Available Titles: Book Club in A Bag

Mexican Gothic/ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. BCIAB #1 

Our story follows a Mexican socialite, Noemi, who finds herself in a strange mansion to check up on her cousin, Catalina. Noemi promises her father that for him to continue paying for her education, she will help Catalina. We find Catalina in an ill state. Noemi is determined to find out why. Catalina’s husband, Virgil, downplays her illness. He says she is just depressed. Noemi, who has known Catalina her whole life, questions this since Catalina was never one to get depressed as such. The story then gets stranger and more complicated as it progresses.

The Sum of Us/ by Heather McGhee. BCIAB #2

Heather McGhee is an expert in economic and social policy. The former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos, McGhee has drafted legislation, testified before Congress, and contributed regularly to news shows, including NBC’s Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. McGhee holds a BA in American studies from Yale University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Lessons in Chemistry/ by Bonnie Garmus. BCIAB #3 

Lessons in Chemistry is a novel by Bonnie Garmus. Published by Doubleday in April 2022, it is Garmus's debut novel. It tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, who becomes a beloved cooking show host in 1960s Southern California after being fired as a chemist four years earlier.

The Women/ by Kristin Hannah. BCIAB #4 

The Women is a historical fiction novel set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. It follows military nurse Frances “Frankie” McGrath as she leaves her illustrious family on Coronado Island, California, and enters the muddy trenches — and even muddier aftermath — of the war. Frankie enlists as a military nurse for two reasons: to join her brother already on the ground and to finally earn her parents’ approval. Suffice to say, that romanticized patriotism does not nearly prepare her for the mortar attacks and napalm wounds that would become her new normal. Frankie begins her first tour in standard-issue pumps that are quickly replaced by combat boots and returns a different woman to a country she can no longer recognize. She is forced to reconcile the war she once believed in with the contentious events that she experienced firsthand. Moreover, she must learn to hide her own scars to rejoin a society that insists “there were no women in Vietnam.” 

The Lost Girl of Paris / by Pam Jenoff. BCIAB #5

From the author of the runaway bestseller The Orphan’s Tale comes a remarkable story of friendship and courage centered around three women and a ring of female secret agents during World War II.

Demon Copperhead / by Barbara Kingsolver. BCIAB #6 

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is 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. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon 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.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

The Searcher / by Tana French. BCIAB #7 

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat and realizes that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets, 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.

Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood / by Cheryl Diamond. BCIAB #8

What if the people you love most are not who you thought they were? What if you don’t know who you are, either? Cheryl Diamond’s memoir begins when she is four and her family is in Kashmir, India, hurtling down the Himalayas in their battered station wagon headed for the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion. The family are Sikhs. Today. In a few years they will be Jewish. Cheryl’s name is Harbhajan. Today. But in a few years she will be Crystal. By the time she turns nine, Cheryl has had at least six assumed identities. She has lived on five continents, fleeing the specter of Interpol and law enforcement. Her father, a master financial criminal, or so she believes, uproots the family at the slightest sign of suspicion.
 
Despite the strange circumstances, Diamond’s life as a young child is mostly joyful and exciting, her family of five a tiny, happy circle unto themselves. Even as she learn how to forge identity papers and fix a car with chicken wire, she somehow becomes a near-Olympic-level athlete and then an international teenage model. She even publishes a book about it. As she grows older, though, things get darker. Her identity is burned again and again, leaving her with no past, no proof even that she exists, and her family—the only people she has in the world—begins to unravel. Love and trust turn to fear and violence. Secrets are revealed, and she is betrayed by those on whom she relies most.
 
Slowly, Diamond begins to realize that her life itself might be a big con. Surviving would require her to escape, and we root for this determined woman as she unlearns all the rules of her family. Cinematic and witty, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph.

Know My Name / by Chanel Miller. BCIAB #9

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.
 
 Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.
 
Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.

Remarkably Bright Creatures / by Shelby Van Pelt. BCIAB #10

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.
Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late. Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

Project Hail Mary / by Andy Weir. BCIAB #11 

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

The Book Thief / by Markus Zusak. BCIAB #12

Trying to make sense of the horrors of WWII, Death relates the story of Liesel, a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family, the Jewish man they are hiding, and their neighbors.

• Includes DVD

The Vanishing Half / by Brit Bennett. BCIAB #13

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

The Book of Lost Friends / by Lisa Wingate. BCIAB #14

Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half-sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation. Still, for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope.
 
Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.

The Secrets We Kept / by Lara Prescott. BCIAB #16 

A thrilling tale of secretaries turned spies, of love and duty, and of sacrifice--inspired by the true story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love story of the twentieth century: Doctor Zhivago.

