Contemporary Classics with Marsha Bansavage takes place virtually and is usually on the first Monday of the month. Multiple copies of the selected book are available at the service desk.
This is a series of events, you only need to register once to receive a reminder email and zoom link for all dates in the series.
Registration required, to receive the link for this series of virtual programs.
Monday, September 8
All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
Image credit: Syndetics
“1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the smalltown of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges–Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another. A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope.”
(Syndetics)
Monday, October 6
You Like It Darker by Stephen King
Image credit: Syndetics
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life–both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker , readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again. “Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo , a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance–with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.”
(Syndetics)
Monday, November 3
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
Image credit: Syndetics
“Stéphane Bréitwieser is the most prolific art thief of all time. He pulled off more than 200 heists, often in crowded museums in broad daylight. His girlfriend served as his accomplice. His collection was worth an estimated $2 billion. He never sold a piece, displaying his stolen art in his attic bedroom. He felt like a king. Until everything came to a shocking end. In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, Michael Finkel gives us one of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of our times, a riveting story of art, theft, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.”
(Syndetics)
Monday, December 8
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Image credit: Syndetics
“Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts–from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan–have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.”
(Syndetics)
