Barista's Book Group

When: Every Third Wednesday at 7 p.m.
Where: Plaza Branch
Contact: Diana Hyle at 816.701.3481

2012 Schedule

January 18
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell.

Sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly's father has disappeared. It's nothing new – but this time he's out on bail for cooking crank, and if he doesn't show for his hearing, the county will take the house Ree shares with her young brothers and a mother who is barely sane. Ree is determined to find her father, and tracks him through the Ozark snowdrifts and up and down rutted mountain roads – and through the people she hopes will have seen him: fellow meth dealers, old girlfriends, and the legions of Dolly kith and kin both inside and outside the law.

February 15
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by 12 outlying districts. Long ago, the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games," a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the games.

March 21
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke.

Houston lawyer Jay Porter runs a floundering small-time practice – but his financial fate becomes the least of his worries after he rescues a floundering woman from drowning in the Buffalo Bayou. Suddenly, trouble comes for Jay from all sides as he investigates a murder near the bayou that leads him to the doorsteps of Houston’s elite and onto secreted oil fields. Despite escalating threats, Jay refuses to involve the police – certain that his past as a Civil Rights activist alongside Stoakly Carmichael as well as his own narrow acquittal from murder charges would bring down the law on him.

April 18
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

Amid the great triumphs and notable persons attracted to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, there also came a serial killer – lured by anonymity afforded by a dense sprawl populated by millions of tourists. While famed architect Daniel Hudson Burnham constructed a 600-acre urban fairground, the self-named H.H. Holmes built a more infamous career, dismembering an estimated 200 young women over six months while the jubilee raged. Larson offers a seamless yet bifurcated story of inspiring artistic vision and gross depravity by focusing on the master builder whose greatest work became a pristine playground for a master killer.

Previous Reads:
December 2011 Origins of the Specious by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman.
November 2011 Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk.
October 2011 Just Like Us by Helen Thorpe.
September 2011 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.
August 2011 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
July 2011 The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen.
June 2011 Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.
May 2011 Room by Emma Donoghue.
April 2011 Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.
March 2011 The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
February 2011 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
January 2011 Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls.