2024 Port Orange Library Book Club Selections
202 Port Orange Regional Library Book Club
3rd Wednesday of every month at
10:30 a.m.
January: Billy Summers
by Stephen King.
February: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
March: Volusia Reads Together Title
April: The Titanic Sisters by
Patricia Falvey.
May: Tom Lake by Anne
Patchett.
June: The Lie Maker by Linwood
Barclay.
July: Two Old Women by Velma
Wallis.
August: Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea.
September: Lessons in
Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.
October: Falling Angels by Tracy
Chevalier.
November: Astor by Anderson
Cooper.
December: The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.
Book Descriptions
Astor by Anderson Cooper. The story of the Astors is an extraordinary but true tale of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention—and of cunning, determination, hard work, hubris, infighting, and greed. One of the wealthiest men to have ever lived, John Jacob Astor first arrived in New York in 1783 and built a fortune through a ruthless expansion of his beaver trapping business, which he grew into an empire through real estate that enriched him at the expense of Manhattan’s poorest residents.
Billy Summers by Stephen King. Chances are, if you're a target of Billy Summers, two immutable truths apply: You'll never even know what hit you, and you're really getting what you deserve. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business--but he'll do the job only if the assignment is a truly bad person. But now, time is catching up with him, and Billy wants out.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Pecola Breedlove--an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier. A fashionable London cemetery, January 1901: Two graves stand side by side, one decorated with an oversize classical urn, the other with a sentimental marble angel. Two families, visiting their respective graves on the day after Queen Victoria's death, teeter on the brink of a new era. The Colemans and the Waterhouses are divided by social class as well as taste.
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea. Abandoning her abusive fiancé in New York in 1943 to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe, Irene Woodward befriends Dorothy Dunford as they join the Allied soldiers streaming into France after D-Day where they are embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald, and where Irene learns to trust again through their friendship.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Set in 1960s California, this blockbuster debut is the hilarious, idiosyncratic and uplifting story of a female scientist whose career is constantly derailed by the idea that a woman's place is in the home, only to find herself starring as the host of America's most beloved TV cooking show.
The Lie Maker by Linwood Barclay. In this twisty, fast-paced thriller, a man desperately tries to track down his father--who was taken into witness protection years ago--before his enemies can get to him. Your dad's not a good person. Your dad killed people, son. These are some of the last words Jack Givins' father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives as best they could.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. A widow's sudden suicide sparks rumors that she murdered her first husband, was being blackmailed, and was carrying on a secret affair with the wealthy Roger Ackroyd. The following evening, Ackroyd is murdered in his locked study, but not before receiving a letter identifying the widow's blackmailer. Kings Abbot is crawling with suspects and it's up to famous detective, Hercule Poirot, to solve the case.
The Titanic Sisters by Patricia Falvey. A relative has provided the means for Delia and Nora to go to New York. Delia will be a maid in a modest household, while Nora will be governess for a well-to-do family. In Queenstown, Cork, they board the Titanic. Any hope Delia carried that she and her sister might become closer during the trip soon vanishes. For there are far greater perils to contend with as the ship makes its way across the Atlantic.
Tom Lake by Anne Patchett. In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Two Old Women by Velma Wallis (Nonfiction). Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying.
