Get Ready for Fall Fiction

The Portsmouth Public Library Fiction Book Group meets monthly on Mondays. There are two discussion sessions to choose from: 1 p.m. in the MacLeod Room, and 7 p.m. in the Hilton Garden Room. All are welcome to attend. Whenever possible copies of each title are borrowed from New Hampshire libraries in advance. Books are available for check out with your PPL card.

According to a press statement, here are the titles that will be read and discussed for the fall:

Sept. 14: Edge of the Earth by Christina Schwarz (2013)

In her impressive fourth novel, Schwarz (Drowning Ruth) illuminates the difficult lives led by lighthouse keepers in the late 1890s. Well-schooled Trudy (Gertrude) Schroeder abandons both her well-ordered life as a teacher in Milwaukee, Wis., and her engagement to childhood friend Ernst Dettweiler after she falls for and marries his cousin, Oskar Swann. An unconventional dreamer, Oskar decides to move to California to work in a lighthouse.

Oct. 19: The Girls by Lori Lansens (2007)

Conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen are linked at the side of the head, with separate brains and bodies. Born in a small town outside Toronto in the midst of a tornado and abandoned by their unwed teenage mother two weeks later, the girls are cared for by Aunt Lovey, a nurse who refuses to see them as deformed or even disabled. She raises them in Leaford, Ontario, where, at age 29, Rose, the more verbal and bookish twin, begins writing their story…

Nov. 9: Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole (2013)

Brockmole uses letters to tell a remarkable story of two women, their loves, their secrets, and two world wars, cutting to the important matters that letter writers struggle to put into just the right words. In 1912, young poet Mrs. Elspeth Dunn, who has never left Scotland’s Isle of Skye because of her fear of boats, receives her first fan letter from David Graham, a college student in Urbana, Ill. They begin a long correspondence.

All synopses from Publisher’s Weekly. Find out about all of the library’s book groups at cityofportsmouth.com/library/books-abdl.htm.