[MD-Sligo] Announcing the new list of upcoming books in the Sligo Creek Chapter book club!

[Jeff Baer]

Many thanks to the group who participated both in this past weekend's book discussion and the selection process for the new books to add to our reading list. This time around, there was a lot of consensus that so many of the nominated books were worthy candidates. We filled out our reading plan for the rest of this calendar year! See below!

Here is the updated list of which books we will be reading and then discussing together by Zoom. Anyone who would like to join the book club and receive the Zoom links, should reach out to me. There is never any obligation to read every book or attend every book club Zoom.

The full book Descriptions are provided even further below after this summary of upcoming books.

Summary of upcoming books for the book club:

May, 2025: "Vision, a memoir of blindness and justice" by David Tatel DB #122023 Duration = 10 hours and 22 minutes

June, 2025: "The betrayal of Ann Frank, a cold case investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan DB 107221 Duration= 10 hours and 44 minutes

July, 2025: "Murder by Lamplight" by Patrice McDonough DB 122014 Duration= 10 hours and 11 minutes

August, 2025: "The bodies keep coming" by Brian Williams, MD  DB #116691  Duration: 7 hours and 52 minutes

September 2025: (in part to recognize Hispanic Heritage Month) "Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut" by José Moreno Hernández and Monica Rojas Rubin
 (Joint Author)  DB 116999 Duration = 8 hours and 14 minutes

October, 2025: (to commemorate Blind Equality Achievement Month): "The Story of My Life", by Helen Keller, DB55883 Duration =16 hours, 20 minutes

November, 2025: " Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women's Olympic Team" by Elise Hooper  DB 101131  Duration: 12 hours and 5 minutes

December, 2025:  "The Twelve Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas" by James Patterson and Tad Safran  DB 116361
Duration: 6 hours and 7 minutes

 Please let me know if you would like help accessing any of these books for free via the lending system of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS), part of the Library of Congress.

Sincerely,
-Jeff Baer
Cell phone:(410) 499-0143
E-mail: jabaer811 at outlook.com

Book descriptions:

May, 2025: "Vision, a memoir of blindness and justice" by David Tatel DB #122023 Duration = 10 hours and 22 minutes

 GoodReads description: "A memoir by one of America’s most accomplished public servants and legal thinkers—who spent years denying and working around his blindness, before finally embracing it as an essential part of his identity. David Tatel has served nearly 30 years on America’s second highest court, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where many of our most crucial cases are resolved—or teed up for the Supreme Court. He has championed equal justice for his entire adult life; decided landmark environmental and voting cases; and embodied the ideal of what a great judge should be. Yet he has been blind for the past 50 of his 80-plus years. Initially, he depended upon aides to read texts to him, and more recently, a suite of hi-tech solutions has allowed him to listen to reams of documents at high speeds. At first, he tried to hide his deteriorating vision, and for years, he denied that it had any impact on his career. Only recently, partly thanks to his first-ever guide dog, Vixen, has he come to fully accept his blindness and the role it's played in his personal and professional lives. His story of fighting for justice over many decades, with and without eyesight, is an inspiration to us all."

June, 2025:

 "The betrayal of Ann Frank, a cold case investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan DB 107221 Duration: 10 hours and 44 minutes
Partial Good Reads Description:
"Less a mystery unsolved than a secret well kept...

Using new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques, an international team—led by an obsessed retired FBI agent—has finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why?

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands of pages of documents—some never before seen—and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest—and came to a shocking conclusion.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behavior of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust."


July, 2025:

 "Murder by lamplight" by Patrice McDonough DB 122014
Duration 10 hours and 11 minutes

Good Reads Description:
"In the twilight streets of Victorian London, a gruesome series of murders unfolds, and Dr. Julia Lewis—one of Britain’s first female physicians—along with the aloof Detective Inspector Tennant of Scotland Yard reluctantly team up to investigate in this atmospheric, vividly authentic historical mystery series debut.

November 1866: The grisly murder site in London’s East End is thronged with onlookers. None of them expect the calmly efficient young woman among them to be a medical doctor, arrived to examine the corpse. Inspector Richard Tennant, overseeing the investigation, at first makes no effort to disguise his skepticism. But Dr. Julia Lewis is accustomed to such condescension . . .

To study medicine, Julia had to leave Britain, where universities still bar their doors to women, and travel to America. She returned home to work in her grandfather’s practice—and to find London in the grip of a devastating cholera epidemic. In four years, however, she has seen nothing quite like this—a local clergyman’s body sexually mutilated and displayed in a manner that she—and Tennant—both suspect is personal.

