Page Against the Machine Book Group (August 2026 Theme)

Check out this space for suggested titles of Page Against the Machine book group's current month's theme!

For August 2026 , the theme is: Dayton Literary Peace Prize: Read any winner or finalist of the U.S. literary award that “[recognizes] the power of the written word to promote peace”.



Updated July 7, 2026
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The antidote
Russell, Karen
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates...
Bad bad girl : a novel
Jen, Gish
Paper Book
L.A. TIMES 15 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * TIME "100 BEST" * RUPAUL'S BOOK CLUB PICK * An engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. "A transcendent work of art." --Boston Globe "Gish Jen...
Beasts of a little land : a novel
Kim, Juhea
Paper Book
"A spectacular debut filled with great characters and heart." --Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan FINALIST FOR THE 2022 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE · FINALIST FOR THE BALCONES FICTION PRIZE · LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN AWARD An epic story of love, war, and...
Brother, I'm dying
Danticat, Edwidge
Paper Book
Brother I'm Dying
Built from the fire : the epic story of Tulsa's Greenwood district, America's Black Wall Street : one hundred years in the neighborhood that refused to be erased
Luckerson, Victor
Paper Book
A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa's Greenwood district, known as "Black Wall Street," that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification "Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of Luckerson's outstanding...
The burning Earth : a history
Amrith, Sunil
Paper Book
In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of Portuguese...
Deacon King Kong
McBride, James
Paper Book
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction   Winner of the Gotham Book Prize One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" Oprah's Book Club Pick New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Far from the tree : parents, children and the search for identity
Solomon, Andrew
Paper Book
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Books for a Better Life Award, and one of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2012, this masterpiece by the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon features stories of parents who not only learn to...
Freedom is a feast : a novel
Puyana, Alejandro
Paper Book
In the tradition of Isabel Allende's career-launching debut, The House of the Spirits, a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause-and receives a late-life chance at redemption: "a tour de force" from "the...
High conflict : why we get trapped and how we get out
Ripley, Amanda
Paper Book
When we are baffled by the insanity of the "other side"--in our politics, at work, or at home--it's because we aren't seeing how the conflict itself has taken over. That's what "high conflict" does. It's the invisible hand of our time. And it's different from the useful friction...
A history of burning
Oza, Janika
Paper Book
This epic, sweeping historical novel spans continents and a century, revealing how one act of survival can reverberate through generations. "Remarkable ... a haunting, symphonic tale" --New York Times Book Review  In 1898,...
Infinite country : a novel
Engel, Patricia
Paper Book
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK and INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A profound, beautiful novel." --People * "Poignant." --BuzzFeed * "A breathtaking story of the unimaginable prices paid for a better life." --Esquire This...
The jailhouse lawyer
Duncan, Calvin
Paper Book
A USA TODAY Bestseller * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Public Library * Winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award * A Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Nonfiction "Duncan's story is so incredible it strains belief. It is so...
Just mercy : a story of justice and redemption
Stevenson, Bryan
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX * A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice--from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time...
Martyr!
Akbar, Kaveh
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR * A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and...
The orphan master's son
Johnson, Adam
CD
The Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times betselling novel of North Korea: an epic journey into the heart of the world's most mysterious dictatorship. "Imagine Charles Dickens paying a visit to Pyongyang, and you see the canvas on which Adam] Johnson is painting here."-...
The overstory : a novel
Powers, Richard
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut...
The plague of doves
Erdrich, Louise.
Paper Book
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, The Plague of Doves--the first part of a loose trilogy that includes the National Book Award-winning The Round House and LaRose--is a gripping novel about a long-unsolved crime in a small North Dakota town and how, years later, the consequences are still being...
Prophet song
Lynch, Paul
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 * INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize Shortlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award One of The Irish Times's 100 Best Books of...
Red memory : the afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution
Branigan, Tania
Paper Book
"It is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution," Tania Branigan writes. During this decade of Maoist fanaticism between 1966 and 1976, children turned on parents, students condemned teachers, and as many as two million people died for their supposed...
Rising out of hatred : the awakening of a former white nationalist
Saslow, Eli
Paper Book
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, the powerful story of how a prominent white supremacist changed his heart and mind. This is a book to help us understand the American moment and to help us better understand one another. Derek Black grew up at the epicenter of white...
Salt houses
Alyan, Hala
Paper Book
 Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses follows three generations of a Palestinian family and asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can't go home again. Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award On the eve...
Shockwave : countdown to Hiroshima
Walker, Stephen
Paper Book
The story of the bombing of Hiroshima presented in a new and dramatic way: a minute-by-minute account told from multiple perspectives, both in the air and on the ground British feature and documentary director Stephen Walker tells the story of the bombing of Hiroshima in a way only a...
The sunflower boys : a novel
Wachman, Sam
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR GAY FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE MASS BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION "That rarest phenomenon: a war novel that feels at once timeless and precisely of the moment..." --...
The surrendered
Lee, Chang-rae.
Paper Book
Read an essay by Chang-rae Lee here. The bestselling, award-winning writer of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft returns with his biggest, most ambitious novel yet: a spellbinding story of how love and war echo through an entire lifetime. ...
To end all wars : a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914-1918
Hochschild, Adam.
Paper Book
World War I stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s...
The train to Crystal City : FDR's secret prisoner exchange program and America's only family internment camp during World War II
Russell, Jan Jarboe
Paper Book
The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families--many US citizens--were incarcerated. From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to...
The treeline : the last forest and the future of life on earth
Rawlence, Ben
Paper Book
Winner of the 2023 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism "Original and readable." ―Financial Times' Best Environmental Books of 2022 "Superb, inspiring." ―Winner, National Academies of Science Schmidt Awards for Excellence in...
When time stopped : a memoir of my father's war and what remains
Neumann, Ariana
Paper Book
In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father's past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew. In 1941, the first...
Wild dark shore
McConaghy, Charlotte
Paper Book
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB'S BOOK OF THE YEAR * LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (NPR, TIME, USA Today, The Economist, Scientific...
The world that we knew : a novel
Hoffman, Alice
Paper Book
This instant New York Times bestseller and longlist recipient for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal takes place in 1941, during humanity's darkest hour, and follows three unforgettable young women who must act with courage and love to survive. "[A] hymn to the power of...

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