Find new books and new friends at our book clubs
Current Selection
May 1 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
Upcoming Selections
June 5 - The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
July 3 - What else are you reading?
August 7 - Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
A fictional recreation of the life of Marilyn Monroe recounts the tale of her rise to stardom, as seen from Marilyn's perspective.
September 4 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her.
October 2 - The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Stretching from the Midwest at mid-century to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.
November 6 - The Reivers by William Faulkner
The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey.
December 4 - After This by Alice McDermott
The novel follows a working-class American family who reside on Long Island, New York and their four children, who are enduring their own experiences during the times of the sexual revolution.
Sometimes Truth is Stranger Than Fiction
Join us for a thoughtful discussion on thrilling true crime books.
Second Wednesday of the Month; 7 p.m.
John and Judy Gay Library
Current Selection
May 8 - What are you reading, watching, or listening to?
Come and share what true crime books, movies, documentaries, series, and/or podcasts you have read/listened to.
Upcoming Selections
June 12 - Hell's Half Acre by Susan Jonusas
In 1873 the people of Labette County in Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried on a homestead seven miles south of the town of Cherryvale, in a bloodied cellar and under frost-covered soil, were countless bodies in varying states of decay. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for over two decades, and the land on which the crimes took place became known as 'Hell's Half-Acre.' When it emerged that a family of four known as the Benders had been accused of the slayings, the case was catapulted to infamy. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders--one among thousands who were relocating further west looking for land and opportunity after the Civil War--were capable of operating 'a human slaughter pen' appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree, and what became of them when they fled from the law is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day--not that there aren't some convincing theories.
July 10 - Evidence of Love by John Bloom and Jim Atkinson
Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore had a lot in common: They sang together in the Methodist church choir, their daughters were best friends, and their husbands had good jobs working for technology companies in the north Dallas suburbs known as Silicon Prairie. But beneath the placid surface of their seemingly perfect lives, both women simmered with unspoken frustrations and unanswered desires. On a hot summer day in 1980, the secret passions and jealousies that linked Candy and Betty exploded into murderous rage. What happened next is usually the stuff of fiction. But the bizarre and terrible act of violence that occurred in Betty's utility room that morning was all too real
August 14 - Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the Legacy of Rage by Jeff Guinn
A former investigative reporter provides an account of the disastrous 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews.
September 11 - In Plain Sight by Kathryn Casey
On a cold January morning, the killer executed Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse in broad daylight. Eight shots were fired a block from the Kaufman County Courthouse. Two months later, a massacre. The day before Easter, the couple slept. Bunnies, eggs, and a flower centerpiece gracing the table. Death rang their doorbell and filled the air with the rat-a-tat-tat of an assault weapon discharging round after round into their bodies.
October 9 - Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin
The definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the enduring legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection
November 13 - What the Dead Know by Barbara Butcher
Reflecting on twenty years of investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, an NYC death investigator, the second woman ever hired for this role, shares how, in dealing with death every day, she learned surprising lessons about life--and how some of those lessons saved her from becoming a statistic herself.
December 11 - What are you reading, watching, or listening to?
A Book Club for Those Who Love Classics
Enjoy discussion with fellow book lovers as we read a timeless book each month.
Third Sunday of the Month; 2 p.m.
John and Judy Gay Library
Current Selection
May 19 - Silas Marner by George Eliot
Set in the early years of the 19th century, this is a novel about the life of Silas Marner, a weaver, who is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in Northern England.
Upcoming Selections
June 16 - Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage.
July 21 - Lord of the Flies by William Golding
In this novel, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization, they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued, and these schoolboys marooned on this tropical island revert to primitive savagery.
August 18 - The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn
Set in seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity, the novel follows outcasts: Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, whose affair leaves one emblazoned with her sin and the other distraught with hidden guilt; their daughter Pearl, born into ostracism; and Roger Chillingworth, driven to vengeance by hatred.
September 15 - My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier
Philip Ashley's older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose's beautiful English estate, is crushed that the man he loved died far from home. He is also suspicious. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman. But the final, brief letters Ambrose wrote hint that his love had turned to paranoia and fear.
October 20 - Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The ne'er-do-well sire of a starving brood suddenly discovers a family connection to the aristocracy, and his selfish scheme to capitalize on their wealth sets a fateful plot in motion. Jack Durbeyfield dispatches his gentle daughter Tess to the home of their noble kin, anticipating a lucrative match between the lovely girl and a titled cousin. Innocent Tess finds the path of the D'Urberville estate paved with ruin in this gripping tale of the inevitability of fate and the tragic nature of existence.
November 17 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
December 15 - No Meeting