Services
CALS Book Club Kits
Book Club Kits, made possible by Friends of Central Arkansas Libraries (FOCAL), are now available for your book group. Click on the tabs below to view available book titles.
What is a CALS Book Club Kit?
A book club kit is a handy canvas tote that holds:
- 10 paperback copies of one title and;
- 1 discussion guide to assist book club leaders.
How do I start a CALS Book Club and reserve a kit?
- Contact Maribeth Murray by phone at 918-3032, or
- Email bookclubkits@cals.org, or
- Download and complete the Book Club Registration Form. Then deliver or mail them to any branch of the Central Arkansas Library System.
What rules apply to a CALS Book Club Kit?
- Kits may be reserved up to a year in advance
- Kits are checked out to one person who will be responsible for returning it.
- Each book club kit will be checked out for 6 weeks. (Sorry, no renewals are allowed.)
- The complete kit must be returned to the Circulation Desk of any branch library during regular library hours. Do not use a book drop to return your kit.
- The fine for overdue book club kits is $1 per day per kit.
- If a kit is not returned, the replacement cost is $100. Replacement costs will be prorated for missing or damaged items.
As with all books your club selects, we recommend that a member of your group reads the book to see if it is a good fit for your club. To find out more about any selection, click "Check Library Catalog" below to view each CALS online catalog record.
Book of Bright Ideas
by Sandra Kring
Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn "Button" Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other.
Much to her mother's dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother's ashes and a tome she calls "The Book of Bright Ideas." It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. And when a devastating secret is suddenly revealed, dividing loyalties and uprooting lives, no one—from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family—will ever be the same.
Cage of Stars
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Twelve-year-old Veronica's Swan's idyllic life in a close-knit Mormon community is shattered when her two younger sisters are brutally murdered. Although her parents find the strength to forgive the deranged killer, Scott Early, Veronica cannot do the same.
Years later, she sets out alone to avenge her sisters' deaths, dropping her identity and severing ties in the process. But as she closes in on Early, Veronica will discover the true meaning of sin and compassion…before she makes a decision that will change her and her family forever.
City of Thieves
by David Benioff
Documenting his reluctant grandparents' experiences during the infamous siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he endeavored to secure their pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake.
Complete Stories
by Flannery O'Connor
The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime—Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"—sent to her publisher shortly before her death—is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux
Everything's Eventual
by Stephen King
A new collection of short fiction, the first in nine years, from the grandmaster of the macabre, includes such acclaimed tales as "L.T.'s Theory of Pets" and "Lunch at the Gotham Café," as well as three stories never before published in paper—"Riding the Bullet," "1408," and "In the Deathroom."
Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Steven D. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of…well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.
Fried Green Tomatoes
by Fannie Flagg
A tale of two women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the Thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Caf´ Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present—for Evelyn—will never be quite the same again…
Gate At The Stairs
by Lorrie Moore
As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer—his "Keltjin potatoes" are justifiably famous—has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.
Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.
As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life hack home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
by Steig Larssen
The disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, gnaws at her octogenarian uncle, Henrik Vanger. He is determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. He hires crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, recently at the wrong end of a libel case, to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance. Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old, pierced, tattooed genius hacker, possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness—assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, an astonishing corruption at the highest echelon of Swedish industrialism—and a surprising connection between themselves.
Going Away Shoes
by Jill McCorkle
Presents eleven short stories that prominently feature shoes, ranging from Cinderella's glass slippers to hunting boots covered in mud.
House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous—it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.
I Feel Bad About My Neck
by Nora Ephron
A new collection of witty essays by the author of Wallflower at the Orgy offers a hilarious look at the ups and downs of being a woman of a certain age, discussing the tribulations of maintenance and trying to stop the clock, menopause, empty nests, her experiences of being a White House intern during the JFK years, and more.
The Love of a Good Woman
by Alice Munro
A new collection of eight stories from the author of Open Secrets and Friend of My Youth explores such themes as the complexities of love, the unexpected implications of passion, and the strange, frequently whimsical desires of the human heart.
Middle Place
by Kelly Corrigan
Traces a San Francisco newspaper columnist's life experiences as evaluated during her late thirties, describing her relationships with her husband, children, and Irish-American father before and during her battle with breast cancer.
Operating Instructions
by Anne Lamont
It's not like she's the only woman to ever have a baby. At thirty-five. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all important first year. From finding out that her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out that her best friend and greatest supporter Pam will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but very little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events that make up a womans life.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by Annie Dillard
Collection of essays on the natural world during a year spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains reflects the author's interactions with her wilderness surroundings.
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying.
Pride & Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down. Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges sagacity, as misconceptions and hasty judgements lead to heartache and scandal, but eventually to true understanding, self-knowledge, and love. In the supremely satisfying story, Jane Austen balances comedy with seriousness, and witty observation with profound insight. If Elizabeth Bennet returns again and again to her letter from Mr. Darcy, readers of the novel are drawn even more irresistibly by its captivating wisdom.
Strength in What Remains
by Tracy Kidder
Deo grew up in the mountains of Burundi, and survived a civil war and genocide before seeking a new life in America. In New York City he lived homeless in Central Park before finding his way to Columbia University. But Deo's story really begins with his will to turn his life into something truly remarkable; he returns to his native country to help people there, as well as people in the United States.
An extraordinary writer, Kidder has the remarkable ability to show us what it means to be fully human, and to tell the unadorned story of a life based on hope. Riveting and inspiring, this may be his most magnificent work to date. Strength in What Remains is a testament to the power of will and friendship, and of the endurance of the soul.
Tender at the Bone
by Ruth Reichl
Tender at the Bone is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by unforgettable people, the love of tales well told, and a passion for food. In other words, the stuff of the best literature. The journey begins with Reichl's mother, the notorious food-poisoner known forevermore as the Queen of Mold, and moves on to the fabled Mrs. Peavey, onetime Baltimore socialite millionairess, who, for a brief but poignant moment, was retained as the Reichls' maid. Then we are introduced to Monsieur du Croix, the gourmand, who so understood and yet was awed by this prodigious child at his dinner table that when he introduced Ruth to the souffle, he could only exclaim, "What a pleasure to watch a child eat her first souffle!" Then, fast-forward to the politically correct table set in Berkeley in the 1970s, and the food revolution that Ruth watched and participated in as organic became the norm. But this sampling doesn't do this character-rich book justice. After all, this is just a taste.
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Wolfe
At their holiday home in Cornwall, a distant lighthouse holds a haunting attraction for the members of an Edwardian family as disillusionment, turmoil, and a world on the brink of war plague the family's relationships.
Too Much Happiness
by Alice Munro
Nine new short works by the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Love of a Good Woman include the stories of a grieving mother who is aided by a surprising source, a woman's response to a humiliating seduction and a 19th-century Russian émigré's winter journey to the Riviera.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
A poignant tale of childhood and the ties of family, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn will transport the reader to the early 1900s where a little girl named Francie dreamily looks out her window at a tree struggling to reach the sky.
Under the Tuscan Sun
by Frances Mayes
Buying a villa in the spectacular Italian countryside is a wonderful fantasy—even if 17 rooms and a garden in need of immediate loving care are included in the asking price. Frances Mayes—gourmet cook, widely published travel writer, and poet—changed her life by doing just that. Sprinkled liberally with delicious recipes for inspired Italian dishes, amusing anecdotes about the risks of being your own contractor, and a savvy traveler's reminiscences, Under the Tuscan Sun is Mayes's enchanting account of her love affair with Tuscany: of scouring the neighborhood for the perfect panettone and the perfect plumber; of mornings spent cultivating her garden, and afternoons spent enjoying its fruits in leisurely lunches on the terrace; of jaunts through the hill towns in search of renowned wines; and the renewal not only of a house, but also of the spirit. An unusual memoir that combines the appeal of M. F.K. Fisher, Peter Mayle, and Martha Stewart, Under the Tuscan Sun is a feast for the senses.
Whistling Season
by Ivan Doig
"Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-I housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch—a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"—none of them of the textbook variety—Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse.
Winter Study
by Nevada Barr
Visiting an isolated Lake Superior isle to study wolf behavior, ranger Anna Pigeon joins a scientific group that subsequently discovers unusual DNA evidence suggesting that a giant and dangerous wolf hybrid has been introduced by an unknown source.
You Shall Know Our Velocity
by Dave Eggers
After acquiring $32,000, Will and Hand, devastated over the death of their closest friend, travel around the world giving away the money, in a rowdy debut novel from the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
As with all books your club selects, we recommend that a member of your group reads the book to see if it is a good fit for your club. To find out more about any selection, click "Check Library Catalog" below to view each CALS online catalog record.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey--a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
The Lace Reader
by Brunonia Barry
A young woman descended from a long line of mind readers and fortune tellers has returned to her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, for rest and relaxation. Any tranquility in her life is short-lived, however, when her aunt drowns under mysterious circumstances.
Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder
At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer-brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti-blasts through convention to get results.
