Carole Barrowman is the author of Hollow Earth series, an English professor at Alverno College and book reviewer. She joins the show today to give us some tips on how to have a successful book club and some great books to read this Spring/Summer.
Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde (Soho Press)
If you need to shake up your club a little, this is a terrific choice. It’s funny, satirical, clever, and a silly quirky read. It’s a mash-up of the Divergent books and West Side Story. Only instead of start-crossed lovers from two families, they are from different sects of people who are segregated based on what colors they can see.
James by Percival Everett (Doubleday)
This novel may seem like a more traditional choice for your book club, but it’s far from a traditional novel. Everett’s brilliant book tells the story of Jim, the enslaved character in Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. This is not a retelling. It’s an important repositioning of a character and a perspective in the story of 19th century America. This will become a classic in its own right.
Murder Road by Simone St. James (Berkley)
This is a mesmerizing supernatural novel about newlyweds whose journey to their honeymoon is diverted along a haunted road and into a small town full of deep dark secrets. This is not only a chilling well-crafted story, but also a really compelling and poignant love story. I loved it.