COOK YOUR WAY THROUGH…
Cookbook Discussion Group on Zoom
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SPRING 2024 Session:
REGISTER HERE!
***Check out a copy of the title at the info desk starting April 1st!***
3-PART SERIES:1st Tuesday of the month at 7pm on Zoom:
Cookies: The New Classics by Jesse Szewczyk
TUESDAY, MAY 7TH 2024
@ 7pm on Zoom– Chocolaty, Boozy, Fruity, Nutty
TUESDAY, JUNE 4TH 2024
@ 7pm on Zoom– Tart, Spiced, Smoky, Savory
SATURDAY, JUNE 29TH 2024- in-person event!
COOKIE PARTY at the library @ 3pm– Come hungry and bring a batch of your favorite cookies and stop by the library to meet fellow book club members!
This discussion takes place virtually on Zoom. Meeting Log-in information will be emailed to registered participants on or before the day of the program and posted to our bookclubs.com page.
Join our group on bookclubs.com to access meeting information, photo albums, discussion boards, polls, and much more (not required)! Visit https://bookclubs.com/clubs/5968796/join/ec9466/ to join!
Pick a recipe from these chapters of the cookbook and try it out before the program. Then come discuss what you liked, what you changed, what you would do differently next time!
We would love to see pictures of your culinary creations! Email all photos to [email protected] prior to each meeting to share your dishes with the group and to add to our group photo album on bookclubs.com!
TRUE CRIME TALES
*** REGISTER HERE***
Do you love true crime? Join us to read and discuss the latest true crime (and true crime adjacent) titles on Zoom! Join our group on Bookclubs.com to access meeting information, discussion boards, polls, and much more! Visit https://bookclubs.com/true-crime-tales/join/ to join (not required)!
Tuesday, May 21
@ 7pm on Zoom
Among the Bros by Max Marshall
A brilliant young investigative journalist traces a murder and a multi-million-dollar drug ring, leading to an unprecedented look at elite American fraternity life. When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. Instead, he found a homicide, several student deaths, and millions of dollars circulating around the Deep South. He also opened up an elite world hidden to outsiders. Behind the pop culture cliches of “Greek life” lies one of the major breeding grounds of American 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but four presidents since 1825 have been fraternity members. With unprecedented immersion, this book takes readers inside that bubble. Under the live oaks and Spanish moss of Travel + Leisure ’s “Most Beautiful Campus in America,” Marshall traces several “C of C” boys’ journeys from fraternity pledges to interstate drug traffickers. The result is a true-life story of hubris, status, money, drugs, and murder—one that lifts a curtain on an ecstatic and disturbing way of life. With expert pacing and a cool eye, he follows a never-ending party that continues after funerals and mass arrests. An addictive and haunting portrait of tomorrow’s American establishment, Among the Bros is nonfiction storytelling at its finest.
– goodreads.com
Tuesday, July 16
@ 7pm on Zoom
Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson (*Fiction Title*)
A chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.
Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne’s Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox’s Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald’s The Drowner, and Donna Tartt’s A Secret History.
But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. The killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.
To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.
– goodreads.com
Tuesday, September 24
@ 7pm on Zoom
If you Tell by Gregg Olsen
A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.
For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders. – goodreads.com
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ROMANCE BOOK CLUB
Join us in reading the latest and greatest romance fiction titles!
This book club takes place in person at the library.
This event is free & open to all adults.
REGISTER HERE!
April 10 @ 11am
Things We Never Got Over
by Lucy Score
Bearded, bad-boy barber Knox prefers to live his life the way he takes his coffee: Alone. Unless you count his basset hound, Waylon.
Knox doesn’t tolerate drama, even when it comes in the form of a stranded runaway bride.
Naomi wasn’t just running away from her wedding. She was riding to the rescue of her estranged twin to Knockemout, Virginia, a rough-around-the-edges town where disputes are settled the old-fashioned way…with fists and beer. Usually in that order.
– from goodreads.com
June 29 @ 11am
Yours Truly
by Abby Jimenez
A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.
Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass” scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.
And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,” and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she can’t refuse.
– from goodreads.com
UMFPL BOOK DISCUSSION
UMFPL’s Book Discussion Group is in person & on Zoom!
Join us however works best for you!
This event is free & open to all adults.
Click below to receive an email with discussion points and Zoom details each month.
Click here to add your email! (No need to sign-up each month, we’ll keep you on our list all year. Register each January to continue to receive Book Discussion information.)
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April 24, 2024 @ 7pm
The Last Garden in England
by Julia Kelly
2021
Present day: Emma Lovett, who has dedicated her career to breathing new life into long-neglected gardens, has just been given the opportunity of a lifetime: to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero Venetia Smith. But as Emma dives deeper into the gardens’ past, she begins to uncover secrets that have long lain hidden.
1907: A talented artist with a growing reputation for her ambitious work, Venetia Smith has carved out a niche for herself as a garden designer to industrialists, solicitors, and bankers looking to show off their wealth with sumptuous country houses. When she is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph, but the gardens—and the people she meets—promise to change her life forever.
1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton, on the other hand, is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds, the mistress of the grand house, is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life now that her home has been requisitioned and transformed into a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers. But when war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.
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May 29, 2024 @ 7pm
Fellowship Point
by Alice Elliot Dark
2022
Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy — to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels. Agnes’ more consuming quest is to protect a piece of majestic Maine coast known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders — including her best friend, Polly— to dissolve a generations-old partnership. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons. But what does Polly want?
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June 26, 2024 @ 7pm
The House of Eve
by Sadeqa Johnson
2023
In 1950s Philadelphia, 15-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to become the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back into the poverty and desperation that have been passed on to her like a birthright.
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July 31, 2024 @ 7pm
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
by J. Ryan Stradal
2015
A young girl navigates a tumultuous childhood to become one of the top chefs in the country in this delicious debut. Eva Thorvald is just a baby when her mother leaves and her father dies. Despite never really knowing her chef father and sommelier mother, Eva finds out that cooking is in her blood.
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August 
28, 2024 @ 7pm
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
2022
Two friends — often in love, but never lovers — come together as creative partners in the world of video game design. Success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. Spanning 30 years, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel. It examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect — to be loved and to love.
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September 25, 2024 @ 7pm
The Great Mrs. Elias
by Barbara Chase-Riboud
2022
A murder and a case of mistaken identity bring police to Hannah Elias’ glitzy, five-story, 20-room mansion on Central Park West. That visit sets off an odyssey that moves back and forth in time to reveal the dangerous secrets of a mysterious woman, the fortune she amassed and her precipitous fall.
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October 30, 2024 @ 7pm
The Sentence
by Louise Erdrich
2021
A small, independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted for a year by the store’s most annoying customer. When Flora dies on All Souls Day, she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention. Now, Tookie must solve the mystery of this haunting while also trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
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November 20, 2024 @ 7pm
No Two Persons
by Erica Bauermeister
2023
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers. Each reader discovers something different that alters their perspective and presents new pathways forward. Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways — and how we are more closely connected to one another than we might think.
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December 18, 2024 @ 7pm
When All Is Said
Anne Griffin
2019
“When All Is Said” chronicles the life of Maurice Hannigan from a bar stool in a grand hotel, as the 84-year-old raises a toast to the five most significant people in his life. Even as he is talking to the reader, Hannigan is really addressing his son, Kevin, who is the absent witness of the entire tale.