Club Book

Book club favorite, Meg Waite Clayton, is the author of five novels to date. Her 2002 debut, The Language of Light , was a finalist for that year’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction. She gained national recognition when her 2007 follow up, The Wednesday Sisters , landed spots on both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Entertainment Weekly named it one of its “25 Essential ‘Best Friend’...

Literary dynamo Garth Stein is best known by many for 2008’s The Art of Racing in the Rain , a runaway hit that spent a consecutive 156 weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list. In addition to penning several other well received novels, Stein is also an accomplished playwright and film producer, whose credits include a 1991 Academy Award win in the short film category. His newest book, A Sudde...

Jon Ronson is among Britain’s most prolific journalists and documentarians, and a household name throughout that country. He first came to the attention of most Americans with the publication of Them: Adventures with Extremists in 2001 and the even more successful The Men Who Stare At Goats in 2004. In the latter, Ronson investigated the strange but true experiments conducted until just recently b...

Over the last eight years, Marisa de los Santos has penned three consecutive New York Times bestsellers: Love Walked In in 2006, Belong to Me in 2011, and Falling Together in 2012. She is also an award-winning poet, with published work in a number of prominent journals to her credit, plus a collection all her own called From the Bones Out . In addition, de los Santos is co-writer (with her husband...

Anthony Marra’s 2013 opus, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena , takes place against the backdrop of occupation and insurgency in war-torn Chechnya. NPR called it “one of the most accomplished and affecting books in a very long time.” It was a contender for the National Book Award, and won the author a number of awards and accolades – including the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leon...

Jonathan Odell’s popular books draw from and explore racial divisions that continue to define his native Mississippi. His second novel, 2012’s The Healing , garnered praise for its candid look at plantation life in the antebellum South, and was an American Booksellers Association (ABA) ‘Indie Next’ pick for that year. His most recent title, Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League , is the story of tw...

Nadia Hashimi made waves last year with the release of her fiction debut, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell – “a luminous tale of two women, destiny, and identity in Afghanistan,” according to Kirkus Reviews . Hashimi’s parents emigrated from their native Afghanistan in the 1970s, but a lifelong fascination with her cultural heritage led her to pen The Pearl That Broke Its Shell . The crisscrossing n...

Amy Quan Barry is a Vietnamese-American author and poet. Her work has appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including The New Yorker and Ploughshares . Barry has written three poetry collections to date, Asylum (2001), Controvertibles (2004), and Water Puppets (2011). The last of these won the Donald Hall Poetry Prize from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and was a fi...

Before turning his attention to novels, literary fiction breakout Peter Heller made a name for himself as a contributor to and editor for such publications as National Geographic Adventure , Outside Magazine , and Men’s Journal . Heller traveled on assignment to all corners of the globe, and parlayed many of his larger-than-life experiences into four gripping works of adventure nonfiction. Heller’...

Over a prolific career spanning five decades, activist and educator Nikki Giovanni has penned nearly twenty popular poetry collections including, more recently, Acolytes (2007), Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), and Chasing Utopia (2013). She is also the author or co-author of ten children’s books, including several profiling seminal moments from black history. Prominent among other awards and accolade...

Literary fiction writer Rebecca Rasmussen garnered accolades in 2011 for The Bird Sisters , an “achingly authentic, almost completely character driven” novel chronicling the remarkable lives of two spinster sisters in rural Wisconsin according to Publisher ’ s Weekly . Rasmussen also pens short fiction; her stories have appeared in or won prizes from notable journals including The Mid-American Rev...

Julie Klassen is Minnesota’s answer to Jane Austen. Her romances, set in Regency-era England, have a strong and growing national following. Two of these, The Maid of Fairbourne Hall and The Girl in the Gatehouse , have the rare distinction of receiving both a Midwest Book Award and the Christy Award for Historical Romance. Her third hit, The Silent Governess , also earned a Christy Award, and was...

Hampton Sides is one of the best known – and bestselling – American historians of the past decade. Sides first made a name for himself with 2001’s Ghost Soldiers , a World War II narrative chronicling the greatest rescue mission in the history of our Armed Forces. The debut received the PEN USA Award for Nonfiction and also became the basis for documentaries on the History Channel and PBS. His gri...

Sue Miller is the author of nearly a dozen bestselling and critically acclaimed novels. Her first two hits, The Good Mother and Inventing the Abbotts , saw successful big screen adaptations in 1988 and 1997. Her third, Family Pictures , was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and her sixth, While I Was Gone , became a popular Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Over the course of...

Jennifer McMahon’s unique brand of suspense straddles the line between conventional mystery and supernatural thriller. Her novels have been staples on The New York Times bestseller list since her 2009 breakout, Promise Not to Tell . McMahon’s latest, The Winter People , boasts “a consistently eerie atmosphere, and some of its darker supernatural flights are reminiscent of Stephen King,” according...

Canadian mystery phenom Louise Penny is the author behind the wildly popular Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, set in Quebec but sold around the world in twenty different languages. She published Still Life , the first of that set, to great acclaim in 2005. Between the ten installments to date, Penny has won or been in contention for nearly every major prize awarded in the mystery genre: five...

Amy Bloom is among the elite set of contemporary American storytellers to see international success as a novelist, short story author, and screenwriter. Bloom’s short fiction has been nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and appeared in popular anthologies including The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories . A psychotherapist by t...

Lev Grossman is the author of the bestselling Magicians trilogy, lauded by the Washington Post as a “masterful… fresh and compelling” addition to the corpus of coming-of-age fantasy literature popularized by Harry Potter. The much anticipated third and final installment, The Magician ’ s Land , debuted August 5, and the full series is already being adapted as a television drama by NBC/Universal. G...

This last Club Book Podcast of the 2014 Winter/Spring season features Amanda Coplin at her April 24th visit to Stillwater Public Library.  Amanda Coplin’s majestic debut novel, The Orchardist, was a New York Times bestseller and has garnered wide critical praise since its release in 2012. Called a “stunning accomplishment” by NPR, the story follows a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two...

J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels Commencement, Maine, and The Engagements . Maine was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. Gloria Steinem called Commencement a “generous-hearted, brave first novel…that makes clear the feminist revolution is just beginning.” Sullivan’s writing has appeared in The New...

This Club Book Podcast features authors Peter Geye and Amy Greene coming together for an evening of conversation about their work and the rich physical landscapes that drive their writing at their April 15th visit to Roseville Library in Ramsey County. Set against the powerful lakeshore terrain of northern Minnesota, Peter Geye’s second novel, The Lighthouse Road, beautifully explores the hardship...

This Club Book Podcast features Brian Freeman at his April 7th visit to Rum River Library in Anoka. Brian Freeman is Minnesota’s own master of psychological suspense. He is best known for his internationally acclaimed Jonathan Stride detective series, set in and around Duluth. His 2006 debut, Immoral , won the Macavity Award and was a finalist for the Edgar, Dagger, Anthony and Barry awards for be...

This Club Book Podcast features Dave Zirin at his March 19 th visit to Southdale Library in Edina. Dave Zirin, correspondent and sports editor for  The Nation , is the author, most recently, of  Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down.  His newest expose, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil , turns attention on the volatile political situation in Brazil in the run-up to the...

This Club Book Podcast features P.S. Duffy at her March 11 th event at Merriam Park Library in Saint Paul. Duffy’s highly praised fiction debut, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land , has been called an “astounding first novel” by Library Journal and was a Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers pick for fall 2013. Set in France and Nova Scotia during the First World War, Duffy’s alternating portrayal...

This Club Book podcast features Elizabeth Berg at her February 26 th event at Galaxie Library in Dakota County . One of the most prolific New York Times bestselling authors of the last two decades, Berg’s impressive bibliography lists more than twenty novels, including Open House , an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. She has also penned two well-received works of nonfiction, and her writ...