Between the Covers Book Club

Books to read and talk about

All the light we cannot see : a novel

Doerr, Anthony, 1973- author
2014

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

And the birds rained down

Saucier, Jocelyne, author
2012

Le Devoir Tom and Charlie are living out what's left of their lives on their own terms in a remote forest, two pot growers their only connection to the outside world. But then two women arrive, a photographer on the trail of survivors of a decades-ago forest fire and an elderly escapee from a psychiatric institution and everything changes.

The Bittlemores : a novel

Arden, Jann, author
2023

On mean Harp Bittlemore's blighted farm nothing has gone right for a very long time. Crops don't grow, the pigs and chickens stay skinny and the three aged dairy cows are so desperate they are plotting an escape. The one thing holding them back is the thought of abandoning young Willa. Just as things are really coming to a head, a bright young police officer starts investigating a cold case involving a baby stolen from a little rural hospital 28 years earlier, and Willa and the cows find out exactly how far the Bittlemores will go to protect a festering secret.

Demon Copperhead : a novel

Kingsolver, Barbara, author
2022

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

How the penguins saved Veronica

Prior, Hazel, author
2020

A heartwarming story about a curmudgeonly but charming old woman, her estranged grandson, and a colony of penguins that proves it's never too late to be the person you want to be and that family is what you make it.

Oil change at Rath's garage

Narine, Shari, author
2017

Where the crawdads sing

Owens, Delia, author
2018

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. Kya Clark is not what they say. Abandoned at ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh. With just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world -- until the unthinkable happens.