My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

July 2, 2021

Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife.

Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood (bleach, bleach, and more bleach), the best way to move a body (wrap it in sheets like a mummy), and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend.

Mark Raymond will read a few chapters of this novel by Oyinkan Braithwaite, which was nominated for the 2019 Booker Prize and winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

July 13, 2021

In her tenth collection, Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, creates narratives that loop and swerve like memory, conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.

A tough-minded housekeeper jettisons the habits of a lifetime because of a teenager’s practical joke. A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife’s nursing-home romance.

Penn’s Village member Marcia Kravis will read the short story “Post and Beam” from this collection.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

July 15, 2021

Ambrose Bierce’s haunting 1890 short story, “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” has a modern twist ending that never gets old.

The narrative concerns the final thoughts of a Southern planter as he is being hanged by Union soldiers. In the brief period between the tightening of the noose and the actual breaking of his neck, something happens. The rope breaks and the man escapes. Or the man imagines he escapes. Which is it?

Pleading Guilty

July 23, 2021

Scott Turow's Pleading Guilty takes us back to Kindle County, where skies are generally gray and the truth is seldom simple, in an edge-of-the-chair story rife with indelible characters and riveting suspense.

The star litigator from a top-notch law firm has gone missing, along with 5.6 million dollars from a class-action settlement, and "Mack" Malloy, a foul-mouthed ex-cop and partner-on-the-wane must find both. Immediately.

Bob Dever read a selection from the book, which was published in 1993, and is Scott Turow's third novel.

I, Claudius

August 3, 2021

Once a rather bookish young man with a limp and a stammer, Claudius spent most of his time trying to stay away from the danger and risk of the line of ascension. Yet, on the death of Caligula, Claudius finds himself next in line for the throne, and must stay alive as well as keep control.

Drawing on the histories of Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus, noted historian and classicist Robert Graves tells the story of the much-maligned Emperor Claudius with both skill and compassion.

Dennis McGlade will read one chapter of the book.

Twelve Days of Lockdown

August 13, 2021

A parody of the ubiquitous “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Jean Haskell read “Twelve Days of Lockdown,” her tribute to the creative ways we all got through the pandemic.

While we might not know what to do with a partridge in a pear tree, thanks to Covid-19 we all know what to do with sourdough starter! Come enjoy reminiscing about our shared experience – if it had only lasted 12 days!

Ordeal by Golf

August 17, 2021

Brian Wengenroth read another story in P. G. Wodehouse’s collection of short stories about golf, The Clicking of Cuthbert.

The Oldest Member returns in this story observing, from the clubhouse of an unnamed golf club somewhere in England around 1920, a group of players struggling on the course. One of them tries to blame his caddie for distracting him.

In this story, “Ordeal by Golf,” the Oldest Member remarks that few men possess the proper golfing temperament, and is reminded of a story about Mitchell Holmes. He then proceeds, unbidden needless to say, to relate the story of Mitchell. While many of us are familiar with the idea that team sports help build skills important in life, the surprise ending of this story shows how even the solo game of golf can be an important definer of what can make a person successful.

A Ride with Olympy

August 20, 2021

James Thurber’s "A Ride With Olympy" first appeared in the New Yorker of April 30, 1938. It was collected in My World and Welcome to It and in The Thurber Carnival.

This is an excellent example -- apart from the story's own considerable pleasures —of why Thurber is considered one of the finest humorists of the 20th century. Uniquely among major American literary figures, he became equally well known for his simple, surrealistic drawings and cartoons.

Judith Sachs read the story of an automobile trip the author takes with his Russian gardener at the wheel.

Selections from Uncle Wellington's Wives

September 3, 2021

"Uncle Wellington's Wives” is the tale of ill-fated Wellington Braboy, who journeys to the North, mythic land of wealth and opportunity, only to realize that life there — despite a newly-acquired white wife — proves increasingly difficult for the black man.

Perhaps the most influential African American writer of fiction around the turn of the twentieth century, Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born in 1858 to free African American parents living in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the first African American writer whose texts were published predominantly by leading periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly and The Outlook, and major publishers, including Houghton Mifflin and Doubleday.

Chesnutt repeatedly unveiled the nation's hypocrisy in claiming social equality among the races while gradually embracing the fierce system of segregation that characterized the North and the South at that time. In 1928, he was awarded the Springarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in recognition of his literary achievements.

Selections from Uncle Wellington's Wives

September 8, 2021

"Uncle Wellington's Wives” is the tale of ill-fated Wellington Braboy, who journeys to the North, mythic land of wealth and opportunity, only to realize that life there — despite a newly-acquired white wife — proves increasingly difficult for the black man.

Perhaps the most influential African American writer of fiction around the turn of the twentieth century, Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born in 1858 to free African American parents living in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the first African American writer whose texts were published predominantly by leading periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly and The Outlook, and major publishers, including Houghton Mifflin and Doubleday.

Chesnutt repeatedly unveiled the nation's hypocrisy in claiming social equality among the races while gradually embracing the fierce system of segregation that characterized the North and the South at that time. In 1928, he was awarded the Springarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in recognition of his literary achievements.

A Halloween Eve Scary Story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe

Get ready for Halloween with the ultimate scary story!

Charlie Berliner read "The Tell-Tale Heart," a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. The story is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity, while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye,” as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime.

Ultimately, the narrator's actions result in hearing a thumping sound, which the narrator interprets as the dead man's beating heart.