We’re so excited to offer a variety of book groups to our community. Books are available at the front desk and are intended for book group attendees to read for discussion. Please check our calendar for the meeting dates and Zoom links.

    2024 Kennett Library Book Group Policy:

    • Book Groups are limited to 25 participants per discussion.
    • Those wishing to join in the book group discussion must register to be part of the discussion.
    • Registration includes reserving a book – if you do not need a copy of the current book, please email the facilitator.
    • Registration takes place on our calendar.
    • A book will be held at the front desk for pick-up under their name. 

    Eat Your Words

    Eat Your Words is a group dedicated to short fiction. Selections vary widely across time, place, and style. Great for those wanting a quick read and a lively discussion with other short story enthusiasts! We meet in person every third Thursday of the month at 11am. Contact lflorence@ccls.org to join.

    Sci-Fi

    •  The Nine Billion Names of God – Arthur C. Clarke
    • Non-Zero Probabilities – N.K. Jemisin

    Relationships

    • The Voice – Silvina Ocampo
    • My Life with the Water – Octavio Paz
    • My Dog Roscoe – Bonnie Jo Campbell

    Jewish Voices

    • Defender of the Faith – Philip Roth
    • The Shawl – Cynthia Ozick
    • What of this Goldfish, Would You Wish? – Etgar Keret

    Nature

    • A Mild Attack of Locusts – Doris Lessing
    • Whitefoot – Wendell Berry

    Young Indigenous Writers

    • New Jesus – Tommy Orange
    • Kelsey and the Burdened Breath – Darcie Little Badger

    The Alices

    • Roses, Rhododendron – Alice Adams
    • Dolly – Alice Munro

    Super Short Stories!

    • The Job Application – Robert Walser
    • Poseidon – Franz Kafka
    • The Fifth Story – Clarice Lispector
    • They Take Turns Using a Word They Like; Jane and the Cane; Oral History (with Hiccups); Disagreement; Agreement; The Cats in the Prison Recreation Hall… – Lydia Davis

    Famous Unknowns

    • Echo Tree – Henry Dumas
    • A Good Scent from a Strange Moutain– Robert Olen Butler

    #WIT (Women In Translation) Month

    • The Monster – Satu Waltari
    • The Youngest Doll – Rosario Ferre
    • The Bystander – Lenna Krohn

    Spooky

    • Afterward – Edith Wharton
    • Young Goodman Brown – Nathaniel Hawthorne

    A Life’s Work

    • Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket; Sundays; Mother; The Great Escape – Hilma Wolizter

    Not Just About Christmas

    • A Christmas Memory – Truman Capote

    Fairy Tale Time

    •  The Erl-King – Angela Carter
    • A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstiltskin – Kevin Brockmeier
    • The Mole King – Marie Hermanson

    Black History Month

    • Little Faith – Percival Everett
    • The Witness – Ann Petry

    Women’s History Month

    • The Long Distant Runner – Grace Paley
    • Holiday – Katherine Anne Porter

    Mad Men

    • The Swimmer – John Cheever
    • The Largesse of the Sea Maiden– Denis Johnson

    Dogs

    • There I Was Stuck with Busby – Patricia Highsmith
    • Seeing Eye – Wilton Brad Watson
    • Sir Henry – Lydia Millet

    Ukraine

    • stories from Lucky Breaks – Yevgenia Belorusets
    • The Ukraine – Artem Chapeye

    Utopia?

    • Buffalo Gals – Ursula K. LeGuin
    • Repent, Harlequin! – Harlan Ellison

    Hotels

    • In the Great City of Phoenix – Tove Jansson
    • The Hotel – Anne Enright

    Across the Pond

    • The Piano Turner’s Wives – William Trevor
    • The Stain – Tessa Hadley

    Spooky

    • The Turn of the Screw – Henry James

    Latino Writers

    • The Book of Sand – Jorge Luis Borges
    • Woman Hollering Creek – Sandra Cisneros

    The Noble Nobel

    • Returns – Annie Ernaux
    • Yente – Olga Tokarczuk
    • Wenlock Edge – Alice Munro

