Book Clubs

Stock image of a group of seven diverse people sitting in a circle holding books mid-discussion during a book club meeting

Regular Book Clubs

Shelf Life Book Club

Join us on the 4th Thursday of the month at 5:00pm and discuss our book of the month. Books are set by the club members. Everyone is welcome to join.

Silent Book Club

A book club without assigned books and discussion not mandatory. Join us on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 11:00am for our silent book club, bring the book you are reading and sit with us and read.  We will have light refreshments and time after the hour to chat. 

Upcoming Book Club Events

This event is in the "Adults" group

Shelf Life Book Club

Thursday, September 25, 2025 at 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Program Type:
Authors & Books, Clubs & Groups
Age Group:
Adults
Shelf Life Book Club:

Join us every 4th Thursday of the month at 5:00 pm and discuss our Book of the Month. Everyone is welcome!

The Shelf Life Book Club pick for this month is "The Night Ship" by Jess Kidd.

Library Branch: Tamarack District Library
Room: Maxwell Room
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Authors & Books, Clubs & Groups
Event Details:

Join us every 4th Thursday of the month at 5:00 pm and discuss our Book of the Month. Everyone is welcome!

The Shelf Life Book Club pick for this month is "The Night Ship" by Jess Kidd.

This event is in the "Adults" group

Silent Book Club

Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at 11:00am - 12:00pm
Program Type:
Authors & Books, Clubs & Groups
Age Group:
Adults

A book club without assigned books and discussion is not mandatory. Join us on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 11:00 a.m. for our silent book club.

Library Branch: Tamarack District Library
Room: Maxwell Room
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Authors & Books, Clubs & Groups
Event Details:

A book club without assigned books and discussion is not mandatory. Join us on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 11:00 a.m. for our silent book club.

This event is in the "Adults" group

Shelf Life Book Club

Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Program Type:
Authors & Books, Clubs & Groups
Age Group:
Adults
Shelf Life Book Club:

Join us every 4th Thursday of the month at 5:00 pm and discuss our Book of the Month. Everyone is welcome!

This month's Shelf LIfe Book is Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall.

Library Branch: Tamarack District Library
Room: Maxwell Room
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Authors & Books, Clubs & Groups
Event Details:

Join us every 4th Thursday of the month at 5:00 pm and discuss our Book of the Month. Everyone is welcome!

This month's Shelf LIfe Book is Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall.

Image for "The Boxcar Librarian"

The Boxcar Librarian



 

Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman's quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library--a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana.

When Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she's shipped off to Montana to work on the state's American Guide Series--travel books intended to put the nation's destitute writers to work.

Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state's powerful Copper Kings who don't want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town's mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.

More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner's daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.

Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

The three women's stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to hide: what happened to Colette Durand.

Inspired by the fascinating, true history of Missoula's Boxcar Library, the novel blends the story of the strong, courageous women who survived and thrived in the rough and rowdy West with that of the power of standing together to fight for workers' lives. And through it all shines the capacity of books to provide connection and light to those who need it most.



 

Image for "The Coroner"

The Coroner

Home is where the bodies are buried in this “intense, riveting mystery” full of twists, romance, and family drama—for fans of Patricia Cornwell (Library Journal).

Summoned to take up her father’s post as a medical examiner, surgeon Emily Hartford returns to her Midwestern hometown—and finds herself at the center of a murder investigation.

Recently engaged and deeply ensconced in her third year of surgical residency in Chicago, Emily Hartford gets a shock when she’s called home to Freeport, Michigan, the small town she fled a decade ago after the death of her mother. Her estranged father, the local medical examiner, has had a massive heart attack and Emily is needed urgently to help with his recovery.

Not sure what to expect, Emily races home, blowing the only stoplight at the center of town and getting pulled over by her former high school love, now Sheriff, Nick Larson. At the hospital, she finds her father in near total denial of the seriousness of his condition. He insists that the best thing Emily can do to help him is to take on the autopsy of a Senator’s teen daughter whose sudden, unexplained death has just rocked the sleepy town.

Reluctantly agreeing to help her father and Nick, Emily gets down to work, only to discover that the girl was murdered. The autopsy reminds her of her many hours in the morgue with her father when she was a young teen—a time which inspired her love of medicine. Before she knows it, she’s pulled deeper into the case and closer to her father and to Nick—much to the dismay of her big-city fiancé. When a threat is made to Emily herself, she must race to catch the killer before he strikes again.

Image for "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant"

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant

This "vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt" memoir tells the story of Curtis Chin's time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980's Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers).

Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone--from the city's first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples--could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city's spiraling misfortunes; and where--between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions--he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself.



Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung's, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy's childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with him--and perhaps even share something off the secret menu.



An American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book--Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award

A 2024 Michigan Notable Book

Best Nonfiction Books of the Year--Kirkus Reviews

Best Books of the Year--Apple Books



TIME's Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle's Highly Anticipated Books to Put on Your Radar This Fall 2023 * Washington Post's Books to Read This Fall 2023 * Eater's Best Food Books to Read 2023 * Lambda Literary Review's October's Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature