Over the next five months, Club Book will bring eight writers to metro libraries, including New York Times best-selling authors Cheryl Strayed, John Sandford, Arthur Phillips and Pam Houston.

Club Book is a program of the Metropolitan Library Service Agency, funded in part through Minnesota's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. All events are free and open to the public.

Here's the lineup:

Pam Houston: 7 p.m. Feb. 5, Maplewood Library, 3025 Southlawn Dr., Maplewood. Houston, author of "Cowboys Are My Weakness" and "Waltzing the Cat," is a novelist, essayist, editor and teacher. Her new novel is "Contents May Have Shifted."

Lorna Landvik: 7 p.m. Feb. 28, Prior Lake Library, 16210 Eagle Creek Av., Prior Lake, and 2 p.m. April 21, Chanhassen Library, 7711 Kerber Blvd., Chanhassen. Landvik, who lives in the Twin Cities, is the best-selling author of "Patty Jane's House of Curl," "Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons" and other novels.

Li-Young Lee: 7 p.m. March 18, St. Anthony Park Library, 2245 Como Av., St. Paul. Li-Young Lee is a poet and memoirist, the author of "Behind My Eyes" and "The City in Which I Love You," winner of the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection. His memoir, "The Winged Seed," won an American Book Award.

Cheryl Strayed: 7 p.m. March 19, Central Park Amphitheater, 8595 Central Park Pl., Woodbury, and 7 p.m. March 20, Galaxie Library, 14955 Galaxie Av., Apple Valley. Strayed, who grew up near McGregor, Minn., and attended the University of Minnesota, is the author of "Wild," a memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. The book was an Oprah Book Club 2.0 selection and has been optioned for film. She is also the author of "Tiny Beautiful Things" and "Torch."

Arthur Phillips: 7 p.m. April 18, Stillwater Public Library, 224 3rd St. N., Stillwater. Phillips was born in Minneapolis and is the author of five novels, including "Egyptologist," "Prague" and "The Song Is You." His most recent novel is "The Tragedy of Arthur," about the supposed discovery of a lost Shakespeare play.

Brenda Langton: 7 p.m. April 24, Hennepin County Library-Southdale, 7001 York Av. S., Edina. Restaurateur Langton established and ran Cafe Kardamena and Cafe Brenda and now operates Spoonriver, all specializing in local and organic cuisine. Langton is the author of "The Spoonriver Cookbook," and has been a judge for the James Beard Foundation's annual cookbook awards.

John Sandford: 7 p.m. May 8, Rum River Library, 4201 6th Av., Anoka. As a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, John Camp (pen name: John Sandford) won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories about a farm in crisis. Now a fiction writer, he is the author of the "Prey" series and the series featuring Virgil Flowers. His newest book is "Silken Prey."

Benjamin Percy: 7 p.m. May 29, Hennepin County Library-Southdale, 7001 York Av. S., Edina. Percy is a novelist and essayist, author of "The Wilding" and, forthcoming in May, "Red Moon," as well as two collections of short stories, "Refresh, Refresh" and "The Language of Elk." He is a regular contributor to Esquire and is writer-in-residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield.

Laurie Hertzel • 612-673-7302