RAVEN BOOK GROUPS

The Raven sponsors two mystery book groups and one general (fiction/nonfiction) group. One of the best parts about reading is the opportunity to discuss a book with others. Join in on good food and conversation! Anyone is welcome to attend these book groups. Telephone the store for additional information. (785) 749-3300.

In the near future, America is crushed by a financial crisis, and Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Then Lenny Abramov, son of an Russian immigrant janitor an ardent fan of “printed, bound media artifacts” (books), meets Eunice Park, an impossibly cute Korean-American woman with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. Could falling in love redeem a planet falling apart?

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious ‘Third Force’. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler finds it hard to stand and watch.

Michelle LeBeau, the child of a white American father and a Japanese mother, lives with her grandparents in Deerhorn, Wisconsin--a small town that had been entirely white before her arrival. Rejected and bullied, Michelle spends her time reading, avoiding fights, and roaming the countryside with her dog Brett. She idolizes her grandfather, Charlie LeBeau, an expert hunter and former minor league baseball player who is one of the town's most respected men. Charlie strongly disapproves of his son's marriage to Michelle's mother but dotes on his only grandchild.

6:30pm; upstairs at Free State Brewery
Upcoming meetings:

In a small Mississippi town, two men are torn apart by circumstance and reunited by tragedy, in this resonant new novel from the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed “Hell at the Breech.”

A classic is back. Ten strangers, each with a dark secret, are gathered together on an isolated island by a mysterious host. One by one, they die–and before the weekend is out, there will be none.

The first novel in John le Carré's celebrated Karla trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a heart-stopping tale of international intrigue. The man he knew as "Control" is dead, and the young Turks who forced him out now run the Circus. But George Smiley isn't quite ready for retirement-especially when a pretty, would-be defector surfaces with a shocking accusation: a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest level of British Intelligence. Relying only on his wits and a small, loyal cadre, Smiley recognizes the hand of Karla-his Moscow Centre nemesis-and sets a trap to catch the traitor.

11:45am at the Eldridge Hotel restaurant
Upcoming meetings:

Detective Inspector Darko Dawson–dedicated family man, rebel in the office, ace in the field–is sent to a sleepy corner of Ghana to investigate the suspicious death of a promising female medical student.

In a small Mississippi town, two men are torn apart by circumstance and reunited by tragedy, in this resonant new novel from the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed “Hell at the Breech.”

After the sudden death of her parents, author Erica Falck returns to her childhood home in the small west coast community of Fjällbacka. When Alex Wijkner, one of Erica’s childhood friends, is found murdered, she is drawn into a web of deception, lies and hidden secrets. Something that happened 25 years earlier still casts its ugly shadow over Alex and the people around her. At first reluctantly, but then with ever growing curiosity, Erica decides to find out who is willing to take such drastic measures in order to prevent old truths from coming out. At the same time she has to deal with personal problems, a budding romance and the feeling that, at the age of 35, she doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life…

When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he's about to be thrust onto the hunt for the holy grail of Holmes-ophiles: the missing diary. But when the world's leading Doylean scholar is found murdered in his hotel room, it is Harold - using wisdom and methods gleaned from countless detective stories - who takes up the search, both for the diary and for the killer.

From a true and shocking event-the bombing of lower Manhattan in September 1920-Jed Rubenfeld weaves a twisting and thrilling work of fiction as a physician, a female radiochemist, and a police official come to believe that the inexplicable attack is only part of a larger plan. It's a conspiracy that takes them from Paris to Prague, from the Vienna home of Sigmund Freud to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., and ultimately to the depths of our most savage human instincts where there lies the shocking truth behind that fateful day.

Debut novelist Imogen Robertson won the London Telegraph's First Thousand Words of a Novel competition in 2007 with the opening of Instruments of Darkness. The finished work is a fast-paced historical mystery starring a pair of amateur eighteenth-century sleuths with razor-sharp minds. When Harriet Westerman, the unconventional mistress of a Sussex manor, finds a dead man on her grounds, she enlists reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer. Moving from drawing room to dissecting room, from dark London streets to the gentrified countryside, Instruments of Darkness is a gripping tale of the forbidding Thornleigh Hall and an unlikely forensic duo determined to uncover its deadly secrets.

When an art restorer is murdered and a portrait by Rembrandt is stolen, Gabriel Allon is pulled into a race across the globe against a group of powerful men who will do anything to keep the truth about the painting hidden...