General Instructions:
Please participate if you attend some or all of the mystery book club meetings, or plan to be participating during the next year that begins with September 2025 and continues through August 2026.
The deadline for all voting is midnight, Wednesday August 6.
We prefer that you do your actual voting online here. This simplifies the counting of the ballots. However,….
There is also a paper ballot. It can be used to help you plan how you will vote online. Or if you are not able to connect to the online ballot via your computer, phone, or other device, you can turn in the paper ballot to Maddy Willwerth, the Mystery Book Club leader and also Director of Adult Services at the Library. Get a copy at the library, or click here to view, download, and/or print your own paper ballot at home.
How do you decide which books to choose? Read a “blurb” or brief promotional summary of each book as shown in the library’s online catalog. Your shortcut to finding the book in the catalog is to use the link for each book in the list below. Tips:
• Every listing will have a short or perhaps more detailed book summary.
• You can also note the number of pages in the book; the year the book was published; and some possible “genres” into which the book perhaps fits.
• You can use all of that to determine if the story is contemporary or historical crime fiction. And where the story takes place.
• Then scroll way down past the copies available in different libraries until you see a blue bar on which opens a section called, “More About This Title.” (Note – not every book listing has this feature.) Click and open the section to find a grab-bag of more information (it differs from book to book). The blue bar looks like this:
Click links below to read a book’s blurb/summary from the library catalog (MVLC).
Ballot #2 Group (Please select at most 3 options.)
- I Need You To Read This by Jessa Maxwell
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
- Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
- The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocum
- The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
- Jackal by Erin E. Adams
- Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
Ballot #3 Group (Please select at most 2 options.)
- The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
- The Return of Farz Ali by Aamina Ahmed
- The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
- What You Leave Behind by Wanda M. Morris
- The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
Ballot #4 Group (Please select at most 1 option.)
- Circle In the Water by Marcia Muller
- We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
- Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie Rendon
Ballot #5 Group (Please select at most 1 option.)
- The Oligarch’s Daughter by Joseph Finder
- Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone
Ballot #6 Group (Please select at most 2 options.)
- Vanishing Point by Marcia Muller
- Nightshade by Michael Connelly
- The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen
- Double Deuce by Robert Parker
Ballot #7 Group (Please select at most 1 option.)
- Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor
- All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
Ballot #8 Group (Please select at most 1 option.)
- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
- Hard Row by Margaret Maron
Ballot #9 Group (Please select at most 1 option.)
- The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher : A Shocking Murder and the undoing of a great Victorian detective by Kate Summerscale.
- Framed : Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey.
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Ballot #10 Group (Please select at most 1 option.)
- Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
- A Fashionably French Murder by Colleen Cambridge