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Book Discussions at Somerset County Libraries
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Popular Fiction Book Discussion
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Tuesday, June 20 at 7:00pm Frances Greany Learning Garden, Bridgewater Branch True biz : a novel by Sara NovićTaking readers into a residential school for the deaf, this coming-of-age novel follows three people a rebellious transfer student, the schools golden boy and the headmistress as they each deal with personal and political crises and find their lives inextricable from one another and changed forever.
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Tuesday, July 18 at 7:00pm Frances Greany Learning Garden, Bridgewater 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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Tuesday, August 15 at 7:00pm 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, June 13 at 6:30pm Meeting Room C & Virtually -- Hybrid Parable of the sower by Octavia E Butler"In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages."
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Tuesday, July 11 at 6:30pm Meeting Room C & Virtually -- Hybrid Bruiser by Neal ShustermanInexplicable events start to occur when sixteen-year-old twins Tennyson and Brontèe befriend a troubled and misunderstood outcast, aptly nicknamed Bruiser, and his little brother, Cody
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Tuesday, August 8 at 6:30pm Meeting Room C & Virtually -- Hybrid When women were dragons : a novel by Kelly Regan BarnhillAfter the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when thousands of women, including her beloved Aunt Marla, transformed into dragons, left a trail fiery destruction and took to the skies, young Alex Green must face the consequences of this event as she learns to accept people as they really are.
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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.) July's Mystery Type: Magicians and Conjurers Wednesday, July 12 Bridgewater Branch, Meeting Room A 10:15am - 11:30am
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"Suspense with Susie" Discussion Group
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Tuesday, May 23 at 7:00pm Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch The stranger in the mirror : a novel by Liv ConstantineHiding the fact that she has no memory of her past from her fiance,̌ Addison, a survivor of a tragic accident, cannot shake the notion that she may have done something very, very bad.
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Tuesday, July 25 at 7:00pm Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch Things we do in the dark by Jennifer HillierAccused of murdering her celebrity husband, Paris Peralta must stop the only person who knows her dark secret from destroying the new life she's worked so hard to build, along with any chance of a future.
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Historical Fiction Fridays Discussion Group
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Friday, May 19 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch Take my hand by Dolen Perkins-ValdezIn 1973 Montgomery, Alabama, Civil Townsend, a young black nurse working for the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, grapples with her role when she takes two young girls into her heart and the unthinkable happens, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.
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Friday, June 16 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch A gentleman in Moscow : A Novel by Amor TowlesDeemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin, where he endures life in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold. By the best-selling author of Rules of Civility.
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Friday, July 21 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch by Melanie BenjaminA story inspired by the wife of the historical circus performer finds mid-19th-century little person Mercy Levinia Warren Bump coming of age in the antebellum south before being invited to join the P. T. Barnum circus, through which she meets her future husband and pursues limitless international opportunities.
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Friday, August 18 at 10:30am
Conference Room, Hillsborough Branch |
All the light we cannot see : a novel by Anthony DoerrA blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.
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Nighttime Book Discussion Group
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Monday, June 12 at 6:00pm Adult Media 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.
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Daytime Book Discussion Group
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Wednesday, June 21 at Noon Children's Area, Manville Branch The wedding dress sewing circle : a novel by Jennifer RyanAfter losing everything in the London Blitz, renowned fashion designer Cressida Westcott heads to the country where she inspires a local village sewing group to mend wedding dresses for both local brides and brides across the county, helping others celebrate love while searching for it themselves.
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Tuesday Morning Page Turners
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Tuesday, June 13 at 10:00am Montgomery Branch An elderly lady is up to no good by Helene TurstenMaud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and... no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late eighties, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way. Over the course of her adventures--or misadventures--this little bold lady will handle a crisis with a local celebrity who has her eyes on Maud's apartment, foil the engagement of her long-ago lover, and dispose of some pesky neighbors. But when the local authorities are called to investigate a dead body found in Maud's apartment, will Maud finally become a suspect?
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Tuesday, July 11 at 10:00am Montgomery Branch Summer Book Share Contact the Montgomery Branch for more information
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Tuesday, August 11 at 10:00am Montgomery Branch Sharks in the time of saviors by Kawai Strong WashburnWhen a child falls overboard and is returned safely to his mother by a shark, his miraculous rescue is hailed as a sign from ancient Hawaiian gods, complicating his family's troubles amid a collapsing sugarcane industry.
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Thursday, May 25 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield 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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Thursday, June 22 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield 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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Thursday, July 27 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch A flicker in the dark by Stacy WillinghamA Baton Rouge psychologist connects a recent spate of missing teenage girls with a series of similar crimes from 20 years prior, to which her own father had confessed and was subsequently jailed for life. Original. 100,000 first printing.
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Thursday, August 17 at 6:45pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch Just the nicest couple by Mary KubicaWhen her husband Jack vanishes without a trace, Nina Hayes will stop at nothing to uncover the truth, which, unbeknownst to her, is inextricably linked to their close friends, who may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing.
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Monday, June 12 at 3:00pm Conference Room, Peapack Gladstone Branch Go set a watchman by Harper LeeA highly anticipated release of a newly discovered early work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird continues the stories of iconic characters 20 years later during turbulent 1950s America.
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Monday, July 24 at 3:00pm Conference Room, Peapack Gladstone Branch Meet me at the museum by Anne YoungsonA disenchanted farmer's wife and a widowed museum curator begin a correspondence over their mutual fascination with poet Seamus Heaney's "The Tollund Man" and gradually share details from their lives, forging an unexpected bond along the way.
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Monday, August 21 at 3:00pm Conference Room, Peapack Gladstone Branch Remarkably bright creatures : a novel by Shelby Van PeltAfter her husband dies, widow Tova Sullivan starts working at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, where she forms a special bond with a giant Pacific octopus who holds the key solving the mysterious disappearance of her 18-year-old son, Erik, over thirty years ago on the Puget Sound.
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Read ANY fiction or non-fiction book and come tell us about it Saturday, June 17 Saturday, July 15 Saturday, August 19 Meeting Room 10am to 11am
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Wednesday, June 7 at 2:00pm Meeting Room A man called Ove : a novel by Fredrik BackmanA curmudgeon hides beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior a terrible personal loss while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship. A first novel by the Swedish author of Things My Son Needs to Know About Life.
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Wednesday, July 12 at 3:00pm Meeting Room ** Part of a Book/Film/Film discussion -- contact Warren Township branch for more information** Washington Square by Henry JamesIn the Washington Square area of New York City in the late nineteenth century, devastating betrayals by both her father and her lover leave shy and fragile Catherine Sloper permanently scarred.
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Wednesday, August 9 at 2:00pm Meeting Room Last summer at the golden hotel by Elyssa FriedlandPerfect for fans of Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, this funny, nostalgia-filled story follows the Goldman and Weingold families as they, amid drama and scandal, try to save the Golden Hotel – their beloved getaway in the Catskills.
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Thursday, June 8 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch The maid : a novel by Nita ProseWhen she discovers the dead body of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black in his suite, hotel maid Molly Gray finds her orderly life upended as she becomes the prime suspect in the case and is caught in a web of deception that she has no idea how to unravel.
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Thursday, July 13 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch
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Thursday, August 10 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch Dolores Claiborne : a novel by Stephen KingForced by overwhelming evidence to confess her life of crime, Dolores Claiborne, a foul-tempered New Englander, describes how her disintegrating marriage years before caused her heart to turn murderous
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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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