The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin

The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin

The Janissary Tree

by Jason Goodwin

The Library Book Club meeting for this book will be March 8, 2018, at 6:30 in the entry foyer.

A limited number of book club reading copies will be available for checkout from the circulation desk about a month prior to the meeting.

The year is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the sultan of the Ottoman Empire feels he has no choice but to follow suit. But just as he’s poised to announce sweeping political change, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind the killings?

Deep in the Abode of Felicity, the most forbidden district of Topkapi Palace, the sultan – ruler of the Black Sea and the White, ruler of Rumelia and Mingrelia, lord of Anatolia and Ionia, Romania and Macedonia, Protector of the Holy Cities, steely rider through the realms of bliss – announces, “Send for Yashim.” Leading us through the palace’s luxurious seraglios and Istanbul’s teeming streets, Yashim places together the clues.

He is not alone. He depends on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and the Creole-born queen mother. He manages to find sweet salvation in the arms of another man’s wife (this is not your everyday eunuch!). And he introduces us to the Janissaries.

For four hundred years, they were the empire’s elite soldiers. But they grew too powerful, and ten years earlier the sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback? And if they are, how can they be stopped without throwing Istanbul into political chaos?

book 1 in the Yashim the Eunuch series

Ratings and Reviews from the Librarians

Bekka rated it ★★★★ and said “This took me a little while to get into it, but I ended up liking it quite a bit. The mystery was well done, and the exotic locale is quite fun.”

Cathy rated it ★★★★.

Genius: The Game by Leopoldo Gout

Genius: The Game by Leopoldo Gout

Genius: The Game

by Leopoldo Gout

Trust no one. Every camera is an eye. Every microphone an ear. Find me and we can stop him together.

The Game: Get ready for Zero Hour as 200 geniuses from around the world go head to head in a competition hand-devised by India’s youngest CEO and visionary.

The Players:
Rex– One of the best programmers/hackers in the world, this 16-year-old Mexican-American is determined to find his missing brother.
Tunde– This 14-year-old self-taught engineering genius has drawn the attention of a ruthless military warlord by single-handedly bringing electricity and internet to his small Nigerian village.
Painted Wolf– One of China’s most respected activist bloggers, this mysterious 16-year-old is being pulled into the spotlight by her father’s new deal with a corrupt Chinese official.

The Stakes: Are higher than you can imagine. Like life and death. Welcome to the revolution. And get ready to run.

book 1 in the Genius series

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express

by Agatha Christie

A Library Book Club meeting for this book was held February 16, 2017, as part of On the Same Page, the Madison Library District’s annual community reading program.

Starting mid-January, free copies of the book were available at the library while supplies lasted.

“The murderer is with us–on the train now . . .”

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.

Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again . . .

book 10 in the Hercule Poirot series

Ratings and Reviews from the Librarians

Cathy rated it ★★★★1/2 and said “Why have I never read Agatha Christie before? I think she eventually turned into one of those authors that I was “supposed to read” that were “good for me” and subconsciously I equated her with a chore read. Honestly, much of the beginning felt a little that way as all the evidence was collected, hashed, and then rehashed, and then . . . Wow! As the locomotive picked up steam so to speak it really went barreling down the line right to the last page where I literally gasped, then laughed, then clapped. I got to get my hands on more Christie.”

Spider Mountain by P. T. Deutermann

Spider Mountain by P. T. Deutermann

Spider Mountain

by P. T. Deutermann

A huge dog came out of the woods from our right and lunged at my face. I ducked the snapping jaws by throwing myself backward hard enough to crack my head on the ground. The dog went over my head, landing in a heap, but then whirled around…

Summoned by a friend, ex-cop Cam Richter agrees to do a favor: investigate the assault of a young woman in a remote area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cam knows the misty hills and shadowed hollers of the park, and his outdoor skills might break a case that local cops can’t—or maybe don’t want to—solve.

Cam has no idea how dangerous his search will become, because in this part of Appalachia, matriarch Grinny Creigh and her extended family destroy those who intrude into their web. The Creighs control the crystal meth trade and own just about everything and everyone in their neck of the woods. But they also operate a much worse enterprise, a dark secret that terrifies any children unfortunate enough to come within their grasp.

