It's in the Bag! Book Club Kit Titles:

  • The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
    It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife.

  • The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
    On the eve of his death, a faithful canine Enzo takes stock of his life while recalling the sacrifices, unexpected losses, and personal struggles of his would-be race-car driver human, Denny, in the latter's efforts to retain custody of his daughter.

  • Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
    While Miles pursues elusive letters and clues in a perpetual search for his missing twin, Ryan struggles with the discovery that he is adopted, and Lucy finds her daring escape from her hometown posing unexpectedly dangerous consequences. By a National Book Award-nominated author.

  • The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
    Seventeen years after fleeing the Ethiopian revolution, Sepha Stephanos runs a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where he reflects on his past and the differences between his prospects and the life he imagined.

  • Benny & Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti
    Shrimp--an intelligent, tidy, widowed librarian--meets Benny--a gentle, overworked milk farmer who fears becoming the village's Old Bachelor--prompting an unlikely love that should not be as complicated as it seems.

  • The Birth House by Ami McKay
    A first daughter in five generations of her early twentieth century Nova Scotia family, Dora Rare becomes an apprentice to a gifted Acadian midwife and storyteller before their home is threatened by the arrival of a brash medical doctor and his promises about sterile and painless births.

  • City of Thieves by David Benioff
    Documenting his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he tried to secure pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake.

  • Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
    Epic novel of post-revolutionary Russia focuses on the torments and dreams of a doctor-poet who attempts to avoid the struggles of his turbulent era.

  • Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
    This book traces the author's decision to quit her job and travel the world for a year after suffering a midlife crisis and divorce, a journey that took her to three places in her quest to explore her own nature and learn the art of spiritual balance.

  • The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
    Based on the author's National Magazine Award for Fiction-winning short story titled "The Foaling Season," the tale of rancher's daughter Alice Winston finds her helping to support the family business by boarding the horses of rich neighbors and leaving behind the innocence of her youth.

  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
    In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton finds inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey, who tells her about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation.

  • Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
    Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a multilayered novel about family, the power of loss and love, the repercussions of war, old secrets and the bonds that unite and sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family--Lark, her brother Termite, their mother Lola, their aunt Nonie and Termite's soldier father, Robert Leavitt.

  • Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
    In 1974 Manhattan, a radical young Irish monk struggles with personal demons while making his home among Bronx prostitutes, a group of mothers shares grief over their lost Vietnam soldier sons, and a young grandmother attempts to prove her worth.

  • Little Bee by Chris Cleave
    From the author of the international bestseller Incendiary comes a haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers---one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.

  • Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan
    Fact and fiction blend in a historical novel that chronicles the relationship between seminal architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, from their meeting, when they were each married to another, to the clandestine affair that shocked Chicago society.

  • Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
    Dreaming of far-off lands away from her loving 1890s Honolulu home, seven-year-old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her reentry into the world.

  • Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
    In 1946, Laura McAllan tries to adjust after moving with her husband and two children to an isolated cotton farm in the Mississipi Delta.

  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
    A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.

  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
    The larger-than-life world of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher and unofficial town crier in a small coastal town in Maine, is revealed in a series of luminous stories that explore her diverse roles in many lives, including a lounge singer haunted by a past love, a young man grieving over his lost mother, her stoic husband, and her own resentful son.

  • Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
    After a meeting with his only neighbor, sixty-seven-year-old Trond is forced to reflect upon a long-ago incident that marks the beginning of a series of losses for Trond and his childhood friend, Jon.

  • Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas
    Drawn to the newly married seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, who has moved to their small mountain Colorado town to escape the ravages of the Great Depression, octogenarian Hennie Comfort forges a friendship with the young woman based on shared hardships and secrets.

  • Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
    A classic novel of romantic suspense finds the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter entering the home of her mysterious and enigmatic new husband and learning the story of the house's first mistress, to whom the sinister housekeeper is unnaturally devoted.

  • Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay
    On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid.

  • South of Broad by Pat Conroy
    The author offers a sprawling tale set mostly in Charleston, South Carolina, where, after his brother's suicide, Leopold Bloom King struggles along with the rest of his family until he begins to gather an intimate circle of friends, whose ties endure for two decades until a final, unexpected test of friendship rears its ugly head in San Francisco.

  • The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
    When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.

  • Tinkers by Paul Harding
    An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a young girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.

  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
    A new edition of the classic novel, featuring a new foreword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen, follows young Francie Nolan, who is armed with her idealism and determination, as she struggles to escape from the poverty of life in a Brooklyn tenement during the early 1900s.

  • The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
    Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent Rose and her brother, Morris, endeavor to educate the widower's sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project.

  • The Widow's War by Sally Gunning
    When Lyddie Berry's husband is lost in a whaling disaster, she becomes the dependent of her nearest male relative, her ruthless son-in-law, who tries to take everything she and her husband had worked for, but as Lyddie's social and legal defiance separate her from friends and family she discovers a deeper sense of self and a potential new love.