Novel Ideas Book Club meets the 1st Thursday of every month at 6:30pm. Books should be read by the discussion date. The next meeting date and book selection is:

  • Thursday, February 2 - The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

    "Great books give you a feeling that you miss all day until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again. THE POSTMISTRESS is one of those rare books. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. THE POSTMISTRESS made me homesick for a time before I was even born. A beautifully written, thought provoking novel that I'm telling everyone I know to read." - Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help

    What would happen if a postmistress chose not to deliver the mail?

    It is 1940. While the war is raging in Europe, President Roosevelt promises he won't send American boys over to fight.

    Iris James is the postmistress of Franklin, Massachusetts a small town at the end of Cape Cod. She firmly believes her job is to deliver and keep people's secrets, to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. Faithfully she stamps and sends the letters between people such as the newlyweds Emma and Will Fitch, who has gone to London to help out during the Blitz. But one day she slips a letter into her pocket, and leaves it there.

    Born in New York City, Sarah Blake is the author of a chapbook of poems, Full Turn (Pennywhistle Press, 1989), an artist book, Runaway Girls (Hand Made Press, 1997) in collaboration with the artist, Robin Kahn, and two novels. Her first novel, Grange House, (Picador, 2000) was named a "New and Noteworthy" paperback in August, 2001 by The New York Times. Her second novel, The Postmistress, was published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam in February 2010. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Good Housekeeping, US News and World Report, The Chicago Tribune and elsewhere.

    Sarah taught high school and college English for many years in Colorado and New York. She has taught fiction workshops at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA, The Writer's Center, in Bethesda MD, The University of Maryland, and The George Washington University. She lives in Washington DC with her husband, the poet Joshua Weiner, and their two sons.

    Click here to read more about Sarah Blake and her novels at http://www.sarahblakebooks.com/books-postmistress.htm.

Upcoming book club meetings & picks:

  • Thursday, March 1 - A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

    What happens when a witch hiding from her past discovers a lost alchemical manuscript and meets a secretive geneticist? A Discovery of Witches is the first book in the All Souls Trilogy.

    When historian Diana Bishop opens a bewitched alchemical manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library it represents an unwelcome intrusion of magic into her carefully ordinary life. Though descended from a long line of witches, she is determined to remain untouched by her family’s legacy. She banishes the manuscript to the stacks, but Diana finds it impossible to hold the world of magic at bay any longer. For witches are not the only otherworldly creatures living alongside humans. There are also creative, destructive daemons and long-lived vampires who become interested in the witch’s discovery. They believe that the manuscript contains important clues about the past and the future, and want to know how Diana Bishop has been able to get her hands on the elusive volume. Chief among the creatures who gather around Diana is vampire Matthew Clairmont, a geneticist with a passion for Darwin. Together, Diana and Matthew embark on a journey to understand the manuscript’s secrets. But the relationship that develops between the ages-old vampire and the spellbound witch threatens to unravel the fragile peace that has long existed between creatures and humans—and will certainly transform Diana’s world as well.

    For the past twenty-eight years Deborah has been a student and scholar of history, and received degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis. During that time she researched the history of magic and science in Europe, especially during the period from 1500 to 1700. Her career in fiction began in September 2008 when she began to wonder “if there really are vampires, what do they do for a living?” A Discovery of Witches is the unexpected answer to that question. In February 2011 the novel was released in the United States and the United Kingdom. Soon after, thirty other editions and translations have appeared around the globe.

    Click here to read more about Deborah and her novels at her website - http://deborahharkness.com.

Here's a list of our past bookclub picks:
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