Blocked by a menacing sheriff with ties to the family, Cam is shut down and sent away, no wiser about why the young woman was attacked and what she saw. He returns, stealthily stalking the Creighs and their secrets, moving ever closer to Grinny’s mountain house and what it might conceal…not knowing that his presence on her web has been detected, and that the Creighs are hunting him with creatures bred for that purpose and starved into relentless fury.

Spider Mountain features nonstop action, frightening night pursuits through deep wilderness, and a shocking finale—a masterful novel of suspense by the author of The Cat Dancers.

Blind Descent by Nevada Barr

Blind Descent by Nevada Barr

Blind Descent

by Nevada Barr

Lechuguilla Cavern is a man-eating cave discovered in New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the mid-1980s. Estimated to extend for more than three hundred miles, only ninety of them mapped, the cave was formed by acid burning away the limestone; corridors, pits, cramped wormholes, cliffs, and splendid rooms the size of football fields tangle together in a maze shrouded in the utter darkness of the underground. When a fellow ranger is injured in a caving accident, Anna swallows her paralyzing fear of small spaces and descends into Lechuguilla to help a friend in need. Worse than the claustrophobia that haunts her are the signs—some natural and some, more ominously, manmade—that not everyone is destined to emerge from this wondrous living tomb. The terrain is alien and hostile; the greed and destructive powers of mankind all too familiar. In this place of internal terrors, Anna must learn who it is she can trust and, in the end, decide who is to live and who is to die.

book 6 of the Anna Pigeon series

Ratings and Reviews from the Librarians

Cathy rated it ★★★★.

The Mediterranean Caper by Clive Cussler

The Mediterranean Caper by Clive Cussler

The Mediterranean Caper

by Clive Cussler

Dirk Pitt rides a tidal wave of intrigue in this classic Cussler.

On an isolated Greek island, a World War I fighter plane attacks a modern U.S. Air Force base—a mysterious saboteur preys on an American scientific expedition—and Dirk Pitt plays a deadly game of hunter and hunted with the elusive head of an international smuggling ring.

book 2 of the Dirk Pitt series

The Testament by John Grisham

The Testament by John Grisham

The Testament

by John Grisham

In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives.

Because Troy Phelan’s new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.

Enter the lawyers. Nate O’Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan’s family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman—pursued by enemies and friends alike—holds a stunning surprise of her own.

Ratings and Reviews from the Librarians

Cathy rated it ★★★★★.

The Partner by John Grisham

The Partner by John Grisham

The Partner

by John Grisham

They watched Danilo Silva for days before they finally grabbed him. He was living alone, a quiet life on a shady street in Brazil; a simple life in a modest home, certainly not one of luxury. Certainly no evidence of the fortune they thought he had stolen. He was much thinner and his face had been altered. He spoke a different language, and spoke it very well. But Danilo had a past with many chapters. Four years earlier he had been Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a prominent Biloxi law firm. He had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Then one cold winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car and died a horrible death. When he was buried his casket held nothing more than his ashes. From a short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial. Then he fled. Six weeks later, a fortune was stolen from his ex-law firm’s offshore account. And Patrick fled some more. But they found him.

Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

by Antonio Mendez & Matt Baglio

The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held dozens of Americans hostage, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics that still reverberates today. Beneath this crisis another shocking story was known by only a select few: six Americans escaped the embassy and hid within a city roiling with suspicion and fear. A top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them before they were detected. Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by a cast of expert forgers, deep-cover CIA operatives, foreign agents, and Hollywood special-effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fiction film called “Argo.” While pretending to find the ideal film backdrops, Mendez and a colleague succeeded in contacting the escapees and eventually smuggled them out of Iran.

After more than three decades, Antonio Mendez finally details the extraordinarily complex and dangerous operation he led. A riveting story of secret identities, international intrigue, and good old-fashioned American ingenuity, Argo is the pulse-pounding account of the history-making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage.

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