ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

By Anthony Doerr

Moderator & Host: Connie Harrison

March 21, 2016

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious

instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in

occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the

master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect

miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she

is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where

Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be

the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a

crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a

talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the

resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the

heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are

dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all

odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All

the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never

fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

BOYS IN THE BOAT: NINE AMERICANS AND THEIR EPIC QUEST FOR GOLD AT THE 1936 BERLIN OLYMPICS

By Daniel J. Brown

Moderator & Host: Cheryl Whited

November 16, 2016

For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating

the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how

nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what

true grit really meant.

It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers,

and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite

teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the

German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager

without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real

place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of an once-in-a-

lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a

remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

DEAD WAKE: THE LAST CROSSING OF THE LUSITANIA

by Erik Larson (author of The Devil in White City)

Moderator & Host: Percy Weber

October 19, 2015

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an

English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children

and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas

around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic.

But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in

service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures

of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the

captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit

tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward

Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded

secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history

It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching

between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive

Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed

Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodore Pope to President Woodrow

Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.

Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose

intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.

GIRL ON THE TRAIN, THE

By Paula Hawkins

Moderator & Host: Enid Serebransky

April 18, 2016

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past

a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple

breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls

them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now

everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and

becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has

she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an

electrifying debut.

Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, LAST REAL DETECTIVE

By Jay Atkinson

Moderator & Host: Bonnie Cardoza

January 18, 2016

“At McCain Investigations, I’d be sent looking for people who didn’t want to be found, following guys

who didn’t want to be followed, and entering neighborhoods where I was not at all welcome. There

would be no commercials, no time-outs, no ‘do-overs’ if somebody got shot or stabbed or run over.

These guys were playing for keeps.”

Seasoned journalist and adventurer Jay Atkinson spent a year working as a rookie private eye for the

storied firm McCain Investigations, founded by the late Joe McCain, Sr., one of the most decorated

police officers in Boston history. In his colorful narrative style, Atkinson describes some of the cases he

worked as a detective, chasing down an assortment of felons, thieves, and con artists, as well as the

ghost of a real-life American hero, legendary cop Joe McCain.

Atkinson traces McCain’s story from the day he put on his Boston Metropolitan Police uniform in the

1950s through the heyday of his run-ins with mafiosi, bad cops, and ruthless killers. Big Joe was the

genuine article, a detective so committed to his work that a gunshot wound suffered in the line of duty

took thirteen years to kill him. McCain pursued such infamous Winter Hill mobsters as Stephen “the

Rifleman” Flemmi and the murderous James “Whitey” Bulger, who remains on the FBI’s Ten Most

Wanted list. Here Atkinson reveals new details—based on his exclusive interviews and an abundance of

his own shoe leather—about how Bulger, one of America’s most notorious fugitives, came within inches

of being apprehended during Joe McCain’s reign.

Atkinson also tracks the career of Joe McCain’s son, Joe Jr., a tattooed, hard-riding motorcycle fanatic

who followed his old man onto the force. Since big Joe’s death, young Joe has learned the hard way that

a father’s mythic persona can be both a blessing and a curse, as a fellow cop with a grudge against Joe

Sr. may be out to ruin young Joe’s career. Atkinson delves into this dark and dangerous aspect of “the

job,” where it’s uncertain which side some cops are on

Legends of Winter Hill takes you into an alluring and gritty world where heroes go unsung every day,

and moral boundaries aren’t always black and white.

REMAINS OF INNOCENCE

By J. A. Jance

Moderator & Host: Sue Banfield

September 21, 2015

Sheriff Joanna Brady must solve two perplexing cases that may be tied together in New York Times

bestselling author J. A. Jance’s thrilling tale of suspense that brings to life Arizona’s Cochise County and

the desert Southwest in all its beauty and mystery.

(continued on next page)

An old woman, a hoarder, is dying of emphysema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In cleaning out

her house, her daughter, Liza Machett, discovers a fortune in hundred dollar bills hidden in the tall

stacks of books and magazines that crowd every corner.

Tracing the money’s origins will take Liza on a journey that will end in Cochise County, where Sheriff

Joanna Brady is embroiled in a personal mystery of her own. A man she considers a family friend is

found dead at the bottom of a hole in a limestone cavern near Bisbee. And now there is the mystery of

Liza and the money. Are the two disparate cases connected? It’s up to Joanna to find out.

ROCK WITH WINGS ( A Leaphorn and Chee Mystery)

by Anne Hillerman

Moderator & Host: Nancy Woodling

February 15, 2016

Navajo Tribal cops Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, and their mentor, the legendary Lieutenant Joe

Leaphorn, investigate two perplexing cases in this exciting Southwestern mystery from the New York

Times bestselling author of Spider Woman’s Daughter/”””/

Doing a good deed for a relative offers the perfect opportunity for Sergeant Jim Chee and his wife,

Officer Bernie Manuelito, to get away from the daily grind of police work. But two cases will call them

back from their short vacation and separate them—one near Shiprock, and the other at iconic

Monument Valley.

Chee follows a series of seemingly random and cryptic clues that lead to a missing woman, a

coldblooded thug, and a mysterious mound of dirt and rocks that could be a gravesite. Bernie has her

hands full managing the fallout from a drug bust gone wrong, uncovering the origins of a fire in the

middle of nowhere, and looking into an ambitious solar energy development with long-ranging

consequences for Navajo land.

Under the guidance of their mentor, retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, Bernie and Chee will navigate

unexpected obstacles and confront the greatest challenge yet to their skills, commitment, and courage

Suggested Meeting Dates

September 21, 2015

October 19, 2015

November 16, 2015

December 21, 2015 ** may be changed to the 14th.

January 18, 2016

February 15, 2016

Marc 21, 2016

April 18, 2016

May 16, 2016 selection of next year’s books and moderators.

List of Suggested Books Host and Moderator Month & Day

All the Light We Cannot See

Connie Harrison March 21, 2016

Boys in the Boat

Cheryl Whited November 16, 2015

Dead Wake

Percy Weber October 19, 2015

Girl on the Train

Enid Serebranski April 18, 2016

Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cage

Barbara Neubert December 21, 2015

Last Real Detective

Bonnie Cardoza January 18, 2016

Remains of Innocence

Sue Banfield September 21, 2015

Rock with Wings

Nancy Woodling February 15, 2016