Summer by Edith Wharton

 

Book Discussion 

Tuesday, July 28, 2026 at 2:00 PM 

A native girl from a humble background meets an ambitious city boy, and a torrid romance ensues. 

Despite her pride, independence, and honesty, Charity Royall feels shadowed by her past--especially in her ardent relationship with the educated and refined Lucius Harney. Can passion overcome the effects of heredity and environment?

With its frank treatment of a woman's sexual awakening, Summer created a sensation upon its 1917 publication. Edith Wharton — the author of Ethan Frome and a peerless observer and chronicler of society — completely shattered the standards of conventional love stories with this novel's candor and realism. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author declared Summer a personal favorite among her works, and liked to refer to it as "the Hot Ethan." Over a century later, it remains fresh and relevant. (goodreads.com)

A MARRIAGE AT SEA: A TRUE STORY OF LOVE, OBSESSION, AND SHIPWRECK, BY SOPHIE ELMHIRST

Book Discussion 

Wednesday 

April 15, 2026 at 2:00 PM 

The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked, in a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits.

Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves.

What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves. (goodreads.com)

WASHINGTON BLACK, BY ESI EDUGYAN

BOOK DISCUSSION 

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2026, AT 2:00 PM

In-Person 

Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born.

When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. [But to his surprise,] Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist. (goodreads)
"A gripping historical narrative exploring both the bounds of slavery and what it means to be truly free." (Vanity Fair)

Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow

 

Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, NY, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. Almost magically, the line between fantasy & historical fact, between real & imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud & Emiliano Zapata slip in & out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family & other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler & a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence. (www.goodreads.com)

Join our Book Discussion 

Tuesday, January 27, 2026, at 2:00 PM

FAHRENHEIT 451, BY RAY BRADBURY

 

Book Discussion:

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

At 2:00 PM

[Originally published in 1953,] Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. (goodreads.com}

LaRose, by Louise Erdrich

 

In-person discussion on Tuesday, November 25, at 2

In this literary masterwork, Louise Erdrich, the bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House and the Pulitzer Prize nominee The Plague of Doves wields her breathtaking narrative magic in an emotionally haunting contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture. (goodreads.com)

The Morningside, by Tea Obreht

October 21, 2025, at 2:00 PM

(in-person discussion)

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to the Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality. (goodreads.com)

TELL ME EVERYTHING, BY ELIZABETH STROUT

 

BOOK DISCUSSION ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”- goodreads

Discussion will be both in-person and on Zoom, via our events calendar at www.hwpl.org

THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON, BY EDITH WHARTON

 

Set in the 1920s, Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. As Susy explains, "We should really, in a way, help more than hamper each other. We both know the ropes so well; what one of us didn't see the other might - in the way of opportunities, I mean". The other part of the plan states that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially, they're free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of errors that will charm all fans of Wharton's work.  (goodreads.com)

HWPL READERS DISCUSSION

ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, AT 2:00 PM

IN-PERSON AND ON ZOOM

VIA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

North Woods, by Daniel Mason

 

Book Discussion  Tuesday July 15,

 at 2:00 PM

in-person and on Zoom

via events calendar at www.hwpl.org

Mason’s ambitious, kaleidoscopic novel ushers readers over the threshold of a house in the wilds of western Massachusetts and leaves us there for 300 years and almost 400 pages. One after another, in sections interspersed with letters, poems, song lyrics, diary entries, medical case notes, real estate listings, vintage botanical illustrations and assorted ephemera not normally bound into the pages of a novel, we get to know the inhabitants of the place from colonial times to present day. There’s an apple farmer, an abolitionist and a wealthy manufacturer. A pair of beetles. A landscape painter. A ghost. Their lives (and deaths) briefly intersect, but mostly layer over each other in dazzling decoupage. All the while, the natural world looks on — a long-suffering, occasionally destructive presence. Mason is the consummate genial host, inviting you to stay as long as you like and to make of the place what you will.  (nytimes.com)

The Safekeep, by Yael Van Der Wouden

 HWPL READERS BOOK DISCUSSION ON TUESDAY JUNE 17, 2025

AT 2:00 PM

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past

Shortlisted for 2024 Booker Prize..

