Excerpt from The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In fact, Ava had been the one to ask Cate—beg, practically—that if anyone dropped out, could she please, please take that spot. She'd tried not to sound desperate, though of course she was. Desperate for company, desperate for conversation, for a way to pass the empty hours that had appeared suddenly when Jim moved out. She was surprised by how much she longed for company. No, she thought as she sipped her drink. Not just for company, but for something more, a deeper connection to people. How easily she'd come to rely on Jim for that. And how woefully she longed for it with others now.

Years ago, before her little sister Lily and her mother died within a year, books had been Ava's refuge. "There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book," her mother used to quote when she'd discover Ava lost in Narnia or on the prairie or at the March household. She would say it with pride. It was the one thing Ava had that Lily didn't. Lily had the lovely blonde blue-eyed looks of their mother, the kind of sweet temperament and charm that made people stop in the street to admire her. But Ava, with her unruly brown hair and blue spectacles, her tendency toward pouting and sarcasm and a generally sour personality, only pleased her mother by being a voracious reader.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book. Who said that? Ava wondered. Her mother had been gone long enough now for Ava to have forgotten its source.

"We've changed over the years," Cate was saying. "It used to be all young mothers, desperate to talk about something other than potty training and temper tantrums. We'd meet in the afternoon, during naptime. Then we went through a phase of meeting at each other's houses in the evening, and cooking food that was in the books. It's evolved nicely, I think. I still try to make the snacks fit with the books we read. And sometimes I dress from the time period of the novel, just for fun. It's really a good mix of people of different ages now." Cate smiled at Ava and added, "You're going to love everyone. You'll see."

Ava wasn't worried about that. She worried the group wasn't going to love her. She was not a group person. Had never been. She was thrown out of Girl Scouts when she was ten because she couldn't make a curler bag out of a Clorox bottle and therefore earn the sewing merit badge. Lily, a year younger, filled her green sash with merit badge after merit badge, for sewing and cooking and botany. She'd even received a special one for selling more cookies than anyone else in New England. When Ava refused to go to the award ceremony, the Girl Scout leader, Mrs. V, had told her she was a bad sport and that Girl Scouts were good sports, easy to work with, and cheerful. Like Lily. "You possess none of these traits, Ava," Mrs. V had said. If Mrs. V could see her now, she would feel vindicated. I told you so, Ava!

A string of lights twinkled across the mirror, alternating pineapples and palm trees blinking back at her. Above the bar a small television played silently, and a familiar face came on the screen. Ava recognized everything: the PPAC marquee covered in red and green cable knit yarn; Hayley Morrow, the News Team 10 anchor, shivering in a too thin pink coat, wearing the wrong color lipstick for her pale skin; and beside her, in full color, a woman with her hair in a messy tumble down her shoulders, wrapped in a fake leopard coat and over-the-knee boots, her kohl-lined eyes smirking at the camera through her oversized thick black librarian glasses. Her name flashed across the screen, but Ava didn't need to read it. She knew exactly who she was looking at. DELIA LINDSTROM, YARN BOMBER. Husband stealer, Ava added silently.

"Oh, sweetie," Cate said. "Don't look. In fact, let's just leave. Okay? What do you say?" She motioned to the bartender, writing with an invisible pen in the air.

Excerpted from The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood. Copyright © 2016 by Ann Hood. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.