All About Our Book Club

Click to jump to the selected books Welcome to our book club page. It provides the Who, What, Where, and When details about our book club! We also share information about how to access books on NLS BARD. All are welcome to join us for these enjoyable discussions. The Council of Citizens with Low Vision International (CCLVI) is proud to sponsor and host this public book club.

Who?

We invite everyone to participate in our monthly book club meetings. Whether you’ve had a chance to read the book or not, you may enjoy the conversation. We are a global group of people interested in discussing the books we read. While we are the low vision affiliate of the American Council of the Blind, everyone is always welcome as members and our Zoom calls. (In other words, we invite individuals with all levels of visual acuity.) to join our discussions.

When and Where?

Graphic of a book with headphones around it and the word audiobooks underneathEach month, our book club meeting is held via Zoom on the third Thursday 8 PM ET (Starting March 30, 2026, the book club will be moving to the fifth Monday of a month). The Zoom login details are posted on CCLVI-Info & ACB Community lists. To join our list, please send an email to: LVA-Info+Subscribe@acblists.org

 

or to our Webmaster at: webmaster@lowvisionalliance.org

March 2026

Title: The country of the blind

 

BARD Description:

“We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in, such that he now sees the world as if through a narrow tube. Soon—but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left. Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him: not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs. He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, “typical” life to one with a disability. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it—to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening. Thought-provoking and brimming with warmth and humor, The Country of the Blind is a deeply personal and intellectually exhilarating tour of a way of being that most of us have never paused to consider—and from which we have much to learn.”

 

 

February 2026

  • Title: Charm City Rocks: a love story
  • Book Number: DB 115941
  • Author: Matthew Norman
  • Reading Time: 9 hours 9 minutes
  • Narrator: Kristen DiMercurio.

 

  • Bard Summary:

Billy Perkins is happy. And why wouldn’t he be? He loves his job as an independent music teacher and his apartment in Baltimore above a record shop called Charm City Rocks. Most of all he loves his brainy teenage son, Caleb. Margot Hammer, on the other hand, is far from happy. The former drummer of the once-famous band, Burnt Flowers, is now a rock and roll recluse.

 

 

January 2026

  • Title: The first gentleman: a thriller
  • Book Number DB130125
  • Authors: Clinton, Bill, Patterson, James
  • Reading Time: 11 hours, 3 minutes
  • Read by: Collyer, Will, Maarleveld, Saskia, Fouhey, James, King, Aja Naomi

 

Bard Description:

“America has a powerful new president … And her husband’s on trial for murder. Clinton and Patterson are back. And they’re better than ever. The President of the United States is up for reelection. Her husband is on trial for murder. Is the First Gentleman a killer? A pair of brilliant investigative journalists set out to answer that burning question about the NFL star-turned-political spouse.” — From publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

 

 

December 2025

Christmas cupcake murder

  • Book Number: DB101104
  • Author: Fluke, Joanne
  • Reading Time: 8 hours, 6 minutes
  • Read by: Suzanne Toren

 

Bard Description:

As December turns Lake Eden into the North Pole, the heat is on in Hannah Swensen’s kitchen to honor two Christmas promises: baking irresistible holiday cupcakes and preventing a person who attempted murder from succeeding the second time around! Includes recipes.

 

 

 November 2025

  • Title: The grey wolf
  • Book Number: DB125318
  • Author: Penny, Louise
  • Reading Time: 14 hours, 23 minutes
  • Read by: Louise Penny, Jean Brassard

Bard Description:

“The 19th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series. Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Quebec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Securitate, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning. That’s only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny’s #1 New York Times best-selling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading “this might interest you”, a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list-and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or anyone case is fast approaching. Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies are friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Quebec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.

 

 

 October 2025 

  • Title: Facing the lion: memoirs of a young girl in Nazi Europe
  • Author: Liebster, Simone Arnold
  • Reading Time: 5 hours, 57 minutes
  • Book Number: DBC11798
  • Read by: Liebster, Simone Arnold

BARD Description:

The author describes her experiences as she tried to retain her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness in the face of Nazi persecution, including being taken away from her family to be reeducated at a reformatory.

 

 

August 2025

  • Title: The Measure: a novel
  • Author: Nikki Erick
  • Book Number: DB109475
  • Reading Time: 11 Hours 3 minutes
  • Narrator: Julia Whelan.

Bard Summary:

Eight ordinary people – one extraordinary choice. When you open your door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the

An answer of the exact number of years you will live.

 

 

June 2025

 

  • Title: The Beantown Girls
  • Book Number: DBC 11621
  • Author: by Healey, Jane, (Freelance journalist).

 

Bard description:

(Note: There is an error in the audio narration.)

Determined to discover what happened to her fiancé́ after he was shot down by the Nazis, Fiona volunteers to work on a Red Cross Club mobile a social club on wheels and recruits two friends from Boston to join her in Europe.

 

 

May 2025

  • Title: The Girls of Ennismore
  • Author: by Falvey, Patricia.
  • Book Number: DB 88491
  • Reading Time: 13 hours, 47 minutes
  • Narrated by: Jennifer Hubbar

 

Bard description:

Ireland, 1900. Eight-year-old Rosie Killeen joins her family as they help prepare the local manor house for a visit from Queen Victoria. While there, she is befriended by the daughter of the house, Victoria Bell. Their lives intertwine, and Rosie balances living in two worlds.

 

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April 2025:

  • Title: The Italian secretary: a further adventure of Sherlock Holmes
  • Book Number: DB 63029
  • Author by Carr, Caleb.
  • Reading time 7 hours, 30 minutes.
  • Narrated by Robert Sams.

Bard Description:

Detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate two deaths at the royal palace in Edinburgh, once home to Mary, Queen of Scots. Holmes’s brother, Mycroft, fears these killings are part of an assassination plot while Sherlock links them to the three-centuries-old murder of Mary’s confidante, Italian secretary David Rizzio.

 

 

March 2025:

  • Title: Red earth, white earth
  • Book Number: DB 25264
  • Author by: Weaver, Will
  • Reading time: 12 hours, 59 minutes.

Narrated: Bob Askey

Bard description:

After several successful years in Silicon Valley, Guy heads home to his ailing grandfather and begins an odyssey into his childhood at the family’s Minnesota farmstead. He teams up with his “blood brother,” Tom Little Wolf, and helps with the Indians’ struggle to reclaim their land.

 

 

February 2025 Book Selection:

  • Title: Harry Truman’s excellent adventure: the true story of a great American road trip
  • Book Number: DB 69543
  • Author: Algeo, Matthew.
  • Reading time 8 hours, 22 minutes.
  • Narrated by Michael Kramer.

Bard Description:

The author retraces the 1953 2,500-mile cross-country road trip of Harry and Bess Truman. Describes the Trumans’ post-presidential life in Missouri, when they lived on Harry’s army pension, and provides first-person accounts of the original journey.

 

 

 January 2025 Book Selection:

  • Title: Not fade away: a memoir of senses lost and found
  • Book Number: DB 80043
  • by Alexander, Rebecca,
  • Reading Time: 7 hours 59 minutes
  • Narrated by: Kate Kiley

 

Book Description:

Autobiography of a woman born with Usher’s syndrome, a genetic condition that causes the gradual loss of hearing and vision. Chronicles the progression

of her condition, describes dealing with her diagnosis as a young adult, and recounts a devastating accident that left every bone in her body broken. 2014.

 

 

December 2024 Book Selection:

  • Title: A Christmas Carol
  • Author: Dickens, Charles.
  • Book Number: DB 43546
  • Reading Time: 3 hours 28 minutes
  • Narrator: Clark Niederjohn.

 

Book Description

Classic nineteenth-century Christmas story set in England describes the conversion of grasping old miser Ebenezer Scrooge when he is visited by ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.

 

 

November 2024 Book Selection:

Title: The Briar Club

  • Author: Kate Quinn
  • Book Number: DB122866
  • Reading Time: 15 hours, 4 minutes
  • Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld

 

Bard Description:

“The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era”

 

 

October 2024 Book Selection:

  • Title: The women
  • Author: Kristin Hannah.
  • Book Number: DB 118896
  • Reading Time: 15 hours
  • Narrated by: Kristin Hannah and Julia Whelan.

Summary:

“Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope, and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets and becomes one of the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.”

 

 

 

 

September 2024 Book Selection:

  • Title: Swan song
  • Author: Hilderbrand, Elin,
  • Book Number: DB 122048
  • Reading Time: 13 hours 42 minutes
  • Narrated by: Erin Bennett and Elin Hilderbrand.

Summary:

“Mysterious wealthy newcomers, the Richardsons, have bought a lavish house. But when it burns to the ground and their employee goes missing, the island is in for plenty of drama.”– From publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

 

 

 

August 2024 Book Selection:

Title: Homer the ninth life of a blind wonder cat

  • Author: Cooper, Gwen
  • Book Number: DB 106486
  • Narrator: Trevathan, Mare
  • Reading Time: 3 hours, 29 minutes

Summary:

this follow-up to Homer’s Odyssey (DB 69557), the author shares further stories of living with her blind rescue cat, Homer. She writes of the sudden fame Homer garnered after her first book’s publication, and the attention it drew for special-needs animals. 2015.

“The odds had always been stacked against Homer, the little blind kitten nobody wanted. But destiny took a hand the day he met Gwen Cooper, and with the publication twelve years later of the international best seller ‘Homer’s Odyssey, ‘ Homer went from beloved housecat to world-wide star. He became the scourge and darling of the reporters, photographers, videographers, bloggers, and radio hosts who clamored to meet him–dragging his hapless human behind him as he greeted fame with his usual joie de vivre and occasional ‘catitude.’ He became a spokes-cat for the cause of special-needs animals everywhere, and eventually the wise older mentor to the new special-needs kitten who would enter his and Gwen’s lives. Most importantly, Homer taught those who loved him best how to live and die with strength, dignity, and joy–and left behind a rescue community of ‘Homer’s Heroes’ that continues to save countless lives in his name.

 

 

June 2024 Book Selection:

 

o   Title: The wolves come at night

o   Author: Ellison, J. T.

o   Book Number: DB 116626

o   Reading Time: 13 hours, 36 minutes

o   Narrated by: Rose, Elizabeth

 

Summary

“While the high-profile murder of a young country singer turns Nashville inside out, danger lurks in the woods beyond the city’s border. There was a witness to the terrible crime, a college student who stumbled onto the scene. When the girl goes missing, the police don’t know if she’s run for cover or been taken…or if something more sinister is happening. The truth will shatter Taylor’s career and bring her face to face with a deadly assassin who wants nothing more than to finish what they started. Taylor Jackson is back. And you’ve never seen her quite like this.”.

  

 

May 2024 Book Selection:

 

o   Title: The light we carry overcoming in uncertain times

o   Author: Michelle Obama

o   Book Number: Db111237

o   Reading time: 10 hours 3 minutes

o   Narrated by: Michelle Obama

 

Summary

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools

to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering

The question many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences?

What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Michelle Obama offers readers

a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate

the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter,

spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles—the

earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.” She details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen

table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility,

encouraging readers to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness. “When we can recognize our own light, we become empowered

to use it,” writes Michelle Obama.

 

 

April 2024 Book Selection:

 

o   Title:  Under the Chinook: tales of a Montana veterinarian

o   Author: Gustafson, R. W.,

o   Reading Time: 3 hours, 30 minutes

o   narrator : Blunn, Lea,.

 

Summary:

This Conrad veterinarian spins folksy tales about his 43 years of caring for animals in Montana’s Golden Triangle. Readers will encounter a backward enema; a Chinese doctor deal that netted 17 half-cows; a cow uterus packed on a pickup bumper; a pregnant cow with no bulls within 20 miles, and many other stories.

 

 

March 2024 Book Selection:

 

    • Title: The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir
    • Author: Jennifer L. Ryan
    • NLS book number: DB 87423
    • Narrated by: Imogen Wilde, Adjoa Andoh, Laura Kirman, Tom Clegg, Gabrielle Glaister, Mike Grady.
    • Reading Time: 11 hours 36 minutes

 

Summary

As the men from the village of Chilbury head off to fight in World War II, the vicar declares the church’s choir to be closed. Music professor Primrose Trent mobilizes the village’s women to organize as the Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. Relationships blossom and grow. “Just because the men have gone to war, why do we have to close the choir? And precisely when we need it most!” As England enters World War II’s dark early days, spirited music professor Primrose Trent, recently arrived at the village of Chilbury, emboldens the women of the town to defy the Vicar’s stuffy edict to shutter the church’s choir in the absence of men and instead “continue singing.” Resurrecting themselves as “The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir,” the women of this small village soon use their joint song to lift themselves, and the community, as the war tears through their lives. Told through letters and journals, THE CHILBURY LADIES’ CHOIR moves seamlessly from budding romances to village intrigues to heartbreaking matters of life and death. As we come to know the struggles of the charismatic members of this unforgettable outfit–a timid widow worried over her son at the front; the town beauty drawn to a rakish artist; her younger sister nursing an impossible crush and dabbling in politics she doesn’t understand; a young Jewish refugee hiding secrets about her family, and a conniving midwife plotting to outrun her seedy past–we come to see how the strength each finds in the choir’s collective voice reverberates in her individual life. In turns funny, charming and heart-wrenching, this lovingly executed ensemble novel will charm and inspire, illuminating the true spirit of the women on the Homefront, in a village of indomitable spirit, at the dawn of a most terrible conflict.

February 2024 Book Selection:  

Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C.

  • By Diane Carlson Evans
  • Narrator: Janet Metzger
  • Total Time: 9:40:48
  • DB 115959

  What is the price of honor? It took 10 years for Vietnam War nurse Diane Carlson Evans to answer that question. And the answer was a heavy one… (The entire description by the publisher is quite lengthy and available at the beginning of downloaded book.)

January 2024 Book Selection:

All the Light We Cannot See: a novel.

  • By Anthony Doer
  • Narrator: Jill Fox
  • Total Time: 16:03:30
  • DB 79182

  When Paris is invaded by the Nazis, Marie-Laure LeBlanc’s father evacuates her to St. Malo to stay with her great-uncle. Blind since the age of six, Marie-Laure must learn the town by the scale model her father has left. Then, the Germans arrive.   December 2023 Book Club Selection: Title: Wrong place wrong time

  • Book Number: DB 110043
  • Author: McAllister, Gillian
  • Reading Time: 10 hours, 10 minutes

Summary: “Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened? Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s past curfew. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed. You won’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody, his future shattered. That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake and it is yesterday. And then you wake up again .  and it is the day before yesterday. Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer.

The trigger for this crime and you don’t have a choice but to find it.     The Book Selection for November 2023: The book is to be discussed on Thursday, November 16, and 

  • ·      DB109007
  • ·      Author: Elin Hildebrand
  • ·       Reading Time: 13 hours 48 minutes This book has it all – mystery, intrigue, and a touch of romance.

Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she’s named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner.

October 2023 Book Information:

 Tuesdays with Morrie

      • Author – Mitch Albom
      • DB 44849
      • Tuesdays With Morrie is a memoir by Mitch Albomin which he recounts the fourteen Tuesdays he spent with his friend and mentor, Morrie Schwartz, prior to Morrie’s death.

       

End of September 2023 Book Selection: George Orwell’s classic, “Animal Farm”:

  • DB 38959
  • Reading Time 3 hrs. 32 mins.

  Originally intended as an allegorical political satire of communism in which the animals on a farm overthrow their master and live a utopian life until the intelligent pigs take over and one establishes himself as dictator. Some questions to reflect on for our discussion:

  • What other cases exist or have existed where similar situations have occurred since the book was written in 1946? 

  September 2023   

  • The Wager, A  Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
    • DB113965

August 2023 Book Selection   Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

  • DB103778
  • Science Fiction
  • 16 hours 12 minutes

  June 2023

  • Last Call at the Nightingale
  •  Author: Katherine Schellman
  •  Narrator: Sara Young
  •  DB 108941
  • Total time: 9:13
  •  New York. 1924. Vivian Kelly’s days are filled with drudgery, from the tenement lodging she shares with her sister to the dress shop where she sews for hours every day. But at night she escapes to The Nightingale, an underground dance hall where illegal liquor flows and the band plays the Charleston with reckless excitement.
  •   Murder Mystery
  •   Historical Fiction

MAY 2023

    • West with Giraffes
    • by Lynda Rutledge
      • Historical FictionDB102687

March 2023 

    • Guiding Emily: a tale of love, loss, and courage by Barbara Hinske.
    • It can be found at NLS/Talking Books/BARD  # DB109068
    • Listening time 7 hours 47 minutes
    • recent author interview available at with our friends at Writing Works Wonders, episode 84

February 2023:  Feb. 2 and 3

    • “A Man Called Ova”  by Fredrik Backman
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB84392
    • Listening time 9 hours,  7 minutes

January 2023:  Jan. 5 and 6

    • “An Untamed Land” by Lauraine Snelling
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB67616
    • Listening time 13 hours,  38 minutes

December  2022 

    • “Finding Gobi: A Little dog with a very big heart” by Dion Leonard  & Craig Borlase
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB89278
    • Listening time 6 hours,  39  minutes

November 2022

    • The Lightkeeper’s Daughters” by Jean Pendziwol
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB108915
    • Listening time  9  hours, 51 minutes

October  2022

    • The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett.
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB99791
    • Listening time 11 hours, 36 minutes

September  2022

Graphic of a book with headphones around it and the word audiobooks underneath

    • “Deep Dish” by  Mary Kay Andrews.
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB72492
    • Listening time 11 hours, 39 minutes

August 2022 

    • “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist  byJudith Heumann and Kristen Joiner (Judy be the speaker at the 2022 ACB Convention Banquet)
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB100399
    • Listening time 6 hours, 40 minutes

July 2022 – No book as first week is ACB Convention

June 2022

    • The Tour”  by Jean Grainger
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB104271
    • Listening time 9 hours, 58 minutes

May 2022

    • “Once upon a town” byBob Greene
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB54433
    • Reading time 6 hours.

April 2022

    • “The Rosie Project”  by Graeme C. Simson
    •  It may be found on NLS BARD at DB78150

March 2022

    • “A Better Man” by Louise Penny
    • It may be found on NLS BARD at DB96139

What Can You Expect on these Zoom Calls? A friendly, welcoming group, dynamic discussion, interesting questions, and a fun time with other readers who enjoy talking about books! As a CCLVI sponsored event, the CCLVI Code of Conduct guides our Zoom calls. In a nutshell, we want to promote uplifting interactions, demonstrate respect for everyone, and enjoy the conversation! If you’re interested in the CCLVI Code of Conduct, you may review it here, https://cclvi.info/about-cclvi/code-of-conduct/.


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Accessing Books through NLS BARD

  • National Library Service of the Library of Congress serves the blind and print disabled., it is also known as Talking Books. If you have permanent low vision, blindness, or a physical, perceptual, or reading disability that prevents you from using regular print materials, you may be eligible for services. Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS circulates books and magazines in braille or audio formats, that are instantly downloadable to a personal device or delivered by mail free of charge. https://www.loc.gov/nls/ 

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