Fiction Book Club

Perfect for fans of fiction in any variety, the Fiction Book Club offers readers a monthly opportunity to meet and discuss a chosen title. Whether you're in the mood for a romance, historical fiction, or a thriller, you are sure to come across a book you will enjoy with some great company to share your thoughts about the plot. The Fiction Book Club meets at 7pm on the third Tuesday of each month from January to November in the Conference Room at the library and online via Zoom. People can join a book club at any time and do not have to attend previous book club meetings to participate. We are happy to have you whenever you can attend!

Those wishing to attend via Zoom need to register in order to receive the Zoom link. Those attending in person do not need to register. Upcoming book club meetings are listed to the right. Click on the date you would like to attend to register online. You may also register by calling 309.590.6168 or by visiting us in person at the library Help Desk on the second floor.

The Library receives extra print copies of book club books leading up to the date of the meeting. To reserve one of the extra print copies of the next title to be discussed, contact the Help Desk by phone at 309.590.6168 or by email to reference@bloomingtonlibrary.org. Digital copies of each title (eBook or eAudiobook) may also be available through the Libby or Hoopla Apps. 

January 20, 2026

 The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, an all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship. Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?

February 17, 2026

 Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with six directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamourous family’s mansion. But it’s not easy getting a life, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

March 17, 2026

 In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling.

April 21, 2026

 Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic. Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper.

May 19, 2026

 The Verifiers by Jane Pek

Claudia Lin is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, like that she prefers girls—and that she's just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency. A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she's landed her ideal job. But when a client goes missing, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit.

June 16, 2026

 The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain

Albert Entwistle is a private man with a quiet, simple life. He lives alone with his cat Gracie. And he’s a postman. At least he was a postman until, three months before his sixty-fifth birthday, he receives a letter from the Royal Mail thanking him for decades of service and stating he is being forced into retirement. At once, Albert’s sole connection with his world unravels. Without the work that fills his days, what will be the point? And so, rather than continue his lonely existence, Albert forms a brave plan to start truly living.

July 21, 2026

 The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves. But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself, consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, Herod: a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart.

August 18, 2026

 Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

This version of the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy is one that you have and haven't met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray.

September 19, 2026

 Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pierce

London 1940: Emmy Lake is doing her part for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent seem suddenly achievable. But the job turns out to be typist to the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down. Mrs Bird is very clear: Any letters containing Unpleasantness—must go straight in the bin. But when Emmy reads poignant letters from women who are lonely, may have gone too far with the wrong men and found themselves in trouble, or who can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she is unable to resist responding.

October 20, 2026

 Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next. In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes. Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.

November 17, 2026

 The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

Poland, 1909: Stanislaw is determined to escape the Russians and follow his brother to America, a land where anything seems possible. Wisconsin, 1941: With all the men off to war, Fritzi and her sisters must learn men’s work -- from fixing flats to driving the tow truck. They add their own touches, too: neat little caps, short skirts and roller skates, and the All-Girl Filling Station is born. Their peace doesn’t last long though, skilled women are needed to fly planes for the war effort. Alabama, 2005: Mrs. Sookie Earle has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to putting her feet up. But then one day a package arrives. Its contents knock Sookie sideways, propelling her back to the 1940s, and four irrepressible sisters whose wartime adventures force them to reimagine who they are, and what they are capable of.