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Upcoming Book Group Meetings

Garfield Park Branch Library
 (10:30 AM-12:00 PM)
Location: Garfield Park
Room: Garfield Park Branch Library, 705 Woodrow Ave, Santa Cruz, 95060
La Selva Beach Branch Library
 (10:30 AM-12:00 PM)
Location: La Selva Beach
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Aptos Branch Library
 (1:00 PM-2:30 PM)
Location: Aptos
Room: Dorosin Memorial Conference Room
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Live Oak Branch Library
 (2:00 PM-3:15 PM)
Location: Live Oak
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Boulder Creek Branch Library
 (11:00 AM-12:00 PM)
Location: Boulder Creek
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Book Discussion Kits

The Kits

To help your book discussion group, we've gathered a collection of popular paperback titles and sorted them into kits. Each bag contains eight paperback copies of the selected title and a list of suggested discussion questions. The loan period is normally two months, but a maximum of three months can be given upon request at check out. You can borrow three kits at one time and they aren't renewable.

If a Book is Lost

If your group loses a copy of the book, we just ask that you replace it with another paperback copy of the book, new or second hand, that is clean and readable.

Book Discussion Kit

Book Kits (Search Results)

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Browse Book Kits

Category - Fiction

Cane River

by Lalita Tademy

Follows four generations of African American women from slavery to the early twentieth century as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisiana.

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.

The Circle

by Dave Eggers

Hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful Internet company, Mae Holland begins to question her luck as life beyond her job grows distant, a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, and her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

Circling the Sun

by Paula McLain

Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman--Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton.

Cloud Cuckoo Land

by Anthony Doerr

It tells story of Aethon, a man who goes looking for a "utopian city in the sky" called Cloud Cuckoo Land. Along the way, he has many adventures (transformed into a donkey, captured, escapes, transformed into a fish, eaten by a sea creature, transformed into a crow, etc.) before he finally finds Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

by Anthony Marra

In December 2004 in a rural village in Chechnya, failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized eight-year-old daughter of a man abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child.

The Cookbook Collector

by Allegra Goodman

While executive Emily questions her choices about her career and a long-distance relationship with a successful man, her environmental activist sister, Jessamine, struggles with her own doubts about her beliefs and love affair.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.

Daughter of Fortune

by Isabel Allende

An orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and meets a Chinese herbalist, who becomes her soul mate, on the journey.

Disgrace

by J.M. Coetzee

Written with austere clarity, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes with unforgettable, almost unbearable vividness the plight of South Africa-a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of the overthrow of Apartheid.

The Dovekeepers

by Alice Hoffman

Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.

The Dressmaker

by Kate Alcott

A spirited young maid on board the Titanic captures the attentions of two men including a kindhearted sailor and an enigmatic Chicago millionaire and barely escapes with her life before witnessing media scorn targeting her famous designer mistress.

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

The biblical account of Cain and Abel is echoed in the history of two generations of the Trask family in California.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery

The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.

Enemy Women

by Paulette Jiles

An unforgettable story of family, love, and war follows Adair, the daughter of modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks who is wrongly accused of "enemy collaboration" by the Union militia, as she falls in love with her interrogator, a Union major who orchestrates her escape, and embarks on a perilous journey to find her family.

Euphoria

by Lily King

Frustrated by his research efforts and depressed over the death of his brothers, Andre Banson runs into two fellow anthropologists, a married couple, in 1930s New Guinea and begins a tumultuous relationship with them.

Exposure

by Helen Dunmore

It's London, 1960. The Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbor, colleague or lover. Two colleagues, Giles Holloway and Simon Callington, face a terrible dilemma over a missing top-secret file. At the end of a suburban garden, in the pouring rain, Simon's wife, Lily, buries a briefcase containing the file deep in the earth. She believes that in doing so she is protecting her family. What she will learn is that no one is immune from betrayal or the devastating consequences of exposure. A master of the literary war novel as seen through the lens of individuals impacted by war's effects, in Exposure, Helen Dunmore pulls back the veneer of 1960's London life to reveal just how the betrayals and paranoia of the Cold War infiltrate even families. This is a propulsive novel of forbidden love and intimate deceptions from one of our finest writers.

The five wounds

by Kirstin Valdez Quade

The Five Wounds follows middle-aged Amadeo, his estranged pregnant daughter Angel, and terminally-ill mother Yolanda, over a single year, as they struggle to redeem themselves by correcting previous missteps, cobble together a worthwhile future out of a broken past, and simply coexist under the same roof.

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Resources for Your Book Group

BookBrowse Book Club Resources

BookBrowse offers a wealth of resources for book clubs, including: Top 10 Book Club Recommendations, advice, reading guides, online book discussions, book club interviews - and much, much more. Free for patrons - just login with your library card!

Additional Resources

  • Amazon.com

    Amazon.com's recommendations for book discussion groups. Browsable by category.

  • SCPL Books & Reading Resources

    Links to online resources that will help you find new books, lists of award winners, and author information.

How to Start

  • Book Club How-to's

    Everything you need to start and run a successful and fun book club. -- Advice from Book Browse