    Snow

    •  The Hermit’s Story – Rick Bass
    • The Hollow Children – Louis Erdrich

    Contemporary Black Writers

    •  In the Old Days – Edwidge Danticat
    • Palaver – Bryan Washington

    Women of the Left Bank

    •  Green Sealing Wax – Colette
    • A Night Among the Horses – Djuna Barnes

    April Foolery

    •  Ron – Joy Baglio
    • Note to Self – Charles Yu

    Toothy Tales

    •  Dr. H.A. Moynihan – Lucia Berlin
    • The Redemption of Galen Pike – Carys Davies

    At the Hospital

    •  In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried – Amy Hempel
    • Two Nurses Smoking – David Means

    American Dudes

    •  Out, Brief Candle – Kurt Vonnegut
    • Hills Like White Elephants – Ernest Hemmingway
    • Eve’s Diary – Mark Twain

    Southern Charm

    •  A View of the Woods – Flannery O’Connor
    • The Bear – William Faulkner

    The Russians are Coming

    •  The Beast – Ludmila Ulitskaya
    • The Darling – Anton Chekhov

    Spooky Story

    •  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Washington Irving

    Novella November

    •  Foster – Claire Keegan

    Strange Angels

    •  The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico – Antonio Tabucchi
    • A Very Old Man with Enourmous Wings – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    A Western Perspective

    • The Man to Send Rainclouds – Leslie Marmon Silko
    • Not Here You Don’t – Thomas McGuane

    Black Writers

    • Sonny’s Blues – James Baldwin
    • The Gilded Six Bits – Zora Neale Hurston

    Irish Roses

    • A Rose in the Heart of New York – Edna O’Brien
    • The Rose Garden – Maeve Brennan

    POV

    • Cream – Haruki Murakami
    • Evil Flowers – Gunnhild Oyehaug

    Mothers

    • My Life is an Open Book – Lucia Berlin
    • How to Talk to Your Mother – Lorrie Moore

    Graphic Novel Book Group

    Graphic Novel Book Group is for adults (18+) who love the mediums of graphic novels and comic books. No previous familiarity required! Expect lots of adventurous reading and great discussions! We meet in person on the last Monday of each month at 6:30pm. Contact lflorence@ccls.org to join. 

    • Locke & Key – Joe Hill
    • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen – Matt Fraction
    • Pulp – Ed Brubaker
    • After the Rain – Nnedi Okorafor
    • Golden Age – Roxanne Moriel
    • Billionaire Island – Mark Russell
    • Dragon Hoops – Gene Luen Yang
    • Something is Killing the Children – James Tynion
    • Onion Skin – Eduardo Camacho
    • Slaughterhouse Five – Ryan North
    • Lady Killer – Joelle Jones
    • Far Sector – N. K. Jemisin
    • Djeliya – Juni Ba
    • Golden Age, volume 2 – Roxanne Moreil
    • Strange Adventures – Tom King
    • The Many Deaths of Laila Starr – Ram V
    • Department of Truth – James Tynion
    • Sentient – Jeff Lemire
    • Nightwing – Tom Taylor
    • Annie of West Philly – Ivy Weir
    • Clementine – Tillie Walden
    • Promethea – Alan Moore
    • Saga, volume 10 – Brian K. Vaughan
    • The Human Target – Tom King
    • Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
    • The Keeper – Marco Finnegan
    • The Accidental Czar – Andrew Weiss
    • Shubeik Lubeik – Deena Mohamed
    • American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang
    • Spider Punk – Cody Ziglar
    • Sailor Twain – Mark Siegel
    • Wytches vol. 1 – Scott Snyder
    • The Secret to Super Human Strength – Alison Bechdel
    • Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands – Kate Beaton
    • It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth – Zoe Thorogood
    • Do a Power Bomb! – Daniel Warren Johnson

    International Book Group

    International Book Group celebrates authors all around the world. We meet in person on the last Wednesday of each month at 7pm. Contact felliott@ccls.org to join.