Same Kind of Different as Me
by Ron Hall & Denver Moore, with Lynn Vincent
A dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in virtual slavery. An upscale art dealer accustomed to the world of Armani and Chanel. A gutsy woman with a stubborn dream. A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it. It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana…and an East Texas honky-tonk…and, without a doubt, in the heart of God. It unfolds in a Hollywood hacienda…an upscale New York gallery…a downtown dumpster…a Texas ranch.
Gritty with pain and betrayal and brutality, this true story also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love.
The Shack
by William P. Young
Mackenzie Allen Phillips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him.
As with all books your club selects, we recommend that a member of your group reads the book to see if it is a good fit for your club.
To find out more about any selection, click on the title below to view the CALS online catalog record.
- The Amateur Marriage
by Anne Tyler - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver - Back When We Were Grownups
by Anne Tyler - Birds of America
by Lorrie Moore - Book of Bright Ideas
by Sandra Kring - The Bookmaker's Daughter
by Shirley Abbott - Breathing Lessons
by Anne Tyler - Bridge of Sighs
by Richard Russo - Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz - Cage of Stars
by Jacquelyn Mitchard - City of Thieves
by David Benioff - Complete Stories
by Flannery O'Connor - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
by Xiaolu Guo - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
by Mark Haddon - Daughter of Fortune
by Isabel Allende - Dead Until Dark
by Charlaine Harris - Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert - The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery and Alison Anderson - Enemy Women
by Paulette Jiles - Everything's Eventual
by Stephen King - Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner - Fried Green Tomatoes
by Fannie Flagg - Gap Creek
by Robert Morgan - Gate At The Stairs
by Lorrie Moore - The Girl With a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier - Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson - The Glass Castle
by Jeanette Walls - Going Away Shoes
by Jill McCorkle - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows - Hearts of Horses
by Molly Gloss - The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo
by Paula Huntley - Here on Earth
by Alice Hoffman - House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros - How Doctors Think
by Jerome Groopman, M.D.
- I Feel Bad About My Neck
by Nora Ephron - Into the Wild
by Jon Krackauer - The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini - The Lace Reader
by Brunonia Barry - The Last Girls
by Lee Smith - Leonardo's Swans: A Novel
by Karen Essex - Liberating Paris
by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason - Life of Pi: A Novel
by Yann Martel - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
by Bill Bryson - The Love of a Good Woman
by Alice Munro - The Madonnas of Leningrad
by Debra Dean - Manhunt: The 12-Day Hunt for Lincoln's Killers
by James L. Swanson - March
by Geraldine Brooks - The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards - Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris - Middle Place
by Kelly Corrigan - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by John Berendt - Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind
by Ann B. Ross - The Mistress of Spices
by Chitra Divakaruni - Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
by Charles J. Shields - Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder - My Cat, Spit McGee
by Willie Morris - My Dog Skip
by Willie Morris - My Sister's Keeper
by Jodi Picoult - The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri - Nine Parts of Desire
by Geraldine Brooks - Nineteen Minutes
by Jodi Picoult - North Toward Home
by Willie Morris - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith - Omnivore's Dilemma
by Michael Pollan - Operating Instructions
by Anne Lamont - The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
by Susan Orlean - Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
- Outer Banks
by Anne Rivers Siddons - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by Annie Dillard - Pope Joan: A Novel
by Donna W. Cross - A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving - Pride & Prejudice
by Jane Austen - The Red Tent
by Anita Diamant - Same Kind of Different as Me
by Ron Hall & Denver Moore, with Lynn Vincent - The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd - The Shack
by William P. Young - The Shadow Catcher
by Marianne Wiggins - Ship Fever
by Andrea Barrett - The Sixteen Pleasures
by Robert Hellenga - Skeletons at the Feast
by Chris Bohjalian - Skin & Other Stories
by Roald Dahl - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See - Strength in What Remains
by Tracy Kidder - Taps: A Novel
by Willie Morris - Tender at the Bone
by Ruth Reichl - The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield - A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini - Three Cups of Tea
by Greg Mortenson - Three Junes
by Julia Glass - The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger - To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee - To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Wolfe - Too Much Happiness
by Alice Munro - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith - Under the Tuscan Sun
by Frances Mayes - Vinegar Hill
by A. Mannette Ansay - Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen - Whistling Season
by Ivan Doig - Winter Study
by Nevada Barr - The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion - You Shall Know Our Velocity
by Dave Eggers - Zookeeper's Wife
by Diane Ackerman
For more information:
Contact Maribeth Murray by phone at 918-3032, or email bookclubkits@cals.org.