Book Club
HOW IT WORKS
Order the book and you'll automatically be enrolled in book club.
We'll email you to let you know when your book comes in.
Before the event, we'll email you a reminder that book club's coming up.
Bada bing, bada boom!
WHAT TO EXPECT
Book clubs will be led by one of the store owners and will be an interactive group discussion.
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The store will be closed for regular shopping during book club so please don’t be late
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15% discount on books (no merch or prints) up to 30 minutes after the event
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Buying the book online is your "ticket"
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When you arrive for book club, check in at the desk with your name
WHAT TO BRING
We encourage you to bring your own fold-out chair or cushion for the floor. Our small shop has limited space and limited seating options.
Feel free to bring non-alcoholic beverages, but please avoid bringing snacks.
GHOST TAMER
By Meredith R. Lyons
Tuesday, October 24th
7:00pm-8:00pm
Horror - Paranormal - Thriller
(This book club is led by the author, who will be joining us in person! After book chat there will be a Q&A.)
Raely survives a train wreck that kills her best friend and awakens an ability to see ghosts, including one who has watched over her all her life, and another who is hell-bent on destroying her.
Death is one thing, it's what you do afterward that matters.
Aspiring comedian Raely is the sole survivor of a disastrous train wreck. While faced with the intense grief of losing her best friend, she realizes that someone is following her—and has been following her all her life. Trouble is, no one else can see him. For a ghostly tag-along, Casper’s not so bad. He might even be the partner Raely needs to fight the evil spirit hell-bent on destroying her.
Raely and her friend must learn why this demonic spirit is haunting Raely and how she can stop him before he destroys her life—and her soul. Which, much to her chagrin, means she needs the help of a psychic (although she’s sure they are all charlatans) and must rid herself of the pesky ghost hunter who’s interested in exploiting her new abilities.
For readers who enjoy Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House and Clay McLeod Chapman’s Ghost Eaters.
NATURAL BEAUTY
By Ling Ling Huang
Wednesday, October 25th
7:00pm-8:00pm
Horror - Literary - LGBTQ+
Our narrator is the youngest student at the Conservatory. She produces a sound from the piano no one else does, employing a special technique she learned from her parents—also stunningly talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future as a pianist and accepts a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
Holistik is known for its remarkable products and outrageous procedures: remoras that suck cheap Botox from the body, eyelash extensions made of spider silk, emotional support ducklings bred to imprint on their owners. Every product is ethically sourced and made with nothing but the highest quality ingredients. Our narrator’s new job is a coveted one among New York’s beauty-obsessed, and it affords her entry into a new world of privilege. She becomes transfixed by Helen—a model, and the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner—and the two strike up a close friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, Holistik plies our narrator with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, lighten her hair, and change her eye color. But beneath these fancy creams and tinctures lies a terrible truth that threatens to consume her. After all, beauty is nothing without ugliness.
NATURAL BEAUTY is a piercing, terrifying, and darkly funny debut that eviscerates the beauty and wellness industry, exploring questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity. This propulsive novel takes a world that feels familiar and pushes it to a conclusion that at first might seem jarring, but when we inch closer, settles on us as truth.
DEATH VALLEY
By Melissa Broder
Thursday, October 26th
7:00pm-8:00pm
Literary Fiction - Magical Realism
In Melissa Broder’s astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.
This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley.