The Mansfield Public Library Fiction Book Club and Mystery Book Club now offers both online and in-person book discussions.
Registration Required for invitation to Zoom Meeting Room. CLICK HERE to register for a discussion.
Registrants will receive the invitation to the Zoom Meeting Room on the day of the event.
The Mystery Book Club meets on the 1st Thursday of the month at 6:30pm (unless otherwise noted).
New members are always welcome and encouraged to attend!
To request a title from the SAILS catalog, please click on image of book.
January 2024
Meets January 4th
The Verifiers by Jane Pek
Introducing Claudia Lin: a sharp-witted amateur sleuth for the 21st century. This debut novel follows Claudia as she verifies people’s online lives, and lies, for a dating detective agency in New York City. Until a client with an unusual request goes missing. . . .
“The world of social media, big tech and internet connectivity provides fertile new ground for humans to deceive, defraud and possibly murder one another. . . . Well rendered and charming. . . . Original and intriguing.” —The New York Times Book Review
Claudia is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she’s just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency.
A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she’s landed her ideal job. But when a client vanishes, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.–Amazon
February 2024
Meets February 1st
Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers by Sara Ackerman
A close-up look at how wartime chaos affects a tight-knit group of women living on Hawaii in 1944 at the height of Pacific combat…. [Violet’s] journey overcoming her trials and grief through friendship, family, and romance is a story of strength and perseverance.”—Booklist
Violet Iverson and her young daughter, Ella, are piecing their lives together after the disappearance of her husband. As rumors swirl and questions about his loyalties surface, Violet believes Ella knows something. But Ella is stubbornly silent. Something—or someone—has scared her.
With the island overrun by troops training for a secret mission, tension and suspicion between neighbors is rising. To get through the difficult days, Violet bands together with her close friends and they open a pie stand near the military base, offering the soldiers a little homemade comfort.
Try as she might, Violet can’t ignore her attraction to the brash marine who comes to her aid when the women are accused of spying. Desperate to discover the truth behind what happened to her husband, while keeping her friends and daughter safe, Violet is torn by guilt, fear and longing as she faces losing everything. Again.–Amazon
March 2024
Meets March 7th
The bestselling author delves into his past and discovers the inspiring story of his grandmother’s extraordinary life
She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s―and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.
Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter’s grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who―together with his friend Dashiell Hammett―would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed.
Moving, haunting, and as fast-paced as a novel, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, her long forgotten story is once again visible.–Amazon
April 2024
Meets April 4th
May 2024
Meets May 2nd
The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
June 2024
Meets June 6th
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
September 2024
Meets September 5th
Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod by Casey Sherman
October 2024
Meets October 3rd
Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McCallister
November 2024
Meets November 7th
The Maid by Nita Prose
December 2024
Meets December 5th
The Curse of Penryth Hall by Jess Armstrong
Click Past Discussions Mystery Book Club for a list of past titles of books discussed by the Mystery Book Club.
Updated January 21, 2024