** Face masks are optional  **

The Second Tuesday of the Month at 7:00 pm Alton  Book Chat, established in 1999, is a library-sponsored book discussion  group that meets monthly in the Agnes Thompson Meeting Room (lower level  entrance), Gilman Library, 100 Main St., Alton, NH 03809 

 Unless  otherwise noted, meetings are held on the second Tuesday each month,  beginning at 7:00 pm.  Call the library at 875-2550 to reserve your copy  of the next book discussion title and get in on the fun!  

 Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams 

by Lynne Withey

    The lively, authoritative, New York Times bestselling biography of Abigail Adams.  This is the life of Abigail Adams, wife of patriot John Adams, who became the most influential woman in Revolutionary America. Rich with excerpts from her personal letters, Dearest Friend captures the public and private sides of this fascinating woman, who was both an advocate of slave emancipation and a burgeoning feminist, urging her husband to “Remember the Ladies” as he framed the laws of their new country.  John and Abigail Adams married for love. While John traveled in America and abroad to help forge a new nation, Abigail remained at home, raising four children, managing their estate, and writing letters to her beloved husband. Chronicling their remarkable fifty-four-year marriage, her blossoming feminism, her battles with loneliness, and her friendships with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Dearest Friend paints a portrait of Abigail Adams as an intelligent, resourceful, and outspoken woman.

Image and Synopsis by Amazon 

 People We Meet on Vacation

by Emily Henry

  From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers and Beach Read comes a sparkling novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.  Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.  Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.   Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven't spoken since.   Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.   Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?    

Image and Synopsis by Amazon 

The Dutch House

by Ann Patchett

    Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize  New York Times Bestseller | A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick | A New York Times Book Review Notable Book | TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2019  Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post;O: The Oprah Magazine,Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Vogue,Refinery29, and Buzzfeed  Ann Patchett, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth, delivers her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are.  At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.  The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.  Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested. 

Image and Synopsis by Amazon