Gramercy Books Club June Selection is The Titanic Survivors Book Club!

Gramercy Book Club’s June pick is by Timothy Schaffert, the author of The Perfume Thief.Schaffert’s seventh novel is a remarkable tale about aTitanic librarian who opens a bookshop in Paris where he meets a secret society of survivors. The story imparts the life-changing power of books. Longtime WOSU Public Media host Christopher Purdy will facilitate the group discussion and interview Schaffert, who will join via Zoom in the latter portion of the evening.

A ticket to this program includes a copy of The Titanic Survivors Book Club. It is strongly encouraged that registrants read the book prior to the program.

WOSU Public Media is Gramercy’s Community Partner for this program.

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship’s second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail he was left stranded at the dock.

After the ship’s sinking, Yorick takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. Soon after, he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket holders who didn’t board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to form a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties through heated discussions of The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Of this ragtag group, Yorick finds himself particularly drawn to the glamorous Zinnia and the mysterious Haze, and a tangled triangle of love and friendship forms among them. Yet with the Great War on the horizon and the unexpected death of one of their own, the surviving book club members are left wondering what fate might have in store.

Elegant and elegiac, The Titanic Survivors Book Club is a dazzling ode to love, chance, and the transformative power of books to bring people together.

Timothy Schaffert is the author of six previous novels: The Perfume Thief, The Swan Gondola, The Coffins of Little Hope, Devils in the Sugar Shop, The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God, and The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters. He is the Adele Hall Chair of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and coeditor of Zero Street, a literary fiction series of the University of Nebraska Press.

Christopher Purdy joined WOSU Public Media/Classical 101 in 1992. In September 2019, he was named permanent on-air host for Classical 101, from 7 to 10 a.m. weekday mornings. He is currently the host of Essential Classics; Front Row Center: Opera and More; Music in Mid-Ohio and is host of the Columbus Symphony Broadcast Series and Concerts at Ohio State. Additionally, he is a regular contributor to the Classical 101 Blog (wosu.org/classical101) and is host and producer of the podcast series Opera Abbreviated. Christopher hosts All Sides Weekend for WOSU 89-7 NPR News on alternate Fridays at 11 a.m. The very popular is heard the third Friday of each month.

Host or Publisher Gramercy Books