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Book Discussions at Somerset County Libraries |
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Popular Fiction Book Discussion
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Tuesday, December 20 at 7:00pm Meeting Virtually Iona Iverson's rules for commuting by Clare PooleyAn eclectic group of train commuters traveling from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station discover that talking to strangers can help them learn more about themselves in the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of The Authenticity Project. |
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Tuesday, January 17 at 7:00pm Meeting Virtually The change : a novel by Kirsten MillerWhen midlife changes give three different women special powers, they come together to solve the murder of a teenage girl whom the police have written off as a drug- addicted sex worker an investigation leading to a world of stupendous wealth where rules don't apply. |
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Tuesday, February at 7:00pm Meeting Virtually and In Person! 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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Tuesday, December 13 at 6:30pm Meeting Room B Childhood's end by Arthur C. ClarkeThe author questions the survival of mankind in this science fiction tale about Overlords from outer space who dominate the world |
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Tuesday, January 10 at 6:30pm Meeting Room B & Virtually -- Hybrid Elsewhere by Alexis SchaitkinFollows a group of young women who are coming of age and wondering who among them will be lost in a close-knit, overly-protective mountain community where their unforgiving adherence to tradition dictates that some mothers vanish from their families. |
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Tuesday, February 14 at 6:30pm Meeting Room B & Virtually -- Hybrid Upgrade by Blake CrouchWhen his DNA is rewritten with a genetic-engineering breakthrough beyond anything the world has seen, Logan Ramsey finds his transformation threatening everything around him as he is forced to take sides in a fight to save humankind. |
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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.) January's Mystery Type: Family Secrets Wednesday, January 11 Bridgewater Branch, Meeting Room A 10:15am - 11:30am |
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"Suspense with Susie" Discussion Group
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Tuesday, November 22 at 7:00pm Conference Room, Hillsborough Library Perfect little children by Sophie HannahSpying on a former best friend she has not seen in years, Beth is alarmed when she discovers that the woman's children do not appear to have aged. |
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Tuesday, January 24 at 7:00pm Conference Room, Hillsborough Library We were never here : a novel by Andrea BartzAfter a backpacking trip in Chile with her best friend Kristen goes horribly wrong, Emily is forced to confront their violent past and wonders if she can outrun the secrets they share or if they will destroy her relationship, freedom and even her life. |
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Historical Fiction Fridays Discussion Group
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Friday, November 18 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Library The children's blizzard : a novel by Melanie BenjaminThe best-selling author of The Aviator’s Wife draws on oral histories of the Great Plains blizzard of 1888 to depict the experiences of two teachers, a servant and a reporter who risk everything to protect the children of immigrant homesteaders. |
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Friday, December 16 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Library The personal librarian by Marie BenedictHired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library, Belle de Costa Greene becomes one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she keeps. |
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Friday, January 20 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Library Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie FordWhen artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at Seattle's Panama Hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a personal quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment and of Keiko, a Japanese girl whose love transcended cultures and generations. |
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Friday, February 17 at 10:30am Conference Room, Hillsborough Library The lost apothecary by Sarah PennerSecretly dispensing poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them, a London apothecary triggers unintended consequences that shape three lives across multiple centuries. |
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Nighttime Book Discussion Group
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Monday, December 12 at 6:00pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch The Dutch house : a novel by Ann PatchettA tale set over the course of five decades traces the consequences of Cyril Conroy's purchase of a lavish Philadelphia estate for him, his wife, and his children, Danny and Maeve, who struggle to escape from poverty following his death |
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Monday, January 9 at 6:00pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch Anxious people : a novel by Fredrik BackmanTaken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers--including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages, and a plucky octogenarian--discover their unexpected common traits |
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Monday, February 13 at 6:00pm Adult Media Area, Manville Branch The madness of crowds by Louise PennyWhen a visiting professor spreads lies so that fact and fiction are so confused it's nearly impossible to tell them apart, leading to murder, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache must investigate this case as well as this extraordinary popular delusion |
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Daytime Book Discussion Group
