COOK YOUR WAY THROUGH…
Cookbook Discussion Group on Zoom
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FALL 2024 Session:
The Pretty Dish by Jessica Merchant
TUESDAY, DEC 17th @ 7pm- in-person event @ UMFPL!- DIY Craft Event- Homemade Sugar Lip Scrubs
Join our group on Bookclubs.com to access meeting information, photo albums, discussion boards, polls, and much more! Visit https://bookclubs.com/clubs/5968796/join/ec9466/ to join.
We would love to see pictures of your culinary creations! Email all photos to uppermoreland@mclinc.org prior to each meeting to share your dishes with the group and to add to our group photo album on bookclubs.com!
WINTER 2025 Session:
Feed These People by Jen Hatmaker
This discussion takes place virtually on Zoom. Meeting Log-in information will be emailed to registered participants on or before the day of the program and posted to our bookclubs.com page. Free copies of the title available to registered participants starting December 2nd (while supplies last) at the information desk!
FULL SCHEDULE (3 PART SERIES):
TUESDAY, FEB 4th 2025 @ 6:30pm on Zoom– Food for Your Picky Spouse or Spawn, Food for Hippies, Food for When You Have No More Damns to Give
TUESDAY, MAR 4th 2025 @ 6:30pm on Zoom- Food for When You Want to Seem Fancy, Food that Goes Next to Your Food, Food that Comes After Your Food.
Join our group on Bookclubs.com to access meeting information, photo albums, discussion boards, polls, and much more! Visit https://bookclubs.com/clubs/5968796/join/ec9466/ to join.
We would love to see pictures of your culinary creations! Email all photos to uppermoreland@mclinc.org prior to each meeting to share your dishes with the group and to add to our group photo album on bookclubs.com!
TRUE CRIME TALES
*** REGISTER HERE***
Tuesday, January 21
@ 6:30pm on Zoom
The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, an ordinary young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding’s modest home, china flies off the shelves, eggs fly through the air; stolen jewellery appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a terrapin materialises on her lap. Nandor Fodor – a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research – reads of the case, and hastens to the scene of the haunting. But when Fodor starts his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma’s peculiar history, he finds a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss – and the foreshadowing of a nation’s worst fears. As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With rigour, daring and insight, the award-winning pioneer of non-fiction writing Kate Summerscale shadows Fodor’s enquiry, delving into long-hidden archives to find the human story behind a very modern haunting. – goodreads.com
Tuesday, March 25
@ 6:30pm on Zoom
Verity by Colleen Hoover
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.
Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her. – goodreads.com
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ROMANCE BOOK CLUB
Join us in reading the latest and greatest romance fiction titles!
This book club takes place in person at the library.
This event is free & open to all adults.
REGISTER HERE!
Saturday, Dec 21 @ 11am
Romantic Comedy
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Sally Milz is a sketch writer for “The Night Owls,” the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.
But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the “Danny Horst Rule,” poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.
Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her…right?
– from goodreads.com
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SILENT BOOK CLUB
2nd Sunday of each month
2-4pm
Join us for dedicated silent reading time in our community room with fellow book lovers! Get book recommendations and bring home some books from our collection!
For more information about Silent Book Club and it’s chapters, visit- https://silentbook.club/
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UMFPL BOOK DISCUSSION
UMFPL’s Book Discussion Group is in person & on Zoom!
Join us however works best for you!
*This event is free & open to all adults.
Click below to receive an email with discussion points and Zoom details each month.
Click here to add your email! (No need to sign-up each month, we’ll keep you on our list all year. Register each January to continue to receive Book Discussion information.)
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December 18, 2024 @ 7pm
When All Is Said
by Anne Griffin
2019
“When All Is Said” chronicles the life of Maurice Hannigan from a bar stool in a grand hotel, as the 84-year-old raises a toast to the five most significant people in his life. Even as he is talking to the reader, Hannigan is really addressing his son, Kevin, who is the absent witness of the entire tale.
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January 29, 2025 @ 6:30pm
Hello Beautiful
by Ann Napolitano
2023
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?”When All Is Said” chronicles the life of Maurice Hannigan from a bar stool in a grand hotel, as the 84-year-old raises a toast to the five most significant people in his life. Even as he is talking to the reader, Hannigan is really addressing his son, Kevin, who is the absent witness of the entire tale.
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February 26, 2025 @ 6:30pm
The Miniaturist
by Jessie Burton
2014
On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office–leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.
But Nella’s world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist–an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways . . .
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March 26, 2025 @ 6:30pm
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
2000
A book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
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April 30, 2025 @ 6:30pm
Paradise Under Glass (Longwood Gardens Community Read)
by Ruth Kassinger
2010
Paradise Under Glass is a witty and absorbing memoir about one woman’s unlikely desire to build, stock, and tend a small conservatory in her suburban Maryland home. Ruth Kassinger’s wonderful story of the unique way she chose to cope with the profound changes in her life—a book that will delight readers of Eat, Pray, Love and I Feel Bad About My Neck —is interwoven with the fascinating history of conservatories from the Renaissance orangeries to the glass palaces of Kew.
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May 28, 2025 @ 6:30pm
Banyan Moon
by Thao Thai
2023
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.
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June 25, 2025 @ 6:30pm
Yellow Wife
by Sadeqa Johnson
2021
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.
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July 30, 2025 @ 6:30pm
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmis
2022
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
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August 27, 2025 @ 6:30pm
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
by James McBride
2023
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood’s quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town’s first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill’s residents—roused by Chona’s kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.
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September 24, 2025 @ 6:30pm
Trust
by Hernan Diaz
2022
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
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October 24, 2025 @ 6:30pm
The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post
by Allison Pataki
2022
Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . .
So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds. Marjorie had an insatiable drive to live and love and to give more than she got. From crawling through Moscow warehouses to rescue the Tsar’s treasures to outrunning the Nazis in London, from serving the homeless of the Great Depression to entertaining Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Hollywood’s biggest stars, Marjorie Merriweather Post lived an epic life few could imagine.
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November 19, 2025 @ 6:30pm *
Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
2024
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
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December 17, 2025 @ 6:30pm *
West with Giraffes
by Lynda Rutledge
2021
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.
It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.
Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.