Prefer exploring books by theme? Attend an upcoming Genre Meetup, held off-site at a local restaurant, where readers gather to explore a mix of titles within a specific genre like Science Fiction, Mystery, or even Cookbooks. Take a deep dive into each genre by reading and discussing 3 books that fit the theme (try to read at least one). A great evening out centered on our favorite hobby – reading! Register for our next meeting on our events calendar.
2026 Meet-Ups
January
The Fiction Book Club is meeting on Thursday January 22nd at 6pm at Fiesta Acapulco in Stony Point.
We will discuss the following books (choose one or more):
• FICTION: [The Correspondent – Virginia Evans] An homage to the written word. The entire story is told through letters, both sent and received and is beautiful and poignant.
• CLASSIC FICTION: [The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath] A classic, semi-autobiographical work with fictional elements.
• HISTORICAL FICTION: [Silver Sparrow – Tayari Jones] Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s families– the public one and the secret one and what happens when the daughters from each family meet.
February
The Mystery Book Club is meeting on Thursday, February 12th at the Patriot Lounge in Stony Point.
Join us for food, drinks, fun, and new friends – as we take a deep dive into the Mystery genre. Please read at least one of the following book selections:
• MYSTERY: [Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman] In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, they find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.
• THRILLER: [The Angel Maker – Alex North] Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever.
• TRUE CRIME: [American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper – Daniel Stashower] An historical true crime starring legendary lawman Eliot Ness. Boston had its Strangler. California had the Zodiac Killer. And in the depths of the Great Depression, Cleveland had the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.
March
The Sci Fi Book Club is meeting on Thursday, March 19th at Inka Terra in Stony Point!
Join us for food, drinks, fun, and new friends – as we take a deep dive into the Science Fiction genre(s). Please read at least one of the book selections:
• SCI FI: [Land of Milk & Honey – C Pam Zhang] A rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world. A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.
• FANTASY: [The Great When – Alan Moore] A new fantasy series about murder, magic, and madness in postWWII London. Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless 18-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss & landlady sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which should not exist – a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author – yet it is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.
• DYSTOPIAN: [Denial – Jon Raymond] The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect, yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Trials convicted the most powerful for crimes against the environment. But not all of them.
April
The Non-Fiction Book Club is meeting on Thursday April 16th at 6pm at Gyro Point Plus – in Stony Point
We will discuss the following books (choose one or more):
• BIOGRAPHY: [Cleopatra’s Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen – Jane Draycott] The first modern biography of Cleopatra Selene, the only daughter of Marc Antony and Cleopatra. She was expected to marry well and bear sons; and to legitimize and strengthen her parents’ rule. Yet with their parents’ deaths by suicide, the princess and her brothers found themselves the inheritors of Egypt, a claim that placed them squarely in the warpath of the Roman emperor.
• MEMOIR: [Song so Wild & Blue: Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell – Paul Lisicky] A gorgeous account of how Joni Mitchell’s work shaped Paul Lisicky’s artistry throughout his life. From the moment he heard Joni Mitchell, he recognized she was a rarity among musicians—a talent whose combination of introspection, liberation, and deep musicality set her apart. As a young man, Paul was a budding songwriter but as he matured, he set his guitar aside and lost himself in prose, which eventually takes him to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and into the professional world of letters.
• NON-FICTION: [The Ruin of All Witches: Life & Death in the New World – Malcolm Gaskill] In Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen: food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. As tensions rise, rumors spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation.
Please contact our Book Club Organizer with any questions.
Joy Buckhout, jbuckhout@rcls.org
