May 2013: A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

From the 2003 Penguin Classics paperback edition:

"'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' 

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine."

For brief biographies of Charles Dickens, click here or here. To visit the Charles Dickens Museum, click here. 

We will meet to discuss A Tale Of Two Cities on Thursday, May 30, 2013, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).

April 2013: March by Geraldine Brooks

From the Penguin Books 2005 paperback edition:

"As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the Civil War, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, Mr. March, who has gone off to war, leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. From vibrant new England to the sensuous antebellum South, March adds adult resonance to Alcott's optimistic children's novel. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction."

You can visit Geraldine Brooks's site by clicking here. (Warning: Spoilers are possible if you read the March page).

To view the author's profile of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott's father and the basis for Mr. March (in both Little Women and March) entitled "Orpheus at the Plow," which appeared in the New Yorker a month before March was released in 2005, please click here or here.

We will meet to discuss March on Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in the Atlantic Highlands Borough Hall Building, Atlantic Highlands.

**To view "The Atlantic Highlands Evening Bookclub Turns 3!" scroll down or click here.**