Book Club Bash Choices: March 2017

Fiction

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Harvest Books $15.95). Originally written in 1946, this classic was chosen as one of Time Magazine's 100 best novels since 1923. Set in the 30s, this story is filled with dramatic tension, great emotion and poetic imagery. (Sandra)

Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson (Random House $16). Johnson was well-deserving of the National Book Award for Fiction with this collection of stories that balances tough subject matter with exquisite writing. (Mamie)

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett (Back Bay Books $15.99). Haslett takes a searing look at the way mental illness devastates a family. (Mamie)

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman (Scribner Book Company $17). A newly married couple live on a remote Australian island. Despite their love, they cannot find true happiness, until one day a rowboat carrying a baby washes up on the beach of Janus Rock. (Lisa)

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (Random House $17). Major Ernest Pettigrew, longtime resident of Edgecombe St. Mary, England, copes with his brother's death and confronts his own declining health. (Belinda)

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (Vintage $16.95). A beautifully written Japanese classic about a proud Osaka family in decline during the years immediately before World War II. (Kent)

Mikhail and Margarita by Julie Lekstrom Himes (Europa Editions $18). This is a wonderful historical novel about the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, imagining his life and the inspiration for his masterpiece The Master and Margarita. (Tony)

Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff (Hachette Books $16). The story of a doctoral student who returns home for the summer, possibly pregnant with her married professor's baby, on the same day a dead monster surfaces from the local lake. (Ceewin)

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (Grand Central Publishing $15). Butler builds a world not too far removed from our own, where the institutions keeping us civilized have virtually collapsed. Moving and powerful. (Ceewin)

Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan (Restless Books $17.00). Wonderfully inventive writing about foreign workers (Indian, Pakistani, Malaysian, etc.) in the United Arab Emirates. It employs absurdity or magical realism. (Tony)

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell (Vintage Books $16.95, PB due May 2017). Readers are taken through many storylines and locales as they learn about Daniel and Claudette, two sympathetic people haunted by past mistakes. Set mainly in Ireland, this improbable love story continues to surprise readers as the past becomes known. (Sandra)

The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder (W. W. Norton and Company $15.95). A finalist for the National Book Award, this novel is a funny and poignant look into the male psyche. (Tony)
 

Young Adult Literature

Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers $17.99, PB $9.99 due April 2017). Teenager Hanneke is a small part of the Dutch resistance in 1943, procuring and delivering black market items for her neighbors in Amsterdam. An emotional depiction of everyday life under Hitler's regime. (Ashley)

Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom (Poppy Books $9.99). High school student Parker Grant is blind, fiercely independent, grieving for her dad, and conflicted about her feelings for Scott, the boy she once loved who has reentered her life. One of the best endings I've ever read. (Ashley)

Nonfiction

Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News by A. Brad Schwartz (Hill and Wang $17). Author Brad Schwartz presents a well-researched analysis of the story behind Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast adaptation of the H.G. Wells science fiction classic The War of the Worlds. (Belinda)

Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels (Picador $17, due March 14). In the aftermath of the Soviet Union, what is Russia? In this essential portrait of Russia's silent majority, Garrels explains why Putin commands the loyalty of so many, even those who decry the abuses of power. (Kent)

Poetry

Milk and Honey by Rapi Kaur (Andrews McMeel Publishing $14.99). Milk and Honey is a collection of poems and drawings that explore themes of love, loss, heartbreak, and sexual abuse. A daring look at what young women face in the world today. (Lisa)