A monthly Sunday afternoon book club at Bookish Notions in Media, PA, dedicated to discussing Jane Austen's classics and Austen-inspired works, with meetings shifting from the third to the fourth Sunday beginning September 2026.

A monthly book club at Bookish Notions where readers gather to discuss a rotating selection of fantasy and science fiction novels, alternating between the two genres each month.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones This chilling historical novel is set in the nascent days of the state of Montana, following a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab as he haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation looking for justice. It begins when a diary written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall in 2012. What is unveiled is a slow massacre, a nearly forgotten chain of events that goes back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow, told in the transcribed interviews with Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar and unnaturally long life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story, captured in the vivid voices of the time, by one of the new masters of literary horror, Stephen Graham Jones. You can find all our selections here: https://mediauplibrary.org/afternoon-book-club/ Please email [email protected] to join the book club.

A free monthly history-themed book club meeting at Bookish Notions bookstore in Media, PA, held on the first Monday of each month at 7:00 PM.

A recurring writers' circle at Bookish Notions bookstore in Media, PA, featuring roughly an hour of free writing time for adults at any stage of their writing journey.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan 2014 : At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife's birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, 'A Corona for Vivien'. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery. 2119 : Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, 'A Corona for Vivian'. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem's discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well. What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost. -- Provided by publisher. You can find all our selections here: https://mediauplibrary.org/afternoon-book-club/ Please email [email protected] to join the book club.

A monthly horror book club meeting at Bookish Notions bookstore in Media, PA, where readers gather on the third Thursday at 7 PM to discuss a selected horror novel.

A free bring-your-own-book silent reading meetup on Sunday, October 18 from 4:30-6:00 PM, where readers gather at Bookish Notions for a quiet, screen-free reading hour followed by optional socializing.

A free monthly book club at Bookish Notions in Media, PA, meeting on the third Tuesday at 7 PM to discuss books across genres that center LGBT+ experiences, led by community member Alexandria Morales-Garcia.

The Women in Classics book club meets at Bookish Notions on Sunday, October 25 at 4:30 PM to discuss Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, specifically the original 1818 text.

A monthly Sunday afternoon book club at Bookish Notions in Media, PA, dedicated to discussing Jane Austen's classics and Austen-inspired works, with meetings shifting from the third to the fourth Sunday beginning September 2026.

A free, drop-in monthly book club at Bookish Notions where readers gather to discuss that month's new fiction pick and vote on the club's next read.

A monthly fiction book club at Bookish Notions bookstore in Media, PA, where readers gather on the fourth Tuesday at 7 PM to discuss a newly selected contemporary novel.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. The hardest thing in the world is to live only once… One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai's relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink. Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong's writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life's most fleeting mercies: a second chance. You can find all our selections here: https://mediauplibrary.org/afternoon-book-club/ Please email [email protected] to join the book club.

A free monthly history-themed book club meeting at Bookish Notions bookstore in Media, PA, held on the first Monday of each month at 7:00 PM.

An interactive networking luncheon with author Christine Miles, featuring a book signing and a donation drive for the VA's Women Veterans Program.

A monthly book club at Bookish Notions where readers gather to discuss a rotating selection of fantasy and science fiction novels, alternating between the two genres each month.

A recurring writers' circle at Bookish Notions bookstore in Media, PA, featuring roughly an hour of free writing time for adults at any stage of their writing journey.

Silent Book Club Media hosts a free, bring-your-own-book meetup at Bookish Notions on Sunday, November 15 from 4:30-6:00 PM, built around an hour of quiet shared reading.

A free monthly book club at Bookish Notions in Media, PA, meeting on the third Tuesday at 7 PM to discuss books across genres that center LGBT+ experiences, led by community member Alexandria Morales-Garcia.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby's longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – "unrecorded lives," Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, "Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love." You can find all our selections here: https://mediauplibrary.org/afternoon-book-club/ Please email [email protected] to join the book club.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town's most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own. Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie. Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon's newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day. You can find all our selections here: https://mediauplibrary.org/afternoon-book-club/ Please email [email protected] to join the book club.

My Friends by Fredrik Backman Most people don't even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it's just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa's care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting's birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she'll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don't always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art. You can find all our selections here: https://mediauplibrary.org/afternoon-book-club/ Please email [email protected] to join the book club.