Check out our book club picks for July! Hand-picked by our experts, these books are sure to please at your next book club meeting.Join the discussion online in the Books-A-Million Book Club Facebook Group!
FICTION PICK
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Beach House Reunion
by Mary Alice Monroe
Cara Rutledge returns to her Southern home on the idyllic Isle of Palms, comforting in its familiarity but rife with painful memories. Through reconnecting with family, friends, and the rhythms of the lowcountry, Cara opens herself to the possibility of new love, career, and hope. Meanwhile, her niece Linnea, a recent college graduate with an uncertain future, leaves her historic home in Charleston and heads to her aunt's beach house. On the island, she is free to join the turtle team, learn to surf, and fall in love. Remembering the lessons of her beloved grandmother, Lovie, the original "turtle lady," Linnea finds the courage she needs to break from tradition. In this heartwarming novel, three generations of the Rutledge family gather together to find the strength, love, and commitment to break destructive family patterns and forge new bonds that will endure long beyond one summer reunion.
LITERARY PICK
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Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
NON-FICTION PICK
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The Stranger in the Woods
by Michael Finkel
In 1986, twenty-year-old Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the woods. He would not have a conversation with another person for the next twenty-seven years. Journalist Michael Finkel shows how Knight lived in a tent in a secluded encampment, developing ingenious ways to store provisions and stave off frostbite during the winters. He stealthily broke into nearby cottages for food, books, and supplies, taking only what he needed but sowing unease in the community. Since returning to the world, he has faced unique challenges—and compelled us to reexamine our assumptions about what makes a good life.
FAITHPOINT PICK
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How the Light Gets in
by Jolina Petersheim
When Ruth Neufeld's husband and father-in-law are killed working for a relief organization overseas, she travels to Wisconsin with her young daughters and mother-in-law Mabel to bury her husband. She hopes the Mennonite community will be a quiet place to grieve and piece together the next steps. Ruth and her family are welcomed by Elam, her husband's cousin, who invites them to stay at his cranberry farm through the harvest. Sifting through fields of berries and memories of a marriage that was broken long before her husband died, Ruth finds solace in the beauty of the land. She also encounters the possibility of new love with Elam, who awakens dreams she thought she’d lost forever.
YA PICK
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The Hazel Wood
by Melissa Albert
Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away—by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.” Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But to retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began.
KIDS PICK
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Aru Shah and the End of Time
by Roshani Chokshi
Best-selling author Rick Riordan introduces this adventure by Roshani Chokshi about twelve-year-old Aru Shah, who has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. While her classmates are jetting off to family vacations in exotic locales, she'll be spending her autumn break at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, waiting for her mom to return from her latest archeological trip. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, traveling to Paris, and having a chauffeur? One day, three schoolmates show up at Aru's doorstep to catch her in a lie. They don't believe her claim that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, and they dare Aru to prove it. But lighting the lamp has dire consequences.
