January Book

 Join us on Wednesday January 21 at 1pm for a discussion of Plainsong by Kent Haruf, who died on November 30, 2014.

A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known.

From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.

"Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace—a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground."
-FROM THE CITATION FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

December Book - Death Comes for the Archbishop

October Book - The City of Women

Come by and pick up a copy of City of Women by David R. Gillham for our discussion on Wednesday October 22nd at 1pm.  We'll meet by the fireplace.

Whom do you trust, whom do you love, and who can be saved? 

It is 1943—the height of the Second World War—and Berlin has essentially become a city of women.
Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model German soldier’s wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime. But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former lover, now lost in the chaos of the war. Her lover is a Jew.

But Sigrid is not the only one with secrets.

A high ranking SS officer and his family move down the hall and Sigrid finds herself pulled into their orbit.  A young woman doing her duty-year is out of excuses before Sigrid can even ask her any questions.  And then there’s the blind man selling pencils on the corner, whose eyes Sigrid can feel following her from behind the darkness of his goggles.

Soon Sigrid is embroiled in a world she knew nothing about, and as her eyes open to the reality around her, the carefully constructed fortress of solitude she has built over the years begins to collapse. She must choose to act on what is right and what is wrong, and what falls somewhere in the shadows between the two.
In this page-turning novel, David Gillham explores what happens to ordinary people thrust into extraordinary times, and how the choices they make can be the difference between life and death.                    ---goodreads.com

September Book - The Last Policeman

This title was one of our finalists for this fall’s Hopkinton READS! book.  It didn’t win the top spot,  but we have decided to read it in our afternoon group for September.  This "pre-apocalyptic police procedural" follows a Concord, NH police detective as he investigates a suicide he believes was really a murder. His efforts are complicated by the social, political and economic effects of preparations for, and anticipation of, an asteroid impact six months in the future!  The book asks the question why people do things in spite of their long-term unimportance. He consulted with experts not only in astronomy and police techniques but psychology and economics.

Copies of the book are available to check out at the library. Discussion will be on Wednesday September 17th at 1pm. 

Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original (2013)

What's the point of solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway?
Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. When it first appeared, 2011GV1 was just a speck, somewhere beyond Jupiter's orbit. By mid-October it revealed itself to be seven kilometers in diameter, and on a crash course with the Earth. By sometime next September, 2011GV1 will slam into our planet and kill half the population immediately, and most of the rest in the miserable decades that follow.
Most people have stopped doing whatever it is they did before the chances of impact rose to 100%. Stopped selling real estate; stopped working at hospitals; stopped slinging hash or driving cabs or trading high-yield securities. A lot of folks spend their days on bended knee, praying to Jesus or Allah or whoever they think might save them. Others have gone the other way, roaming the streets, enjoying what pleasures they can before the grand finale. Government services are beginning to slip into disarray, crops are left to rot. Even Hank Palace's police department in Concord, NH is crumbling at the foundation.
But problems don't stop just because the world does.
All of humanity now, every person in the world--we're like a bunch of little kids, in deep, deep trouble, just waiting till our dad gets home. So what do I do while I wait? I work.
The Edgar-award-winning Last Policeman trilogy presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. A suicide, a missing person, a doomsday cult that's pulled Hank's sister away from him: these days, no case is open-and-shut. As the world grinds to a halt around him, Hank Palace must face questions that go way beyond "whodunit": what do we as human beings owe to one another? And what does it mean to be civilized when civilization is collapsing all around you?                       --Quirk Books (publisher)

Ps.  Just read an interesting (and very funny) post by Ethan Gilsdorf on Ben H. Winters' website:
“Git off my beach or I’ll shoot you.” — Ethan Gilsdorf on why you should set your novel in New Hampshire.

August book title

Our August book selection is Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan. We'll meet on August 27th at 1pm by the fireplace.  Pick up your copy of the book at the Reference Desk today!
(Please note this is the 4th Wednesday of the month rather than our usual 3rd Wednesday).

 In her best-selling debut, Commencement, J. Courtney Sullivan explored the complicated and contradictory landscape of female friendship. Now, in her highly anticipated second novel, Sullivan takes us into even richer territory, introducing four unforgettable women who have nothing in common but the fact that, like it or not, they’re family.

For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials “A.H.” At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface.

As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.

By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.                                                                           --   goodreads.com

July title - The Burgess Boys

Our July book is The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge. We'll meet on July 23rd at 1pm by the fireplace.  Pick up your copy of the book at the Reference Desk today!
(Please note this is the 4th Wednesday of the month rather than our usual 3rd Wednesday).

Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives. Bob, a Legal Aid attorney, idolizes Jim and has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan, urgently calls them home.
Susan's teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble and she desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood. Long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationships begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.

With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout’s newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.                                           --from the author's website

June Title - Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

A story of survival and war, love and madness, loyalty and forgiveness, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is an intimate exploration of Fuller’s parents and of the price of being possessed by Africa’s uncompromising, fertile, death-dealing land. Alexandra Fuller is also the author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.

Wednesday June 18th at 1pm. Copies of the book are available to borrow at the library.

May book - The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

Our May title is The Art of Hearing Heartbeats.  This international bestseller is the first novel by German author Jan-Philipp Sendker, originally published in 2002 and released here in the U.S. in 2012 (there is also a sequel to this book called A Well-Tempered Heart that came out in January)  Book discussion will take place by the fireplace on Wednesday May 21st at 1pm.  Pick up a copy of the book at the Library's Reference Desk.

 A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present.  When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.                                     goodreads.com

April Title - Destiny of the Republic

Our April book selection is Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard.  Pick up a copy of the book at the library.  Also available in large print, audio CD, ebook and eaudiobook so there's no excuse not to read this one!  Join us on Wednesday April 16th at 1pm by the fireplace at the library.

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.  goodreads.com

March Title - Cutting for Stone

Pick up a copy of Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese at the library and join us on Wednesday March 19th at 1pm by the fireplace for a discussion of this great read!

An epic novel that spans continents and generations, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, compassion and redemption, exile and home that unfolds across five decades in India, Ethiopia, and America...In Cutting for Stone, renowned physician Abraham Verghese has given us a remarkable reading experience that explores the lives of a memorable cast of characters, many of them doctors; the insight the novel offers into the world of medicine, along with its wealth of precise detail about how doctors work, is unparalleled in American fiction. Verghese is so attuned to the movements of the heart and of the mind, so adept at dramatizing the great themes of human existence, and he has filled this world with such richly drawn, fascinating characters, that Cutting for Stone becomes one of those rare books one wishes would never end, an alternate reality that both rivals and illuminates the real world readers must return to when the book is closed.                                -- Readinggroupguides.com

February Title - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Our February book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Pick up a copy at the library today for our meeting on Wednesday February 19th at 1pm. 

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.--From publisher description.