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Adult Book Clubs

The Holmes Library offers two book discussion groups for adult readers, an evening group and an afternoon group. Please feel free to try either group!

Copies of the books are available at the Circulation Desk, or can be reserved through our iBistro catalog. For more information or to sign up, contact Jean for the evening group and Susan for the afternoon group.

Traditional Evening Group

     Books we have read

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Afternoon Readers

      Books we have read

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Evening Group

Evening Book Club

Afternoon Readers

Afternoon Readers

Evening Book Club


book group

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

by Katherine Boo

Tuesday, May 21

Discussion at 6:30

While the distance between rich and poor is growing in the U.S., the gap between the haves and have-nots in India is staggering to behold.
This first book by a New Yorker staff writer (and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the Washington Post) jolts the reader’s consciousness with the opposing realities of poverty and wealth in a searing visit to the Annawaldi settlement, a flimflam slum that has recently sprung up in the western suburbs of the gigantic city of Mumbai, perched tentatively along the modern highway leading to the airport and almost within a stone’s throw of new, luxurious hotels. We first meet Abdul, whose daily grind is to collect trash and sell it; in doing so, he has “lifted his large family above subsistence.”

Boo takes us all around the community, introducing us to a slew of disadvantaged individuals who, nevertheless, draw on their inner strength to not only face the dreary day but also ponder a day to come that will, perhaps, be a little brighter. Sympathetic yet objective and eloquently rendered.
~Brad Hooper for Booklist

 

Books We Have Read

April The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
March Sutton by J.R. Moehringer  
February The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh  
January Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie  
December Double Shot by Diane Shot Davidson  
November Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer  
October This Time Together by Carol Burnett  
September Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich  
August Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gilmore
July Chocolat by Joanne Harris  
June No One You Know by Michelle Richmond  
May Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson  
April Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet  
March An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor
January '12 Garden of Lies by Eileen Goudge
December The Necklace by Cheryl Jarvis
November A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
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October Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo
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September Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
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August Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde  
July A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini  
June Hank & Chloe by Jo-Ann Mapson thumbs down
May Alice's Tulips by Sandra Dallas  
April The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen  
March The Sweet By and By by Todd Johnson
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February Merlot Murders by Ellen Crosby
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January '11 A Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams
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November Family Acts by Louise Shaffer
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October The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
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September The Girls by Lori Lansens
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August The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
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July Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan
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June The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
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May The Penny by Joyce Meyer and Deborah Bedford
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April The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Allen Bradley
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March Sudden Sea by R. A. Scotti
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February Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
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January '10 The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser
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December In a Gilded Cage by Rhys Bowen
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November Never Tell a Lie by Hallie Ephron (author visit)
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October The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
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September

The Widow's War by Sally Gunning

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August

The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig

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June

First Light by Philip R. Craig and William Tapply

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May

Black Mass by Dick Lehr

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April

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland

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March

Limitations by Scott Turow

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February

Harriet and Isabella by Patricia O'Brien

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January

How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed

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December

The Childrens Blizzard by David Laskin

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November

Deafening by Frances Itani

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October

Blessings by Anna Quindlen 

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September

North River by Pete Hamill

Death in Belmont by Sebastion Junger

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


The Afternoon Readers' Book Club

For more information or to sign up, please contact Susan at (781)293-2271 or by email. This month's selection...

book groupFresh Disasters

by Stuart Woods

Tuesday, June 11

1:00 p.m.

Smooth-talking New York lawyer Stone Barrington gets dragged into an impossible case in Stone's entertaining 13th outing. Stone's bosses at the high-class law firm of Woodman and Weld want him to sue major league Mafia don Carmine Dattila for beating up a character from earlier Stone adventures, the hapless Herbie Fisher.

It's all pretty much good fun until the tale turns darker with the introduction of a psychotic sculptor, Devlin Daltry, who's the ex-boyfriend of Stone's current flame. Woods delivers few surprises, but there are plenty of laughs as the pages speed by. Series regulars and newcomers alike will be perfectly satisfied.

Books We Have Read

May The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry
April The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe  
March March by Geraldine Brooks  
February The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey  
January '13 Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie  
December Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff  
November State of Wonder by Ann Patchett  
October Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen  
September Honeymoon with my Brother by Franz Wisner  
August Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman
July Chocolat by Joanne Harris  
June Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison  
May The Maytrees by Annie Dillard  
April Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen  
March The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson
February Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich  
January '12 Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
December The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
November Thanksgiving Night by Richard Bausch
October The Dressmaker of Khair Khana  
Sept. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert  
August Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde
July The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff  
June The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny  
May The Postmistress by Sarah Blake  
April The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
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March Burning Marguerite by Elizabeth Inness-Brown
February I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn
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January'11 A Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams
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Dec Plum Pudding Murder by Joanne Fluke
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Nov High Plains Tango by Robert James Waller
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Oct Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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Sept The Secret by Beverly Lewis
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August Away With the Fairies by Kerry Greenwood
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July Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan
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June Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
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May Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood
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May Run by Ann Patchett  
April Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
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March Watchers of Time by Charles Todd
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February The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman
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January A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve
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December The Cat Who Came For Christmas by Cleveland Amory
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November Lily of the Valley by Suzanne Strempek Shea
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