James, by Percival Everett

Book Discussion: Tuesday May 20, 2025

A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. Winner of the 2024 National Book Award and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize. 

THE GOD OF THE WOODS, BY LIZ MOORE

 

BOOK DISCUSSION 

TUESDAY, APRIL 29

AT 2:00 PM

IN-PERSON AND ON  ZOOM

SEE OUR UPCOMING EVENTS AT WWW.HWPL.ORG FOR LINK

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

PROPHET SONG, BY PAUL LYNCH

 

BOOK DISCUSSION

IN-PERSON AND VIA ZOOM

TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2025

AT 2:00 PM

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

THE HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS, BY LUIS ALBERTO URREA

 

Book Discussion 

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

At 2:00 PM

The definitive Mexican-American immigrant story, a sprawling and deeply felt portrait of a Mexican-American family occasioned by the impending loss of its patriarch, from one of the country's most beloved authors.

Prizewinning and bestselling writer Luis Urrea has written his Mexican coming-to-America story and his masterpiece. Destined to sit alongside other classic immigrant novels, The House of Broken Angels is a sprawling and epic family saga helmed by patriarch Big Angel. The novel gathers together the entire De La Cruz clan, as they meet for the final birthday party Big Angel is throwing for himself, at home in San Diego, as he nears the end of his struggle with cancer and reflects on his long and full life.

But when Big Angel's mother, Mama America, approaching one hundred, dies herself as the party nears, he must plan her funeral as well. There will be two family affairs in one weekend: a farewell double-header. Among the attendants is his half-brother and namesake, Little Angel, who comes face to face with the siblings with whom he shared a father but not, as the weekend proceeds to remind him, a life.

This story of the De La Cruzes is the story of what it means to be a Mexican in America, to have lived two lives across one border. It is a tale of the ravaging power of death to shore up the bits of life you have forgotten, whether by choice or not. Above all, this finely wrought portrait of a deeply complex family and the America they have come to call home is Urrea at his purest and best. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank. (www.goodreads.com)

THE LITTLE STRANGER, BY SARAH WATERS

 

One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.

Book Discussion on Tuesday January 14 at 2:00 PM

                                              In-person and on Zoom 

(for link: go to Upcoming Events calendar at www.hwpl.org)

                                                                              

THE TIGER'S WIFE, BY TEA OBREHT

Book Discussion on Tuesday, December 17, 2024, at 2:00 PM

In-person and on Zoom

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death.

"Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger’s Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination." —Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Sunday Book Review

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, BY PHILIP ROTH

 BOOK DISCUSSION:  IN-PERSON AND ON ZOOM: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2024, AT 2:00 PM

In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, the great American novelist, Philip Roth, imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.

THIS OTHER EDEN, BY PAUL HARDING

 

HWPL READERS BOOK DISCUSSION

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024,

AT 2:00 PM

IN-PERSON AND ON ZOOM

See our calendar of upcoming events for link (www.hwpl.org)

Set at the beginning of the twentieth century and inspired by historical events, This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island: an enclave off the coast of the United States where waves of castaways - in flight from society and its judgment - have landed and built a home.

Benjamin Honey- American, Bantu, Igbo- born enslaved- freed or fled at fifteen- aspiring orchardist, arrived on the island with his Irish wife, Patience, and discovered they could make a life together there. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. Then comes the intrusion of 'civilization': officials determine to 'cleanse' the island, and a missionary schoolteacher selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will succumb to the authorities' institutions or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah's Ark.

Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's This Other Eden explores the hopes and dreams and resilience of those seen not to fit a world brutally intolerant of difference.

(www.goodreads.com)

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU, BY REBECCA MAKKAI

 

Book Discussion Date:

Tuesday August 6, 2024, at 2:00 PM

In-person and on Zoom

(access link via upcoming events at  www.hwpl.org)

When a successful film professor and podcaster returns to visit her   boarding school in New Hampshire, she finds herself  inexorably drawn back to  an old murder case and its increasingly apparent flaws.