Bookclub in a Box!

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image  The Kite Runner

Here is our current booklist at a glance. Click the novel's picture, the book name, or choose either the PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF link to access a detailed summary of both the novel and the details offered by BOOKCLUB-IN-A-BOX.
In each guide you will receive a wealth of information that cannot be found anywhere else!

Special Offer

The discussion guides to The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid) are now offered at a special introductory price: printed guide is $16.90 and the PDF downloadable file is $6.98.

Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF version.  Click on the title for more information.

Discussion Guides and PDF's

Anil’s Ghost (Michael Ondaatje)
Anil's GhostIn Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje presents an intimate and detailed picture of the costs and pain of the civil war in Sri Lanka, as uncovered through the novel’s main character, Anil, a Sri-Lankan-born, American-trained forensic anthropologist.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Ash Garden (Dennis Bock)
The Ash GardenThe Ash Garden tells the story of Emiko, a child victim of the bombing of Hiroshima; Sophie, a child survivor of the Holocaust; and Anton, a German national who joined the effort in the West to develop and use the atom bomb for the purpose of ending the war. These three people are joined together by a shared history, a shared loss and a shared grief.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Atonement (Ian McEwan)
AtonementThirteen-year-old Briony makes up stories and plays and is mesmerized by the potential of the imaginary world and by the power of words. McEwan looks closely at the impact that words have on one’s consciousness and behavior.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)
Bel CantoAnn Patchett’s novel Bel Canto is a fictional account of the actual 1996 siege of the Japanese Embassy in Peru. What should be narrated as a tense and terse action-filled tragedy, turns out to be a human story told with warmth and sardonic humor.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

A Complicated Kindness (Miriam Toews)
A Complicated KindnessMiriam Toews describes a community where individual skills and emotions are held in strict check by the Mennonite leadership of the town.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen)
CorrectionsIn this fast-paced and funny novel, Jonathan Franzen tells the story of Enid and Alfred Lambert, and their three grown children, Gary, Chip and Denise. It is Enid’s goal to bring her family back together for a Christmas celebration; a last chance to have everyone together before something serious happens to Alfred, a fast-failing Parkinson’s disease victim. This is the novel that Oprah Winfrey ‘de-listed’ from her television book club.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Mark Haddon)
the curious incident of the dog in the night-timeMark Haddon takes you inside the exceptional mind of Christopher Boone, a young man who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition associated with autism.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Deafening (Frances Itani)
DeafeningAs the surviving number of WWI veterans dwindle in number and become forever silent, Frances Itani seeks to recreate the words and thoughts of the participants of this war. Itani highlights the soundless world of the deaf against the constant noise of battle.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Disgrace (J. M. Coetzee)
DisgraceThis Booker Prize winner by J.M. Coetzee is well named. From the disgraceful affair of a middle-aged professor with a student, to the disgrace of an entire country reeling from the after-effects of Apartheid, this novel will leave you breathless.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Elizabeth and After (Matt Cohen)
Elizabeth and AfterThe story of Elizabeth and After begins dramatically with Elizabeth’s death. The narrative thread follows the tormented and broken Carl, who had driven the car the night his mother was killed. Cohen offers choices to his emotionally damaged characters in order to see if these choices might make a difference to their futures.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions.

A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
A Fine BalanceIt is 1975 and Indira Gandhi has declared a State of Emergency in India. Rohinton Mistry vividly portrays the tragedy of human suffering and the dignity of the human spirit during this time. His four main characters manage to sew together the scraps of their individual lives to create a strong, supportive family.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Fugitive PiecesFugitive Pieces (Anne Michaels)
Anne Michaels explores how the chance and circumstance of life is measured against the power of love. The novel is set during and after WWII and links the stories of two men – Jakob and Ben – both of whom are lost and found through love.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Girls (Lori Lansens)
Lori Lansens’ fantastic novel, The Girls, brings us the extraordinary story of Rose and Ruby Darlen, conjoined twins. They are physically connected at the head and because of that they have never looked into each other’s eyes.
Available in an ACROBAT PDF Novel Notes version

The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
The HoursMichael Cunningham seamlessly weaves together the stories of three women, set in three locations during three different time periods. One of the characters is a fictional Virginia Woolf, while the other two, despite being wholly distinct personalities, portray other aspects of the real Virginia Woolf.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
Human StainNathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth's favorite narrator, is at it again, discussing the human condition and the human characteristics that stain that existence.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
The Kite RunnerIn his first novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini uses the story of two boys, Amir and Hassan, to show the human faces behind the historic events in Afghanistan, during three turbulent decades in the country’s history.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Novel Notes: Mini-guides

Deconstructing Herzog
imageNovel Notes is the Bookclub-in-a-Box mini-guide to Saul Bellow’s novel, Herzog. Saul Bellow uses his character, Moses Herzog, to discuss and discover the meaning of being one human being among others. This novel is Bellow’s most autobiographical. Bookclub-in-a-Box looks at Bellow’s philosophy of writing, his values and ethical perspective, as well as his views on interpersonal relationships.
Available only in ACROBAT PDF version.

The Known World (Edward P. Jones)
life of piThis Pulitzer prize-winning novel highlights a little known fact of American history: black slaves belonging to black slave owners. Henry Townsend, a black slave owner, dies as the novel opens. Everyone wonders what will happen next.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

New Guides

Our next plan is to bring you the guides to The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon), The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon), The People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks) and others.  Watch the What’s New section for announcements.

Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
life of piWe join Pi on his life's journey – from his childhood in Pondicherry, through his oceanic struggle alone in a lifeboat with only a Bengal tiger for a companion, to his rescue and afterlife in Canada.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
lovely bonesIn Alice Sebold’s story, fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is murdered. Many readers might stop reading right there, but that would mean missing Sebold’s unique perspective on life and death, and it would mean not getting to know her unusual narrator, Susie, who tells her story from heaven.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Mark of the Angel (Nancy Huston)
The Mark of the AngelIn her novel, Nancy Huston sets the story of a love triangle between Raphael, a Parisian flautist, Andras, a Holocaust survivor, and the enigmatic young Saffie, a German national, against the backdrop of the French-Algerian conflict of the 1960s.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards)
MiddlesexThe Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards is a thoughtful and provocative novel that explores the idea of secrecy as a moral backdrop for people’s motives, choices, behavior, and interactions.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
MiddlesexTransformation, identity, fate, destiny, crime and punishment are just some of the themes that are unraveled for readers in the Bookclub-in-a-Box discussion guide for this Pulitzer prize-winning novel.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith (Gina B. Nahai)
Moonlight on the Avenue of FaithGina Nahai tells the lovely story of Roxanna the Angel, who disappears one night when her daughter is five years old. Her story is set in the Iranian-Jewish community, first in the years prior to the fall of the Shah in 1979, and later, in California, where many of these Jews emigrated.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri)
imageAmerican-born Gogol Ganguli is linked to the Bengali culture through his parents. However, his name, Gogol, connects him to the immensely talented but psychologically wounded Russian author, Nikolai Gogol. Jumpha Lahiri’s Gogol has a big problem with identity.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Never Let Me GoThe future is now and it is quite frightening as Ishiguro tells it. Listen to Kathy H., a cloned human being, as she tells her incredible story.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood is a classic futuristic story about life as we may soon know it. The story follows Snowman (Jimmy) back through his memories to unravel how a technologically driven world spiraled out of control. Oryx and Crake was first released in 2003, but it is scarily relevant to our world today.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Plot Against America (Philip Roth)
the plot against americaPhilip Roth imagines that American hero, Charles Lindbergh, has won the presidency of the United States away from the other grand American hero of the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
The Poisonwood BibleInto the Belgian Congo’s jungle comes a narrow-minded American missionary from America’s deep South, along with his wife and four daughters. These five women tell the tale of the family's unexpected relationship with the Congo against the backdrop of America's relationship with Africa.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid)
imageThis second novel by Mohsin Hamid is an important story for our times because it explores personal loyalties, both cultural and political, that are compromised by fear and assumption.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The River Midnight (Lilian Nattel)
imageThe River Midnight tells a story of the friendship of four women who were born and raised in a small village (the shtetl, Blaszka). The place is Poland and the date is the late 1800s, a time in history that is nestled between tragic events. The novel is a day-to-day diary of a slice of Jewish life not overshadowed by the Holocaust.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Small Island (Andrea Levy)
Small IslandSmall Island is a delightfully entertaining and probing book about Jamaican immigration to Britain in the days after World War II.

Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions.

A Student of Weather (Elizabeth Hay)
Student of WeatherThe student of the title, Maurice Dove, arrives from lush Ontario to study weather patterns in the bleak Canadian prairies. He becomes the object of fascination for the two sisters, Lucinda and Norma Joyce.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Suite Française (Irène Némirovsky)
imageIrène Némirovsky’s novel is extraordinary as a fiction, as a witness to an ongoing history, and as its own mystery. Written in 1942 and published in 2004, this novel has taken quite a journey.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)
A Thousand Splendid Suns, the new novel by Khaled Hosseini brings us the female perspective of how hard life is in Afghanistan, a story which he began in his first novel, The Kite Runner.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
The Time-Traveler's WifeThe Time Traveler’s Wife is the romantic and tender story of an unusual love affair. Clare meets Henry when she is 6 and he is 36 years of age; Henry meets Clare when he is 28 and she is 20. Niffenegger frees their relationship from the traditional definitions of time and love.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
To the LighthouseCome along with Bookclub-in-a-Box and the Ramsay family on a journey To The Lighthouse. This novel is Virginia Woolf’s favorite and most autobiographical book. Find out about Virginia Woolf, the woman, the wife, and the writer.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

True History of the Kelly Gang (Peter Carey)
kelleyTrue History of the Kelly Gang is the story of Australian outlaw-turned-hero Ned Kelly. In this novel, Peter Carey has captured the essence of a character, who has risen to mythical proportions in Australia. As Carey explores Ned’s story, he also explores the mythology of Australia, the country.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

Water For Elephants (Sara Gruen)
Come along with Bookclub-in-a-Box as we run away to the circus. Sara Gruen’s fantastic novel presents Jacob Jankowski as a ninety-something senior looking back on the exciting, romantic, difficult, and often tragic days of circus life during the Great Depression era.
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

The Way The Crow Flies (Ann-Marie Macdonald)
The Way The Crow FliesAnn-Marie Macdonald tells a graphic tale of murder, false accusation, cruelty and slavery, based on true history. The novel is her vehicle for exploring the following questions: How often do we make irreversible decisions based on assumptions instead of fact? On convenience instead of truth?
Available in PRINTED or ACROBAT PDF versions

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"A home without books is like a body without a soul."
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