Afternoon Coffee Book Club

Join the Afternoon Coffee Book Club (formerly the Morning Coffee Book Club) where Scott Biegen, a PSPL Librarian (and English Teacher in a previous life), leads a book club meeting on Zoom. It will be BYOC (Bring Your Own Coffee) this year, but we'll have fun reading and discussing the works of a diverse group of women who bravely explore the concepts of solitude, isolation, disconnection and connection in one way or another.

The group meets the 3rd Wednesday of the month (September-May) on Zoom from 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m. (PST). To receive meeting information and join the email list for the Afternoon Coffee Book Club, please email Scott Biegen in advance of the meeting at scott.biegen@palmspringsca.gov

Please Note: Due to the inauguration on January 20, we have moved the January meeting to January 27.

Click here to see other selections for the Afternoon Coffee Book Club.

January 27, 2021

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

"The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker."
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

—From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events-a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients' accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

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Anyone who requires an auxiliary aid or service for effective communication, or a modification of policies or procedures to participate in a program, service, or activity of the City of Palm Springs, should contact the ADA Coordinator, as soon as possible but no later than 48 hours before the scheduled event.