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 21, 2025

 The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore

Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She looks forward to that time every day when old curmudgeon library patron Arthur McLachlan comes to browse the shelves and cheerfully insult her. When Arthur doesn't show up at the library one morning, she's instantly concerned. Anxious, Sloane tracks him down only to discover he's bedridden and desperately struggling to hide how happy he is to see her. Wanting to bring more cheer into Arthur's life, Sloane creates an impromptu book club.

February 18, 2025

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Agreeing to a holiday escape to the country, literary agent Nora keeps running into a bookish, hardheaded, arrogant editor she knows from Manhattan, and wishes she didn't, even as she discovers they have more in common than previously thought.

March 18, 2025

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

In the summer of 1919, Constance travels to Hazelbourne-on-Sea where she will be a lady's companion to by Poppy Wirrall, a baronet's daughter. Poppy runs a ladies' motorcycle club, but as the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace after the great war, the club realizes the freedoms they gained are at risk and could be revoked.

April 15, 2025

When a skeleton is unearthed in the small, close-knit community of Chicken Hill, Pennsylvania, in 1972, an unforgettable cast of characters—living on the margins of white, Christian America—closely guard a secret, especially when the truth is revealed about what happened and the part the town's white establishment played in it.

May 20, 2025

After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals the deceased authors just-finished masterpiece. After publishing the book as her own work, June becomes threatened as emerging evidence points to her not being the author.

June 17, 2025

Nell Young’s greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field but she hasn’t spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map. When her father is found dead in his office with the very same map hidden in his desk, Nell must investigate. She discovers that the map is valuable and rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left because a mysterious collector has been destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

July 15, 2025

Mamah Borthwick Cheney struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

August 19, 2025

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by. The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories.

September 16, 2025

Clayton Stumper was abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers. When the esteemed crossword compiler, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on Clay: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. As Clay begins to unpick the clues, he uncovers something even the Fellowship have never been able to solve—and it's a secret that has the potential to change everything.

October 21, 2025

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. She will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone.

November 18, 2025

Arthur Parnassus is the master of a strange orphanage on a distant island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker. But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.