Join us this spring for Reading on the Rock as we discuss contemporary fiction. Each title offers unique and interesting story lines that are sure to keep the conversation going. Feel free to come to one or all of the hour-long discussions – and bring a friend! No registration necessary.

All discussions take place in the Public Meeting Room, located on the library's lower level. Grab a cup of coffee at the Ground Floor coffee shop and join the conversation!

Thursday, September 22 at 6:30 p.m.
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
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Paris, July 1942 : Sarah, a ten year-old Jewish girl, is arrested by the French police in the middle of the night, along with her mother and father. Desperate to protect her younger brother, she locks him in a cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as she can. Paris, May 2002 : Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked to write about the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv the infamous day in 1942 when French police rounded up thousands of Jewish men, women and children, in order to send them to concentration camps. Sarah's Key is the poignant story of two families, forever linked and haunted by one of the darkest days in France's past. In this emotionally intense, page-turning novel, Tatiana de Rosnay reveals the guilt brought on by long-buried secrets and the damage that the truth can inflict when they finally come unravelled. Visit author's website.

Thursday, October 27 at 6:30 p.m.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
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Roseanne McNulty, a one hundred-year-old patient at a mental hospital, is secretly writing her memoirs. Meanwhile, her doctor discovers a document by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseannes life. As doctor and patient attempt to understand each other, they uncover long-buried secrets about themselves.

Thursday, November 17 at 6:30 p.m.
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
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Four slave women accompany their masters to a resort in the free state of Ohio in the mid-1850s. But they are guilt-ridden about the prospect of leaving their children behind. The women rely on each other for support as they come together for three summers, catching up on their lives of woe and occasional joy. Drawing on research about the resort that eventually became the first black college, Wilberforce University, the novel explores the complexities of relationships in slavery and the abiding comfort of women’s friendships. Visit author's website.

* Meets third Thursday due to Thanksgiving holiday. No December discussion.

Thursday, January 26* at 6:30 p.m.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. Aibileen is a black maid raising her seventeenth white child. Minny is perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. They start a movement that forever changes a town, and the way women view one another.

* No December discussion.

Thursday, February 23 at 6:30 p.m.
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Since she was born, Truly has suffered constant abuse and humiliation for her enormous size. But when her beautiful sister, Serena Jane, attracts a ruthless suitor, both their destinies change forever.

Thursday, March 22 at 6:30 p.m.
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
It is 1940. France has fallen. Bombs are dropping on London. American radio gal Frankie Bard is convinced that if she can just get the right story, it will wake Americans to join the fight. Meanwhile, in Franklin, Massachusetts – a small town on Cape Cod– the local postmistress, Iris James, hears Frankie’s broadcasts and knows that it is only a matter of time before the war arrives on Franklin’s shores. The Postmistress shows how we bear the fact that war goes on around us while ordinary lives continue.

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