Book Group Recommendations

- OCTOBER IS NATIONAL READING GROUP MONTH -
Celebrate the joy of shared reading!

In celebration of National Reading Group Month, our in-store newsletter is dedicated to book groups, with Bookshop's staff passionately vying to convince you their favorites should be your next reads.

For more Book Group related materials and information vist our Book Groups Section of our website or drop by and check out our Book Group Wall in the store.

$16.99
ISBN-13: 9780316001823
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Back Bay Books, 9/2007
Between a gristly murder and the story of its victim looking down from an unconventional heaven, this book still haunts me despite the fact that I read it seven years ago. Sebold's descriptions of Susie's dreamlike afterlife will stick with you long after you read the last page. This novel is a testament to the beauty that writing can evoke, and it would be impossible to find a reader who it could not move. –Kate

$18.00
ISBN-13: 9780865475106
Availability: Usually ships from warehouse in 1 - 5 days
Published: North Point Press, 10/1997
This might be subtitled “Everything you want to know about Custer’s Last Stand and the kitchen sink too.” Hefty historical tomes don’t usually appeal to me, but the peculiar virtue of this book is that once you surrender to Connell’s discursive style, you find yourself very viscerally on the scene of that tragic day and see it happen through eyes on all sides.  –Seana

$18.00
ISBN-13: 9780618127498
Availability: Usually ships from warehouse in 1 - 5 days
Published: Mariner Books, 8/2001
In 1936, on a writing assignment for Fortune magazine, two young men went into the deep South and chronicled the lives of three sharecropper families. In the midst of such poverty, Agee wrote some of the most piercingly gorgeous prose American letters has ever seen. Evans photographed it, and the stark beauty they discovered does not glamorize the hardship they encountered—it makes it luminous. –Seana

The Handmaid's Tale (Paperback)

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780385490818
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Anchor, 3/1998
If your book group craves fiction with a great story and perceptive social critique, you can do no better than The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood tells us of a world where misogyny has gone to the extreme: a police state bent on reinforcing singular roles for women. As the novel spirals around how society snapped overnight into an oppressive patriarchal regime, Atwood alerts us to the pieces of our world that could make this book less fiction than reality. –Kate

$13.99
ISBN-13: 9780061711374
Availability: Usually ships from warehouse in 1 - 5 days
Published: Harper Perennial, 8/2009
This is the classic story of good versus evil set in the rock and roll world of Queens!  Our hero is Checker, the talented and charismatic drummer for the Derailleurs, who holds the band together.  You should not overlook this cult classic, as it has finally been reprinted for the masses to enjoy.  Like the rest of her books, Shriver's text is beautifully and thoughtfully written, allowing people of all ages to feel young and hip again. –Saraphine 

$14.95
ISBN-13: 9781400078431
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 2/2007
It took me a while to get to this memoir, quite frankly. It wasn’t the fact that it records the year after Didion loses her husband to a heart attack, while her daughter is gravely ill in the hospital, though that might have been enough. I’d been warned off because some found it too distanced and clinical in its approach. Although this is understandable, I found Didion’s grief to be quite transparent despite her style. Book groups may find it interesting to discuss how the style strikes each of its members.  –Seana

$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780060929510
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper Paperbacks, 10/1998
Modoc is one of the most amazing true animal stories ever told. Raised together in a small German circus town, a boy and an elephant form a bond that will last their entire lives. Modoc is a captivating story of loyalty, friendship, and high adventure. If you aren’t amazed by, or in love with, elephants already, you will be by the time you finish this book. Read it out loud to the entire family. It’s a true story, and a great movie waiting to happen. –Clytia

A Long Way Down (Paperback)

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781594481932
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Riverhead Trade, 5/2006
Why live? This book focuses on that question. On New Year’s Eve, four people find themselves atop a building that is one of London’s top suicide spots. Instead of jumping, they end up forming an unlikely alliance. Hornby’s great gift is that in clear and simple prose, he can write a novel that is by turns funny, sad, and in the end, very wise. And if you like Nick Hornby, don’t miss his new novel, Juliet, Naked. –Seana

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