Book Club in a Bag includes multiple copies of a popular book, information about the author and copies of discussion questions, all packaged in a sturdy zipper bag for you to carry. Each kit may be checked out for 8 weeks. You can view a list of titles below. Please allow some advance notice and have an alternate title choice available. Visit or call the Adult Services Desk (847-634-3650) for more details, or to reserve a kit. This service is partially sponsored by the Friends of the Library. Last updated: 1/3/2010

• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
  Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher's soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe's maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.
• Away by Amy Bloom
  Arriving in America alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian Leyb receives word that her daughter Sophie might still be alive and embarks on a risky odyssey that takes her from New York's Lower East Side to Siberia to find the missing girl.
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
• Bridge of sighs by Richard Russo
  Lou C. Lynch, given the unfortunate nickname "Lucy" in kindergarten, is getting ready to retire and also writing a history of his blue-collar town. He recalls his relationship with his working-class father and also his relationship with then-bully Bobby Marconi, now an artist living in Italy
• Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
  Margaret Hughes, a septuagenarian living in Seattle, takes in a series of boarders who help her cope with her illness, and whose lives become unexpectedly connected to each other.
• The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
  In 1959, Haruko marries the Crown Prince of Japan, becoming the first commoner to enter the mysterious and reclusive world of Japanese royalty, confronting the cruelty and suspicions of the court, until, three decades later, she helps arrange the marriage of her son. 
• Digging to America by Anne Tyler
  A chance airport encounter between two families--the Donaldsons, and the Iranian-born Yazdans--as both couples await the arrival of an adopted daughter from Korea, prompts an examination about what it means to be an American.
• Don’t Let’s Go to the Dog’s Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
  Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate.
• Doubt: a Parable by John Patrick Shanley
  Chosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic School in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues.
• Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
  The celebrated author of The Last American Man creates an irresistible,candid and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion
• 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.
• The Faith Club by Ranya Idilby, Priscilla Warner and Suzanne Oliver
  A true story about three mothers from three different faiths-Islam, Christian and Jewish-who get together to write a children's book highlighting the connections between their religions, but due to misunderstandings, the project nearly falls apart.
• The First Desire by Nancy Reisman
  The lives of the four Cohen siblings--Sadie, Jo, Goldie, and Irving--are turned upside down by the secrets that they have kept hidden, even from themselves, as the sudden disappearance of Goldie sparks revelations about their family.
• Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
  Gathering for their weekly knitting club at a small yarn shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a group of friends share such challenges as raising children, navigating the ups and downs of their careers, and pursuing uncertain relationships.
• Gardens of Water by Alan Drew
  The lives of two families living on the outskirts of Istanbul are changed by a massive earthquake that brings them together in a dangerous intimacy in which forbidden love blossoms between Irem, a Kurdish Muslim girl, and Dylan, a young American.
• Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
  As the new term gets under way at the elite St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, a number of increasingly devastating incidents occurs, leaving the unraveling school in the hands of the only person who can save it.
• Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
  Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, "The Geography of Bliss" takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author’s case, moments of "un-unhappiness."
• The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
  A finalist for the National Book Award, this is an extraordinary love story set in the immediate aftermath of World War II. A man and woman seek to recover self-reliance, balance, and tenderness, and struggle to reclaim their humanity.
• Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
  In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton finds inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey, who tells her about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation.
• The Ha-Ha by Dave King
  Rendered unable to speak, read, or write after a Vietnam War injury thirty years earlier, Howard Kapostash feels trapped by his disability until his high school sweetheart, recently forced into rehab, asks him to care for her nine-year-old son
• The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
  Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
  When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.
• If Today be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar
  A middle-aged widow struggles to decide whether she will live in her native India or immigrate to America, where her son and his wife live in suburban Ohio and where the widow struggles with her cultural identity and need to bring happiness into the family.
• Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
  This memoir offers a glimpse into a world Westerners seldom seen-life behind the veil. Rodriguez's experiences will delight readers who will share her admiration for Afghan women's survival and triumph in chaotic times.
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
  When a plantation proprietor and former slave--now possessing slaves of his own--dies, his household falls apart in the wake of a slave rebellion and corrupt underpaid patrollers who enable free black people to be sold into slavery.
• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
  Fact and fiction blend in a historical novel that chronicles the relationship between seminal architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, from their meeting, when they were each married to another, to the clandestine affair that shocked Chicago society.
• The Madonna's of Leningrad by Debra Dean
  In a novel that moves back and forth between the Soviet Union during World War II and modern-day America, Marina, an elderly Russian woman, recalls vivid images of her youth during the height of the siege of Leningrad when, as a tour guide at the Hermitage, she and other staff members removed the museum's priceless artworks for safekeeping
• March by Geraldine Brooks
  In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences.
• Mayflower: a story of courage, community and war by Nathaniel Philbrick
  A history of the Pilgrim settlement of New England challenges popular misconceptions, discussing such topics as the diseases of European origin suffered by the Wampanoag tribe, the fragile working relationship between the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors, and the devastating impact of the King Philip's War.
• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
  In a tale spanning twenty-five years, a doctor delivers his newborn twins during a snowstorm and, rashly deciding to protect his wife from their baby daughter's affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child.
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
  Matilda lives on Bougainville Island at the north end of the Solomon chain in the Pacific, a place remote enough from the outside world that no one else seems to notice when Matilda's island is blockaded by soldiers from Port Moresby (capital of nearby Papua New Guinea)
