Books and Adventures: Novel Tourists Cecil & Nearby Counties

🍂 Suggest a Book for September’s Book Club Theme: Fall Harvest! 🍎🌻🍇

As the air turns crisp and the leaves start to turn, we’re diving into a theme that celebrates the bounty of the season — Fall Harvest! Think books involving apples, grapes, sunflowers, orchards, vineyards, or anything else that captures the magic of this time of year.

📚 Now it’s your turn to plant the seeds!

Use this Google Form to share your book suggestions that fit the Fall Harvest theme — whether it’s set on a farm, in a vineyard, at a harvest festival, or simply features the beauty of nature and abundance.

Let’s find something ripe for discussion! 🙃

After we get your ideas, we’ll pick 4 for you to select a winner!
The poll will close on July 26, so don’t delay!
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Each month we put out a call for ideas for one book that will have both an online discussion event as well as an inperson event. After you share your ideas, we'll pick four to put out for vote as the Member Choice Book for the month. After the book is chosen…well that’s when the fun begins! Stay tuned for the exciting paired online discussion and in person event!

This is not an "event" it is just a post to share the link to suggest the Member Choice Book for this month's theme. But feel free to click "attend" because then Meetup will show this to more people and we'll get lots of great book club book ideas!

🎉Stay connected to other adventurous readers! Join the Novel Tourist online community:
📸Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/thenoveltourist/
🌟Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheNovelTourist

Thanks for participating! Reading books and doing stuff together as a book club brings us all so much joy. 🤩

Diane and Audrey

July’s book!!! The clear winner was The Boxcar Librarian as the July member choice book for the theme “Transportation.” Woot woot!

Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library—a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana.

Our online discussion will be the last Monday of July at 7 PM! The event with zoom link will be posted soon!

Stay tuned for the paired inperson adventure related to the book.

This is our online book club discussion night (always the last Monday of each month). Zoom link will be posted on the day of the event.

📚NOVEL: The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes
Genre: Historical Fiction
Transportation: Train

When Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work.

Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.

More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.

Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

The three women’s stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to hide: what happened to Colette Durand.

Happy Reading!
Diane and Audrey

-------------------The below is silly babble just for the algorithm - no need for book club members to read this!-------------------------------
Reading books everywhere including in cecil county Maryland neighborhoods is such a fun way to make new friends and be social with book loving book club members who like to read and explore urban areas and try new activities such as hiking, reading, craft, hobbies, museums and more! It's especially fun for a book club to go on outdoor and indoor adventures with all the book club friends who like to explore and try new hobbies and discuss books and be always

The votes are in and I bet 😉🤓you can't wait to join us for our online discussion! That's right! Ya'll chose A Betting Woman by Jenni L. Walsh as our Member Choice pick for August. Join us for our online discussion as always on the last Monday of the month at 7pm.

Born Simone Jules, reinvented as Eleanor Dumont, and largely remembered as Madame Moustache, “A Betting Woman” is a historical novel inspired by the tumultuous life, times, and loves of America's first professional croupier of modern-day blackjack, bringing to life an intrepid and entrepreneurial real-life woman who lived on her own terms

‼️Stay tuned for the paired in-person adventure! It's definitely in the cards...😉

Zoom link will be posted on the day of the event.

🎉Want more ideas for bookish fun? Join the Novel Tourist online community:

📸Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/thenoveltourist/
🌟Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheNovelTourist
🧩Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/676589017607990

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📚🔖NOVEL: A Betting Woman by Jenni L. Walsh
Genre: Historical Fiction

"A rollicking ride of a story.” — New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis

When her whole family dies in a fire, young Simone flees her grief and travels west to reinvent herself in burgeoning San Francisco. Down to her last dollar and facing some unsavory options, Simone quick-wits her way to a gambling table where she begins to deal vingt-et-un—modern-day blackjack. Word travels fast among of this French-speaking, card-playing novelty, and she begins to build a new life for herself.

A gripping and endearing tale, A Betting Woman brings to life an intrepid and entrepreneurial female who lived on her own terms... a Molly's Game for lovers of the American West. Fans of Thelma Adams, Therese Anne Fowler, and Marie Benedict will root for the quick-witted, charming, and self-sufficient Eleanor as she paves her way in a man’s world and into the pages of history.

Happy Reading!
Audrey and Diane

❓Event Review Guidance:
Meetup reviews are now public. Did you love the event? Tell the world with a 5-star rating AND a comment!🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
I love putting together fun literary adventures and your comments feed my soul. But, if you didn't like something, please don’t submit a negative review — instead, message me (Diane) directly with your suggestions so we can improve the club together! Also, please remember, you’re reviewing the club experience, not the location. So, for instance, if we go to a play and you didn’t like it, don’t give the Meetup event a negative, it’s not my fault the play stunk. I can’t change what I can’t control.

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------------------The below is silly babble just for the algorithm - no need for book club members to read this!-------------------------------
Reading books everywhere including in Cecil County and neighborhoods is such a fun way to make new friends and be social with passions with book loving book club members who like to read and explore urban areas and try new activities and hobbies such as hiking, reading, craft, hobbies, museums and more! It's especially fun for a book club to go on outdoor and indoor adventures with all the book club friends who like to explore and try new hobbies and discuss books and be always social