** 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!  

We Must Be Brave

by Frances Liardet

 THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A powerful story that proves how love itself requires courage." --Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing

Spanning World War II and the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of  that love to endure. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself.

A woman. A war. The child who changed everything.

December  1940. As German bombs fall on Southampton, England during World War II,  the city's residents flee to the surrounding villages. In Upton  village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep,  unclaimed at the back of an empty bus. Little Pamela, it seems, is  entirely alone.

Ellen has always believed she does not want  children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open  the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her  husband Selwyn had dreamed for themselves. As the war rages on, love  grows where it was least expected, surprising them all. But with the end  of the fighting comes the realization that Pamela was never theirs to  keep. Spanning the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores  the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that  love to endure. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself. 

 Image and Synopsis by Amazon 

Mrs.  Sherlock Holmes: 

The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female  Detective and 

the 1917 Missing Girl Case 

That Captivated a Nation

by Brad Ricca

Nominated for a 2018 Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime
Recipient of the ★ Kirkus Star, Awarded to Books of Exceptional Merit
A 2017 True Crime Book for Summer, The New York Times Sunday Book Review

"An express train of a story." -Kirkus Reviews
"Heroic...her inspiring story demands a hearing." -The New York Times Sunday Book Review

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes tells  the true story of Mrs. Grace Humiston, the detective and lawyer who  turned her back on New York society life to become one of the nation's  greatest crime fighters during an era when women weren't even allowed to  vote. After graduating from N.Y.U. law school, Grace opened a legal  clinic in the city for low-income immigrant clients, and quickly  established a reputation as a fierce, but fair lawyer who was always on  the side of the disenfranchised.

Grace's  motto "Justice for those of limited means" led her to strange cases all  over the city, and eventually the world. From defending an innocent  giant on death row to investigating an island in Arkansas with a  terrible secret about slavery; from the warring halls of Congress to a  crumbling medieval tower in Italy, Grace solved crimes in-between  shopping at Bergdorf Goodman and being marked for death by the sinister  Black Hand. She defended a young wife who shot her would-be rapist and  fought the framing of a Baltimore black man at the mercy of a corrupt  police department. Known for dressing only in black, Grace was appointed  the first woman U.S. district attorney in history. And when a pretty  18-year-old girl named Ruth Cruger went missing on Valentine's Day in  New York, Grace took the case after  the police gave up. Grace  and her partner, the hard-boiled Hungarian detective Julius J. Kron,  navigated a dangerous mystery of secret boyfriends, two-faced  cops,underground tunnels, rumors of white slavery, and a mysterious pale  man-- in a desperate race against time to save Ruth. When she solved  the crime, she was made the first female consulting detective to the  NYPD.

But despite her many  successes in social and criminal justice, Grace began to see chilling  connections in the cases she had solved, leading to a final showdown  with her most fearsome adversary of all and one of the most powerful men  of the twentieth century.

This  is the first-ever literary biography of the singular woman the press  nicknamed after fiction's greatest detective. In the narrative tradition  of In Cold Blood and The Devil in the White City, her  poignant story unmasks unmistakable connections between missing  girls,the role of the media, and the real truth of crime stories. The  great mystery of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes -- and its haunting twist ending -- is how could one woman with so much power disappear so completely?

 Image and Synopsis by Amazon 

 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2014 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
WINNER OF THE 2014 DILYS AWARD
A SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2013
 

From New York Times bestselling  author William Kent Krueger, a brilliant new novel about a young man, a  small town, and murder in the summer of 1961.

“That was  it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all  to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was  spoken forgotten a single word.”

New Bremen, Minnesota,  1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers  were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot  Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It  was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young  president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in  which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature.  Suicide. Murder.

Frank begins the season preoccupied with the  concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his  family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate,  artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years  kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of  secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to  demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his  young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling  apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the  terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God. 

 Image and Synopsis by Amazon