PML Book Group

Every month the library hosts a book discussion where readers gather to talk about what they liked and disliked about our monthly read. The group meets on the first Thursday of every month at 11:00 AM.

AUGUST

HOUSE GONE QUIET

Thursday, August 6 at 11:00 am

A group of women contemplate violence after they’re sent into foreign territory to make husbands of the enemy. A support network of traumatized joggers meets to discuss the bodies they’ve found on their runs. And a town replaces its Confederate monument with a rotating cast of local residents. Slippery but muscular, sly but electric, this stunning debut collection moves from horror to magical realism to satire with total authority. In these stories, characters build and remake their sense of home, be it with one another or within themselves.

SEPTEMBER

THERE WAS NIGHT AND THERE WAS MORNING

Thursday, September 3 at 11:00 am

A searing memoir about growing up in a fiercely loving, abusive rabbinical family in which the author’s father, the charismatic head of a splinter Orthodox religious community, demands unswerving loyalty—and a commitment to guarding terrible secrets.

OCTOBER

SPECTACULAR THINGS

Thursday, October 1 at 11:00 am

Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: The responsible and academically minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young, while Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price.
A sharply observed and tender portrait of sisters, love, and ambition, Spectacular Things is a sweeping story about the impossible choices we’re forced to make in pursuit of our dreams.

NOVEMBER

THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE

Thursday, November 5 at 11:00 am

A “wildly entertaining” (NPR), “gripping” (The Washington Post) work of historical fiction about an incendiary tragedy that shocked a young nation and tore apart a community in a single night, from the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever.
Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire is a “stunning” (Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle), “all-consuming exploration” (E! News) that offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.

DECEMBER

THIS ORDINARY STARDUST

Thursday, December 3 at 11:00 am

A compassionate, vulnerable, and transformative exploration of the nurturing and spiritual power of scientific wonder, as illuminated through the tragic dual cancer diagnoses of author Dr. Alan Townsend’s wife and daughter.

At a time when society’s relationship with science is increasingly polarized while threats to human life on earth continue to rise, Townsend offers a balanced, moving perspective on the common ground between science and religion through the spiritual fulfillment he found in his work. Awash in Townsend's electrifying and breathtaking prose, This Ordinary Stardust offers hope that life can carry on even in the face of near-certain annihilation.