The FOPSL Book Club meets on the third Friday of the month at 2:00 p.m. (September-June) in the Cornelia White Community Room at the Welwood Murray Memorial Library in downtown Palm Springs and is open to everyone. Members of the club read the selected book for the month and join in lively discussions.

For more information or to join the FOPSL Book Club email list, please contact Friends Book Club Coordinators Mary Marks and Don Elder.

Most titles are available as Downloadable Audiobooks and/or eBooks from PSPL.

June 12, 2026
Please note that the June meeting is on the second Friday of the month.

 The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

—Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography

—The acclaimed memoir about fathers and sons, a legacy of loss, and, ultimately, healing—one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The Return is the story of what he found there.

The Pulitzer Prize citation hailed The Return as “a first-person elegy for home and father.” Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable work with a powerful human question at its core: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss?

Assisted Listening Devices (ALDs) are instruments designed to amplify sounds to make it easier for persons who are hearing‑impaired to enjoy a library program.

Anyone who requires an auxiliary aid or service for effective communication, or a modification of policies or procedures to participate in a program, service, or activity of the City of Palm Springs, should contact the ADA Coordinator, as soon as possible but no later than 48 hours before the scheduled event.