Book Clubs

Book Club meets on the first Monday of each month at 1:30AM in the library! All are welcome, even if you haven't read the book.

June 2025 Read for Discussion on July 7th

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman - Fiction - 242 pages

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Mrs Emily Pollifax is a 60-ish widow wanting more from life than teas and garden club meetings. In search of adventure, she decides to offer her services to the CIA - who, after all, would spot a suburban grandmother as a cold war secret agent? - and adventure she finds.

Her first assignment, in Mexico City, doesn't sound dangerous - until something goes wrong. She suddenly finds herself abducted across the world, embroiled in quite a hot Cold War... and her abductors find themselves entangled with one unbelievably feisty lady.

Armed with only an open mind and a little karate, Mrs Pollifax is the most lovable and unlikely of international spies.

 

July 2025 Read for Discussion on August 4th

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts - Biography - 336 pages

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In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.

Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956, the three travelers pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America’s big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities—from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers—a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television’s influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.

 

August 2025 Read for Discussion on September 1st

One Second After by William R. Forstchen (forward by Newt Gingrich) - Post Apocalyptic Fiction - 382 pages

One Second After by William R. Forstchen

New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.

Months before publication,
One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future...and our end.

 

 

September 2025 Read for Discussion on October 6th

Just A Regular Boy by Catherine Ryan Hyde - Coming of Age Fiction - 336 pages

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Out there is chaos, the collapse of society, and so much to be afraid of. All that matters is freedom.

That’s what Remy Blake has been taught by his survivalist father. Raised off the grid in the middle of nowhere, his own survival skills not yet honed, Remy is days shy of his eighth birthday when his father unexpectedly dies. As seasons pass, supplies run out, and fending for himself grows more desperate, Remy sets out on foot, unprepared for the great unknown of civilization.

He is found―near feral, silent, and terrified―in the small rural town of Blaire. To Anne, a nurturing mother of two adopted teenagers who’s still dealing with her own childhood rejections, Remy is not a lost cause. Just a challenging one. As Remy cautiously adapts to his new foster home, his family wants nothing more than to reassure him that he can trust the world. But to do so, they must first reexamine how much they trust the world themselves, and how much they should. As Remy’s journey into the real world begins, figuring out how to navigate it becomes a path they will have to learn to walk together.