Pages Book Club's Picks!
The exact year Pages Book Club started is not known. The following excerpt is written by Pat Horner who joined in 2003. “I joined Book Club in January, 2003. We met in the old part of the original library before the new addition was built. I think there was 6 of us. We took turns each month introducing a book of our choice and after our meeting we wrote a report which was published in the Western Wheel. Mine was Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Goldman.”
Now there are eighteen members ande we still meet monthly at the Okotoks Public Library. June and December are lunch meetings. Book reviews are informal. Some members choose to read their written reviews while others prefer to give an oral review. A very eclectic group! Wide variety of books! Great discussions! Lots of laughter!
The book woman of Troublesome Creek
Richardson, Kim Michele, author
2019
Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however; she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the government's new book program, and along her treacherous route, Cussy faces doubters at every turn. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the complex and hardscrabble Kentuckians, she's going to have to confront dangers and prejudice as old as the Appalachias, and suspicion as deep as the holler. Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, [this] is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere--even back home.
The diamond eye : a novel
Quinn, Kate, author
2022
In the city of Kiev, Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job - but Hitler's invasion of Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper - a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. Still reeling from war wounds, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in Washington, DC. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.
A gentleman in Moscow
Towles, Amor, author
2016
When, in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he's sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
The nightingale
Hannah, Kristin, author
2015
Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. Younger, bolder sister Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann lives a quiet and content life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. When World War II strikes and Antoine is sent off to fight, Viann and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope. As the war progresses, it's not only the sisters' relationship that is tested, but also their strength and their individual senses of right and wrong. With life as they know it changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.
The rose code : a novel
Quinn, Kate, author
2021
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, a mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together.
Where the crawdads sing
Owens, Delia, author
2018
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. Kya Clark is not what they say. Abandoned at ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh. With just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world -- until the unthinkable happens.