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.

MAY

TRUE BIZ

Thursday, May 7 at 11:00 am

Sara Nović’s second novel is a vibrant celebration of Deaf culture and Deaf communities. Set at the fictional River Valley School for the Deaf in the struggling industrial town of Colson, Ohio, True Biz follows the interconnected lives of several students and teachers over the course of one tumultuous year. It’s a remarkable book that is many things at once: a primer on Deaf history, a love story, a coming-of-age tale, a riotous political awakening, a family saga and a richly layered character study.

JUNE

GIRL WAITS WITH GUN

Thursday, June 4 at 11:00 am

When Constance Kopp and her sisters suffer a run-in with a ruthless, powerful crook, Constance leaves her quiet country life to team up with the local sheriff and exact justice. As a war of bricks, bullets, and threats ensues, Constance realizes that this racketeer’s history may be more damning than she thought, but now that she’s on the case–he won’t get away.

Quick-witted and full of madcap escapades, Girl Waits with Gun tells the true story of one woman rallying the courage to stand up for and grow into herself–with a little help from sisters and sheriffs along the way.

JULY

THE SOUND OF A WILD SNAIL EATING

Thursday, July 2 at 11:00 am

While an illness keeps her bedridden, Elisabeth Tova Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence in a flowerpot alongside her bed. She enters the rhythm of life of this mysterious creature, and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, she shares the inspiring and intimate story of her connection with Neohelix albolabris – a common woodland snail.

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.