Here is a list of past years’ Southern Cayuga Book Club selections:

2023

The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

Defending Jacob by William Landay

The Doctors Blackwell by Janice Nimura

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony

Vanishing Point- The Search for a B-24 Bomber Crew Lost on the World War II Home Front by Tom Wilber

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

2022

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare’

Bear Town by Fredrik Backman

The Story of More by Hope Jahren

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

The Indomitable Florence Finch by Robert J. Mrazek

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich


2021

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman

All the Real Indians Died Off — and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz & Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Caste: The origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson


2020

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by F.E.B. deWaal

Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic by Michael McCreary

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Ickabog by J.K. Rowling

The Shipping News by Anne Proulx

Shattered by Dick Francis

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Educated by Tara Westover


2019

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Hidden in France by Simon Jerchim

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan

The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin

It Was and Was Not So by Bill Castle

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Becoming by Michelle Obama


2018

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict

The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf by Mohja Kahf

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez (Southern Cayuga Community Read)

The Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Stout

Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas 

South Pole Station by Ashley Shelby


2017

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Life in a Jar by Jack Mayer (Southern Cayuga Community Read)

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bockman

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Double Blind by Chris Bohjalian

Bound for the Promised Land by Kate Clifford Larson (Cayuga County Read)

I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai


2016

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Plainsong by Kent Haruf


2015

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

A Mighty Long Way by Carlotta Walls Lanier

What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman

The First of July by Elizabeth Speller

Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd


2014

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Dove Keepers by Alice Hoffman

Native Son by Richard Wright

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Opdyke

The Social Animal by David Brooks

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen Year Old Boy With Autism by Naoki Higashida


2013

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira

Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A Very Dangerous Woman: Martha Wright and Women’s Rights by Sherry H. Penney and James D. Livingston

Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story By Marion Blumenthal Lazan

Homefront by Kristin Hannah

The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food and Love By Kristin Kimball

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

The Shoemaker’s Wife: A Novel by Adriana Trigiani


2012

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden

Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman