The Well Red Coyote now has two bookclubs: Our well established WRC Bookclub and the WRC Mystery Bookclub.

All book club selections -- ours and others about town and the Verde Valley -- receive a 20% discount.

The WRC Bookclub meets monthly to read and discuss general and literary fiction and creative nonfiction books. Pizza and wine are served. To partially offset the cost of the refreshments, attendees who consume the refreshments are asked to make a $5 donation.

July Meeting: Monday, July 14, 6 pm
July Choice: THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER by Ann Packer

SUMMARY: A riveting novel about loyalty and self-knowledge, and the conflict between who we want to be to others and who we must be for ourselves. Carrie Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. She's had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can remember. It's with real surprise she finds that, at age twenty-three, her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change, an upheaval, for a chance to begin again. That chance is granted to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and the meaning of home. She must ask: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or of weakness to walk away from someone in need? Publishers Weekly says: " This is the sort of book one reads dying to know what happens to the characters, but loves for its wisdom: it sees the world with more clarity than you do."

August Meeting: Monday, August 11, 6 pm
August Choice: THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD by Debra Dean

SUMMARY: Her granddaughter's wedding should be a time of happiness for Marina Buriakov. But the Russian emigre's descent into Alzheimer's has her and her family experiencing more anxiety than joy. As the details of her present-day life slip mysteriously away, Marina's recollections of her early years as a docent at the State Hermitage Museum become increasingly vivid. When Leningrad came under siege at the beginning of World War II, museum workers--whose families were provided shelter in the building's basement--stowed away countless treasures, leaving the painting's frames in place as a hopeful symbol of their ultimate return. Amid the chaos, Marina found solace in the creation of a "memory palace," in which she envisioned the brushstroke of every painting and each statue's line and curve. Gracefully shifting between the Soviet Union and the contemporary Pacific Northwest, first-time novelist Dean renders a poignant tale about the power of memory. Dean eloquently describes the works of Rembrandt, Rubens, and Raphael, but she is at her best illuminating aging Marina's precarious state of mind: "It is like disappearing for a few moments at a time, like a switch being turned off," she writes. "A short while later, the switch mysteriously flips again." — Starred Review/Booklist