Wychmere, Stage Harbor &

                   Chatham Book Clubs

Recent selections from Harwich, Chatham, and other local Book Clubs. It is free to register your club with us - just let us know the monthly title the month in advance and we will stock the book, hold it behind the counter for members, give a 10% discount, and list your book list on our website - here or on its own page. We also lend out the publication Reading Group Choices and will pass along Advance Reading Copies to books we think your group may like!

	Office of Desire Martha Moody    Having developed a close friendship through their work at an Ohio medical practice, Alicia, Brice, and Caroline find their personal and professional dynamics dramatically shifting when Alicia begins an affair with one of their employers.
	The Elegance of the Hedgehog Muriel Barbery    The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.
	Shelter Me Juliette Fay    In the tradition of Marisa de los Santos and Anne Tyler comes a moving debut about a young mother's year of heartbreak, loss, and forgiveness...and help that arrives from unexpected sources.    Four months after her husband's death, Janie LaMarche remains undone by grief and anger. Her mourning is disrupted, however, by the unexpected arrival of a builder with a contract to add a porch onto her house. Stunned, Janie realizes the porch was meant to be a surprise from her husband—now his last gift to her.    As she reluctantly allows construction to begin, Janie clings to the familiar outposts of her sorrow—mothering her two small children with fierce protectiveness, avoiding friends and family, and stewing in a rage she can't release. Yet Janie's self-imposed isolation is breached by a cast of unlikely interventionists: her chattering, ipecac-toting aunt; her bossy, over-manicured neighbor; her muffin-bearing cousin; and even Tug, the contractor with a private grief all his own.    As the porch takes shape, Janie discovers that the unknowable terrain of the future is best navigated with the help of others—even those we least expect to call on, much less learn to love.
	Netherland Joseph O'Neill    In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
	What Was Lost Catherine O'Flynn    Twenty years after her brother is hounded from his home by rumors about his alleged role in a young girl's disappearance, Lisa and her security guard friend become increasingly curious about a child they glimpse on a mall's surveillance cameras.
	The Buccaneers Edith Wharton    Finally finished by writer Marion Mainwaring, Edith Wharton's timeless story is as riveting today as any written in her own time. Set in the 1870s, The Buccaneers is about five wealthy American girls whose money is too "new" to get them into society.
	Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert    This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom "Booklist" calls Anne Lamottas hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sistera) is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.
	Crow Lake Mary Lawson    Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing--a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.  Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural "badlands" of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur--offstage.
	Emma   Jane Austen    Jane Austen's classic. Content with her life and not interested in marriage, Emma Woodhouse, a rich and beautiful heiress, causes complications with her matchmaking schemes.
	Thunderstruck Erik Larson    A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world's "great hush." In "Thunderstruck," Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men--Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication--whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.
	Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson    The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban's backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual's power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools-especially for girls-that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson's quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, "Three Cups of Tea" combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.