The Bookies read a variety of popular fiction and nonfiction. The group meets at 10:00 am in the Library’s Conference Room. New members are always welcome so make plans to join us! Call the Library at 205-445-1121 for more information.

Tuesday, June 9 @ 10:00 am – All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Tuesday, July 14 @ 10:00 am – Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan From Nancy Horan, New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank, comes her much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny.

Tuesday, August 11 @ 10:00 am –  Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee *meeting in the 2nd floor Makerspace
Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch—Scout—struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.  Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee’s enduring classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.  (In the last twenty minutes of our meeting, we will have a discussion via Skype with another library book group in Rhode Island – should be fun!)

Tuesday, September 8 @ 10:00 am – Author Study: Doris Kearns Goodwin Read any title written by Ms. Goodwin and share it with the group.  Tickets for An Evening with the Author featuring Doris Kearns Goodwin at the Emmet O’Neal Library on Saturnday, September 12th will be available Summer 2015.

Tuesday, October 13 @ 10:00 am – Real Life Adventure
Please read a book about true life adventure, such as River of Doubt by Candice Millard or The Lost City of Z by David Grann.  Our Genre Book Group recently read true life adventures so if you’d like to choose something different, just ask for the list! 

Tuesday, November 10 @ 10:00 am – Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitantia by Erik Larson 
From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania. On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitaniawas one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. 

Tuesday, December 8 @ 10:00 am – Angels at the Gate by T.K. Thorne
Angels at the Gate is a story of adventure and the power of love, a compelling saga based on historical research about the ancient biblical world of Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the woman who “became a pillar of salt.”  Enjoy our holiday party while discussing Ms. Thorne’s newest title.  In addition, please bring a book outside The Bookies reading list that you would like to share with the group.