Meets 4thThursday of the month
10:00 am
Community Room, Hastings Public Library
February 24 “Nefertiti, the Book of the Dead” by Michelle Moran
”Though sometimes big events are telegraphed, Moran, who lives in California and is making her U.S. debut, gets the details just right, and there are still plenty of surprises in an epic that brings an ancient world to life.” -Publishers Weekly
March 24 “The Boleyn Inheritance” by Philippa Gregory
Just when it seems there can be nothing left of the powerful Boleyn family, Lady Jane, takes the stage to manipulate the next of Henry’s wives. “An only survivor of the ambitious Boleyn family, lady-in-waiting Jane Boleyn testifies against Henry VIII’s latest queen, Anne of Cleves, and conspires to place her young cousin, Katherine Howard, on the throne.” -Novelist
April, 2011 “The Monster of Florence” by Douglas Preston
From 1974 to 1985, seven pairs of lovers parked in their cars in secluded areas outside of Florence were gruesomely murdered. When Preston and his family moved into a farmhouse near the murder sites, he and Spezi began to snoop around, although witnesses had died and evidence was missing. Better than some overheated noir mysteries, this bit of real-life Florence bloodletting makes you sweat and think, and presses relentlessly on the nerves. (June 11) Publishers Weekly
May, 2011 “The Book of Lies” by Brad Meltzer
A highly tenuous link between the two murders revolves around the mysterious weapon Cain (the world’s greatest villain) used to kill his brother. One of numerous theories is that the weapon was a divine book containing the secrets of immortality. After coming to the aid of a shooting victim, Calvin Harper, a homeless volunteer working in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., soon finds himself hopelessly caught up in a life-and-death quest for the ancient artifact that includes the obligatory secret societies, Nazi conspiracies, enigmatic villains and cryptographic riddles à la The Da Vinci Code. Publishers Weekly
June, 2011 “Hold Tight” by Harlan Coben
Mike and Tia Baye try to deal with the increasing withdrawal of their 16-year-old son, Adam, after a friend’s suicide. A pair of brutal, seemingly senseless killings, punctuate the unfolding domestic troubles that ratchet up the tension and engulf the Baye family, their friends and neighbors in a web of increasing tragedy Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Publishers Weekly
July, 2011 “Blasphemy” by Douglas Preston
The ostensible goal of Isabella’s creator, physicist Gregory North Hazelius, is to discover new forms of energy, but what he really wants is to talk to God. The project, located inside Red Mesa (a five-hundred-square-mile tableland on the Navajo Indian Reservation), is behind schedule, so presidential science adviser Stanton Lockwood hires ex-CIA man Wyman Ford to go to Red Mesa and find out what’s causing the holdup. Meanwhile, a Navajo medicine man, a televangelist and a pastor who runs a failed mission on the reservation are gearing up to pull the plug on Isabella before she destroys the earth Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Publishers Weekly
August, 2011 “Santa Fe Dead” by Stuart Woods
Ed and his girlfriend, actress Susannah Wilde, are watching the Los Angeles trial on Court TV of his villainous ex-wife, Barbara, who stands accused of arranging for his murder, when a reporter announces that Barbara has escaped from custody just before the not guilty verdict. Soon, suitably disguised and under an alias, Barbara contrives to meet a recent widower, Palo Alto billionaire Walter Keeler, at a luxury spa and has him proposing marriage and making a new will in her favor. Meanwhile, her hatred for her ex unquenched, Barbara schemes to have Ed and Susannah killed. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Publishers Weekly
