The Manchester City Library is pleased to offer to our patrons two book clubs. Each club meets once per month.
Do you like talking about books as much as you enjoy reading them? Join our Wednesday Evening Book Club! Selections are chosen by the group, and include fiction, nonfiction and biography. We try to offer titles that are available in a wide variety of formats (large print, audiobook on CD, ebook, etc.) whenever possible. You can borrow a print copy of the current selection by going to the circulation desk at the main library. Call 603-624-6550 x 7620 for more information. Meeting dates and times are subject to change.
Click here to jump to the Brown Bag Book Club list!
Wednesday Evening Book Club: Wednesdays @ 6:30 PM in the Winchell Room and via ZOOM. Email Steve Viggiano for an invitation to join the meeting.
September 10, 2025
Peters, Amanda. The Berry Pickers. Fiction
July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries; weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie vanishes mysteriously, last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe. Joe will remain deeply affected by his sister's disappearance for years to come.
October 8, 2025
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. Fiction
Apocalypse grips the earth; wildlife has disappeared; and starvation prevails. Amidst this bleak backdrop, a man and his young son slowly make their way toward the coast. Avoiding roves of marauding cannibals and fighting off starvation, they gain hope and stamina in knowing they are some of the remaining few virtuous people.
November 12, 2025
Grissom, Kathleen. Crow Mary. Fiction
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.
December 10, 2025
Christie, Agatha. And Then THere Were None. Fiction
Ten houseguests, trapped on an isolated island, are the prey of a diabolical killer. A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion: Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine--When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale?
January 14, 2026
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Nonfiction
Recounts the story of the 1820 wreck of the whaleship Essex, which inspired Melville's classic Moby-Dick, and describes its doomed crew's ninety-day attempt to survive whale attacks and the elements on three tiny lifeboats.
February 11, 2026
Allende, Isabel. The Wind Knows My Name. Fiction
Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children: five-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and seven-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S. where she's separated from her mother.
March 11, 2026
Desmond, Matthew. Poverty, by America Nonfiction
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor.
April 9, 2025
Bohjalian, Chris. The Red Lotus. Fiction
Falling in love with a wounded former patient and accompanying him on a cycling trip to Vietnam, an emergency-room doctor uncovers a bizarre series of deceptions that culminate in her boyfriend's unexplained disappearance.
May 13, 2026
Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake. Fiction
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage, and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
June 10, 2026
Landau, Deb Miller. A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder ofLita McClinton. Nonfiction
The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shockwaves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Georgia like few other crimes before it. The neighborhood was simply not the kind of place where women were gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight.
The Brown Bag Book Club meets on the last Tuesday of each month from 12:15-1:30.
Call David Basora at 603-624-6550 Ext. 7643 for more information on how to participate.
This group meets in the Hunt Room.
September 22, 2024
Makkai, Rebecca. I Have Some Questions for You. 2023, 438 p. Fiction
When film professor Bodie Kane is asked to teach at her old NH boarding school, she can't help but return to the place of her roommate's tragic murder. A man was convicted, but Bodie finds herself wondering if she knew more about the case than she thought. Could a killer still be on the loose?
October 29, 2024
Clark, Avree Kelly. Malice Aforethought: A True Story of the Shocking Double Crime that Horrified Nineteenth-Century New England. 2023, 404 p. Fiction
In 1874, a schoolteacher is discovered mutilated in the woods in the village of St. Albans, Vermont. A year later, news arrives of a similar crime committed in peaceful Pembroke, New Hampshire. Author Avree Kelly Clark will attend to discuss her theory of the events that occurred, with the group.
November 26, 2024
Garmus, Bonnie. Lessons in Chemistry. 2022, 390 p. Fiction
Elizabeth Zott is a gifted research chemist, absurdly self-assured and immune to social convention in 1960s California where women aren't taken seriously in science. Elizabeth's career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a TV cooking show. Cooking is chemistry after all!
December 30, 2024 (Monday)
Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake. 2023, 309 p. Fiction
This is a novel about love, family, and growing up. It explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.
January 28, 2025
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. 1929, 330 p. Fiction
The story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield, this gripping, semi-autobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.
February 25, 2025
Goolrick, Robert. A Reliable Wife. 2009, 291 p. Fiction
Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman with a troubled past who lives in a remote nineteenth-century Wisconsin town, has advertised for a reliable wife. His ad is answered by Catherine Land, a woman who makes every effort to hide her own dark secrets.
March 25, 2025
Clark, Julie. The Last Flight. 2020, 311 p. Fiction
Two women, distraught by their current lives and unknown to each other, swap tickets in an airport bar. Secrets about another’s life will be revealed.
April 29, 2025
Christie, Agatha. Death on the Nile. 1937, 333 p. Fiction
Linnet Doyle is young, beautiful, and rich. She's the girl who has everything-including the man her best friend loves. Linnet and her new husband take a cruise on the Nile, where they meet the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It should be an idyllic trip, yet Poirot has a vague, uneasy feeling that something is dangerously amiss.
May 27, 2025
McLain, Paula. Circling the Sun. 2016, 366 p. Fiction
Beryl Markham finds herself in a love triangle as her understanding of the world crumbles apart, after growing up on an English estate in early 20th century Africa.
June 24, 2025
Stewart, Amy. Girl Waits with Gun. 2015, 408 p. Fiction
A fictionalization of the true story of one of America's first female deputy sheriffs, Constance Kopp.