Cora J. Belden Library - Mystery Book Discussion

Welcome! Come join our Mystery Book Discussion, now meeting in person! This group loves to read, you guessed it: mysteries! Registration is required via our online calendar. Extra copies of each book will be available to checkout from the library. Please contact the Information Desk at 860-258-7623 with any questions!

Here is a schedule of the upcoming discussions:

If I Die Tonight - Alison Gaylin

July 6 at 6:30 pm - Click HERE to register

Late one night in the quiet Hudson Valley town of Havenkill, a distraught woman stumbles into the police station - and lives are changed forever.

Aimee En, once a darling of the '80s pop music scene, claims that a teenage boy stole her car, then ran over another young man who'd rushed to help.

As Liam Miller's life hangs in the balance, the events of that fateful night begin to come into focus. But is everything as it seems?

The case quickly consumes social media, transforming Liam, a local high-school football star, into a folk hero, and the suspect, a high school outcast named Wade Reed, into a depraved would-be killer. But is Wade really guilty? And if he isn't, why won't he talk?

Told from a kaleidoscope of viewpoints - Wade's mother Jackie, his younger brother Connor, Aimee En, and Pearl Maze, a young police officer with a tragic past, If I Die Tonight is a story of family ties and dark secrets - and the lengths we'll go to protect ourselves.

Clark and Division - Naomi Hirahara

August 3 at 6:30 pm - Click HERE to register

Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train.

Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth.

Inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.