Book Discussions

"The perfect book for thriller readers and true-crime podcast addicts...a stunning literary thriller that artfully twists and turns until the very end."--Bustle One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Thrillers and Mysteries of the Year One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year One of Real Simple's Best Books of the Year On a bright morning in the suburbs, a family moves into the house they've just bought on Trinity Avenue. Nothing strange about that. Except it's your house. And you didn't sell it. When Fiona Lawson arrives home to find strangers moving into her house, she is plunged into terror and confusion. She and her husband, Bram, have owned their home on Trinity Avenue for years; how can another family possibly think the house is theirs? And why has Bram disappeared--along with their two young children--when she needs him most? As the nightmare takes hold, Fiona begins to untangle the lies that led to a devastating crime--and a betrayal so shocking it will teach her to keep her own secrets behind locked doors....   Tilton Library's mystery book discussion group has been meeting on the first Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m. since 2010.  Group members choose the books to be discussed and library staffers order copies for members and others who might be interested in readng the books but not attending the meetings.  The group is open to all.  Free pizza (while it lasts) is provided by the Friends of Tilton Library. Books available at the library.

The mega-bestseller with more than 1.5 million readers that is soon to be a major television series He can’t leave his hotel. You won’t want to. From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Free and open to all. Books available through the library.

AT DEERFIELD TOWN HALL, 8 CONWAY ST, S. DEERFIELD Amazon, 3M, Johnson &Johnson; to name but a few of the most successful companies today, succeed only as they innovate. Their success has been built on a foundation dating back to DaVinci, Gutenberg, and the Web: what we now know as the Adjacent Possible, described by Steven Johnson in his history of innovation: Where Good Ideas Come From.  The goal of this interactive discussion/presentation is to provide you with an understanding of the Adjacent Possible that will inform your ability to generate good ideas, whether student, artist, small retailer, or nonprofit manager. Peter Farber is a former college educator, entrepreneur, musician, and 20 years as director of non-profits. 

The Last Place You Look is a head-on collision between an allegedly closed case and a tenacious, troubled private investigator who doesn't know when to quit. Nobody knows what happened to Sarah Cook. The beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton―black and from the wrong side of the tracks―was convicted of the murders and is now on death row. Though he’s maintained his innocence all along, the clock is running out. His execution is only weeks away when his devoted sister insists she spied Sarah at an area gas station. Willing to try anything, she hires PI Roxane Weary to look at the case and see if she can locate Sarah. Brad might be in a bad way, but private investigator Roxane Weary isn’t doing so hot herself. Still reeling from the recent death of her cop father in the line of duty, her main way of dealing with her grief has been working as little and drinking as much as possible. But Roxane finds herself drawn in to the story of Sarah's vanishing act, especially when she links the disappearance to one of her father’s unsolved murder cases involving another teen girl. The stakes get higher as Roxane discovers that the two girls may not be the only beautiful blonde teenagers who’ve turned up missing or dead. As her investigation gets darker and darker, Roxane will have to risk everything to find the truth. Lives depend on her cracking this case―hers included.   Tilton Library’s mystery book discussion group has been meeting on the first Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m. since 2010.  Group members choose the books to be discussed and library staffers order copies for members and others who might be interested in readng the books but not attending the meetings.  The group is open to all.  Free pizza (while it lasts) is provided by the Friends of Tilton Library. Books available at the library.

An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.   Free and open to all. Books available through the library.

First published serially between 1859 and 1860, “The Woman in White” is Wilkie Collins’s epistolary novel that tells the tale of Walter Hartright, who encounters a woman all dressed in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. Hartright helps the woman to find her way back to London. The woman warns him against an unnamed baronet and after they part he discovers that she may have escaped from an insane asylum. Hartright travels to Cumberland where he takes up a position as the art tutor of Laura Fairlie and her devoted half-sister, Marian Halcombe, who are somehow entangled with this mysterious “woman in white”. Wilkie Collins’s fifth published novel, “The Woman in White” is considered one of the earliest examples of the mystery genre, an early work of detective fiction, and one of the finest examples of sensationalist literature. While the novel was a commercial success when first published it was harshly reviewed by critics of the age. Since that time it has come to be regarded as a groundbreaking work of the mystery genre, one of Collins’s best.

A charming novel of self-discovery and second chances from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread.   Willa Drake has had three opportunities to start her life over: in 1967, as a schoolgirl whose mother has suddenly disappeared; in 1977, when considering a marriage proposal; and in 1997, as a young widow trying to hold her family together. So she is surprised when in 2017 she is given one last chance to change everything, after receiving a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to help a young woman she's never met. This impulsive decision, maybe the first one she’s consciously made in her life, will lead Willa into uncharted territory—surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places. A bewitching novel of hope and transformation, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers. One of the Best Books of the Year: O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, The Christian Science Monitor 

"Jaw dropping. Unforgettable. Shocking." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The best domestic suspense novel since Gone Girl." ―In Touch Weekly When you read this book, you will make many assumptions. You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife. You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love. You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle. Assume nothing. Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love. Read between the lies.   Tilton Library's mystery book discussion group has been meeting on the first Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m. since 2010.  Group members choose the books to be discussed and library staffers order copies for members and others who might be interested in readng the books but not attending the meetings.  The group is open to all.  Free pizza (while it lasts) is provided by the Friends of Tilton Library. Books available at the library.    

From the writer who “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker) and has been called “incandescent” by Stephen King, “absolutely mesmerizing” by Gillian Flynn, and “unputdownable” (People) comes a gripping new novel that turns a crime story inside out. Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life—he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family’s ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden—and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed. A spellbinding standalone from one of the best suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, when we no longer know who we are.

New York Times and worldwide bestselling author Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil. An instant New York Times bestseller, In the Midst of Winter is about three very different people who are brought together in a mesmerizing story that offers “a timely message about immigration and the meaning of home” (People). During the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his sixties, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and what at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice. As these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love. Allende returns here to themes that have propelled some of her finest work: political injustice, the art of survival, and the essential nature of—and our need for—love.