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Wednesday, December 21 at Noon Children's Area, Manville Branch The last thing he told me : a novel by Laura DaveAfter her husband disappears, Hannah Hall quickly realizes he isn’t who he said he was and that his 16-year-old daughter, who wants nothing to do with her, may hold the key to figuring out his true identity. |
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Wednesday, January 18 at Noon Children's Area, Manville 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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Wednesday, February 15 at Noon Children's Area, Manville Branch Gingerbread by Helen OyeyemiThe award-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird draws on the classic fairy-tale element of gingerbread in the story of a British family whose surprising legacy and secret past are tied to a favorite recipe |
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Thursday, December 1 at 6:30pm Quiet Room, Manville Branch The night she disappeared : a novel by Lisa JewellOne year after a young woman and her boyfriend disappear on a massive country estate, a writer stumbles upon a mysterious note that could be the key to finding out what happened to the missing young couple |
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Thursday, January 5 at 6:30pm Quiet Room, Manville Branch All I want : a novel by Darcey Bell"A young couple with a baby on the way moves to an old Victorian house in rural, upstate New York. Strange happenings contribute to their disintegrating marriage-and to their terrifying descent into the darker side of human nature" |
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Thursday, February 2 at 6:30pm Quiet Room, Manville Branch Believe me : a novel by JP DelaneyAn out-of-work British actress plays both sides of a murder investigation while working as a decoy for unfaithful husbands for a New York City divorce firm, in a twisted psychological thriller. |
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Tuesday Morning Page Turners
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Tuesday, January 10 at 10:00am Montgomery branch The henna artist by Alka JoshiA talented henna artist for wealthy confidantes finds her efforts to control her own destiny in 1950s Jaipur threatened by the abusive husband she fled as a teenage girl. |
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Tuesday, February 14 at 10:00am Montgomery branch Her hidden genius : a novel by Marie BenedictTells the story of Rosalind Franklin, who, despite an environment of harassment and bullying in the late 1940s and 1950s, worked in a stringent, scientific manner and became one of the first scientists to map the structure of DNA. |
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Thursday, December 1 at 6:30pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch Our country friends : a novel by Gary ShteyngartWhen a group of old friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic, they end up spending six months in isolation during which old betrayals emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. |
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Thursday, January 26 at 6:30pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch Ordinary grace by William Kent KruegerLooking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community |
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Thursday, February 23 at 6:30pm Woodland Room, North Plainfield Branch The vanishing half by Brit BennettSeparated by their embrace of different racial identities, two mixed-race identical twins reevaluate their choices as one raises a black daughter in their southern hometown while the other passes for white with a husband who is unaware of her heritage. |
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Not On the Same Page: Books and Board Games
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Read ANY book you want that was published within a certain decade and come ready to tell us a bit about it. Afterwards, we will play a variety of board games. Your book can be at any reading level and in any language, however, discussion and game playing will be in English. December and January: Read ANYTHING You Want! Saturday, December 17 Saturday, January 21 Meeting Room 3:00pm - 5:00pm |
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Wednesday, December 7 at 2:00pm Meeting Room The Grammarians by Cathleen Schineinseparable due to their obsession with words, redheaded twins Laurel and Daphne Wolfe find themselves at war over custody of their most prized family heirloom Merriam Websters New International Dictionary, Second Edition. |
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Wednesday, January 11 at 2:00pm or Wednesday, January 25 at 6:30pm Meeting Room The book of two ways by Jodi PicoultExperiencing memories of a man other than her husband while surviving a plane crash, an end-of-life doula on the brink of a fateful decision envisions two disparate paths that find her staying with her family or reconnecting with the past |
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Wednesday, February 22 at 2:00pm Meeting Room I know why the caged bird sings by Maya AngelouThe critically acclaimed author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums. |
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Thursday, December 8 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch Of Monkey Bridges and Bánh M Sandwiches by Oanh Ngo UsadiA quietly affecting and laugh-out-loud funny immigrant memoir tells the story of a girl and her family as they flee Việt Nam to America in the 1980s. |
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Thursday, January 12 at 6:30pm Bicentennial Room, Watchung Branch Whiteout by Ken FollettA missing canister containing a deadly virus forms the center of a deadly storm that traps Stanley Oxenford, director of a medical research firm; his greedy grown children; Toni Gallo, the firm's security director; an ambitious local TV reporter; and a violent trio of thugs in a remote house during a Christmas Eve blizzard. |
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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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