In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.

Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community – heaven and earth – that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

For discussion at the December 2025 (Tuesday, the 16th) meeting of the book club.  To place a hold on this book click here and then click the green “place hold” button on the right side of the screen.  You will then be directed to enter your library card barcode and PIN (which is your birthdate in SIX DIGITS i.e. if your birthdate were September 6th, 1975 your PIN would be 090675).

“From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “cult literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature”–

For discussion at the November 2025 meeting (Tuesday, the 18th) of the book club.  To place a hold on this book click here and then click the green “place hold” button on the right side of the screen.  You will then be directed to enter your library card barcode and PIN (which is your birthdate in SIX DIGITS i.e. if your birthdate were September 6th, 1975 your PIN would be 090675)

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. How do they know? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like a superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as ‘The Death Lady’. Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party. If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

For discussion at the October 2025 meeting (Tuesday, the 21st) of the book club.  To place a hold on this book click here and then click the green “place hold” button on the right side of the screen.  You will then be directed to enter your library card barcode and PIN (which is your birthdate in SIX DIGITS i.e. if your birthdate were September 6th, 1975 your PIN would be 090675)

“Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can’t afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather’s fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise.

Then with the international Tchaikovsky Competition-the Olympics of classical music-fast approaching, his prized family heirloom is stolen. Ray is determined to get it back. But now his family and the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray’s great-grandfather are each claiming that the violin belongs to them. With the odds stacked against him and the pressure mounting, will Ray ever see his beloved violin again?”–

For discussion at the September 2025 meeting of the book club.  To place a hold on this book click here and then click the green “place hold” button on the right side of the screen.  You will then be directed to enter your library card barcode and PIN (which is your birthdate in SIX DIGITS i.e. if your birthdate were September 6th, 1975 your PIN would be 090675).

“The New York Times bestselling author of the modern classic In Five Years returns with a moving and unforgettable exploration of the powerful bond between mother and daughter set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast. “When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. To make matters worse, the mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano.

Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the beautiful Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. And then Carol appears for real-in the flesh, healthy and sun-tanned… and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how. But over the course of her time in Italy, Katy gets to know Carol in this new form, and soon she must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue. One Italian Summer is Rebecca Serle’s next great love story, a transcendent novel about how we move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us”–

For discussion at the August 2025 meeting of the book club.  To place a hold on this book click here and then click the green “place hold” button on the right side of the screen.  You will then be directed to enter your library card barcode and PIN (which is your birthdate in SIX DIGITS i.e. if your birthdate were September 6th, 1975 your PIN would be 090675).

Don Tillman, a professor of genetics, sets up a project designed to find him the perfect wife, starting with a questionnaire that has to be adjusted a little as he goes along. Then he meets Rosie, who is everything he’s not looking for in a wife, but she ends up his friend as he helps her try and find her biological father.

For discussion at the September 2014 meeting of the book club.  To place a hold on this book click here and then click the green “place hold” button on the right side of the screen.  You will then be directed to enter your library card barcode and PIN (which is your birthdate in SIX DIGITS i.e. if your birthdate were September 6th, 1975 your PIN would be 090675)