September 14, 2021: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to by the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise to his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Cyril’s son Danny and his older sister Maeve are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another.

November 16, 2021: The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

In Winston Churchill’s first year as England’s Prime Minister, he faced leading the country as Hitler began the nine-month Blitz bombing campaign. Best-selling author Erik Larson’s (Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck) examines Churchill’s family life, attempts to convince US President Roosevelt to join the war efforts, and his leadership of Great Britain during this challenging time

January 11, 2022: The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

“Margot Lee’s mother isn’t returning her calls. It’s a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown and finds her mother dead under suspicious circumstances. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the facts of Mina’s life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.” – Amazon

March 8, 2022: The Sport of the Gods by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Selected in celebration of the 150^th anniversary of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s birth on June 27, 2022

“Berry Hamilton is an emancipated black man living in an unnamed city in the South with his wife Fannie and two children, Joe and Kitty. Berry works as a butler for a wealthy white man name Maurice Oakley, and the Hamilton family lives in a house on the Oakley property. It is a happy, stable life, and Berry is raising his children to dream big and believe themselves capable of great things.

This idyllic life is suddenly shattered one night at a dinner party. Maurice’s younger brother, Francis, accidentally leaves the key sitting in the safe, and a large amount of money is stolen. Berry is soon blamed for the theft after it is discovered that there has recently been a large deposit made in his bank account.” Excerpt taken from SuperSummary.

May 10, 2022: We Germans by Alexander Starritt

Fiction Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for 2021, “We Germans is an intense, short novel with an enormous impact, because it faces into the great unanswerable human conundrum: the persistence of evil, the very nature of it, and all the facets of helpless striving from which it can spring. A young British man has questioned his grandfather about what it was like being a German soldier in World War II. The grandfather, Meissner, refuses to talk about it. But after his death, a long letter is discovered in his effects, addressed to the young man. “My dear Callum,” it begins. And the story unfolds.” (Richard Bausch, DLPP 2021 finalist judge and 2009 Fiction Award Winner for Peace.) Learn more about Alexander Starritt and We Germans on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website.