Our Book Club usually meets on the third Tuesday of the month. Relax with a good book — and then join us for a lively and engaging discussion. Everyone is welcome to participate, whether you enjoyed the book or not, and even if you haven’t finished it.
Multiple copies of our selections are usually available at the Princeton Public Library on the “Book Club” shelves. Or you can purchase the book from Amazon.
To request more information, please click here
On Tuesday, July 21, at 7:30 pm we’ll meet via Zoom to discuss:
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue by Julie Satow
“Julie Satow has written a group biography of the department-store doyennes who ran the show — and these places in their heyday really were a form of theater…She nimbly braids together the stories of Hortense Odlum of Bonwit, which moved locations but basically disappeared by 2000; Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel, shuttered since 2019; and Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, which after slow decline was delivered a definitive death blow by the pandemic…Each might not have sustained a biography of her own…Considered in aggregate, they are a force. You can imagine them milling around the great perfume counter in the sky.” (New York Times)
Tuesday, August 18, at 7:30 pm
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
“The Whalebone Theatre,” a generous slab of historical fiction cut from the same crumbling stone as Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s “The Cazalet Chronicles,” is a big hit in England. Centered on imperiled aristocracy during the well-trod period of 1919-45, it’s also been compared (inevitably, and to Quinn’s dismay) to “Downton Abbey,” Chilcombe being almost a character in its own right….Quinn is an energetic narrative seamstress. Into her giant tapestry she stitches in letters, lists, scrapbook entries, dramatic dialogue… and the occasional piece of concrete poetry. All of this is lovely and unforced. (New York Times)
Tuesday, September 15, at 7:30 pm
Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz
“Horowitz’s diabolically clever Marble Hall Murders begins as Susan Ryeland, a British book editor, starts reading the newest installment in a crime series featuring a Poirot-like detective named Atticus Pünd. The book looks promising — the plot is enticing, the writing sharp, the detective as canny as ever. But Susan soon realizes that what she’s reading isn’t “just a cheerful murder mystery bringing back a much-loved character,” as she puts it, but rather a “bubbling cauldron” of hatred, infidelity, greed and murder drawn from the troubled past of the writer, Eliot Crace. That’s only the beginning of Horowitz’s multilevel romp, which serves up an elegant plot while lampooning writers, publishers, murderers, rich people and golden-age mystery stories.” (New York Times)
To RSVP, and for more details, email louise@sandsmith.com
If you’d like your name removed from our email list, please let me know, but please remember that all other Book Club business should be sent to Louise.
Be safe! Stay well!
Regards,
– Donna
Alan Hlad’s The Book Spy
Julie Satow’s When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
Weina Dai Randel’s The Last Rose of Shanghai
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s
The Wolf Hunt
Jodi Picoult’s By Any Other Name
Daniel Silva’s A Death in Cornwall
B.A. Shapiro’s Metropolis
Anthony Horowitz’s Moonflower Murders
Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot
Lisa Scottoline’s Eternal
B.A. Shapiro’s The Collector’s Apprentice
David Biro’s This Magnificent Dappled Sea
Daniel Silva’s The Collector
Margalit Fox’s The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum
James McBride’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller
Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale
Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living
Daniel Silva’s The Other Woman
Talia Carner’s The Third Daughter
Dara Horn’s In the Image
Goldie Goldblum’s On Division
Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink
Dani Shapiro’s The Inheritance
Isabella Hamad’s The Parisian
Evie Grossman’s Hidden in Berlin: A Holocaust Memoir
Colum McCann’s Apeirogon
Daniel Silva’s The Order