Highwood Reading Group's Picks!
Several friends, all avid readers, first met in September 1998 to discuss starting a reading group. It has run continually since then. Meetings started with one evening a month for ten months, which has evolved to afternoons as we all became retirees.
The books are chosen by group interest, something a member has read, recommended by others, ‘most read lists’ etc., and we sometimes take chances and end with the question “Who the hell picked this one and why?”!! ‘Heavy’ or longer books are usually read over the summer or maybe a winter month. The format is a discussion where everyone takes part. Very seldom is there a book that someone doesn’t learn something new – about history, people, countries, or society.
Looking for Jane
Marshall, Heather (Heather J.), author
2022
2017: When Angela Creighton discovers a mysterious letter containing a life-shattering confession, her research takes her back to the 1970s when a group of daring women operated an illegal underground abortion network. 1971: Dr. Evelyn Taylor joins the Jane Network as an abortion provider, determined to give other women the choice she never had. Twenty-year-old Nancy Mitchell unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she locates Jane and finds a place of her own alongside Dr. Taylor within the network's ranks, but she can never escape the lies that haunt her.
The nightingale
Hannah, Kristin, author
2015
Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. Younger, bolder sister Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann lives a quiet and content life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. When World War II strikes and Antoine is sent off to fight, Viann and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope. As the war progresses, it's not only the sisters' relationship that is tested, but also their strength and their individual senses of right and wrong. With life as they know it changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.
The pillars of the earth
Follett, Ken, author
1989
Set in twelfth-century England, this epic of kings and peasants juxtaposes the building of a magnificent church with the violence and treachery that often characterized the Middle Ages.
The red tent
Diamant, Anita, author
1997
The story of Dinah, a tragic character from the Bible whose great love, a prince, is killed by her brother, leaving her alone and pregnant. The novel traces her life from childhood to death, in the process examining sexual and religious practices of the day, and what it meant to be a woman.
The secret life of bees
Kidd, Sue Monk
2003
After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.
