Booksweet events are a great place to stay connected to your community, meet cool new people, and add a little bright spot to your week. Join us for our upcoming events in December!
Keep an eye on our calendar for additional events as we add them!
Book Clubs
We hope to invite a group of people who have read the book (or don’t mind a spoiler) to discuss their thoughts about the book (the plot, the characters, and anything else you want to discuss!). We will bring prompts but invite anyone to pose a question or share their thoughts!
After a fun discussion, the group votes on the next session’s read. Feel free to pitch an on-theme book you’ve enjoyed recently or want to read with the group.
While we will have water and light refreshments (including nut-free and gluten-free options), Booksweet is located in The Courtyard Shops, filled with AMAZING dining options. Food and drinks are totally welcome at the meet-up; don’t feel shy about sipping boba while we chat!
Your Eventbrite RSVP is so helpful to our planning. Hope to see you there!
Thursday Murder Mystery Book Club
Thursday December 4, 7pm
Book: The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
Join us at Booksweet for our next Thursday Mystery Book Club! Get ready to dive into thrilling mysteries, discuss your favorite sleuth novels, and meet fellow armchair detectives. Whether you’re a seasoned mystery reader or just starting to explore the genre, this club is the perfect place to share your thoughts, theories, and suspicions about all things mysterious.
About the book //
From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.
Solve the murder to save what’s left of the world.
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.
On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they’re told by the scientists.
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn’t solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped everyone’s memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don’t even know it.
And the clock is ticking.
Different Eras- Historical Fiction Book Club
Sunday December 7, 12pm
Book: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Come join us for a cozy afternoon at Booksweet for our second Historical Fiction Book Club on Sunday, December 7! At our first meting, we selected The Nightwatchman by Louise Erdrich. Whether you’re a history buff or just starting to explore the genre, this book club is for you! To help transport the club to another time and place, we will also offer tea and refreshments!
About the book //
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.
Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.
In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
Rainbows and Unicorns- An LGBTQ+ Book Club
Wednesday December 17, 7pm
Book: Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen
Join us for a fun evening of discussion and community at Booksweet for our sixth LGBTQ+ Book Club on December 17th! For our December book, we’ve selected Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen. Whether you’ve read the book more than once or are just coming to chat with like-minded readers, this event is for you!
About the book //
When the final four women in competition for an aloof, somewhat sleazy bachelor’s heart arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews, and, of course, the salacious drama eager viewers nationwide tune in to devour. Each woman came on The Catch for her own reasons—brand sponsorships, followers, and, yes, even love—and they’ve all got their eyes steadfastly trained on their respective prizes.
Enter Patricia, a temperamental and woe¬fully misunderstood local living alone in the dark, verdant woods, and desperate for connection. Through twists as unexpected as they are wildly entertaining, the self-absorbed cast and jaded crew each make her acquaintance atop the island’s tallest and most desolate peak, finding themselves at the center of an action-packed thriller that is far from scripted—and only a few will make the final cut.
A whirlwind romp careening toward a last-girl-standing conclusion, and a scath¬ing indictment of contemporary American media culture, Patricia Wants to Cuddle is also a love story: between star-crossed lesbians who rise above their intolerant town, a deeply ambivalent woman and her budding self-actualization, and a group of misfit islanders forging community against all odds.
Other Events
Author Event – D.J. Hoogacker Discusses Chasing Autumn
Saturday December 6, 1pm
Come join us at Booksweet for an exciting in-person event with author D.J. Hoogacker as she discusses her latest book, Chasing Autumn. Get ready to dive into the world of her captivating storytelling and learn more about the inspiration behind this intriguing novel. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to meet the author and connect with fellow book lovers. See you there!
Author Reading Featuring Ann Epstein, Maureen Aitken and Keith Hood
Sunday December 7, 3pm
Come join us for an afternoon of readings at Booksweet! We are thrilled to welcome Ann Arbor authors Ann Epstein, Maureen Aitken and Keith Hood reading from selected works.
Ann S. Epstein (she/her) writes novels, stories, memoir, poems, and essays. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize creative nonfiction nomination, Walter Sullivan fiction prize, Historical Novel Review Editors’ Choice selection, and St. Lawrence Book Award Finalist nomination. Her novels are On the Shore, Tazia and Gemma, A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., The Great Stork Derby, One Person’s Loss, and The Sister Knot, and Who Cares? (in press). Her other work appears in North American Review, Sewanee Review, PRISM International, Ascent, The Long Story, and elsewhere. She also has a PhD in developmental psychology, MFA in fiber art, and certification as an end-of-life doula. Her website is https://www.asewovenwords.com.
Maureen Aitken‘s award-winning short story collection was reissued by Wayne State University in September, 2025. It has won The Nilson Prize, The Foreword Review Gold Prize, and received a Kirkus Star. Her stories have been published widely in journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and The Missouri Review. Most recently, her story was a finalist for The Missouri Review’s Perkoff Prize. She has taught at The University of Michigan, Hamline University, and The University of Minnesota.
Keith Hood is a former janitor and window cleaner. He retired from a job as a field technician for a Michigan electric utility after 32 years avoiding electrocution. His prose and poetry have appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Quick Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, 50 Give or Take, Your Impossible Voice, one sentence poems, Five Minutes One Hundred Words, The Forge Literary Journal, and Vestal Review. Keith’s photography has appeared in Ontario Review, Helen: A Literary Journal, The Grief Diaries, Storm Cellar Street Lit, and F-Stop, and in an exhibition at The Toledo Museum of Art.
Finding Home: Poetry Workshop featuring Ellen Stone & Ashwini Bhasi
Wednesday December 10, 6:30pm
Tickets: $15
Come join us for a cozy evening of poetry at Booksweet! We are thrilled to have Ashwini Bhasi and Ellen Stone offering their considerable expertise in writing poetry, particularly using nature as a guide for writing or belonging. We will provide space for participants to use the evening as a break from the hectic holiday season – a nature writing break without going outside!
Ashwini Bhasi is a bioinformatician and multidisciplinary artist from Kerala, India. Her hybrid work merges scientific data, poetry and visual art to explore the lived experience of chronic illness, trauma and disability. A Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar, Ashwini is the recipient of the Shaw Memorial Poetry Prize from Dunes Review, a Good Hart Artist Residency and a Room Project Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, DIAGRAM, Redivider and elsewhere. MUSTH, the winner of the 2020 CutBank chapbook contest, is her first poetry collection.
Ellen Stone advises a poetry club at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat! and is an editor at the literary journal, Public School Poetry. Her poems have appeared recently in Third Coast, Dunes Review, Michigan Quarterly Review Mixtape, and Midwest Review. Ellen is the author of Everybody Wants to Keep the Moon Inside Them (Mayapple Press, 2025), What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). She was a Good Hart Artist Residency Writer in Residence in 2024. Ellen’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Keep an eye on our calendar for additional events as we add them!