Intercontinental Readers Book Club

The Intercontinental Readers meet at 11:00 am at the Peoria Public Library Main Branch in the Gallery Classroom. This is a unique book discussion that virtually connects readers from Peoria and Clonmel to share both American and Irish literature.

If you have any questions about the Intercontinental Book Club please reach out to Kathy and Terry Tate at knttate@mchsi.com.

The following are the book selections and meeting dates for 2023.

All descriptions from Goodreads summaries


March 22, 2023

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

This Tender Land Bookcover

In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota's Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training School is a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to Odie O’Banion, a lively orphan boy whose exploits constantly earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Odie and his brother, Albert, are the only white faces among the hundreds of Native American children at the school.

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June 7, 2023 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These Bookcover

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

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September 6, 2023

The Last Thing He Told Me  by Laura Dave

The Last Thing He Told Me BookcoverBefore Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child.  Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

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November 1, 2023 

Life Sentences by Billy O'Callaghan

Life Sentences Bookcover

Spanning more than a century, Billy O’Callaghan’s weaves together the journey of an Irish family determined against all odds to be free. In 1920, Nancy’s son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer’s youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house just steps away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies ahead for those who will survive her.

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