MARTHA MERRELL’S BOOK CLUBS
Martha Merrell’s hosts a variety of book clubs and is pleased to offer the following services free-of-charge to area clubs.
We can:
- Provide a meeting space for clubs
- Provide a selection of books for your club to choose from
- Special order club selections
- Provide a 15% discount on club selections
- Facilitate discussions
- No-charge consulting on new books and current trends
- Share what other clubs are reading
We invite you to stop by our location at 231 West Main Street in the Avalon Square Building.
Discover what we have to offer!
Contact us to set up your club meeting at the store on a regular monthly basis. If you are interested in using our space on a more occasional basis, feel free to schedule a time with us as well. (New surroundings can be just what your book club needs to invigorate itself.) We will gladly accommodate your group’s needs including light refreshments, lunch or dinner.
UPCOMING BOOK CLUBS
Monday Morning Group meets at 10:30 AM
1/13/25 favorite non-book club title of 2024
2/10/25 Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
HER PERFECT LIFE IS A PERFECT LIE
As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve. But Ani has a secret. There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.
Wednesday Evening Book Group meets at 5:45 PM
1/8/25 favorite non-book club title of 2024
2/5/25 Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him–so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
3/5/25 The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.
In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.
Avalon Book Group meets at 2 PM
1/6/25 favorite non-book club title of 2024
Monday Afternoon Book Group meets at 2:30
1/13/25 One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker
For as long as they have lived on the Wyoming frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. When Ernest Bemis finds his wife Cora in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse. Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal 1876 winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family–to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son Clyde–no longer a boy, but not yet a man–who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him and Cora’s daughter Beulah who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home. Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. When love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested. Cora and Nettie Mae must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other or risk losing everything they hold dear.
2/25 Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse–one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
3/25 Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles
The author shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. As her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, ‘Eve in Hollywood’ describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.
4/25 Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See
5/25 The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
6/25 The Women by Kristin Hannah