Wyoming State Law Library

Multiple titles for book club discussion groups

" In THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, Elizabeth Alexander--poet, mother, and wife--finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband, who was just 49. Reflecting with gratitude on the exquisite beauty of her married life that was, grappling with the subsequent void, and feeling a re-energized devotion to her two teenage sons, Alexander channels her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose that describes a very personal and...

2) The last time they met: a novel

Author

Shreve, Anita

3) Crazy brave: a memoir

Author

Harjo, Joy

Series

Formats

Book, Book Club Kit

Summary

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, this is...

4) Like family: growing up in other people's houses : a memoir

Author

McLain, Paula

Summary

This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next fourteen years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years-a book in the tradition of...

5) Sylvia

Summary

Thorndike Press large print biographies and memoirs

Born in Boston, MA, in 1932, Plath developed a talent as a writer and published her first poem when she was eight years old. That same year, Plath was forced to confront the unexpected death of her father. In 1950, she began studying at Smith College on a literary scholarship. In 1955, she was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England at Cambridge. There, Plath met Ted Hughes, a respected author. The two fell in love, and married in 1958....

6) The poems of Emily Dickinson

Author

Dickinson, Emily

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD

7) Poet warrior: a memoir

Author

Harjo, Joy

Series

Formats

Book, Large Print

Summary

"Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry...

8) Ordinary hazards: a memoir

Author

Appears on list

Formats

Summary

"Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduring companions. In this accessible and inspiring...

9) Zoli: a novel

Author

McCann, Colum

Formats

Book, Large Print

10) She stopped for death

Author

Buzzelli, Elizabeth Kane

Series

Little Library mystery volume 2
Wheeler large print cozy mystery

Formats

Summary

Jenny Weston and her mother, Dora, have been receiving strange midnight visits. Bear Falls's own elusive and highly secretive poet, Emily Sutton, has lived her life cloistered away with her sister in a house at the edge of Pewee Swamp. But now, Emily's started leaving scraps of poetry in Dora's Little Library, and Dora makes it her mission to befriend the sheltered woman. Meanwhile Zoe Zola, almost famous author, Little Person, and the Weston's quirky...

11) Deadly nightshade

Author

Series

Martha's Vineyard Mystery
Martha's Vineyard mysteries volume 1st

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD

Summary

Martha's Vineyard has been home to Victoria Trumbull for most of her ninety-two years. Its magic, history, and picture-perfect calm are part of her very being. Like other Islanders, she knows the sounds of the sea in calm and stormy weather—and she knows sounds that do not belong. One evening, Victoria is waiting on the dock for her granddaughter to return with the harbormaster when she hears a chilling scream followed by a splash and the

...

12) The grammarians

Author

Schine, Cathleen

Formats

Summary

"From the author compared to Norah Ephron and Nancy Mitford, not to mention Jane Austen, comes a new novel celebrating the beauty, mischief, and occasional treachery of language. The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love,...

13) Louisiana lament

Author

Smith, Julie

14) The life of Emily Dickinson

Author

Sewall, Richard B

Summary

Winner of the National Book Award, this massively detailed biography throws a light into the study of the brilliant poet. How did Emily Dickinson, from the small window over her desk, come to see a life that included the horror, exaltation and humor that lives her poetry? With abundance and impartiality, Sewall shows us not just the poet nor the poetry, but the woman and her life.

15) Home

Summary

Inga is a poet. She wants to buy and restore a house she is drawn to that reminds her of her childhood home, but her distant husband Hermann sees little value in it or many of the things Inga loves. Her crumbling marrigae is a stark contrast to the relationship that she shares with her 8-year-old daughter, with whom she shares her hopes, fears and inner-most thoughts following her recovery from breast cancer. By day their lives seem magical, but at...

16) The cemetery yew

Author

Series

Martha's Vineyard Mystery
Martha's Vineyard mysteries volume 3rd
Thorndike Press large print Americana

Formats

Summary

There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in Martha's Vineyard, not to mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians—she has a cutoff shoe to accommodate her bunion and a stout stick to help her on her walks across the fields

...

17) The cranefly orchid murders: a Martha's vineyard mystery

Author

Series

Martha's Vineyard Mystery
Martha's Vineyard mysteries volume 2nd

Formats

Summary

Victoria Trumbull is a feisty ninety-two-year-old who refuses to let her age stop her from having fun—or investigating crime. When Victoria's knowledge of her native Martha's Vineyard helped to solve a murder in Deadly Nightshade, she earned her own baseball cap emblazoned with "West Tisbury Police Deputy." Now the authorities will turn to her again to help uncover another scandal on the idyllic island.

Phoebe Eldridge, a short-tempered

...

18) Because I could not stop for death

Author

Flower, Amanda

Series

Emily Dickinson mystery volume 1

Summary

"Emily Dickinson and her housemaid, Willa Noble, realize there is nothing poetic about murder in this first book in an all-new series from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Amanda Flower. January 1855 Willa Noble knew it was bad luck when it was pouring rain on the day of her ever-important job interview at the Dickinson home in Amherst, Massachusetts. When she arrived late, disheveled with her skirts sodden and filthy, she'd lost...

19) Jack in the pulpit: a Martha's Vineyard mystery

Author

Series

Martha's Vineyard Mystery
Martha's Vineyard mysteries volume 4th

Formats

Summary

Cynthia Riggs has no problem making readers believe that her feisty protagonist can be almost indispensable to the new police chief. The years just seem to have sharpened ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull's mind, and she's got an encyclopedic knowledge of her fellow West Tisbury residents and their forebears. But most readers do wonder how the old lady came to be made the chief's official deputy. Author Cynthia Riggs obligingly offers that

...

20) Shooting star

Author