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Book Discussions at Somerset County Libraries
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Popular Fiction Book Discussion
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RESCHEDULED: Tuesday, September 5 at 6:30pm Frances Greany Learning Garden, Bridgewater Branch The Golden Spoon by Jessa MaxwellDuring her annual televised baking competition on her Vermont estate, celebrated baker Betsy Martin, hailed as“America's Grandmother,” finds murder in the mix when a body is discovered, and everyone is a suspect.
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Tuesday, September 19 at 6:30pm Frances Greany Learning Garden, Bridgewater Branch Hang the moon : a novel by Jeannette WallsAfter encouraging her younger step-brother to participate in daredevil activities leads to an accident, Sallie Kincaid is cast out of her family, in the new novel from the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Glass Castle.
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Tuesday, October 17 at 6:30pm Frances Greany Learning Garden, Bridgewater Branch How to sell a haunted house by Grady HendrixForced to return to the small Southern town where she grew up to sell her late parents' house, Louise discovers that her and her brother's old grudges pale in comparison to the terror that still lurks within its walls. 150,000 first printing.
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Tuesday, November 21 at 6:30pm Frances Greany Learning Garden, Bridgewater Branch The house is on fire by Rachel BeanlandTold from the perspectives of four people whose actions changed the course of history, this masterful work of historical fiction takes readers back to 1811 Richmond, Virginia, where, on the night after Christmas, the city's only theater burned to the ground, tearing apart a community.
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Tuesday, September 12 at 6:30pm Meeting Room C & Virtually -- Hybrid Even though I knew the end by C. L. PolkOffered one last job before serving an eternity in hell, a magical detective in Chicago is given three days to track down the White City Vampire and the chance to live out the rest of her life.
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Tuesday, October 10 at 6:30pm Meeting Room C & Virtually -- Hybrid We have always lived in the castle by Shirley JacksonThe inhabitants of the Rochester house wield a strange power over their neighbors
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Mysteries in the Mornings Love a good mystery? Always looking for a new book because you've read EVERYTHING by your favorite author? Or do you just really enjoy reading mysteries? come and join our Mysterious Morning discussions!
Every other month we'll discuss a different sub-genre of mysteries. Pick a book from an author you haven't read already and tell the group all about it. There's only one big rule -- don't tell us how it ends!
A list of suggested authors and titles are available at the Bridgewater Library and books will be on display about a month prior to the discussion. (If you're a voracious mystery reader you can read more than one.) September's Mystery Type: Murder in the Garden Wednesday, September 13 Bridgewater Branch, Meeting Room A 10:15am - 11:30am November's Mystery Type: Murder Across Time Wednesday, November 8 Bridgewater Branch, Meeting Room A 10:15am - 11:30am
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"Suspense with Susie" Discussion Group
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Tuesday, September 26 at 7:00pm Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch My dark Vanessa : a novel by Kate Elizabeth RussellAsked to help defend an older high-school English teacher with whom she had an affair at age 15, Vanessa struggles to choose between her romantic teen illusions and harrowing adult perceptions. 250,000 first printing. A first novel.
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Tuesday, November 28 at 7:00pm Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch The favor by Nora MurphyEven though they've never met, Leah and McKenna lead parallel lives, trapped in marriages where their“perfect” husbands are not what they seem, and Leah, deciding to keep an eye out for McKenna, intervenes one night, irrevocably changing both of their lives. Original. 100,000 first printing.
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Historical Fiction Fridays Discussion Group
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Friday, September 15 at 10:30am
Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch |
Switchboard soldiers : a novel by Jennifer ChiaveriniIn 1917, Grace Banker from N.J., Marie Moissec from France, and Valerie DeSmedt, originally from Belgium, are recruited as a telephone operators, aka switchboard solders, to help American forces communicate between troops as bombs fell around them.
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Friday, October 20 at 10:30am
Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch |
Hour of the witch : a novel by Chris BohjalianA resourceful Puritan woman in 1662 Boston plots to escape a violent marriage only to find herself targeted by her disapproving and superstitious neighbors for failing to save a child’s life. By the best-selling author of The Red Lotus. (suspense). Simultaneous.
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Friday, November 17 at 10:30am
Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch |
The magnificent lives of Marjorie Post : a novel by Allison PatakiThe epic reimagining of the extraordinary life of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the American heiress who lived and loved on a grand scale, reveals the heartbreak she endured as a wife four times over in vastly different, dramatic marriages.
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Nighttime Book Discussion Group
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Monday, September 11 at 6:00pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch The overstory : a novel by Richard PowersThe National Book Award-winning author of The Overstory presents an impassioned novel of activism and natural-world power that is comprised of interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.
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Monday, October 9 at 6:00pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch Horse by Geraldine BrooksA scientist from Australia and a Nigerian-American art historian become connected by their shared interest in a 19th century race horse, one studying its remains, the other uncovering the history of the Black horsemen who were critical to its success.
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Monday, November 13 at 6:00pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch This tender land by William Kent KruegerFleeing the Depression-era school for Native American children who have been taken from their parents, four orphans share a life-changing journey marked by struggling farmers, faith healers, and lost souls
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Thursday Thrillers Discussion Group
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Thursday, September 7 at 6:30pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch |
The night shift by Alex FinlayWhen four teenage girls are attacked at an ice cream shop in Linden, New Jersey, and only one makes it out alive, which is similar to a case in 1999, an FBI agent must delve into the secrets of both crimes—stirring up memories of teen love and lies—to uncover the truth. 75,000 first printing.
