Join a book club at Peoria Public Library this month. New members are always welcome!
Book ‘Em Mystery Book Club will meet on Sunday, June 15 at 2:00 p.m. at Lakeview Branch to discuss The Rope by Nevada Barr. What started as a simple hike through the park turns into a nightmare when Anna Pigeon wakes up in the bottom of a dry well, naked, without any of her supplies, and no memory as to how she got there. Using her own wits and nothing else, Anna must fight to escape this deadly prison, and then find out who put her there.
The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club meets on Monday, June 9 at Lakeview Branch at 6:30 p.m. to discuss Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber.Humanity pushed its way to the stars – and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out. Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they’ve built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever. Call 309-497-2149 for more information.
The Biography and Non-Fiction Book Club will meet on Sunday, June 8 at 3:00 p.m. at North Branch to discuss Jack London: A Life by Alex Kershaw. Jack London lived a life as dramatic as any of the heroes he created. Brilliant and self-taught, he was a hard-drinking womanizer, with an abiding interest in socialism, who died before he turned 40. In this painstakingly researched biography, Kershaw uncovers this classic American novelist, fighter, and adventurer. For more information call 309-497-2186.
Bibliophiles will meet on Tuesday, June 3 at 1:30 p.m. at Lakeview Branch to discuss Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler. Z is a tale inspired by the marriage of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The book follows their union in defiance of her father’s opposition and her abandonment of the provincial finery of her upbringing in favor of a scandalous flapper identity that gains her entry into the literary party scenes of New York, Paris and the French Riviera. For more information, call Carol May at (309) 692-1020 or email cmay1223@comcast.net.
The Read On Book Club will meet on Tuesday, June 24 at 5:30 p.m. at Lincoln Branch to discuss A Wanted Woman by Eric Jerome Dickey. The story follows a woman assign known as Reaper. Making a living man a dead one should be easy, but this simple job goes wrong thanks to a security camera. The Laventille Killers are in hot pursuit. Reaper has limited protection of a safe house, no passport and no funds. Island paradise is more like an island prison. Reaper will discover family ties run deep. Will this wanted woman discover who she really is? Call 497-2601 for more information.
Intercontinental Readers will continue to meet to discuss novels by American and Irish authors via Skype at Main Library LL 1 at 1:00 p.m. once every three months with readers in Ireland. The next meeting will be Tuesday, August 19, 2014 and the group will discuss Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals. In 1957, Melba Pattillo turned sixteen. That was also the year she became a warrior on the front lines of a civil rights firestorm. Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, Melba was one of nine teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School. Throughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their parents, threatened by a lynch mob’s rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down. Call 309-497-2143 for more information.
Club Read will meet on Wednesday, June 25 at 6:30 p.m. at Lakeview Branch to discuss The Light Between Oceans, by M. L. Stedman. Tom Sherbourne is a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a tiny island a half day’s boat journey from the coast of Western Australia. When a baby washes up in a rowboat, he and his young wife Isabel decide to raise the child as their own. The baby seems like a gift from God, and the couple’s reasoning for keeping her seduces the reader into entering the waters of treacherous morality even as Tom–whose moral code withstood the horrors of World War I–begins to waver.
YA for Adults Book Club will meet on the third Tuesday, June 17 at 6:30 p.m. at Lakeview Branch to discuss The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.