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Welcome Lovely Readers!

We are a delightful group of women who have a passion for books...whether we'll hold the book in our hands, read from a mobile device, or listen while driving makes no difference. We have one commonality in that we like to take in stories and new information.

No doubt we are curious lot and insatiable learners! If you review the past books (scroll down) you'll see the genres greatly vary.

Please join us even if you have not read the book. Register for reminders and the Zoom link to join us!

Join us on the third Tuesday of the month at:

4pm-5:30pm Pacific

6pm-7:30pm Central

7pm-8:30pm Eastern

Mark your calendar now for these dates in 2025/2026:

(2025) Aug 19 | Sep 16 | Oct 21* | Nov 18 | Dec 16
(2026) Jan 20 | Feb 17 | Mar 17 | Apr 21 | May 19 | Jun 16 | Jul 21 | Aug n/a | Sep 16 | Oct 21 | Nov 18 | Dec 16

(* Author Discussion)

What we will be reading/discussing...

Aug 19 2025

Medgar and Myrlie

Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid

Myrlie Louise Beasley met Medgar Evers on her first day of college. They fell in love at first sight, married just one year later, and Myrlie left school to focus on their growing family. Medgar became the field secretary for the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, charged with beating back the most intractable and violent resistance to black voting rights in the country. Myrlie served as Medgar’s secretary and confidant, working hand in hand with him as they struggled against public accommodations and school segregation, lynching, violence, and sheer despair within their state’s “black belt.” (More information)

Sep 16 2025

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. (More information)

Oct 21 2025

Riding Like the Wind

Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb by Iris Jamahl Dunkle (Author Discussion)

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In Riding Like the Wind, renowned biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb. Dunkle follows Babb from her impoverished childhood in eastern Colorado to California. There, she befriended the era's literati, including Ray Bradbury and Ralph Ellison; entered into an illegal marriage; and was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. (More information)

Nov 18 2025

Mankiller

Mankiller: A Chief and Her People by Wilma Mankiller

In this spiritual, moving autobiography, Wilma Mankiller, former Chief of the Cherokee Nation and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, tells of her own history while also honoring and recounting the history of the Cherokees. Mankiller's life unfolds against the backdrop of the dawning of the American Indian civil rights struggle, and her book becomes a quest to reclaim and preserve the great Native American values that form the foundation of our nation. Now featuring a new Afterword to the 2000 paperback reissue, this edition of Mankiller completely updates the author's private and public life after 1994 and explores the recent political struggles of the Cherokee Nation. (More information)

Dec 16 2025

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

It’s a snowy winter in London where we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, an old man who has become bitter with life, he is known for being cold and selfish. Scrooge profits off his impoverished community, financially benefitting off their labour whilst paying measly wages to his employees. In the lead up towards Christmas, Scrooge is visited by the spirit of his former business partner Jacob Marley who informs Scrooge to expect 3 ghosts. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, show Scrooge what he needs to see before it’s too late, and we get to witness the mistakes of his past, the emptiness of his present and the dark future that awaits him. (More information)

Jan 20 2026

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The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine the cause of death. (More information)

Feb 17 2026

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Persuasion by Jane Austen

Jane Austen's final novel and published after she died in 1817, Persuasion tells the story of twenty-seven-year-old Anne Elliot, who is resigned to an unhappy fate and forced to move with her family to humbler lodgings when an old, lost love reenters her life. The handsome young naval officer, whose marriage proposal she was persuaded to reject seven years prior, has moved up in the world, and now she has a second chance at love. (More information)

Mar 17 2026

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The Story Collector by Evie Woods (Gaughan)

In a quiet village in Ireland, a mysterious local myth is about to change everything…One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteered to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But all is not as it seems, and Anna soon finds herself at the heart of a mystery that threatens her very way of life. (More information)

Apr 21 2026

Huckelberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The 1885 Classic: After he and his good buddy Tom Sawyer had uncovered a small fortune, Huckleberry Finn finds himself restrained by the demands of an overbearing guardian. Never one to be confined by the proprieties of society, Huck bolts from this dull life in pursuit of a more exciting and mischievous life. Witty and poignant, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often cited as the preeminent “Great American Novel.” So join this willful vagabond as he sails down the Mighty Mississippi and discovers one thrilling adventure followed by another. (More information)

May 19 2026

James

James by Percival Everett

2025 Pulitzer Prize Winner: When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature. (More information)

Jun 16 2026

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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever-escalating dangers around in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. (More information)

Jul 21 2026

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My Last Name by Eric Schumacher

Ninety-five-year-old Lottie Barnes now lives in a care facility in her native Iowa. Restrained by the physical trappings of old age and cognitive decline, she struggles to comprehend her present surroundings. Nevertheless, her life story unfolds as she remembers key moments from her past with sharp clarity. (More information)

Aug - N/A

Aug - no gathering

No gathering this month.

Sep 16 2026

West With Giraffes

West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

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. (More information)

Oct 21 2026

The Ride of Her Life

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family; she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. (More information)

Nov 18 2026

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The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer’s affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners—an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance. (More information)

Dec 16 2026

Once Upon a Wardrobe

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan

1950: Margaret Devonshire (Megs) is a seventeen-year-old student of mathematics and physics at Oxford University. When her beloved eight-year-old brother asks Megs if Narnia is real, logical Megs tells him it's just a book for children, and certainly not true. Homebound due to his illness and remaining fixated on his favorite books, George presses her to ask the author of the recently released novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a question: "Where did Narnia come from?" (More information)

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Author joined the discussion.

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