Summertime is perfect for considering a "mega read"—those longer, fully immersive novels that are ideal for leisurely summer days and evenings. Books over 400 pages, sometimes even 500+, feel less daunting during this relaxed time of year.
July is the perfect month to switch things up and tackle those substantial titles you've always wanted to read but held back from due to their length. Darien Library Book Groups offers both exciting new releases and beloved classics that fit the bill perfectly!
Is your book group not registered with Darien Library yet? You can do that online.
Making the Most of Your Mega Read
Pick your book and take the time to truly savor it. Enhance your reading experience by exploring the author's website, reading and watching interviews, or diving into literary analysis sites that offer deeper insights into the work.
Still feeling overwhelmed by the length?
Consider reserving your chosen book for an extended 8-week period instead of the usual timeframe. This gives everyone in your group ample time to read at a comfortable pace and arrive fully prepared for discussion.
The God of the Woods
This slow-burn missing persons mystery takes place in 1975 on a summer camp in Upstate New York. The chapters shift among characters and timelines, offering twists, turns, and surprises.
Kiera, Director, Darien Library
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
Dream State
A transporting wonder…Puchner’s manipulation of time is among his novel’s most magical elements….We book reviewers don’t get to say much about endings, but Puchner’s final chapter is one of the most touching and satisfying I’ve read in years.
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws’ lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can’t imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task—an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie’s shared past. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett’s friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she’s dreamed of and a life she’s never imagined.
The Covenant of Water
Although this book requires an investment of time, the returns are endless. The Covenant of Water made me want to write beautiful prose, travel the world, cook erachi olathiathu, study medicine, and hug my mother.
Verghese’s sweeping generational saga is one of perseverance and perspective, as a South Indian family navigates an inherited, mysterious affliction. It is a novel whose tenderness, sorrows, smells, and sounds linger in your senses long after the final page.
Elysia, Head of Materials Management, Darien Library
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, Abraham Verghese’s long-awaited, masterful novel follows three generations of a Christian family in Kerala, South India, that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning. As the novel opens, a twelve-year-old girl is sent by boat to her wedding, where she meets her husband for the first time. She joins a prosperous household and becomes known as Big Ammachi, the matriarch of an extraordinary family that will endure hardship, celebrate triumph, and witness unthinkable changes over the coming decades.
The Women
A gripping portrait of an Army Corps nurse serving on the front lines during the Vietnam War. This work of historical fiction illuminates the undertold stories of the female veterans who risked their lives during wartime.
Kiera, Director, Darien Library
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.
Demon Copperhead
It's easy to see why this won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. Kingsolver crafts a modern retelling of David Copperfield set in Appalachia that tackles issues such as poverty, child abuse, addiction, and loss with clarity and grace. A great read, and an even better audiobook.
Kiera, Director, Darien Library
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours.
Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
All the Colors of the Dark
Although slow to get going, stick with it, it's worth it! This is a unique novel—part mystery, part thriller, part multi-generational drama. There are lots of characters, each well-drawn and memorable. This one will stay with you.
Kiera, Director, Darien Library
1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.
When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.
Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.
A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope.