Titles for the Wapakoneta
Book Discussion Group
at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
October 2015-September 2016
To register for this program, please contact the Auglaize County LibraryCentral in Wapakoneta at (419)738-2921. The library will provide copies of
each month’s book for each participant.
October 2, 2015
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
On Writing by Stephen King
Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and
practical view of the writer's craft. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his
emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how
the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery.
November 6, 2015
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
Waiting for Paint to Dry by Lia Mack
For the past decade, Matty Bell has lived safe in a self-made monochromatic life of work-eat-sleep-survive. Matty
learned long ago that it's easier to run and hide from life than to deal with the pain of the post-traumatic stress she’s
suffered since being raped at sixteen. Yet on the night of her thirtieth birthday, a freak accident shows Matty a truth:
run from something long enough and it will consume you. She must find a way back to her life, a life full of passion
in which she can follow her dreams and is not afraid to love.
December 4, 2015
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding Brown
Even before Mary Rowlandson is captured by Indians, she sometimes found herself in conflict with her rigid Puritan
community. Now she has been sold into the service of a powerful woman tribal leader, made a pawn in the on-going
bloody struggle between English settlers and native people. Mary witnesses harrowing brutality but also unexpected
kindness, and she is drawn to her captors’ open and straightforward way of life. All her life, Mary has been taught to
fear God, submit to her husband, and abhor Indians. Now, having lived on the other side of the forest, she begins to
question the edicts that have guided her, torn between the life she knew and the wisdom the natives have shown her.
January 8, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
In 19th-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an
emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on
which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in
secret. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching
out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.
February 5, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations. But then his
brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village.
Drawn together by their love of literature and the loss of their spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali find their friendship
blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as
the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of
culture and tradition?
March 4, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
The Humans by Matt Haig
Professor Andrew Martin is dead before the book even begins. As it turns out, though, he wasn’t a very nice man, as
the alien imposter who now occupies his body discovers. Sent to Earth to destroy evidence that Andrew had solved a
major mathematical problem, the alien soon finds himself learning more about the professor, his family, and “the
humans” than he ever expected. When he begins to fall for his own wife and son--who have no idea he’s not the real
Andrew--the alien must choose between completing his mission and returning home or finding a new home right
here on Earth.
April 1, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of
the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun. When "Verity" is arrested by
the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's
worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.
May 6, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she
has by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a
gang of heavily armed men. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille must endure the
torments of a man who resents everything she represents. An Untamed State is the story of a willful woman
attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected
of places.
June 3, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
Driving the Saudis by Jayne Amelia Larson
When the Saudi royal family vacationed in Los Angeles, they hired Jayne Amelia Larson, an actress struggling to
make ends meet, to be their personal chauffeur. She’d heard stories of the Saudis’ outrageously generous gratuities
and figured that several weeks at their beck and call might be worth her time. But when the family arrived via their
private jet with an entourage of forty and millions of dollars in cash, Jayne Amelia realized she might be getting into
more than she bargained for.
July 1, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows
Layla Beck is a young debutante working for the Federal Writer's Project in 1938. Her arrival in Macedonia, West
Virginia, changes the course of history for a prominent family who has been sitting on a secret for decades. The
Romeyn family is a fixture in the town, their identity tied to its knotty history. Layla enters their lives and lights a
match to the family veneer, and a truth comes to light that will change each of their lives forever.
August 5, 2016
10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
Suppose your life stinks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied, and
your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a
nutshell—until an unexpected knight-in-shining-armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess’s knight turns out to be
Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his
own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages...maybe ever.
September 2, 2016 10:00am at LouAnn’s Tea sPot
The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save
the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers. She boldly
embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward
bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril. Eden, a modern woman desperate
to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in
the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger
and deliverance. Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define
courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.