Plano Reads: April Book Clubs

Second Tuesday Book Club

Tuesday, April 12 at 7 p.m.
In-person at Schimelpfenig Library

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam 

Available as Print | eBook | eAudiobook 

Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quite reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. The houseowners, Ruth and G.H., arrive in the middle of the night in a panic. They say a sudden blackout has swept the city: the TV and internet are down, and no cell phone service. Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another? 

Examples:

Rasika: Flavors of India by Ashok Bajaj and Vikram Sunderam, available as eBook 

Tarkari: Vegetarian and Vegan Indian Dishes with Heart and Soul by Rohit Ghai, available as Print 

Mumbai Modern: Vegetarian Recipes Inspired by Indian Roots and California Cuisine by Amisha Dodhia Gurbani, available as Print 

Indian Cooking Unfolded by Raghavan Iyer, available as eBook 

Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey, available as eBook 

Chetna’s 30-Minute Indian: Quick and Easy Everyday Meals by Chetna Makan, available as Print 

Mystery Book Club

Thursday, April 21 at 7 p.m.

Hybrid, meeting in person at Haggard Library and virtually on Zoom 

The Tenant by Katrine Engberg 

Available as Print | eBook | eAudiobook 

When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist – and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit – or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? 

Brown Bag Book Club

Thursday, April 28 at 12 p.m.

In person at Parr Library — bring your lunch and discuss the featured book

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell 

Available as Print | eBook | eAudiobook 

England, 1580. A young Latin tutor – penniless, bullied by a violent father – falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman – a wild creature who walks her family’s estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague.