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Wednesday Evening Virtual Book Discussion

Adults

3/19 None of This Is True 4/16 North Woods 5/21 Slaughterhouse Five 6/18 The Stolen Queen 7/16 The Ministry of Time 8/20 The Antidote

Wednesday, March 19th, 7:30PM: None of This Is True, by Lisa Jewell.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix's children's school. Josie has been listening to Alix's podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie's life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can't quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix's life--and into her home. But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family's lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

Wednesday, April 16th, 7:30PM: North Woods by Daniel Mason

When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave--only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we're gone?

Wednesday, May 21st, 7:30PM: Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time."

Wednesday, June 18th, 7:30PM: The Stolen Queen, by Fiona Davis

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archeological dig at Egypt's Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same. New York, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who's in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the 'Party of the Year.' Though Annie soon realizes she'll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana's capricious demands and exacting standards. Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met's celebrated Egyptian Art Collection, wants little to do with the upcoming Gala. She's consumed with her research on Hathorkare - a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant. That is, until the night of the Gala. When one of the Egyptian Art Collection's most valuable artifacts goes missing...and there are signs Hathorkare's legendary curse might be reawakening. As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she'd never return: Egypt. But if they're to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past - which may mean leading them both directly into danger.

Wednesday, July 16th, 7:30PM: The Ministry of Time, by Kalaine Bradley

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible--for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a "bridge": living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machines," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry's project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how--and whether she believes--what she does next can change the future.

Wednesday, August 20th, 7:30PM: The Antidote, by Karen Russell

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing--not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples' memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch's apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town's secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation's forgetting--enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been--and what still could be. 

Virtual Meeting Information: A meeting link will be emailed to registered participants approximately one hour prior to the start of the meeting.  Staff will be available for help with connecting to Zoom and technical issued beginning 15 minutes prior to the program.  You will need a device with audio and/or video and an internet connection to join.

If you have any questions, please call the Chagrin Falls Branch at (440)247-3556.