    • Amnesty – Aravind Adiga
    • The Blue-Eyes Tiger – Dr. Louise Bingham Bennett
    • American By Day – Derek B. Miller
    • The Far Field – Madhuri Vijay
    • The Girl with the Louding Voice – Abi Dare
    • The Yield – Tara June Winch
    • The Kurdish Bike – Alesa Lightbourne
    • The Home Place – J. Drew Lanham, PhD. (Longwood Community Read)
    • The Beekeeper of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
    • We Begin at the End – Chris Whitaker
    • The Midnight Library – Matt Haig
    • What is the What – Dave Eggers
    • Things We Lost to the Water – Eric Nguyen
    • The Day the World Came to Town 9/11 In Ganer Newfoundland – Jim Defede
    • The Star of the North – D. B. John
    • The Last Blue – Isla Morley
    •  A Single Swallow – Zhang Ling
    • House on Endless Waters – Emuna Elon
    • The Songs of Trees – David George Haskell (Longwood Community Read)
    • At the End of the Matinee – Keiichiro Hirano
    • Something Beautiful Happened – Yvette Manessis Corporon
    • A House Without Windows – Nadia Hashimi
    • The Speckled People – Hugo Hamilton
    • The Kitchen Front – Jennifer Ryan
    • The Spanish Daughter – Lorena Hughes
    • The Color of Air – Gail Tsukiyama
    • The Italian Villa – Daniela Sacerdoti
    • The Mozart Code – Rachel McMillan
    • The Night Ship – Jess Kidd
    • The Paris Library – Janet Skeslien Charles
    • Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora – Bryant Terry (Longwood Community Read)
    • The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese
    • A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
    • Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
    • The Island of Missing Trees – Elif Shafak
    • Happiness Falls – Angie Kim
    • People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
    • The Hummingbird – Sandro Veronesi

    Library Book Group

    The Library Book Group focuses on contemporary fiction. We meet in-person on the last Thursday of each month at 6:30pm. 

    • Kindred – Octavia Butler
    • The Exiles – Christina Baker Kline
    • The Vanished Bride – Bella Ellis
    • Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
    • The Lowering Days – Gregory Brown
    • Infinite Country – Patricia Engle
    • What Strange Paradise – Omar El Akkad
    • Clark and Division – Naomi Hirahara
    Favorite Book: The Exiles
    • The Rose Code – Kate Quinn
    • The Song of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors – David George Haskell (Longwood Community Read)
    • The Lincoln Highway – Amor Towles
    • Crying in H Mart – Michelle Zauner
    • The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz – Erik Larson
    • The Diamond Eye – Kate Quinn
    • Black Cake – Charmaine Wilkerson
    • The Long, Bright River – Liz Moore
    • The Patron Saint of Second Chances – Christine Simon
    • The Wright Brothers – David McCullough
    • Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell
    • Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver
    • The Violin Conspiracy – Brendan Slocumb
    • A Woman is No Man – Etaf Rum
    • Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
    • The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai
    • West with Giraffes – Lynda Rutledge
    • Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus
    • West with Giraffes – Lynda Rutdledge
    • The Personal Librarian – Marie Benedict
    • Trust – Hernan Diaz
    • The Spy and The Traitor – Ben MacIntyre
    • Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue

    Life on Earth

    Life on Earth Book Group is an earth-centric book group reading titles from many genres that relate in some way to our place in/on planet Earth and exploring our relationships to the natural world. We meet in person on the third Monday of every-other month at 6:30pm. Contact lflorence@ccls.org to join. 

    • Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer
    • Landmarks – Robert Macfarlane
    • Trace – Lauret Savoy
    • Book of Eels – Patrik Svensson
    • Flight Behavior – Barbara Kingsolver
    • Entangled Life – Merlin Sheldrake
    • Upstream – Mary Oliver
    • Wildwood – Roger Deakin
    • Surfacing – Kathleen Jamie
    • The Great Derangement – Amitav Ghosh
    • The Songs of Trees – David George Haskell (Longwood Community Read)
    • Field Study – Helen Humphrey
    • The Seed Keeper – Diane Wilson
    • Islands of Abandonment – Cal Flyn
    • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard
    • Underland: A Deep Time Journey – Robert Macfarlane
    • Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora [A Cookbook] – Bryant Terry (Longwood Community Read)
    • Conversations with Birds – Priyanka Kumar
    • Playing God in the Meadow – Martha Leb Molnar
    • Healing Ground – Liz Carlisle
    • Gardening Can Be Murder – Marta McDowell
    • Waiting for Aphrodite – Sue Hubbell
    •  

    Romance Book Group

    The Romance Book Group reads all sorts of Happily Ever Afters. We are offering hybrid sessions! Please visit us on Zoom or in person on the first Wednesday of each month at 6:30pm. Contact gmckelligan@ccls.org to join. 