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Thursday, October 5 at 6:30pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch The golden couple by Greer HendricksA maverick therapist who lost her license due to controversial methods, Avery agrees to help golden couple Marissa and Mathew Bishop overcome Marisa's cheating, setting all three of them on a collision course because the biggest—and most dangerous—secrets have not yet been revealed. 350,000 first printing.
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Thursday, November 2 at 6:30pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch Wrong place wrong time : a novel by Gillian McAllisterAfter witnessing her teenage son kill a man, a mother falls asleep in despair, wakes up and it is yesterday, and wakes up again and it is the day before yesterday, getting chance after chance to stop the murder and save her son
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Daytime Book Discussion Group
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Wednesday, September 20 at Noon Children's Area, Manville Branch Afterlife by Julia Alvarez"A literature professor tries to rediscover who she is after the sudden death of her husband, even as a series of family and political jolts force her to ask what we owe those in crisis in our families, biological or otherwise"
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Wednesday, October 18 at Noon Children's Area, Manville Branch Leave the world behind : a novel by Rumaan AlamSheltering in a New York beach house with a couple that has taken refuge during a massive blackout, a family struggles for information about the power failure while wondering if the cut-off property is actually safe. 100,000 first printing.
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Wednesday, November 15 at Noon Children's Area, Manville Branch The reading list : a novel by Sara Nisha AdamsWorking at the local library, Aleisha reads every book on a secret list she found, which transports her from the painful realities she’s facing at home, and decides to pass the list on to a lonely widower desperate to connect with his bookworm granddaughter. 75,000 first printing.
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Tuesday Morning Page Turners
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Tuesday, September 12 at 10:00am Montgomery Branch Evicted : poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew DesmondA Harvard sociologist examines the challenge of eviction as a formidable cause of poverty in America, revealing how millions of people are wrongly forced from their homes and reduced to cycles of extreme disadvantage that are reinforced by dysfunctional legal systems
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Tuesday, October 10 at 10:00am Montgomery Branch How the García girls lost their accents by Julia AlvarezForced to flee their native Caribbean island after an attempted coup, the Garcias--Carlos, Laura, and their four daughters--must learn a new way of life in the Bronx, while trying to cling to the old ways that they loved
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Thursday, September 28 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch Lessons in chemistry by Bonnie GarmusIn the early 1960s, chemist and single mother Elizabeth Zott, the reluctant star of Americas most beloved cooking show due to her revolutionary skills in the kitchen, uses this opportunity to dare women to change the status quo.
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Thursday, October 26 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch The Golden Spoon by Jessa MaxwellDuring her annual televised baking competition on her Vermont estate, celebrated baker Betsy Martin, hailed as “America's Grandmother,” finds murder in the mix when a body is discovered, and everyone is a suspect.
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Thursday, November 30 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle ZevinEmbarking on a legendary collaboration launching them to stardom, two friends, intimates since childhood, have the world at their feet until they discover that their success, brilliance and money won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of the heart.
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Monday, September 25 at 3:00pm Conference Room, Peapack Gladstone Branch The day the world came to town : 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFedeShares the experiences of the citizens of Gander, Newfoundland, who were hosts to the more than six thousand passengers of thirty-eight U.S.-bound jetliners forced to land there in the wake of the September 11th attacks
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Monday, October 30 at 3:00pm Conference Room, Peapack Gladstone Branch The midnight library by Matt HaigNora Seed finds herself faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, or realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist, she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place
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Monday, November 20 at 3:00pm Conference Room, Peapack Gladstone Branch Hang the moon : a novel by Jeannette WallsAfter encouraging her younger step-brother to participate in daredevil activities leads to an accident, Sallie Kincaid is cast out of her family, in the new novel from the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Glass Castle.
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Wednesday, September 13 at 6:30pm Meeting Room The immortalists by Chloe BenjaminAfter getting readings from a psychic reputed to be able to tell customers when they will die, four siblings from New York's Lower East Side hide what they learn from each other before living five decades of experiences shaped by their determination to control fate. Reprint. A New York Times best-seller. AB. NYT. PW.
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Wednesday, October 11 at 6:30pm Meeting Room |
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Wednesday, November 8 at 2pm Meeting Room The Cloisters : a novel by Katy HaysAssigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden, curatorial associate Ann Stilwell becomes obsessed with the history of fortune-telling after discovering a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future, blurring the line between the modern and the arcane.
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Thursday, September 14 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch Devotion : a memoir by Dani ShapiroIn a deeply personal memoir, the novelist and best-selling author of Slow Motion reveals how--in her mid-40s, after being scarred by the early loss of her father and her mother's death from terminal illness--she grappled with what she believed when it came to religion and spirituality.
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Thursday, October 12 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch Beheld : a novel by TaraShea NesbitThe best-selling author of The Wives of Los Alamos retraces the story of the Pilgrims from the perspectives of the rebel Billington family, whose disputes with Puritan neighbors under the influence of a newcomer escalate into Plymouth’s first murder.
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Thursday, November 9 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch Magellan : over the edge of the world by Laurence BergreenA middle-grade adaptation of the author's best-selling Over the Edge of the World traces Magellan's historic voyage around the globe, describing the tragedies, triumphs and challenges that cost hundreds of lives. By the award-winning author of Columbus: The Four Voyages.
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Somerset County Library System of New Jersey1 Vogt Drive P.O. Box 6700 Bridgewater, New Jersey 08807 (908) 526-4016www.sclsnj.org/ |
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