OutBook Book Club

The OutBook Book Club is supported by the Palm Springs Public Library. Selections are chosen by group members and highlight a mix of new LGBTQ+ releases and influential classics.

OutBook meets on the first Wednesday of the month in The Learning Center at the Palm Springs Public Library. The book discussion starts at 6:30 p.m. (from 6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. is a social mixer). For more information, please email Book Club Coordinator Hubertus Zegers in advance of the meeting.

View other selections for the OutBook Book Club.

Most titles are available as Downloadable Audiobooks and/or eBooks from PSPL.

November 6, 2024

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

—“A satire of writerly ambition wrapped in a psychological thriller. An homage to Patricia Highsmith, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, but its execution is entirely Boyne’s own.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own.
 
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonel—older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.

Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall....

Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.

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