    •  A Wedding One Christmas – Therese Beharrie
    • Day of the Duchess – Sarah Maclean
    • Boyfriend Material – Alexis Hall
    • Hidden Sins – Selena Montgomery (aka Stacey Abrams)
    • A Heart of Blood and Ashes – Milla Vane
    • Hidden Amish Secrets – Debby Giusti (AUTHOR INTERVIEWED ON ZOOM!)
    • An Extraordinary Union – Alyssa Cole
    • The Kiss Quotient – Helen Hoang
    • You Had Me at Hola – Alexis Daria
    • The Princess Bride – William Goldman
    • Undercover Bromance – Lissa Kay Adams
    • Mangos & Mistletoe – Adriana Herrera
    Three Favorite Books: Boyfriend Material; Extraordinary Union; Undercover Bromance
    • The Viscount Who Loved Me – Julia Quinn
    • It’s Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake – Claire Christian
    • Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
    • Seven Days in June – Tian Williams
    • Bear With Me – Lucy Eden
    • The House in the Cerulean Sea – TJ Klune
    • A Cowboy to Remember – Rebekah Weatherspoon
    • Dangerous Books for Girls – Maya Rodale (AUTHOR INTERVIEWED VIA ZOOM!)
    • Husband Material – Alexis Hall
    • The Ex Hex – Erin Sterling
    • The Duke Who Didn’t – Courtney Milan
    • The Twelve Dates of Christmas – Jenny Bayliss
    Three Favorite Books: Seven Days in June; Husband Material; Viscount Who Loved Me
    • What Did You Eat Yesterday? volume 1 – Fumi Yoshinaga
    • Star Mother – Charlie N. Holmberg
    • Destiny’s Captive – Beverly Jenkins
    • Love Lettering – Kate Clayborn
    • The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics – Olivia Waite
    • Queerly Beloved – Susie Dumond
    • High Noon – Nora Roberts
    • Knot My Type – Evie Mitchell
    • Touch of Darkness – Scarlett St. Clair
    • Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas
    • Married to a Bedouin – Marguerite van Geldermalsen
    • Dead Collections – Isaac Fellman
    Three Favorite Books: Star Mother; Love Lettering; Touch of Darkness
    • Practice Makes Perfect – Sarah Adams
    • D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding – Chencia C. Higgins
    • Savage City – L. Penelope
    • Hana Khan Carries On – Uzma Jalaluddin

    True Crime Book Group

    The True Crime Book Group is a home for all true crime lovers – share with us your favorite podcast, show, or book – we’re here for it all! We meet in person on the second Tuesday of each month at 7pm. Contact amurphy@ccls.org to join.

    • Say Nothing – Patrick Radden Keefe
    • Couple Found Slain – Mikita Brottman

    • Devil’s Knot – Mara Leveritt
    • Helter Skelter – Vincent Bugliosi
    • Don’t Call It a Cult – Sarah Berman
    • I’ll Be Gone in the Dark – Michelle McNamara

    YA Book Group

    The Young Adult Book Group offers a space for teenagers who love reading! We meet in person on the second Monday of each month at 6:30pm. Contact lflorence@ccls.org to join.

    **Our YA Book Group is on pause until the new building opens!

    • The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
    • Darius the Great is Not Okay – Adib Khorram
    • A good Girl’s Guide to Murder – Holly Jackson
    • Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo
    • Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas
    • Loveless – Alice Oseman
    Favorite Book of 2022: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

    Check back soon! We will continue the YA Book Group when the new building opens!