Book Club
The book club is an opportunity to engage in learning and professional development by reading a book, getting together with your colleagues to explore new ideas, network, discuss the content of the book, and create an action plan to apply your learning at work and in life.
Format
The book club follows this format:
- Participants will meet three times per book as a group.
- Each person receives a personal copy of the book (yours to keep), along with guided questions to consider for discussion with the larger group.
- Participants, please read the book.
- Sessions focus on a discussion about the contents and themes of the book, sharing thoughts about how the ideas presented in the book may be applied within the university community.
Session information
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Fall Offering - How to Solve Your Own Murder
How to Solve Your Own Murder
This is an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.
It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.
In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?
Join us to discuss:
Time: 11am - 12pm
Dates:October 28, 2025
November 11, 2025
November 25, 2025 -
Winter Offering - The God of the Woods
The God of the Woods
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S “100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2024”
"A long novel that at first is hard to put down. By page 200, impossible." —Stephen King
“Extraordinary . . . Reminds me of Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut, The Secret History . . . I was so thoroughly submerged in a rich fictional world, that for hours I barely came up for air.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR
“This expertly paced thriller …has the kineticism of a well-crafted miniseries.” —The New YorkerWhen a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.Join us to discuss:
Time: 1pm - 2pm
Dates:
Feb 12, 2026
Feb 24, 2026
Mar 10, 2026 -
Spring Offering - TBD
In 2024 our Spring book was:
The Framed Women of Ardemore House
In recognition of National Accessibility Awareness Week, the Spring Offering of Book Club will be The Framed Women of Ardemore House.
Schillace makes her fiction debut with her cozy mystery book that follows an autistic and hyperlexic book editor named Jo Jones in New York who inherits an estate in the English countryside. The town groundskeeper is found shot to death on her newly acquired property; Jo finds herself in possible danger while also being a potential suspect. Schillace, a neurodivergent medical historian, infuses her own lived experience into Jo’s unique way of interpreting the world around her. This nuanced portrayal of neurodiversity adds depth to the character, which, on its own makes the book worth the read, even though some might agree the story is less of a thriller and more police procedural in its telling.
Join us to discuss:
Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Virtual
Note: Please read the book in its entirety prior to this session.