Days later, another body is found with links to the first, and Tennant calls in Dr. Lewis again. The murderer begins sending the police taunting letters and tantalizing clues—though the trail leads in multiple directions, from London’s music halls to its grim workhouses and dank sewers. Lewis and Tennant struggle to understand the killer’s dark obsessions and motivations. But there is new urgency, for the doctor’s role appears to have shifted from expert to target. And this killer is no impulsive monster, but a fiendishly calculating opponent, determined to see his plan through to its terrifying conclusion . . ."

August, 2025:

"The bodies keep coming" by Brian Williams, MD   DB 116691
Duration: 7 hours and 52 minutes

Abbreviated Good Reads description:

"Trauma surgeon and professor Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all, from gunshot wounds to stabbings to traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Coming, Williams ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow the rage when patients told him to take out the trash.

Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, Williams tried to save the lives of police officers shot in Dallas in the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories about heroism more than hard truths about racism, Williams came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice, and what true healing looks like.

Now, in raw and intimate detail, Williams narrates not only the events of that night in 2016, but the grief and anger of a Black doctor on the front lines of trauma care...."


September, 2025:

."Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut" by José Moreno Hernández and Monica Rojas Rubin
 (Joint Author)  DB 116999
Good Reads Description:
"Born into a family of migrant workers, toiling in the fields by the age of six, Jose M. Hernàndez dreamed of traveling through the night skies on a rocket ship. Reaching for the Stars is the inspiring story of how he realized that dream, becoming the first Mexican-American astronaut.

Hernàndez didn't speak English till he was 12, and his peers often joined gangs, or skipped school. And yet, by his twenties he was part of an elite team helping develop technology for the early detection of breast cancer. He was turned down by NASA eleven times on his long journey to donning that famous orange space suit.

Hernàndez message of hard work, education, perseverance, of "reaching for the stars," makes this a classic American autobiography."


October, 2025:

"The Story of My Life", by Helen Keller, DB55883 Duration =16 hours, 20 minutes

 Partial Good Reads book description:

"When she was 19 months old, Helen Keller (1880–1968) suffered a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Not long after, she also became mute. Her tenacious struggle to overcome these handicaps-with the help of her inspired teacher, Anne Sullivan-is one of the great stories of human courage and dedication. In this classic autobiography, first published in 1903, Miss Keller recounts the first 22 years of her life, including the magical moment at the water pump when, recognizing the connection between the word "water" and the cold liquid flowing over her hand, she realized that objects had names..."

November, 2025:
 " Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women's Olympic Team" by Elise Hooper  DB 101131  Duration: 12 hours and 5 minutes

Abbreviated Good Reads Description:

"Fast Girls is a compelling, thrilling look at what it takes to be a female Olympian in pre-war America. Rich with historical detail and brilliant story-telling, the book follows three athletes on their path to compete – and win – in a man’s world...
Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany.

This inspiring story is based on the real lives of three little-known trailblazing women Olympians.  Perfect for readers who love untold stories of amazing women, such as The Only Woman in the Room, Hidden Figures, and The Lost Girls of Paris.

In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.

Outside of Boston, Louise Stokes, one of the few black girls in her town, sees competing as an opportunity to overcome the limitations placed on her. Eager to prove that she has what it takes to be a champion, she risks everything to join the Olympic team.

>From Missouri, Helen Stephens, awkward, tomboyish, and poor, is considered an outcast by her schoolmates, but she dreams of escaping the hardships of her farm life through athletic success. Her aspirations appear impossible until a chance encounter changes her life.

These three athletes will join with others to defy society’s expectations of what women can achieve. As tensions bring the United States and Europe closer and closer to the brink of war, Betty, Louise, and Helen must fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Nazi-sponsored 1936 Olympics in Berlin."

December, 2025:

   "The Twelve Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas" by  James Patterson and Tad Safran  DB 116361
Duration: 6 hours and 7 minutes

Good Reads Description:
"Every year at Christmastime, Will and Ella Sullivan, and their father, Henry, come to a family agreement: Christmas is a holiday for other people.

At their brownstone in Harlem, stockings go unstuffed, tinsel unstrewn, gifts unbought, mistletoe unhung, chestnuts unroasted, carols unplayed, cookies uncooked, a tree un-visible, and guests uninvited.

Until guests start arriving anyway. In pairs and sixes, in sevens and tens—they keep coming. And they stay. For twelve long, hard, topsy-turvy, very messy days. That’s when the Sullivans discover that those moments in life that defy hope, expectation, or even imagination, might be the best gifts of all."

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