Monthly book club meetings are held at 6:30 pm on the last Wednesday of the month.
Meet us in the Upstairs Conference Room or on Zoom. New members are always welcome!
Monthly book selections are listed below. The library pre-orders multiple physical copies from the catalog so that copies of the books are available for checkout one month prior to each meeting; simply ask for a copy at the circulation desk. Click each link below to see other ways to borrow the books (i.e. Audiobook, eBook, eAudiobook, Large Print, Kindle, etc.)
October 29
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is perhaps the crowning achievement of Shirley Jackson’s brilliant career: a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the dramatic struggle that ensues when an unexpected visitor interrupts their unusual way of life.
November 19
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide.
A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.
Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.
December 17
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
In October 1843, Charles Dickens, heavily in debt and obligated to his publisher, began work on a book to help supplement his family’s meager income. That volume, A Christmas Carol, has long since become one of the most beloved stories in the English language. As much a part of the holiday season as holly, mistletoe, and evergreen wreaths, this perennial favorite continues to delight new readers and rekindle thoughts of charity and goodwill. With its characters exhibiting many qualities as well as failures often ascribed to Dickens himself, the imaginative and entertaining tale relates Ebenezer Scrooge’s eerie encounters with a series of spectral visitors. Journeying with them through Christmases past, present, and future, he is ultimately transformed from an arrogant, obstinate, and insensitive miser to a generous, warmhearted, and caring human being.
January 28
The Wager by David Grann
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z, a mesmerizing story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death – for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers.
February 25
RWU Collaboration
To be determined. Check back soon!
March 25
The Appeal by Janice Hallett
Welcome to Lockwood, proud home of The Fairway Players, who, under the creative control of Martin Hayward, the owner of the local country club, are putting on a production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” The star, as always: Martin’s wife, Helen, the only person in the troupe with any real acting talent. But this is not a production like any other: just as rehearsals get under way, tragedy strikes when Poppy Reswick, Martin and Helen’s beloved granddaughter, is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. An experimental treatment is available from the US – at a massive cost. The Players and the entire town rally in order to raise the 250,000 pounds needed to give Poppy a chance at survival.
Not everybody is convinced that the experimental treatment is all it’s cracked up to be, however. First among the doubters is Sam Greenwood, who has only recently moved to Lockwood with her husband, Kel, after spending several years as an NGO worker in Sub-Saharan Africa. Are her suspicions justified? Or does she merely have an axe to grind with the doctor who’s looking after Poppy? The tension within the community is palpable, and on the night of the Players’ dress rehearsal, things come to a head. The next day, a dead body is found, and soon afterwards, an arrest is made. In the run-up to the trial, two law students find themselves sifting through the evidence in the form of e-mails, texts, and letters, trying to make sense of it all and unmask the real killer…
April 29
Read Across Rhode Island (RARI) selection 2026
To be determined. Check back soon!
May 27
Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
When we throw things “away,” what does that actually mean? Where does it go, and who deals with it when it gets there? In Wasteland, award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on an eye-opening journey through the global waste industry. From the mountainous landfills of New Delhi to Britain’s overflowing sewers, from hollowed-out mining towns in the USA to Ghana’s flooded second-hand markets, we meet the people on the frontline of our waste crisis – both those being exploited, and those determined to make a difference. On the way, we discover the corporate greenwashing that started the recycling movement; the dark truth behind our second-hand donations; and come face to face with the 10,000-year legacy of our nuclear waste.
Both shocking and hopeful, Wasteland is the timely and ultimately human story at the heart of an urgent global issue.
Join us for our monthly book club. New members are always welcome! Books are available for checkout at the library.
All meetings are held at 6:30 pm on the last Wednesday of the month unless otherwise noted. Registration is required.
The adult book club is funded through the generosity of the Friends of the Rogers Free Library Community Grant Program.