October: The Phantom of the Opera

Melissa has picked The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux for our book for October. A Kindle copy is on sale now for 99 cents. It is also available on Audible, as an ebook on Hoopla, and an audiobook on Libby. 

This story is about a Parisian opera house that is haunted by a mysterious and alluring phantom. 

September: The Paris Agent

Alecia has picked The Paris Agent by Kelly Rimmer for our book for September. We will meet at Debby's house on Tuesday September 17 at 7:30pm to discuss the book.  Here's some information about the book: 

Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Noah Ainsworth is still preoccupied with those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in France. A head injury sustained on his final operation has caused frustrating gaps in his memory—in particular about the agent who saved his life during that mission gone wrong, whose real name he never knew, nor whether she even survived the war.

Moved by her father’s frustration, Noah’s daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers that resurrects the stories of Chloe and Fleur, the code names for two otherwise ordinary women whose lives intersect in 1943 when they’re called up by the SOE for deployment in France. Taking enormous risks to support the allied troops with very little information or resources, the women have no idea they’re at the mercy of a double agent among them who's causing chaos within the French circuits, whose efforts will affect the outcome of their lives…and the war.

But as Charlotte’s search for answers bears fruit, overlooked clues come to light about the identity of the double agent—with unsettling hints pointing close to home—and more shocking events are unearthed from the dangerous, dramatic last days of the war that lead to Chloe and Fleur’s eventual fates.

Hope to see you there.

August: The Emperor's Soul

Donna has picked The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson for our book for August. 

Here's some information about the book:

When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan comatose, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos.

Shai is given an impossible task: to create―to Forge―a new soul for the emperor in fewer than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai’s only possible ally is the emperor’s most loyal councillor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent.

Time is running out for Shai. Forging, while deducing the motivations of her captors, she needs a perfect plan to escape…

 

July: The Labors of Hercules Beal

Erin has selected The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt for our July book club discussion. Here is some information about the book: 

Herc Beal knows who he's named after—a mythical hero—but he's no superhero. He's the smallest kid in his class. So when his homeroom teacher at his new middle school gives him the assignment of duplicating the mythical Hercules's amazing feats in real life, he's skeptical. After all, there are no Nemean Lions on Cape Cod—and not a single Hydra in sight.

Missing his parents terribly and wishing his older brother wasn't working all the time, Herc figures out how to take his first steps along the road that the great Hercules himself once walked. Soon, new friends, human and animal, are helping him. And though his mythical role model performed his twelve labors by himself, Herc begins to see that he may not have to go it alone.

We will meet at Debby's house at 7:30 pm on July 16 for our discussion. Hope to see you there. 

June: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

 We met last night to discuss The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas. Thanks Tracie for picking the book, leading the discussion, and making the delicious scones and hermit cookies. It was a great discussion. 

Kellyn has picked The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab for our June book. 

Here's some information about the book: 

When Addie La Rue makes a pact with the devil, she trades her soul for immortality. But there’s always a price – the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.

Addie flees her tiny home town in 18th-Century France, beginning a journey that takes her across the world, learning to live a life where no one remembers her and everything she owns is lost and broken. Existing only as a muse for artists throughout history, she learns to fall in love anew every single day.

Her only companion on this journey is her dark devil with hypnotic green eyes, who visits her each year on the anniversary of their deal. Alone in the world, Addie has no choice but to confront him, to understand him, maybe to beat him.

Until one day, in a second hand bookshop in Manhattan, Addie meets someone who remembers her. Suddenly thrust back into a real, normal life, Addie realises she can’t escape her fate forever.

We will meet at 7:30 on Tuesday June 18, at Debby's house to discuss the book. Hope to see you there.

May: The Persian Pickle Club

We met last night to discuss The Butchering Art. Thanks Corinna for leading the discussion and the yummy wraps to eat while we discussed the book. 

Tracie has picked The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas for our May Book. Here's some information about the book.

It is the 1930s, and hard times have hit Harveyville, Kansas, where the crops are burning up, and there's not a job to be found. For Queenie Bean, a young farm wife, a highlight of each week is the gathering of the Persian Pickle Club, a group of local ladies dedicated to improving their minds, exchanging gossip, and putting their quilting skills to good use. When a new member of the club stirs up a dark secret, the women must band together to support and protect one another. In her magical, memorable novel, Sandra Dallas explores the ties that unite women through good times and bad.

We hope to see you on Tuesday May 28 at Debby's home at 7:30 for our book discussion!

Happy Reading!

April Book: The Butchering Art

We had a great discussion on Tuck Everlasting and A Gift From the Sea. Thanks Amy for leading the discussion and also for the yummy pound cake topped with fresh berries. 

Corinna has picked our book for April. She chose The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsay Fitzharris. Here is some information about the book: 

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters―no place for the squeamish―and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than patients’ afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn’t have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the riddle and change the course of history.

Fitzharris dramatically reconstructs Lister’s career path to his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection and could be countered by a sterilizing agent applied to wounds. She introduces us to Lister’s contemporaries―some of them brilliant, some outright criminal―and leads us through the grimy schools and squalid hospitals where they learned their art, the dead houses where they studied, and the cemeteries they ransacked for cadavers.

Eerie and illuminating, The Butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world.

We will meet on April 16th at Debby's house at 7:30 to discuss the book. Hope to see you there.