Book Groups at the Library
Virtual, International Murder Mystery—we have something for everyone. Interested in starting a new book group? Let us know!
Virtual Book Club
This online book club meets on the third Saturday of the month at 4:00 p.m.
January 17: Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
2026 Book Club Selections
January 17: Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid
February 21: In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
March 21: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
April 18: A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Gilliland (semi- local author who will join in the book club discussion)
May 16: How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
June 20: Hard Times, You Say? Smile, This is the Great Depression by R. Leslie Howe (local author who will join in the book club discussion)
July 18: Tell me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
August 15: Home Inside the Globe by Gail Straub (local author who will join in the book club discussion)
Sept 19: The Boy From the North Country by Susan Sussamn
Oct 17: Confessions of A Bar Brat: Growing Up In Rosendale NY by Judith A. Boggess (local author who will join in the book club discussion)
Nov 21: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Dec 19: The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
You can request a book, or ebook from the Mid-Hudson library system. Please call the library with any questions: 845-657-2482
International Murder Mystery Book Club
This book club meets in person at the library on the 3rd Monday of each month at 2 p.m., led by Henrietta Shannon.
January 26: The Last Party by Clare MacIntosh, #1 DC Morgan Series – Wales
It's the party to end all parties….but not everyone is here to celebrate.
On New Year's Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he's generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors.
But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.
On New Year's Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family―and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.
With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn't who wanted Rhys dead…but who finally killed him.
In a village with this many secrets, murder is just the beginning.
2026 International Mystery Book Club Selections
January 26: The Last Party by Clare MacIntosh, #1 DC Morgan Series – Wales
February 23: 6:40 to Montreal by Eva Jurczyk - Canada
March 23: Better the Blood by Michael Bennett, #1 in Hana Westerman Series - New Zealand
April 20: The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid, # 3 in Karen Pirie Series - Scotland
May 18: The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips - Pakistan
June 15: The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer – England
July 20: – TWO BOOKS:
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind – 18th Century Paris
and
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley- #1 Flavia de Luce Series – England
August 17: Sleep Well my Lady by Kwei Quartey - #2 in Emma Djan Investigation Series -Ghana
September 28: Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonine Swann - #1 in the SheepDetective Series - England
October 19: Red Wolf by Liza Marklund - #5 Annika Bengtzon Series – Sweden
November 16: The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O’Donnell - #1 Cutter and Bliss Series - Victorian England
December 21: An Enemy in the Village the Woods by Martin Walker - #18 Bruno, Chief of Police – Rural France
Defending Democracy Book Club
In-person book club meeting the first Tuesday of each month at 5:30 p.m., led by author David Corbett.
February: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt’s definitive work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history. It begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. This edition includes an introduction by Anne Applebaum – a leading voice on authoritarianism and Russian history – who fears that “once again, we are living in a world that Arendt would recognize.”
Hannah Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.
2026
January: No group meeting this month
February: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
March: Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right by Laura K. Field
April: Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer
May: Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp
Reading Away Our Teens
This new in-person teen book club will meet monthly on Thursdays from 5:00 - 6:00 pm at the Olive Free Library. It’s led by Jenny Albright, for teens ages 13 - 19.
January 22: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
This book tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favor of freedom and the most unexpected of alliances. Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness.” —Helen Macdonald in The New York Times Book Review's “By the Book."
In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break way from her controlling family—a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.
2026 (Forth Thursday)
January 22: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
February 26: TBD
March 26: TBD
April 23: TBD
May 28: TBD
June 25: TBD