Host An Unforgettable Book Club Party

The Widower’s Tale is the story of Percival Darling. He still lives in the house where his daughters grew up – “the house of her mother’s heart” according to Clover, Percy’s eldest daughter. Percy is a 70 year old who runs everyday to get in shape to die and who fantasizes of a quasi-Luddite retirement – “Cursed be the cursors; farewell to iEverything and its pertly nicknamed apps.”

Cutting for Stone is an engaging and witty novel about the traumatic origins of twin brothers who grew up in the shadows of a hospital in Ethiopia. Losing their mother and being abandoned by their father, they were raised by two physicians who instilled in them a love of medicine. Despite their bond, the twins could not be more different. However, it is their genetic similarities that gives life to one of them, but in the process destroys the other.

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières takes place on the Greek isle of Cephalonia under German and Italian occupation during Word War II.

The jovial Italian Captain Antonio Corelli is quartered with Dr. Iannis and his daughter Pelagia. Despite the fact that Captain Corelli is Italian and considered the enemy, his love of life, his kind joyful spirit, and his gifted ability on the mandolin, all work to win Pelagia’s heart.

“The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Captiol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games”.

A 4 year old arrives alone on a dock in Australia with only a few belongings in a small white suitcase. When the man who found and cared for her dies, an older Nell is given the suitcase. Within it is a book of fairy tales written by the woman who put her on the boat. Join Nell, and then her granddaughter Cassandra, on a journey to England and a cottage on a cliff to unravel the mystery of her past.

December 12, 1930
Trinity College, Oxford
My dear and unfortunate successor:
It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself — because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir-and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don’t know, but I hope to discover that fact, eventually-perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events.

This book was chosen for our very first book club party. It brought family and friends together for one night of strengthening our minds, renewing our bounds and nourishing our bellys. This party went on way past any of our bedtimes but it was worth every yawn. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The Cross Gardener is about an orphaned boy named John Bevan who learns about life, love and loss while growing up on an apple farm. He finds a man tending to crosses on the side of the road and through him he learns in times of tragedy, you are never alone.

Celebrate southern women with Beth Hoffman’s debut novel Saving CeeCee Honeycutt. CeeCee is a young girl who had an unhappy childhood in an unstable home until she moved to Savannah to live with her Aunt Tootie. She notes “I had been plunked into a strange, perfumed world that, as far as I could tell, seemed to be run entirely by women.” It was these women who taught her the gifts she possessed and what it meant to be loved.

Deep into the night, an infant is thrust through the small swinging door cut into the wooden entry gate of Saint Anthony’s Orphanage for Boys. The infant is missing a hand and the only clue to his identity is three letters, REN, sewn in the collar of his soiled baby clothes.