Books with Friends

Books with Friends Book Group

(Ages 18+, new members welcome)

*Please scroll to the bottom for a list of previous book club picks

Date: November 26th, 2024

Time: 6 PM

Location: Meeting Room (1st Floor)

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan

A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers.

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.

Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

Previous Picks

2015

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows

Above by Isla Morely

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam

House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

2016

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian

Cherokee Rose by Tiya Miles

Host by Robin Cook

Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Pheaedra Patrick

2017

Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Treachery at Lancaster Gate by Anne Perry

The Hundred Lies of Lizzy Lovett by Chelsea Sedotti

Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

Secret Cord by Geraldine Brooks

Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

2018

Into the Magic Shop by James R. Doty

The Spy by Paulo Coelho

House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers

Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Ashes in the Wind by Kathleen Woodiwiss

Behind Closed Doors by B. H. Paris

Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

2019

Hell Fire Club by Jake Tapper

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Island of the Sea Women by Lisa See

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

The Library Book by Susan Orlean 

2020

Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict

Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg

Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett

2021

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford

An Appeal to the World by Dalai Lama

Darwin Affair by Tim Mason

Life Intercepted by Charles Martin

One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney

Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson

2022

Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

2023

Any book from the Choose to Read Ohio Book List for 2023 & 2024

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

The First Husband by Laura Dave

Unknown Beloved by Amy Harmon

Choice of one or all: Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman, Anthem by Deborah Wiles, Kent State by Deborah Wiles, and/or Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf

The Devil May Dance by Jake Tapper

2024

The Spectacular by Fiona Davis

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

The Coworker by Freida McFadden

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan