Find your next great read and some lively conversation with the Ames Free Library Book Club! Copies of each selection are available at the Circulation Desk approximately one month before the meeting.

The Ames Free Library Book Club meets on the second Wednesday of every month at 1:30 P.M. We welcome all new members! Subscribe to the "AFL Book Club" e-newsletter to receive book club reminders and updates.

If you're unable to attend this meeting in person, we're happy to offer a hybrid meeting option! Contact the library at info@amesfreelibrary.org or 508-238-2000, ext. 3 and we will provide a Zoom link. Please note that we require at least 24 hours notice.

This month's selection is: The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

"It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass--but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists. In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure."