January 2025 Book Selection

 

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 as we discuss, Dial “A” for Aunties by Jesse Q Sutanto. This is the first book featuring Meddelin (Meddy) Chan and her family.

The book description from the author’s website is: “What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family? You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue! When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business—"Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!"—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers. But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?”

We will be meeting in the Conference Room at 6:30 pm and on Zoom. For more information, ask Sara at the Reference Desk.

December 2024 Book Selection

 

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday December 3, 2024. We will be discussing The Off-Islander by Peter Colt. This is the first book featuring Boston PI Andy Roark. 

 The book description from the publisher’s website is: “Boston, 1982. P.I. Andy Roark has spent the past decade trying to fit back into the world. In Vietnam, there was order and purpose. Everything—no matter how brutal—happened for a reason. Now, after brief stints in college and with the police force, it’s enough for him to take on the occasional divorce or insurance fraud case. Roark’s childhood friend, Danny Sullivan, dragged himself out of the Southie gutter to become a respected and powerful lawyer. Now he wants Roark to help one of his clients find her missing father. The case takes Roark to the beaches of Nantucket, where Roark’s finely-honed senses alert him to danger just below the island’s picturesque surface—where the biggest case of Roark’s career may just shatter what little peace of mind he has left . . .”  

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 PM and on Zoom. For more information, see Sara at the Reference Desk.

November 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday November 12, 2024. We will be discussing, A Rip through Time by Kelley Armstrong. This is the first book featuring Canadian Detective Mallory Atkinson who somehow goes from 2019 Edinburgh to 1869 Edinburgh. 

The book description from the author’s website is: “May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She’s drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness. May 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Mitchell had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she’d been strangled and left for dead . . . exactly one-hundred-and-fifty years before Mallory was strangled in the same spot. When Mallory wakes up in Catriona’s body in 1869, she must put aside her shock and adjust quickly to the reality: life as a housemaid to an undertaker in Victorian Scotland. She soon discovers that her boss, Dr. Gray, also moonlights as a medical examiner and has just taken on an intriguing case, the strangulation of a young man, similar to the attack on herself. Her only hope is that catching the murderer can lead her back to her modern life . . . before it’s too late.”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 PM and on Zoom. For more information, see Sara at the Reference Desk. We will be meeting on the 2nd Tuesday because the library will be closed on the 1st Tuesday.

 

October 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday October 1, 2024. We will be discussing The Man in the Queue. This is the first book by Josephine Tey, written during the “Golden Age of British Mysteries” featuring Inspector Alan Grant.

The book description from a publisher’s website is: “In 1920s London, the packed queue for the city’s most popular musical comedy is growing impatient. When the theatre doors open at last and the crowd surges forward, a man falls to the ground, dead-silently stabbed with a stiletto. Who killed him before melting away unseen into the night? As Inspector Alan Grant investigates, the mystery turns into a breathless manhunt leading from London all the way to the Scottish highlands and back, before at last a truth is revealed that shocks even the canny detective himself.”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 PM and on Zoom. For more information, see Sara at the Reference Desk.

 

September 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday September 3, 2024. We will be discussing Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings. This is the first book featuring Detective William Murdoch of the Toronto Police Department, which is the basis for the long running Canadian television series, Murdoch Mysteries.

The book description from the author’s website is: “In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the unclad body of a young woman is found naked and frozen in a quiet laneway. Acting Detective William Murdoch, driven by pity for the girl and the desire to secure his promotion, is determined to pursue every lead and reveal the truth. Although influential people pressure the police to solve the mystery quickly, when the girl is eventually identified, it becomes clear that those connected with her life have secrets to hide. Murdoch must use every detective skill he possesses as well as his understanding of human nature as he pursues the mystery through both brothels and drawing rooms, desperate to untangle the case before more lives are lost.”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 PM and on Zoom. For more information, see Sara at the Reference Desk.

August Book Club Meeting Cancelled

 Due to the postponement of the National Night Out, the library will be closing early on August 13th. The book club will not be  meeting. The next meeting will be September 3rd.

August 2024 Book Selection

 

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday August 13, 2024*. We will be discussing Eeny Meeny by M. J. Arlidge. This is the first book featuring Detective Inspector Helen Grace.

The book description from the publisher’s website is: “Two people are abducted, imprisoned, and left with a gun. As hunger and thirst set in, only one walks away alive.

It’s a game more twisted than any Detective Helen Grace has ever seen. If she hadn’t spoken with the shattered survivors herself, she almost wouldn’t believe them.

Helen is familiar with the dark sides of human nature, including her own, but this case—with its seemingly random victims—has her baffled. But as more people go missing, nothing will be more terrifying than when it all starts making sense….”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 pm and on Zoom. For more information, see Sara at the Reference Desk.

*We will be meeting on the 2^nd Tuesday in August.

July 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday July 2, 2024. We will be discussing The Dragon Man by Garry Disher. This is the first in the Peninsula Crimes series featuring Inspector Hal Challis.

The book description from the publisher’s website is: “A serial killer is on the loose in a small coastal town near Melbourne. Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his team must apprehend him before he strikes again. But first, Challis has to contend with the editor of a local newspaper who undermines his investigation at every turn, and with his wife, who attempts to resurrect their marriage through long-distance phone calls from a sanitarium, where she has been imprisoned for the past eight years for attempted murder. His.”

We will be meeting at 6:30 pm in the Second Floor Meeting Room and on Zoom. For more information please see Sara at the Reference Desk.

 

June 2024 Book Selection

 Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday June 11, 2024*. We will be discussing, The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey. This is the first book featuring Perveen Mistry, a female lawyer in Bombay, India in the 1920s.

The book description from the author’s website is: “Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with an Oxford, legal education, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women’s legal rights.

Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X—meaning she probably couldn’t even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah—in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger.”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 pm and on Zoom. For more information, contact Sara at the Reference Desk.

*We will be meeting on the second Tuesday for the month of June.*

May 2024 Book Selection

 

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday May 7, 2024 as we discuss, Death of Dishonorable Gentleman by Tessa Arlen. This is the first book featuring Lady Montfort, taking place in Edwardian England. 

The summary from the publisher’s website is, “Lady Montfort has been planning her annual summer costume ball for months, and with scrupulous care. Pulling together the food, flowers and a thousand other details for one of the most significant social occasions of the year is her happily accepted responsibility. But when her husband's degenerate nephew is found murdered, it's more than the ball that is ruined. In fact, Lady Montfort fears that the official police enquiry, driven by petty snobbery and class prejudice, is pointing towards her son as a potential suspect. Taking matters into her own hands, the rather over-imaginative countess enlists the help of her pragmatic housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, to investigate the case, track down the women that vanished the night of the murder, and clear her son's name. As the two women search for a runaway housemaid and a headstrong young woman, they unearth the hidden lives of Lady Montfort's close friends, servants and family and discover the identity of a murderer hiding in plain sight.”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 pm and on Zoom. For more information, please see Sara at the Reference Desk.

April 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday April 2 2024. We will be discussing And There He Kept Her by Joshua Moehling. This is the first book featuring Deputy Sheriff Ben Packard.

The book description from the author’s website is: “When two teenagers break into a house on a remote lake in search of prescription drugs, what starts as a simple burglary turns into a nightmare for all involved. Emmett Burr has secrets he's been keeping in his basement for more than two decades, and he'll do anything to keep his past from being revealed. As he gets the upper hand on his tormentors, the lines blur between victim, abuser, and protector. Personal tragedy has sent former police officer Ben Packard back to the small Minnesota town of Sandy Lake in search of a fresh start. Now a sheriff's deputy, Packard is leading the investigation into the missing teens, motivated by a family connection. As clues dry up and time runs out to save them, Packard is forced to reveal his own secrets and dig deep to uncover the dark past of the place he now calls home.”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 pm and on Zoom. For more information, please see Sara at the Reference Desk.

 

March 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday March 5, 2024. We will be discussing Cold Tuscan Stone by David P. Wagner. This is the first book featuring Rick Montoya, an American translator living in Rome.

The book description from the publisher’s website is: “Rick Montoya has moved from New Mexico to Rome, embracing the life of a translator. He's settling in to la dolce vita when a school friend who is now senior in the Italian Art Squad recruits Rick for an unofficial undercover role. Armed with a list of galleries, suspects, and an expense account, Rick arrives in Tuscany posing as a buyer for a gallery, ready to spend his days sipping wine and examining Roman artifacts to flush out burial urn traffickers. But before sunset on Rick's first day in Volterra, a gallery employee dies in a brutal fall from a high cliff. The local Commissario and his team consider Rick an amateur, and worse, a foreigner. And now they suspect him in the dead man's murder. While the Volterra squad pursues its leads, Rick continues to meeting his own suspects: a museum director, a top gallery owner, a low-profile import/export businessman and his enterprising color-coordinated assistant, and a sensuous heiress with a private art specialty and clientele. As the murder mystery and the art trafficking heat up, has Rick's role made him the target of both cops and criminals?”

We will be meeting in the Second Floor Meeting Room at 6:30 pm and on Zoom. For more information, see Sara at the Reference Desk.

 

February 2024 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday February 6, 2024. We will be discussing, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. This is the first in the Thursday Murder Club series, featuring four senior citizens living in a retirement village. The book description from the publisher’s website is: “Every Thursday, four unlikely friends meet in the Jigsaw Room at the luxurious Coopers Chase Retirement Village to solve cold cases that have been languishing on the books for years. There’s Red Ron, the infamous former socialist firebrand, still causing trouble wherever he can; gentle Joyce, widowed, pining for another resident, but surely not as innocent as she seems; Ibrahim, a former therapist who understands the darker side of human nature; and Elizabeth? Well, no one is quite sure who she really is, but she’s definitely not a woman to underestimate. Though they may be in their seventies, Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Joyce, and Ron still have a few tricks up their sleeves. When a local property developer winds up dead, The Thursday Murder Club finds themselves in the middle of their first live case—can the four catch the killer before it’s too late?”  We will be meeting in the Second Floor Conference Room at 6:30 pm, and through Zoom. For more information, please see Sara at the Reference Desk.