No Pressure Book Club
Join us for a no pressure book club! Each month, we'll curate a selection of books from a specific genre; you can pick a book from our list or choose your own! Read the book and join us on the first Wednesday of the next month to discuss your thoughts with others. Can’t make the meeting? No worries! We’ll share our selections on social media, where you can share any thoughts you had while reading or about the genre as a whole.
November 2026 | Historical Non-Fiction
Wednesday, December 2 | 5:00PM - 6:00PM
Click on a book cover and log into NoveList with your library card to see reviews and search the catalog!
A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland
In the early hours of March 24th, 1976, soldiers seized the presidential palace in Argentina. The resulting dictatorship decimated a generation by kidnapping hundreds of pregnant women, killing them once they'd given birth, and giving their babies to police, military families, and dictatorship supporters. United by the hope their grandchildren still lived, a group of fierce grandmothers formed the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to finding the stolen children and seeking justice from a nation that betrayed them.
Galileo and the Science Deniers by Mario Livio
Galileo, a freethinker who followed the evidence and one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution, was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. Based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, his discoveries contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities. Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise to provide captivating insights into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
The received idea of Native American history—as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota and training as an anthropologist, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention.
The Hello Girls by Elizabeth Cobbs
In 1918, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France to help win World War I. They were masters of the latest communications technology: the telephone switchboard. Men called them the Hello Girls. They were America’s first women soldiers. Discharged in 1920; the Army unexpectedly dismissed them without veterans’ benefits. A handful of undaunted survivors carried a sixty-year battle to triumph in 1979. With the help of the National Organization for Women, Senator Barry Goldwater, and a crusading young Seattle attorney, they defeated the U.S. Army to win their Victory Medals at last.
The Martians by David Baron
The Martians begins in the 1890s with Percival Lowell, a wealthy Harvard scion who (almost) convinced a generation of astronomers that grainy telescopic photographs of Mars revealed meltwater and an intricate canal system. Tesla announced he had received Martian radio signals. Biologists debated whether Martians were winged or gilled. Martians headlined Broadway shows, and a new genre called science fiction arose. Many Americans believed there was indeed life on Mars. While Lowell’s claims were savagely debunked, his influence sparked a compulsive interest in Mars and life in outer space that continues to this day.
Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard
A powerful and unflinching account of the enduring impact of nuclear war, told through the stories of those who survived. Nagasaki takes readers from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the first-hand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation. Susan Southard has spent years interviewing hibakusha (“bomb-affected people”) and researching the physical, emotional, and social challenges of post-atomic life. She weaves together dramatic eyewitness accounts with searing analysis of the policies of censorship and denial that colored much of what was reported about the bombing both in the United States and Japan.
Overground Railroad by Candacy Taylor
Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was a resourceful and innovative solution to a horrific problem - a time when black travelers couldn’t eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. Hailed as the “black travel guide to America,” it listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for black travelers. It took courage to be listed in the Green Book, and Overground Railroad celebrates the stories of those who put their names in the book and stood up against segregation.
The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon
Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
A prominent classicist explores ancient Rome and how its citizens adapted the notion of imperial rule, invented the concepts of citizenship and nation, and made laws about those traditionally overlooked in history, including women, slaves, and criminals.
When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning
When America entered World War II, it faced an enemy that banned and burned over 100 million books. Outraged librarians gathered 20 book million donations to send to American troops. Then the government and the publishing industry stepped in, sending out 1,200 different titles of every type in lightweight paperbacks. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy; amid battles in the Pacific; in field hospitals; and on long bombing flights. They wrote to the authors, many of whom responded to every letter. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity. They made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon.
December 2026 | Memoirs/Biographies
Wednesday, January 6 | 5:00PM - 6:00PM
Click on a book cover and log into NoveList with your library card to see reviews and search the catalog!
Agent Josephine by Damien Lewis
Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life.
The Boy Who Reached for the Stars by Elio Morillo
A young immigrant from Ecuador, Elio Morillo overcame a history of systemic adversity and inequality in public education to forge ahead on a journey as indebted to his galactic dreams as to a loving mother whose sacrifices provided the ground beneath his feet. Today, Elio is helping man NASA's mission to explore Mars and promoting the future of human innovation--from AI and robotics to space infrastructure and equitable access. The Boy Who Reached the Stars is both a cosmic and intimate memoir spun from a constellation of memory and intrepid curiosity, as thoroughly luminous as the stars above.
Did I Ever Tell You? By Genevieve Kingston
Genevieve Kingston's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer when Gwen was three years old. Defying the odds, she lived another eight years—during which time she filled a chest with gifts and letters to Gwen and her brother for every major milestone and birthday through age thirty. The day Gwen got her driver's license. The day she graduated from high school. Gwen is now in her thirties and, when Did I Ever Tell You? begins, three unopened boxes remain: engagement, marriage, and first baby. Two decades after her passing, Gwen's mother's extraordinary efforts created a lifelong conversation beyond the grave.
Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry
"My entire life I have been less fat and more fat, but never not fat." Despite merciless teasing by uncles, cousins, and kids at school, Rabia Chaudry always loved food too much to hold a grudge against it. Soon she would leave behind fast food and come to love the Pakistani foods of her heritage, learning to cook them with wholesome ingredients and eat them in moderation. At once a love letter (with recipes) to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, shorba, parathay and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but that refuses to meet the expectations of others.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Henrietta Lacks was a poor farmer whose cells, taken without her consent, became vital for huge advances in science. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today despite her being dead for more than sixty years. Yet she is buried in an unmarked grave, and her family did not learn of her "immortality" until twenty plus years after her death, when scientists began using her family in research without informed consent. The story of her family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
My Life Among the Underdogs by Tia Torres
Tia Torres has devoted her life to shattering the stereotype that pit bulls are dangerous, vicious animals prone to bad behavior. Through her hit show Pit Bulls & Parolees she has shown the world that these wonderful animals have nothing but love to give. As the owner of the Villalobos Rescue Center in New Orleans, the largest pit bull rescue facility in the United States, Tia knows firsthand that pit bulls’ easygoing, adaptable, and vulnerable nature allows them to be used and abused, giving them a bad rep. Here, she chronicles her life alongside the stories of eleven of her best-loved rescue dogs.
My Time Will Come by Ian Manuel
In 1991, Ian Manuel, then fourteen, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. In a botched mugging attempt with some older boys, he shot Debbie Baigrie, a young white mother of two, in the face. This is Ian Manuel's powerful testimony of growing up homeless in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida, and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances, only to find himself, partly through his own actions, imprisoned for two-thirds of his life, eighteen years of which were spent in solitary confinement. This is the story of how he endured the savagery of the US prison system and of how his victim, an extraordinary woman, forgave him and bravely advocated for his freedom, achieved by a crusade on the part of the Equal Justice Initiative to address a barbarism of our judicial system, and to bring about just mercy.
Nonviolent by Reverend James Lawson Jr and Emily Yellin
The gripping firsthand account of the courage it takes to change a nation, from the Rev. James Lawson Jr, who practiced what he preached, always recognizing and respecting the inherent dignity of every human being—even those who opposed him. Nonviolent is at once a riveting historical narrative from an architect of one of the most influential and inspiring global liberation movements, and an ode to what it means to compel a nation to live up to its founding ideals of liberty and justice for all.
A Place Called Home by David Ambroz
There are millions of homeless children in America today and in A Place Called Home, award-winning child welfare advocate David Ambroz writes about growing up homeless in New York for eleven years and his subsequent years in foster care, offering a window into what so many kids living in poverty experience every day.
Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.