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.

UPCOMING BOOK CLUBS

Monday Morning Group meets at 10:30 AM

7/13/26    A Scattered Life by Karen McQuestion

Free spirit Skyla Plinka has found the love and stability she always wanted in her reliable husband Thomas. Settling into her new family and roles as wife and mother, life in rural Wisconsin is satisfying, but can’t seem to quell Skyla’s increasing sense of restlessness. Her only reprieve is her growing friendship with neighbor Roxanne who has five kids (and counting) and a life in constant disarray–but also a life filled with laughter and love. Much to the dismay of her intrusive mother-in-law, Audrey, Skyla takes a part-time job at the local bookstore and slowly begins to rediscover her voice, independence, and confidence. Throughout one pivotal year in the life of three very different women, each will learn what it means to love unconditionally.

8/10/26    How to Read a Book by Monica Wood

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.  Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.  When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland–Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman–their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

Wednesday Evening Group meets at 5:45 PM

8/5/26      The Mountains We Call Home by Kim Richardson

When Cussy Lovett, a Packhorse Librarian famed for bringing books to the people of Appalachia, is unjustly incarcerated, she finds a new calling as a prison librarian, bringing hope to downtrodden women and voiceless city residents alike, finding a home even while separated from those she loves. A vivid portrait of mid-century Kentucky, from the hills and hollers of Appalachia to a vibrant city neighborhood on the cusp of urban renewal, The Mountains We Call Home explores the effects of criminalization and incarceration on the poor and powerless, while tracing the societal consequences of fractured family bonds.

9/2/26      The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

10/7/26    33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen

On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever.  Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.

All else that’s familiar fractures when whispers of German occupation become reality, and the lives of the residents grow increasingly intertwined. Charlotte’s godmother Masha, a beautiful seamstress living upstairs, deepens her risky affair with a wartime compatriot of Colonel Warlemont in 3L–a man far more calculating than his neighbors believe. When a Nazi functionary with an interest in the Raphaëls moves into the building, knowing who can and cannot be trusted becomes a matter of life and death.

In the face of their perilous new reality, every member of this accidental community will discover they are not the person they believed themself to be. When confronted with a cruel choice–submit to the regime or risk their lives to save one another–each learns the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most.

Avalon Book Group meets at 2 PM

8/3/26      The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Monday Afternoon Book Group meets at 2:30 PM

9/14/26    The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

10/12/26   The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan Henry

11//26       The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

1//27         Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

2//27        Life, and Death, and Giants by Ronald Rindo

3//27        The Secret War of Julia Child by Diana Chambers

4//27        The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

5//27        The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

6//27        The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb

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.