Our May Book choice was
"Swamplandia!" by Karen Russell. The meeting will be an early June brunch.
Here is what the NY Times reviewer Emma Donoghue had to say about this book-
"In 2006, Zoetrope published a story by a 24-year-old writer, Karen Russell. That story, “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” featured a lusciously strange setting (an alligator theme park in the Everglades) and a tough young heroine with a dead mother and an absent father, as well as a weird problem: how to save her resented-yet-beloved older sister from eloping with a ghost. A few months later, Russell’s first story collection, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” with “Ava Wrestles the Alligator” leading a crazy procession of nine other Florida swampland stories, won her wide acclaim, and last year she was chosen one of The New Yorker’s
“20 Under 40” top fiction writers.
Now her fans can sink their teeth into her first novel, “Swamplandia!,” a sort of expansion of and sequel to that alligator story. Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades.
The setting and the sisters (Ava and Osceola, a k a Ossie) are the same, but they now benefit from a full back story. It’s easier to care about the pleasures and miseries of life in a failing gator park when we know how the father (the self-proclaimed Chief Bigtree) and his family ended up there, and are led to understand what goes into the routine of putting on death-defying shows every day. If Russell’s style is a North American take on magical realism, then her commitment to life’s nitty-gritties anchors the magic; we are more inclined to suspend disbelief at the moments that verge on the paranormal because she has turned “Swamplandia!” into a credible world.
Ava is a highly appealing narrator who has many talents beyond swimming with gators or taping their jaws shut. If protagonists (especially of first novels) typically bewail the mundanity of their small towns, the exotic is normal to Ava. Her first-person narration is not a transcription of a 13-year-old voice, but an evocation, in adult language, of a barely adolescent mind-set. This allows for a dazzling level of linguistic invention. Here Russell as Ava describes the dozen houses on pilings that make up the abandoned outpost of Stiltsville: “dawn light screaming through the doorways that hung on their hinges, the broken windows that birds could fly through, the plank lace, the cheesed metals.” "
Interesting to note this reviewer is the author of a previous Beehive book-
Room
Now her fans can sink their teeth into her first novel, “Swamplandia!,” a sort of expansion of and sequel to that alligator story. Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades. 
Betsy hosted the April meeting in her Sunset magazine like back garden. 
Our March get together was held at Molly's lovely home. The book Room had limited food references but many chose to go with the comfort aspect with such foods as macaroni and cheese . Some of our most interesting questions and discussion involving childhood, parenting and survival were inspired by this book. 
And what a voice it is. "Ma" has clearly spent his five years devoting every scrap of mental energy to teaching, nurturing and entertaining her boy, preserving her own sanity in the process. To read this book is to stumble on a completely private world. Every family unit has its own language of codes and in-jokes, and Donoghue captures this exquisitely. Ma has created characters out of all aspects of their room – Wardrobe, Rug, Plant, Meltedy Spoon. They have a TV and Jack loves Dora the Explorer, but Ma limits the time they are allowed to watch it for fear of turning their brains to mush. They do "phys ed" every morning, keep to strict mealtimes, make up poems, sing Lady Gaga and Kylie, and most importantly, Ma has a seemingly endless supply of stories – from the Berlin Wall and Princess Di ("Should have worn her seatbelt," says Jack) to fairytales like Hansel and Gretel to hybrids in which Jack becomes Prince Jackerjack, Gullijack in Lilliput: his mother's own fairytale hero. And really, what is a story of a kidnapped girl locked in a shed with her long-haired innocently precocious boy if not the realisation of the most macabre fairytale?
Kitty hosted our February gathering in her artistically inviting East Sac home. I am somewhat relieved to report that there was no Turkey Neck soup in the eclectic mix of sophisticated foods and bevy of beverages. Good conversation and laughter as we shared the goings on via the Internet with Beth who was unable to attend.
Annette hosted our first Book Club meeting of 2012 in her elegant and inviting home. We enjoyed a lively evening of discussion and book inspired Middle Eastern and Old world foods, with a few modern twists.
USA Today book review October 2011 
Betsy once again hosted our holiday cookie exchange and book group at her festive and elegant home. We all enjoyed the soup, salad, beverages and a plethora of cookies and treats. Much book talk, what we read this year, likes and dislike and what we'd like to read next year. It was a wonderful way to welcome the holiday season and say good-bye to yet another year.
We really enjoyed the language of this book and the tea sandwiches and other treats were also a delight.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only known novel. The work first appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890, and it was revised and published as a novel the following year. The work was considered scandalous and immoral when it first appeared, but it was really a way for Wilde to write about his philosophy of art.
Our summer July/August book group meeting was hosted at the Hastings house and the book "boss" was Miss Molly. 
Washington Times
"The Zookeeper's Wife is a groundbreaking work of nonfiction," said selection committee member Mark Kurlansky, "in which the human relationship to nature is explored in an absolutely original way through looking at the Holocaust." Kathleen Dean Moore, the committee's chairperson, said: "A few years ago, 'nature' writers were asking themselves, How can a book be at the same time a work of art, an act of conscientious objection to the destruction of the world, and an affirmation of hope and human decency? The Zookeeper's Wife answers this question."