cary area public library district

adult book discussion group

Groups meet Wednesdays @ 10:30 am & Thursdays @ 7:30 pm.

To Join, or for more information, please call the Adult Services Desk.
Books available @ the Adult Services Desk.

Fall Books

 

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger
Wednesday, November 19 @ 10:30 am
Thursday, November 20 @ 7:30 pm

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Bessie Goldberg was strangled to death in her home in Belmont, a Boston suburb, in March of 1963—right in the middle of the Boston Strangler's killing spree. Her death has not usually been associated with the other Strangler killings because Roy Smith, a black man who was working in Goldberg's house that day, was convicted of her murder on strong circumstantial evidence. But another man was working in Belmont that day: Albert DeSalvo, who later confessed to being the Boston Strangler, was doing construction work in the home of Junger's parents (the author himself was a baby). Could DeSalvo have slipped away and killed Bessie Goldberg? Junger's taut narrative makes dizzying hairpin turns as he considers all the evidence for, and against, Smith or DeSalvo being Goldberg's killer; he also reviews the more familiar case for and against DeSalvo being the Strangler—for there are serious questions about his confession. As Junger showed in his bestselling The Perfect Storm, he's a hell of a storyteller, and here he intertwines underlying moral quandaries—was racism a factor in Smith's conviction? How to judge when the truth in this case is probably unknowable?

No book discussion in December.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Wednesday, January 28 @ 10:30 am.
Thursday, January 29 @ 7:30 pm

From Publishers Weekly
Reading Geraldine Brooks's remarkable debut novel, Year of Wonders, or more recently March, which won the Pulitzer Prize, it would be easy to forget that she grew up in Australia and worked as a journalist. Now in her dazzling new novel, People of the Book, Brooks allows both her native land and current events to play a larger role while still continuing to mine the historical material that speaks so ardently to her imagination. Late one night in the city of Sydney, Hanna Heath, a rare book conservator, gets a phone call. The Sarajevo Haggadah, which disappeared during the siege in 1992, has been found, and Hanna has been invited by the U.N. to report on its condition.

Harriett and Isabella by Patricia O'Brien
Wednesday, February 25 @ 10:30 am
Thursday, February 26 @ 7:30 pm

From Publishers Weekly
Smooth flashbacks carry this inventive romp through a 19th-century New England scandal, which opens at the deathbed of Henry Ward Beecher, the most brilliant preacher in America, in March of 1887. Around him are his many siblings, notably his famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The deathwatch mirrors the moment when, 15 years earlier and further on in the book, the clan assembles to discuss a front-page story in Victoria Woodhull's newspaper that, in veiled language, accuses Henry of having an affair with parishioner Elizabeth Tilton, in which the two conduct orgies in front of her children. The

New @ the library

Just finished reading a great book? Want to find another? Next Reads is a service that emails you a list of new and upcoming books in the genres of your choice. Sign up and choose the Newletter(s) you'd like to receive with suggestions, from your selected genre(s), of things to read both old and new. There will be a link directly to our online catalog so you can place a hold on something you'd like to borrow. Check you email for confirmation and click on the link to finish the sign up process.
Click here to begin.

We will resume in the fall! Dates and books TBA

Photo Policy

The library reserves the right to photograph and videotape program participants. These photos and videos may be used in library publications and publicity, including local access cale. Notify library staff if you do not wish to be photographed.