Eagle Valley Library District

Welcome to "It's in the Bag!" Book Club Kits

Are you a member of a book club looking for an easier way to borrow copies of the books you discuss? Have you always wanted to start your own book club, but lacked the time necessary to gather materials? Look no further! Thanks to a generous donation from the Friends of the Eagle Valley Library District, we are happy to announce a new service for local book clubs called It’s In The Bag! Book Club Kits.

Each book club kit consists of ten copies of a single title and a notebook filled with information designed to stimulate discussion. Author interviews and biographical information, book reviews, and discussion questions are all contained in a sturdy canvas bag. Just grab it and go! It’s in the bag!

In order to use this new service, we request that book clubs register with Adult Services Librarian, Amy Gornikiewicz, either in person at the Avon Public Library or by phone at 949-6797 and she will help you check out a kit. Each club must have at least one member with a valid Eagle Valley Library District card. That person will be responsible for picking up the kit, checking it out on a library card, distributing the books to club members, and returning the kit with all its contents to the library. Kits are checked out for six weeks and can be reserved in advance. Kits can be couriered for pick-up at any Eagle Valley Library District library. If your group happens to lose a book, we ask that you replace it with another copy, either new or gently used.

You can help us build our Book Club Discussion Kits collection by donating copies of books that your group has read. This is will be a great way for area groups to share not only titles of what they’ve read and enjoyed, but the books themselves. Drop off copies of your book discussion books at any EVLD location. Be sure to mention they are for the Book Club Kits.

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

The Amateur Marriage: A Novel by Anne Tyler
Marrying quickly during World War II after falling in love at first sight, a mismatched couple discovers that their very different personalities and approaches to life are taking a toll on their lives, their relationship, and their family, in a compelling novel spanning three generations.
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
The classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the lives and fortunes of four generations of one family as they attempt to build a life for themselves in the American West.
Astrid & Veronica by Linda Olsson
A lyrical study of friendship, love, and loss chronicles the evolving relationship between Veronika, a young New Zealand writer struggling with a recent tragedy and trying to finish her novel, and Astrid, an older, reclusive neighbor who offers comfort in the form of companionship and home-cooked meals, in a debut novel set against the backdrop of small-town Sweden.
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.
Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Private detective Jackson Brodie finds his own need for resolution sparked by three investigations including those of two sisters who discover a shocking clue to the disappearance of their third sister thirty years earlier, a lawyer whose life is turned upside-down when his daughter joins the firm, and a woman whose past mistakes and demanding family life culminate in a violent escape.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In a timeless story of justice, morality, and redemption, an impoverished Russian student murders a miserly landlady, a crime that has severe repercussions on his life and his family as he battles his conscience.
The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
When her fiancâe Mike is left paralyzed following a tragic accident, Carrie Bell begins to question her familiar world, from her everyday life in Wisconsin to her relationships, as she sets out to rediscover her own identity.
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 Echo Maker by Richard Powers
Twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter, suffering from a rare brain disorder that causes him to believe his sister to be an impostor, endeavors to discover the cause of the motor vehicle accident that resulted in his head injury.
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
Three friends on the verge of their thirties--beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite; Danielle, a quiet TV producer; and Julius, a freelance writer--make their way through New York City, until Marina's idealistic cousin, Bootie, arrives to complicate their lives.
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
A successful caterer in Bascomb, North Carolina, Claire has always remained tied to the long and magical legacy of the Waverly family, until her peaceful life is transformed by Tyler Hughes, an art teacher and new next-door neighbor, and by the return of her prodigal sister, Sydney, who has arrived with her five-year-old daughter, Bay.
The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
Bookish Rose Darlen, one of the world's oldest living craniopagus conjoined twins, at the approach of her thirtieth birthday, attempts to pen her autobiography while remembering the joys and challenges of her life with sister Ruby.
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.
History of Love by Nicole Krauss Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl, named for one of the book's characters, seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
Love Walked In by Marisa De los Santos
Harboring romantic notions about golden-age Hollywood film stars, thirty-one-year-old Philadelphia café manager Cornelia Brown embarks on a too-good-to-be-true relationship with the debonair Martin Grace, while across town, an eleven-year-old abandoned girl seeks out her estranged father.
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.
March by Geraldine Brooks
In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences.
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.
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.
Saturday by Ian McEwan
A successful, happily married neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne is drawn into a confrontation with Baxter, a small-time thug, following a minor motor vehicle accident on the way to his regular squash game, an encounter that has savage consequences when Baxter, believing that the doctor has humiliated him, visits the Perowne home that evening during a family reunion.
Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
On an ill-fated art expedition, eleven Americans find themselves deep in the Burmese jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting a leader and the mystical book of wisdom that will protect them from the Myanmar military regime.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
An evocative story of friendship set against the backdrop of a nineteenth-century China in which women suffered from foot binding, isolation, and illiteracy follows an elderly woman and her companion as they communicate their hopes, dreams, joys, and tragedies through a unique secret language.
Straight Man by Richard Russo
Chronicles a singularly eventful week in the life of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., a once-promising novelist and now a middle-aged chairman of a university English department in hilarious disarrary.
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.
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.
Water for Elephants by Sara Greun
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton
After being left brain damaged, with the mind of a seven year old, following a bicycle accident, Madeline, Aaron Maciver's beautiful young wife, is cared for by Aaron and his second wife along with two children of their own, in an insightful novel, narrated by Aaron's son Mac, that follows the Maciver family through four decades.
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.
Zorro by Isabel Allende
Diego de la Vega, the son of an aristocratic Spanish landowner and a Shoshone mother, returns to California from school in Spain to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for the weak and helpless.