American Library Association share the Women’s National Book Association’s mission to get the word out about worthy and exciting books, and to encourage reading and book discussion. To commune privately with a book, then share the thoughts and feelings, questions and realizations that a book inspires is to expand and deepen one’s life and sense of connection. Booklist is delighted to join in the celebration of National Reading Group Month and the Great Group Reads selections.” — Donna Seaman, Editor, Adult Books, Booklist

GGR Resources:

  • 2014 Great Group Reads Flyer
  • 2014 GGR Press Release
  • Shop all Great Group Reads

Read the 2013 Great Group Reads!

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