100 Main Street, Alton, New Hampshire 03809, United States
ALTON BOOK CHAT
Unless otherwise noted, meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month, 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!
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
Alton Book Chat 2025
NOTE: MEETING 6:30 AT DEB LAURION'S December 9
image and description from Amazon.com
How the Finch Stole Christmas: A Meg Langslow Christmas Mystery,
Book 22 of 39: Meg Langslow Mysteries
by Donna Andrews
As in her previous Christmas mysteries, Six Geese a-Slaying, Duck the Halls, and The Nightingale Before Christmas, Andrews continues to write “firmly in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie’s Christmas books” (Toronto Globe and Mail).
New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews takes us home to Caerphilly for the holidays in her new hilarious Christmas mystery How the Finch Stole Christmas!
Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens' A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager.
The show must go on, even if the famous―though slightly over-the-hill―actor who's come to town to play the starring role of Scrooge has brought a sleigh-load of baggage and enemies with him. And why is Caerphilly suddenly overrun with a surplus of beautiful caged finches?
How the Finch Stole Christmas! is guaranteed to put the "ho ho hos" into the holidays of cozy lovers everywhere with its gut-bustingly funny mystery.
January 13, 2026
image and description from Amazon.com
How to Stop Time: A Novel
by Matt Haig
Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy
“A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations….A delightfully witty…poignant novel.” —The Washington Post
“She smiled a soft, troubled smile and I felt the whole world slipping away, and I wanted to slip with it, to go wherever she was going… I had existed whole years without her, but that was all it had been. An existence. A book with no words.”
Tom Hazard has just moved back to London, his old home, to settle down and become a high school history teacher. And on his first day at school, he meets a captivating French teacher at his school who seems fascinated by him. But Tom has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.
Unfortunately for Tom, the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.
How to Stop Time tells a love story across the ages—and for the ages—about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live. It is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch.