Mystery Book Club

Next date: Monday, August 25, 2025 | 07:00 PM to 08:00 PM

Our newest book club is all mysteries!  Beginning in January 2025, we'll meet on the 4th Monday of each month, 7:00-8:00 p.m., to discuss a mystery book chosen by the group. 

Drop-in; no registration needed.  To request a copy of the book, click here to do so through our online catalog; or contact us at the email or phone number under the Contact section on the right.

Upcoming books:

August: A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn, including Jane Marple, are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette which reads: ‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.’ A childish practical joke? Or a hoax intended to scare poor Letitia Blacklock? Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, a crowd begins to gather at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out… (from www.agathachristie.com)

 

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September: The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen

Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she’s living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement.

But when a body turns up in Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a message from former foes who haven’t forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends―all retirees from the CIA―to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why. This “Martini Club” of former spies may be retired, but they still have a few useful skills that they’re eager to use again, if only to spice up their rather sedate new lives. (from www.tessgerritsen.com)

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October: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

A murder on the high seas. A remarkable detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist. It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent. But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered. Anyone could be to blame. Even a demon. And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel. With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board. (from www.sourcebooks.com) 

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 November: The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman

To Dr. Bergen McKee, the talk of witchcraft on the lonely Lukachukai plateau meant only an opportunity to prove his theory of the social usefulness of superstition. To Joe Leaphorn of the Law and Order Division, gossip about the Navajo Wolf spreading among the Red Forehead Clan, meant a threat - potential trouble of the sort he was hired to prevent . But to Luis Horseman, chanting to the Talking God on the rimrock above Many Ruins Canyon, the Navajo Wolf was real and terrible. Luis was on the run and now this big man with the wolf skin denied him his safe hiding place.

Then they found Luis' body - its mouth filled with sand - and the talk of witchcraft took on a new dimension. For one of Horseman's young kinsmen, it became a matter of revenge. For Joe Leaphorn, it became an urgent and baffling challenge to his logic. And for Bergen McKee, the academic problem of understanding evil became suddenly a question of life or death. (from The Tony Hillerman Portal)

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December: Death Comes to Pemberly by P.D. James

The world is classic Jane Austen. The mystery is vintage P. D. James.

The year is 1803, and Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the nursery, Elizabeth’s beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley live nearby, and the orderly world of Pemberley seems unassailable. But all this is threatened when, on the eve of the annual autumn ball, the guests are preparing to retire for the night and a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley’s wild woodland. As it pulls up, Lydia Wickham – Elizabeth Bennet’s younger, unreliable sister – stumbles out screaming that her husband has been murdered.  (from www.pdjames.co.uk)

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January 2026: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Intrigue, investigations, thievery, drugs and murder all make an appearance in Collins’s classic who-done-it, The Moonstone. Published in serial form in 1868, it was inspired in part by a spectacular murder case widely reported in the early 1860s.

Collins’s story revolves around a diamond stolen from a Hindu holy place. On her eighteenth birthday, Rachel Verinder receives the diamond, but by the following morning the stone has been stolen again. As the story unravels through multiple eyewitness accounts, the elderly Sergeant Cuff—with a face “sharp as a hatchet”—looks for the culprit. (from Broadview Press)

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Past titles:

• Dog on It by Spencer Quinn
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Caveman's Valentine by George Dawes Green
• Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
• In the Woods by Tana French
• The Maid by Nita Prose
• Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg.

   

When

Location

Conference Room, Whippany, 07981