For both book lovers and book clubbers who are snapping up works about reading, such as Pies & Prejudice and The Jane Austen Book Club, as well as those made weary by self-satisfied bibliophiles and who want some snark, plot, and drama.

I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of "The Unbearable Book Club," CeeCee, Jill, Wallis, and I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we weren't friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, and hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter literary catastrophe. Or open this book and read my essay, which I'll turn in when I go back to school.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JULIE SCHUMACHER is the author of several highly acclaimed children's books. She is a professor of English at the University of Minnesota.