So your book club met again this month and the same thing happened – even with double espresso brownies; the discussion meandered to include everything from breast enhancement to new age potty training techniques. Keep it on track with something a little more intriguing—like a book that garnered such stellar reviews your members will wonder if they and Booklist really read the same thing. Here are just a few sure to inspire energetic, albeit critical interpretation:

Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips. A gritty, blue-collar coming of age tale rooted in the Korean War era, its focus is an extended West Virginia family’s fierce determination to stay intact despite some pretty sordid Sound and the Fureyesque skeletons in the closet. Dark, murky and sexually charged, book discussion members may forego the brie and crackers to dissect what The New York Times called ‘emotionally piercing’.

Generate a bristling discussion with The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker. Truly suffers from a pituitary gland disorder that deems her a gargantuan sage with a predilection for murder masked in euthanasia. Set in a small upstate New York town, festering with fated characters, readers just might fall under Truly’s spell.

 The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. It’s set in Salem and the female protagonist has one of those waspishly male first names — Towner. She also descends from a soothsaying bunch of witchy women who can read your future in lace. Plus, there’s a hunky cop who’s into visionary though self-destructive women. Read it and talk about it if for nothing else, than the fact that William Morrow gave Barry a two-million dollar advance!

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. A gorgeous porn actor meets a fate worse than death when he crashes his car and is incinerated. He does not die however, but endures the ghastly process of burn recovery with the aid of morphine, the contemplation of suicide and a psychotic sculptress who looks like Penelope Cruz, sleeps with stone gargoyles for inspiration and convinces the main character that they were lovers in the 14^th century. Davidson, (pretty cute in his press release photo), was clearly an A student in his medieval lit classes. A sure bet for book discussions—especially if accompanied by a decent chardonnay.

And finally, from a small—very small kernel of historical truth about The 1875 Brides for Indians Program, comes One Thousand White Women: The Journals of Mary Dodd by Jim Fergus. The issue of Indian assimilation plagues President Ulysses S. Grant until his administration comes up with the secretive plan to trade one thousand white women to the warring Cheyenne—in exchange for one thousand horses—the idea being that bi-racial offspring will succumb better to the institutionalization of those nomadic people. But where to get the women? Grant’s advisors go shopping in east coast brothels and asylums for a rainbow coalition of brides-to-be. Fergus’s oversimplified conception of women and native people will assuredly spark a blood-pumping, yet divisive discussion your group will long remember.