STANTON READERS BOOK CLUB
Join our Book Club for ECSHA members.
Avid readers engage in rich discussions of books chosen by us.
In March 2024 a small group of our members decided it would be great enjoyment to read books together about women’s lives, accomplishments, and struggles over a wide variety of genres, places and time periods. We usually read in the morning, but can try an evening read as well. It depends on the make-up and wishes of the group. As does the selection of titles and facilitators.
NOTIFICATIONS of book selection will be by email - generated by club facilitator Jennifer Gardella.
If you are interested in participating, please email gardella15@gmail.com.
We appreciate member Laurie Freeman’s willingness to send out the Zoom links.
MEMBERSHIP in ECSHA is required to participate as a reader in the Stanton Readers’ Club.
(click JOIN US for more information)
Current Selection
COME JOIN OUR DISCUSSION. YOU MUST BE AN ECSHA MEMBER.
Please contact gardella15@gmail.com for the Zoom link.
Read #15: April 23, 2026 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Catherine Julius
Please contact gardella15@gmail.com for the Zoom link.
The Women of Arlington Hall
Jane Haeley
A female codebreaker puts her future and her heart on the line in a stirring novel about love, loyalty, betrayal, and Cold War spy games by the bestselling author of The Secret Stealers.
1947: Adventurous Radcliffe graduate Catherine “Cat” Killeen cancels her wedding and upends a future that no longer suits her. At the behest of her professor and hungry for a challenge, Cat arrives in Virginia to work on a confidential military project. A student in cryptoanalysis, Cat is already ahead of the game—to assist in rooting out Soviet spies who have infiltrated the US.
Joining the “government girls” of Arlington Hall, Cat gains the respect of her superiors and the friendship of her peers. Then, on a night out in DC, Cat runs into Jonathan Dardis, her arrogant and privileged Harvard rival and newly minted agent for the FBI. What Cat and Jonathan share is a competitive drive and an attraction that’s becoming just as spirited. They’re also united in the same critical goal for America. Together, they’re diving deep into the shadows of espionage.
The stakes of the codebreaking operation grow ever higher, and Cat’s relationship with Jonathan opens her heart. Amid dangerous intrigue and grave secrecy, Cat is ready for every risk—no matter how personal the stakes get.
Past Selections
Read #14: Thursday, March 26, 2026 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence
“An elegant, impassioned demand that America see gender-based violence as a cultural and structural problem that hurts everyone, not just victims and survivors… It's at times downright virtuosic in the threads it weaves together.”—NPR
Winner of the 2022 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Books
In 1991, Anita Hill began something that's still unfinished work. The issues of gender violence, touching on sex, race, age, and power, are as urgent today as they were when she first testified. Believing is a story of America's three decades long reckoning with gender violence, one that offers insights into its roots, and paths to creating dialogue and substantive change. It is a call to action that offers guidance based on what this brave, committed fighter has learned from a lifetime of advocacy and her search for solutions to a problem that is still tearing America apart.
We once thought gender-based violence--from casual harassment to rape and murder--was an individual problem that affected a few; we now know it's cultural and endemic, and happens to our acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family members, and it can be physical, emotional and verbal. Women of color experience sexual harassment at higher rates than White women. Street harassment is ubiquitous and can escalate to violence. Transgender and nonbinary people are particularly vulnerable.
Anita Hill draws on her years as a teacher, legal scholar, and advocate, and on the experiences of the thousands of individuals who have told her their stories, to trace the pipeline of behavior that follows individuals from place to place: from home to school to work and back home. In measured, clear, blunt terms, she demonstrates the impact it has on every aspect of our lives, including our physical and mental wellbeing, housing stability, political participation, economy and community safety, and how our descriptive language undermines progress toward solutions. And she is uncompromising in her demands that our laws and our leaders must address the issue concretely and immediately.
Read #13: Thursday, February 19, 2026 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Ruth Levinton
The Dictionary of Lost Words
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress.”—Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of People of the Book
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.
As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.
Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.
WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD
Read #12: Thursday, January 15, 2026 |10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Joyce Caputo
Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR
A group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism, covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR
In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the "women's pages." But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges.
Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli's captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court.
Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author's deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.
Read #11: Thursday, November 20, 2025 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Catherine Julius
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Read #10: September 30, 2025 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Nancy Brown
The Small and the Mighty
Sharon McMahon
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.
In The Small and the Mighty, 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.
You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.
Read #9: April 30, 2025 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Joyce Caputo
Please contact gardella15@gmail.com for the Zoom link.
Let's Call Her Barbie
Renée Rosen
THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER ∙ She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.
As featured in The New York Post ∙ RuPaul's Book Club ∙ Book Riot ∙ The Nerd Daily ∙ Chicago Review of Books ∙ and more!
“A fresh and fun take on Barbie lore…clever and satisfying.”—Shelby Van Pelt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Remarkably Bright Creatures
When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.
In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.
As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.
In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions— each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.
Includes a Reader's Guide and Exclusive Vintage Barbie Photos!
Read #8: March 20, 2025 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Zoom meeting facilitator: Ruth Levinton
Educated
Tara Westover
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, 2018
Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
As featured in Amazon books ad:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.
“Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”
—The New York Times
Movie Review #7: February 13, 2025 |6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Six Triple 8
Tyler Perry
Based on a true story
The movie is Six Triple 8 with Kerry Washington in the starring role, plus other familiar faces.
An important piece of Black Women's WW2 History hidden from historic accounts of their contributions.
Project of Director Tyler Perry who felt that this story of black women, overlooked in the telling of our history, must be known.
The 6888th Central Postal Directory was the first and only Women's Army Corps unit of color to be stationed in Europe during World War II.
Read #6: January 8, 2025 |10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Take My Hand
Dolen-Perkins-Valdez
Winner of the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work
FICTION
From Amazon:
“Deeply empathetic yet unflinching in its gaze…an unforgettable exploration of responsibility and redemption.”—Celeste Ng
Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a searing and compassionate new novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible injustice done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench
Inspired by true events and brimming with hope, Take My Hand is a stirring exploration of accountability and redemption.
“Highlights the horrific discrepancies in our healthcare system and illustrates their heartbreaking consequences.”—Essence
Read: #5: October 23, 2024 | 6:30 PM - 8 PM
Discussion facilitator: Jennifer Gardella
My Life on the Road
Gloria Steinem
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
The personal and political influences in Steinem’s life that propelled her into being one of the leading spokeswomen for women and civil rights in the mid-20th century.
Gloria Steinem - writer, activist, organizer, and one of the most inspiring leaders in the world - now tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of how her early years led her to live an on-the-road kind of life, traveling, listening to people, learning, and creating change. She reveals the story of her own growth in tandem with the growth of an ongoing movement for equality. This is the story at the heart of My Life on the Road.
Read: #4: September 18, 2024 | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Discussion Facilitator: Joyce Caputo
The Secret Life of Sunflowers
Marta Molnar
Amazon described the book as:
“A gripping, inspiring novel based on the true story of Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law. Johanna inherited Vincent van Gogh's paintings. They were all she had, and they weren't worth anything. She was a 28-year-old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce Vincent's legacy to the world.”
Read: #3: June 19, 2024 | 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Discussion Facilitator: Laurie Kozakiewicz
Between Two Kingdoms
Suleika Jaouad
A MEMOIR
Summary from Amazon:
“A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to reentry into “normal” life - from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times “
Read: #2: May 15, 2024 | 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Discussion Facilitator: Marlene Guiffre
The Women
Kristin Hannah
A novel focusing on the lives, struggles, survival and sometimes even triumphs, of the unsung hero nurses who served in Vietnam during one of America’s most turbulent times at
Read: #1: March 26, 2024 | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Discussion Facilitator: Ruth Levinton
My Personal Librarian
Marie Benedict and
Victoria Christopher Murray
A work of historical fiction focusing on the light-skinned African-American woman who was J.P. Morgan’s key purchaser of books for his famous library in NYC. She was “passing” as a white woman to have this marvelous career that benefitted so many.