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
  A portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life.
• Netherland by Joseph O’neill
  Abandoned amid the offbeat inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel when his English wife and son return to London following September 11th, Hans, a banker originally from the Netherlands, struggles to find himself in his adopted country.
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.
• The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin
  Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.
• Old Filth by Jane Gardam
  Filth is an acronym (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong) and the affectionate nickname for Sir Edward Feathers, whose distinguished career, as an advocate and judge, began in Hong Kong in 1947. His colleagues saw an "untroubled and uneventful life." Boy, were they wrong.
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
  The world of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher in a small coastal town in Maine, is revealed in stories that explore her diverse roles in many lives, including a lounge singer haunted by a past love, her stoic husband, and her own resentful son.
• Once Upon a Day by Lisa Tucker
  Having been raised in utopian isolation by her once-famous Hollywood father, twenty-three-year-old Dorothea leaves their New Mexico sanctuary in search of her missing brother and discovers terrifying truths about her family's past.
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
  After a meeting with his only neighbor, sixty-seven-year-old Trond is forced to reflect upon a long-ago incident that marks the beginning of a series of losses for Trond and his childhood friend, Jon.
• Pears on a Willow Tree by Leslie Pietrzyk
  Five generations of Marchewka women struggle to cope with the hardships of emigration and assimilation in twentieth-century America as they battle to preserve family traditions and deal with the realities of modern life.
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
  Offered a coveted job to analyze and conserve a priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the volume's ancient binding that reveal its historically significant origins.
• A pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev
  A young, dying pigeon handler dispatches a bird with a message for the girl he loves, while many years later, that girl's middle-aged son falls in love with a childhood friend and receives a gift from his mother on her deathbed.
• Prague by Arthur Phillips
  Five American expatriates living in Budapest in the early 1990s seek to establish themselves and make their fortunes in a city still haunted by the tragedies of its Communist past
• The Rich Part of Life by Jim Kokoris
  Teddy and his brothers find their lives thrown into turmoil by the death of their mother and, soon afterwards, a winning lottery ticket that leaves the family with more money than they ever imagined.
• The Ride of Our Lives by Mike Leonard
  A humorous and deeply moving account of an NBC journalist's  cross-country odyssey with his eccentric parents, three grown children and a daughter-in-law.
• Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
  On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets.
• Saturday by Ian Mcewan
  A successful, happily married neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne is drawn into a confrontation with Baxter, a small-time thug, following a minor motor vehicle accident, an encounter that has savage consequences.
• Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.
• Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
  Their serene villa life devastated by a wrongful imprisonment, the wife and children of Tehran gentleman Isaac Amin face potential betrayals within their own household and eventually plan a dangerous escape.
• Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins
  A series of tales about a photographer's developing relationship with the Native Americans he astonishes by showing them pictures of themselves is interspersed with parallel tales about an unsung soldier, a husband, and a father.
• Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
  The close friendship between Martin Simmonds and violin prodigy Dovidl Rappoport, two Jewish boys living in London between the 1930s and the end of World War II, is threatened by the unexpected disappearance of Dovidl on the eve of his debut performance.
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
  A story of life in France under the Nazi occupation includes two parts--"Storm in June," set amid the chaotic 1940 exodus from Paris, and "Dolce," set in a German-occupied village rife with resentment, resistance, and collaboration.
• Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
  Orphaned at the age of eight, British-born Lilly studiously devotes her life to the teachings of the Qur'an from within a Moroccan Sufi shrine but is persecuted for her foreign heritage, a situation that remains challenging when she subsequently flees to London and finds herself equally disconnected.
• Swim to me by Betsy Carter
  Young Delores Walker flees the Bronx and ends up taking a part as a mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs, an underwater show in Florida. She becomes the star of the show, but a park opened nearby by Disney begins to overshadow the long-running tourist attraction.
• Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
  Summary: When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.
• Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
  A professor of German history begins a long journey back into a past she has pushed aside, returning to Germany to reopen the wounds of her own life--as well as that of her mother--as a child living in Nazi Germany
• Thousand Pieces of Gold by Ruthanne Lum McCunn
  The family of Polly Bemis (Lalu Nathoy) sells her to bandits and a Chinese saloon keeper, but she ends up married to an American and homesteading in Idaho.
• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jonathan Krakauer
  Jon Krakauer's literary reputation rests on chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under the Banner of Heaven, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders.
• Up from Orchard Street by Eleanor Widmer
  A story of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family living on New York's Lower East Side follows the lives of three generations of Roths, who live together in a crowded tenement flat.
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
  This first novel looks at life in Wales during World War II. Seventeen-year-old Esther Evans assists her widowed father with their sheep and works in a pub where she falls in love with a young English soldier. Their remote community has been turned into a POW camp.
• The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
  Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent Rose and her brother, Morris,endeavor to educate the widower's sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project.
• Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
  Photographer Abby Mason's life is changed forever by the disappearance of the young girl with whom she had been walking on a cold and foggy beach, and her desperate search for the truth behind the child's vanishing.
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
  Through the eyes of a housemaid, the story of the plague is told as it ravages a small village in England in the year 1666. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

The following titles are also available:

Fahrenheit 451
Fall of a Sparrow
Gardens of Kyoto
Gilead
Glass Castle
Ideas of Heaven
Into the Wild
The Kite Runner
Middlesex
My Sister’s Keeper
Plot Against America
The Road
Snow
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Story of Lucy Gault
Three Junes
Time Traveler’s Wife
Waiting for Snow in Havana
Wicked