Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris

Picked by Brenda - February 18th 2020 Meeting

Welcome to Shakespeare, Arkansas. Lily Bard came to the small town of Shakespeare to escape her dark and violent past. Other than the day-to-day workings of her cleaning and errand-running service, she pays little attention to the town around her. So when she spots a dead body being dumped in the town green, she's inclined to stay well away. But she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and despite her best efforts, she's dragged into the murder case.
Lily doesn't care who did it, but when the police and local community start pointing fingers in her direction, she realizes that proving her innocence will depend on finding the real killer in quiet, secretive Shakespeare.

Slaughter-House Five by Kirk Vonnegut

Picked by Evan - January 21st 2020 Meeting

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”

Have You See Luis Velez? by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Picked by Penny - December 17th 2019 Meeting

Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong. Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez?
Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, has been alone since her caretaker disappeared. She turns to Raymond for help, and as he tries to track Luis down, a deep and unexpected friendship blossoms between the two.
Despondent at the loss of Luis, Mildred isolates herself further from a neighborhood devolving into bigotry and fear. Determined not to let her give up, Raymond helps her see that for every terrible act the world delivers, there is a mirror image of deep kindness, and Mildred helps Raymond see that there’s hope if you have someone to hold on to.

Run Away by Harlan Coben

Picked by Dick - November 20th 2019 Meeting

A perfect family is shattered when their daughter goes missing in this "brilliantly executed" New York Times bestselling thriller from a "master storyteller" (Providence Sunday Journal).
You've lost your daughter.
She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found.

Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble.

You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home.

She runs.

And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Before you know it, both your family and your life are on the line. And in order to protect your daughter from the evils of that world, you must face them head on.

14 by Peter Clines

Picked by Beth - October 8th 2019 Meeting

30-something Nate hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So, he has other things on his mind when he ends up moving into an old brownstone apartment building in LA, with suspiciously cheap rent. The neighbors are quite the group: the artist who likes to sun herself on the roof deck in the nude; the hacker who arranges free wi-fi for the building; the mysterious ‘text book publisher’ who displays unusual skills, and more.

The building holds secrets; more than one door is locked with a series of deadbolts and/or padlocks. There’s a perfect apartment which no one rents because people keep dying there. The hacker’s room is always 69° F, no matter the time of year or anything she tries to do to alter it. There are no power lines coming to the building, yet it has zero power problems. Nate and the others gradually become obsessed with finding out what’s going on, and that obsession may kill them–and take the rest of the world with them.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Picked by Barb - August 27th 2019 Meeting

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.
A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Picked by Brenda - July 24th 2019 Meeting

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).