All Over the Page -- August 14th -- Meet at Panera Bread Co. at 7:00p

The Bear and the Nightingale: a novel by Katherine Arden

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.

Bookies -- August 1st -- Meet in the Small Conference Room at 1:30p

Story of Charlotte’s Web: E.B. White’s eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic by Madeline Albright

As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E.B. White was obeying that oft repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats, White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. Painfully shy his entire life, "this boy," White once wrote of himself, "felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people." It is all the more impressive, therefore, how many people have felt a kinship with E.B. White. With Charlotte's Web, which has gone on to sell more than 45 million copies, the man William Shawn called "the most companionable of writers" lodged his own character, the avuncular author, into the hearts of generations of readers. In this book the author shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole" by mining the raw ore of his childhood friendship with animals in Mount Vernon, New York, translating his own passions and contradictions, delights and fears, into an all time classic. Blending White's correspondence with the likes of Ursula Nordstrom, James Thurber, and Harold Ross, the E.B. White papers at Cornell, and the archives of Harper Collins and the New Yorker into his own narrative, the author brings to life the shy boy whose animal stories, real and imaginary, made him famous around the world.

Literary Angles -- August 21st -- Meet in Small Conference Room at 1:30p

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.

Pardon Our Youth -- August 20th --Meet in Small Conference Room at 6p

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.

Renaissance Readers -- August 14th -- Meet in Small Conference Room at 10a

Doctor in Spite of Himself (a play) by Moliere

When the peasant woodcutter, Sganarelle, is mistaken as a doctor, he is surprised to find himself winning the respect of everyone in town. However, when he discovers that the source of a patient's inability to speak is the dread of her arranged marriage, Sganarelle helps her run off with her boyfriend, which leaves him, the "doctor," at the mercy of the girl's vengeful father. This rhymed-verse adaptation of Moliere's play uses wit and rhyme to tell the story of an ignorant peasant who is elevated to a position of authority, and the hilarity that ensues when no one can tell the difference. 

Unshelved -- August 8th -- Meet in Small Conference Room at 1p

The Kitchen House: a novel  by Kathleen Grissom

When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. 

Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.