| Meeting Dates/Venue |
Title/Author |
Genre/Pages |
Blurbs |
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May 23, 2025
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
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Mystery/Gothic/Romance
449 pages
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From Goodreads:
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.
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April 25, 2025
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
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Historical Fiction/Mystery
432 pages
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From Goodreads:
Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?
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March 21, 2025
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes
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Fiction/Romance
438 pages
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From Goodreads:
Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope--she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in.
That’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag--she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself.
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February 21, 2025
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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The Kissing Bug by Daisy Hernandez
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Memoir/308 pages
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This Book Club meeting will be in addition to our participation in the Keynote Event with author Daisy Hernández on February 13th at 6:30 pm and a UMWC hosted event to be publicized in January.
Free copies of the book are available at the Richter Library’s Access Services desk. https://www.library.miami.edu/one-book/index.html
From the One Book One U webpage:
A top 10 best nonfiction book of 2021 – Time Magazine and selected for the National Book Foundation’s Science & Literature. Hernández’s own family story inspired the book. After watching her aunt endure a painful yet unnamed disease for decades, Daisy spent seven years researching and uncovering the facts of the invisible Chagas disease.
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January 24, 2025
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
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Fiction/Romance
289 pages
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From Goodreads:
In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.
When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career.
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November 15, 2024
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle
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Fiction/Romance
336 pages
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From Goodreads:
Still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, Jess is about to do the hardest thing she's ever done: empty her childhood home so that it can be sold. As she sorts through a lifetime of memories, everything comes to a halt when she comes across something she just can’t part with: an old set of encyclopedias. To the world, the books are outdated and ready to be recycled. To Jess, they represent love and the future that her mother always wanted her to have.
In the process of finding the books a new home, Jess discovers an unusual archive of letters, photographs, and curious housed in a warehouse and known as the Museum of Ordinary People. Irresistibly drawn, she becomes the museum's unofficial custodian, along with the warehouse’s mysterious owner. As they delve into the history of objects in their care, they not only unravel heart-stirring stories that span generations and continents, but also unearth long-buried secrets that lie closer to home.
Inspired by an abandoned box of mementos, The Museum of Ordinary People is a poignant novel about memory and loss, the things we leave behind, and the future we create for ourselves.
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October 18, 2024
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
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Fiction
314 pages
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From Goodreads:
One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.”
That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go…
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.
Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways—and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.
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September 20, 2024
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
Tip: This is a popular book! We suggest request your copy from the library as soon as possible. Wait for the audibook is now 7 weeks and eBook 8 weeks (July 11).
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The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl
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Historical Fiction/
Food/Travel/Romance, 288 pages
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From Goodreads:
Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean... Oysters, she thought, where have they been all my life?
When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual a one-way plane ticket and a note reading Go to Paris . But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.
Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and, for the first time in her life, Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress and together they embark on an adventure.
Her first iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters, and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces her to a veritable who’s who of the 1980s Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, Stella begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.
As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.
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August 23, 2024
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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Where'd You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple
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Fiction/Humor/Mystery
330 pages
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From Goodreads:
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.
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July 19, 2024
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
Richter Library, first floor, room 102B Learning Commons Flexible Program Space
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
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Mystery/Thriller
279 pages
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From Goodreads:
As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.
Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album––and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.
As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred––and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.
Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge––and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.
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June 14, 2024
Hybrid meeting
In-person:
230 Ashe Administration Building, Coral Gables Campus
Zoom:
Zoom link will be provided to Listserv members prior to the meeting.
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The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
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Mystery/Thriller
292 pages
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From Goodreads:
In every person's story, there is something to hide...
The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.
Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.
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| Check our Reading Archive for book lists from the last two years |
