August’s book club picks are now available for borrowing! Just ask for a copy at the public service desk. These books are for anyone to borrow; you don’t have to attend the associated discussion. Here’s a bit more about each book:

Mystery Lovers Book Club, 5 p.m. Aug. 2

Blindsighted, by Karin Slaughter. A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it’s only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer’s twisted work becomes clear. Sara’s ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation, which grows even more macabre a few days later, when another local woman is found crucified.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club, 7 p.m. Aug. 8

Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the Colonial Defense Force. The CDF doesn’t want young people; they want people who carry the skills of decades of living. You’ll serve two years at the front. If you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead of your own one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking the deal. He has a vague idea of what to expect. The actual fight is far harder, and stranger, than he can imagine. 

Nonfiction Book Club, 12 p.m. Aug. 11

Olive the Lionheart, by Brad Ricca. In 1910, Olive MacLeod, a 30-year-old, redheaded Scottish aristocrat, received word that her fiancé, the famous naturalist Boyd Alexander, was missing in Africa. So she went to find him. This is the thrilling true story of her astonishing journey. In jungles, swamps, cities and deserts, Olive comes face-to-face with cobras, a murderous leopard cult, a haunted forest, and even two adorable lion cubs that she adopts as her own. It’s a love story that defies all boundaries.

Third Thursday Book Club, 7 p.m. Aug. 17

The Boy in the Field, by Margot Livesey. One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Over the course of the autumn, as each of the siblings confronts the complications and contradictions of their approaching adulthood, they find themselves at once drawn together and driven apart.

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