NOVEMBER 2016 BOOK DISCUSSIONS

The Turner House

By: Angela Flourney

Date: Thursday, November 3rd, 2016 @ Harnish

Start Time: 7:00 PM

The Turners live on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house sees thirteen children get grown and gone—and some return; it sees the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. Despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs, the house still stands. But now, as their powerful mother falls ill and loses her independence, the Turners might lose their family home. Beset by time and a national crisis, the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called back to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts might haunt—and shape—their family's future.

The Little Paris Bookshop

By: Nina George

Date: Friday, November 4th, 2016 @ Harnish

Start Time: 10:00 AM

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened. After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Elsewhere

By: Gabrielle Zevin

Date: Monday, November, 14th, 2016 @ Village Vintner

Start Time: 7:00 PM

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice.
Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver's license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

Winesburg, Ohio

By: Sherwood Anderson

Date: Wednesday, November 16th, 2016 @ Harnish

Start Time: 7:00 PM

Sherwood Anderson’s unforgettable story cycle has long been considered one of the finest works of American literature. The central character is George Willard, a young artist coming of age in a quiet town in the heart of the Midwest, but his story is no more extraordinary than those of friends and neighbors such as Kate Swift, a lonely schoolteacher whose beauty inspires lust and confusion; Wing Biddlebaum, a recluse whose restless hands are the source of both his new name and the terrible secret that led him to abandon the old one; and Doctor Reefy, who hides his personal suffering by pouring it onto scraps of paper.