Join us for book discussions during the month of September at Newton Public Library! These friendly gatherings are open to the public, no registration needed.

Books are available to borrow about a month before each discussion. You’re welcome to check out any or all of the book club picks and read along with us, whether or not you can attend.

To sign up for an email list with the latest book club announcements and reminders, click here and check “Book Discussions” when you fill out the form.

Prime Suspects Book Club – 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4

Too Many Cooks, by Rex Stout. Murder is on the menu at a five-star gathering of the world’s greatest chefs. As guest of honor, Nero Wolfe was lured from his brownstone to a posh southern spa to deliver the keynote address. He never expected that between courses of haute cuisine, he and Archie would be compelled to detect a killer with a poison touch—a killer preparing to serve the great detective his last supper.

TALK Book Discussion – 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg. Join us for a Humanities Kansas TALK discussion, with guest discussion leader Rachel Goossen! The fall TALK series will continue on Oct. 1 and Nov. 7, and all three books are now available to borrow. For more info, click here.

Strange New Worlds Book Club – 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender. On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

Nonfiction Book Club – 12 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13

Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spares no one’s appetite as he reveals what happens behind the kitchen door. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, the chef pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Boundless Bookworms – 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18

Evening Clouds, by Junzō Shōno. A family moves into a new home on a windswept hilltop in western Tokyo. Around them are forests and farms. But the developers are coming, and the children are growing up. There are meals, quandaries, conversations…Life appears comfortable and serene, yet Shōno’s portrayal has a strange and evocative undercurrent, as the most minute details slowly resonate out through a universe that is changing and unforgiving. 

Sugar & Spice Book Club, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26

A Proposal They Can’t Refuse, by Natalie Caña. Kamilah Vega is desperate to convince her family to update their Puerto Rican restaurant and enter it into the Fall Foodie Tour. With the gentrification of their Chicago neighborhood, it’s the only way to save the place. The fly in her mofongo? Her blackmailing abuelo says if she wants to change anything in his restaurant, she’ll have to marry the one man she can’t stand: his best friend’s grandson.