March 10th ~ The Scent of Sake by Joyce Lebra
This historical novel concerns one of Japan's most ancient practices, sake brewing. Rie Omura, the daughter of a brewing merchant in 19th-century Kobe, decides at a young age to get into the business, even though women aren't even allowed inside the brewing house. Guilt over her brother's fatal accident drives Rie's fantasy to make her family's enterprise number one.
Discussion Leader: Marilyn Saks

April 14th ~ Bliss: A Novel by O.Z. Livaneli
The paths of three characters converge to illustrate the conflicts of contemporary Turkey. Raped by her uncle, the sheikh, 15-year-old villager Meryem has shamed her family. To save the family name, Cemal, the sheikh's son, a soldier home from his tour fighting Kurds in the Gabar Mountains, is ordered by his father to take Meryem to Istanbul and to murder her. Instead of murdering Meryem, travels with her to the seaside, where they encounter Irfan who is plagued by insomnia and anxiety, has fled his cushy life to set sail in the Aegean Sea.
Discussion Leader: Mary Barker

May 12th ~ The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
Gloss's austere latest (after Wild Life) features a wandering taciturn tomboy who finds her place in rural Oregon while the men are away at war. After she leaves home in 1917, 19-year-old Martha Lessen plans to travel from farm to farm in Elwha County, Oregon, breaking horses left behind by owners away fighting. She winds up in small town Shelby, where farmers George and Louise Bliss convince her to stay the winter with them after she domesticates their broncos with soft words and songs instead of lariats and hobbles
Discussion Leader: Diane Gladstone

June 9th ~ Carry Me Across the Water
This is essentially a book of short stories posing as a novel, and here's the surprise--it's pretty effective. The protagonist, August Kleinman, is a wealthy old man looking back on the span of his life. He recalls his early youth in Vienna as the son of a cultured Jewish family; his flight to America in the 1930s with his mother; his war years in the Pacific; his career as the beer king of Pittsburgh; his love for his wife and alienation from his children.
Discussion Leader: Dom Amuso

July 14th ~ Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Michael Pollan is the crack investigator and graceful narrator of the ecology of local food and the toxic logic of industrial agriculture. Now he has a peer. Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers "putting food by," as the classic kitchen title goes.
Discussion Leader: Rosemary Dreger Carey

August 11th ~ Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpia Lahirik
The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children—and that separates the children from India—remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning.
Discussion Leader: Joyce Spencer