Book Clubs

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

11/11/24 Ask Me No Questions by Shelley Noble

A modern woman in 1907, Lady Dunbridge is not about to let a little thing like the death of her husband ruin her social life. She’s ready to take the dazzling world of Gilded Age Manhattan by storm. From the decadence of high society balls to the underbelly of Belmont horse racing, romance, murder, and scandals abound. Someone simply must do something and Lady Dunbridge is happy to oblige.

Wednesday Evening Book Group meets at 5:45 PM

11/6/24 The Bookshop on Water’s Edge by Patti Callahan Henry

Bonny Blankenship’s most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. One night changed everything: the night that Lainey’s mother disappeared. Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.

12/4/24 a variety of Christmas titles by Mary Kay Andrews

BLUE CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT CLEAR THE SANTA SUIT

CHRISTMAS BLISS

Avalon Book Group meets at 2 PM

11/4/24 A Map for the Missing by Belinda Tang

Tang Yitian has been living in America, estranged from his family, for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother. His father has disappeared from the family’s rural village in China. When Yitian returns home and attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate the country’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider. H e seeks out a childhood friend -Tian Hanwen – who as a teenager was “sent down” from Shanghai to Yitian’s village as part of China’s rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university together. But after a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged. While Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind. Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on a search for Yitian’s father while grappling with the past and what might have been.

Monday Afternoon Book Group meets at 2:30

11/11/24 Mockingbird Summer by Lynda Rutledge

In segregated High Cotton, Texas, in 1964, the racial divide is as clear as the railroad tracks running through town. It’s also where two girls are going to shake things up.

This is the last summer of thirteen-year-old Corky Corcoran’s childhood and her family hires a Haitian housekeeper who brings her daughter America along with her. Corky is quick to befriend America and eager to share her favorite new “grown-up” novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. America’s take on it is different and profoundly personal. As their friendship grows, Corky finds out so much more about America’s life and her hidden skill: she can run as fast as Olympian Wilma Rudolph!

When Corky asks America to play with her girls’ softball team for the annual church rivals game, it’s a move that crosses the color line and sets off a firestorm. As tensions escalate, it fast becomes a season of big changes in High Cotton. For Corky, those changes will last a lifetime.

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.