Great Big Beautiful Life / by Emily Henry BCIAB #18  

Great Big Beautiful Life is a 2025 romance/historical fiction novel by Emily Henry about two rival journalists, Alice and Hayden, competing to write the biography of a reclusive heiress in a small Georgia town, all while navigating their own complicated pasts and growing attraction. Published in April 2025, it's a Reese's Book Club pick that blends romance with mystery, exploring themes of family, heartbreak, and finding beauty in life's complexities. 

The Island of Sea Women / by Lisa See. BCIAB #26 

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook developed the closest bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a unique and unforgettable culture where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.

Where the Crawdads Sing / by Delia Owens. BCIAB #28 

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.

Perfect for Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell fans, Where the Crawdads Sing is an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

• Includes 1 Large Print copy

The Giver of Stars / by Jojo Moyes. BCIAB #30   

From the author of The Last Letter from Your Lover, soon to be a major motion picture on Netflix, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond in Depression-era America. Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, and enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic--a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.

Interior Chinatown / by Charles Yu. BCIAB #32

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life; he’s merely a Generic Asian Man. Sometimes, he gets to be Background Oriental, making a Weird Face, or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit of a player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

The Last Thing He Told Me / by Laura Dave. BCIAB #35 

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
 
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he disappeared.

The Lincoln Highway / by Amor Towles. BCIAB #36

In The Lincoln Highway, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska in June 1954 by the warden of the juvenile work farm, where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother is long gone, his father is recently deceased, and the bank forecloses upon the family farm; Emmett intends to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California, where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, taking them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them with an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

People We Meet on Vacation / by Emily Henry. BCIAB #37 

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven't spoken since.

Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics / by Daniel James Brown. BCIAB #38

Out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. 

• Nonfiction 
• Includes audio CD/ one large print

The Devil in the White City / by Erik Larson. BCIAB #39

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. 

Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City. At the same time, Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

• Includes audio CD

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women / by Lisa See. BCIAB #40

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women (2023) is a work of adult historical fiction written by American author Lisa See. The novel fictionalizes the life of Tan Yunxian, a female physician who lived in imperial China during the Ming dynasty and whose compendium of her cases is the earliest surviving Chinese medical text written by a woman. Yunxian, shaped by the early death of her mother and educated by grandparents who are both medical practitioners, marries into a wealthy family and lives as an obedient wife, mother, and daughter-in-law, but learns through her friendship with young midwife Meiling to defy tradition and pursue her ambition to treat women of all classes and walks of life. In providing health care, Yunxian works against the prevailing cultural belief that values women only for their childbearing and decorative

functions. At the same time, her friendships prove that a circle of supportive and nurturing women provides the foundation for a fulfilling life. Following Chinese convention, in both the novel and this guide, character names are presented with the family name or surname first and the given name second (i.e., Tan Yunxian, Shi Meiling, Yang Maoren)

Educated / by Tara Westover. BCIAB #46 

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the world's end by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer, she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter, she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents to Harvard and Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far and if there was still a way home.

The Judge’s List / by Candice Millard. BCIAB #49

In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching forty, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change. 
 
Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims. Suspicions are easy enough, but proof seems impossible. The man is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure, and most important: he knows the law. He is a judge, in Florida—under Lacy’s jurisdiction. 
 
He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?

In the Midst of Winter / by Isabel Allende. BCIAB # 52 

In the Midst of Winter begins with a minor traffic accident--which becomes the catalyst for an unexpected and moving love story between two people who thought they were deep into the winter of their lives. 

Richard Bowmaster--a 60-year-old human rights scholar--hits the car of Evelyn Ortega--a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala--in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconvenience takes an unforeseen and far more serious turn when Evelyn turns up at the professor's house seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant Lucia Maraz--a 62-year-old lecturer from Chile--for her advice. These three very different people are brought together in a mesmerizing story that moves from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil, sparking the beginning of a long overdue love story between Richard and Lucia. 

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine / by Gail Honeyman. BCIAB #54 

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .the only way to survive is to open your heart.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo / by Christy Lefteri. BCIAB #59 

Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo—until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight, leaving Nuri to navigate her grief as well as a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece toward an uncertain future in Britain.
 
Nuri is sustained only by the knowledge that waiting for them is his cousin Mustafa, who has started an apiary in Yorkshire and is teaching fellow refugees beekeeping. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm even the bravest souls. Above all, they must make the difficult journey back to each other, a path once so familiar yet rendered foreign by the heartache of displacement. 

The Paris Library / by Janet Skeslien Charles. BCIAB #60  

Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet seems to have the perfect life with her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into the city, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.
 
Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings, and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them.