We know how difficult it is to choose a book for your next book group meeting, and to find enough copies for all the members of your group. We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag. We've included discussion questions and information about each author in a folder for each collection.
There are at least 8 copies of the book in each kit. At this time we have over 400 kits for you to choose from.
Printable lists of titles are also available, without cover art, sorted by title and by author.
How can we get a kit?
Call us at 608-266-6300 and we will help you check out a kit. The kit will be checked out on the library card of the person picking them up. The person checking out the kit may choose a due date for the kit, up to 3 months from the day they pick it up. Due to high demand, please take only one or two kits at a time. Kits can be shipped to any library in Madison as well as any public library in the South Central Library System.
What if a book is lost?
If your group happens to lose a book, we ask that you replace it with another copy of the book, new or second hand, that is clean and readable.
Search our collection of kits
Be a Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--and How You Can, Too
Showing how people across America are working to create change for intersectional racial equity and illustrating various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live; this book is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World
An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life--the humble parking spot.
Chain-Gang All-Stars
Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
A skeleton at the bottom of a well, unearthed in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1972, leads to the revelation of long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez
A powerful novel of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island who discovers their long‑missing sister is potentially alive and cast on a reality TV show, and they set out to bring her home.
I Know What You Did
When a bestselling novel fictionalizes the death of her childhood best friend-and accuses her of the murder-Petal Woznewski must figure out who wrote it and why in this debut novel by a Madison-area author.
Happy Place
A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends.
Pineapple Street
A deliciously funny, sharply observed novel of family, wealth, love and tennis, this zeitgeisty debut follows three women in an old Brooklyn Heights clan: one who was born with money, one who married into it, and one, the millennial conscience of the family, who wants to give it all away.
The Berry Pickers
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.
Spare
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow--and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling--and how their lives would play out from that point on.
For Harry, this is that story at last.
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
A story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them.
Maame
Maddie, a young British Ghanaian woman and self-acknowledged late bloomer, navigates her twenties and finds her place in the world in this novel that explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.
Let Us Descend
In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world.
Killers of a Certain Age
They've spent their lives as assassins in a clandestine international organization, but at 60 years old, four women find they can't just retire - it's kill or be killed.
Olga Dies Dreaming
A status-driven New York City wedding planner grapples with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots--all in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
In this lively journey through human psychology, bestselling author and creator of the You Are Not So Smart podcast David McRaney investigates how minds change-and how to change minds. The 2023-24 UW Madison Go Big Read selection.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
A New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and "one of our greatest living writers" (Shondaland) reimagines the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.
Every Summer After
Five summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right. A magazine writer has to make a choice when she returns to the lake she grew up on, and to the man she thought she'd never have to live without.
Calling for a Blanket Dance
A young Native American boy in a splintering family grasps for stability and love, making all the wrong choices until he finds a space of his own.
Honey and Spice
Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake: she kissed Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced. They're soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations and save their futures.