What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Picked by Brenda - January 23rd 2018 Meeting

Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym (a gym! She HATES the gym) and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over—she’s getting divorced, she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over...

Kompromat by Stanley Johnson

Picked by Evan - December 12th 2017 Meeting

Stanley Johnson’s Kompromat is a brilliant satirical thriller that tells the story of 2016’s seismic and unexpected political events on both sides of the Atlantic.
The UK referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU was a political showdown the British PM, Jeremy Hartley, thought he couldn’t lose. But the next morning both he and the whole of the rest of the country woke in a state of shock.
America meanwhile has its own unlikely Presidential candidate, the brash showman Ronald Craig, a man that nobody thought could possibly gain office. Throw into the mix the cunning Russian President Igor Popov, with his plans to destabilize the west, and you have a brilliant alternative account of the events that end with Britain’s new PM attempting to seek her own mandate to deal with the Brexit related crisis and America welcoming its own new leader.
Now in development for a major new TV series, Kompromat is a fast-paced thriller from a true political insider, and who knows, it just might all be true!

Redemption Road by John Hart

Picked by Penny - November 7th 2017 Meeting

The winner of history's only consecutive Edgar Awards for Best Novel John Hart delivers his most powerful story yet.
Imagine:
A boy with a gun waits for the man who killed his mother.
A troubled detective confronts her past in the aftermath of a brutal shooting.
After thirteen years in prison, a good cop walks free as deep in the forest, on the altar of an abandoned church, a body cools in pale linen…
This is a town on the brink.
This is Redemption Road.
Brimming with tension, secrets, and betrayal, Redemption Road proves again that John Hart is a master of the literary thriller.

Camino Island by John Grisham

Picked by Dick - September 19th 2017 Meeting

A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
     Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
     Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.
     But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.

Blame by Jeff Abott

Picked by Kris - August 22nd Meeting

The crash that killed him…
Two years ago, Jane Norton crashed her car on a lonely road, killing her friend David and leaving her with amnesia. At first, everyone was sympathetic. Then they found Jane’s note: “I wish we were dead together.”
A girl to blame. . .
From that day, the town turned against her. But even now Jane is filled with questions: Why were they on that road? Why was she with David? Did she really want to die?
The secrets she should forget…
Most of all, she must find out who has just written her an anonymous message: “I know what really happened. I know what you don’t remember…”

The Secret Wife by Gill Paul

Picked by Melissa - July 18th Meeting

A Russian grand duchess and an English journalist. Linked by one of the world’s greatest mysteries.
1914...
Russia is on the brink of collapse, and the Romanov family faces a terrifyingly uncertain future. Grand Duchess Tatiana has fallen in love with cavalry officer Dmitri, but events take a catastrophic turn, placing their lives in danger . 
2016...
Kitty Fisher escapes to her great-grandfather’s remote cabin in America, after a devastating revelation makes her flee London. There, on the shores of Lake Akanabee, she discovers the spectacular jewelled pendant that will lead her to a long-buried family secret .

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whithead

Picked by Barb - June 20th 2017 Meeting

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the #1 New York Times bestseller from Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.