Today, your library is starting something new. We had plans to start a new online book group, but the current coronavirus issue has caused us to (at least temporarily) move all our book groups online. The first one to go active is Death on the Shelf, our mystery and thriller group. After some thought, we decided to host it through Goodreads, a major online book lovers’ site. You’ll find it at Goodreads. It’s open to everyone, so you’re all welcome to join. One of the reasons we went with Goodreads was that signing up for it seemed to be the easiest for our patrons. It’s free to register and use, and you can use any email address and password you want. But you also have the option to sign in using a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a Google account (such as Gmail) or even an Amazon account. We felt like most people probably already have at least one of those accounts, and it would be one less username and password set to remember. If you’re like me, you probably have too many as it is!
With the current stay-at-home order in effect, we also made a decision to rework our book selections and use as many eBooks and downloadable audiobooks as we can. Especially ones that are available through the library’s Hoopla account, which allows our members to borrow up to twelve items a month with no restrictions on how many of our members can borrow the same title. You can find out more about it at Hoopla, or visit the library’s website to find out more. It’s a pretty easy process to get signed up for Hoopla, but if you have trouble, don’t hesitate to contact any of us through email, also available on the website. We’ll be glad to help! Besides eBooks and downloadable audiobooks, Hoopla makes movies, TV shows, and comic books available to you at no charge!
For April, Death on the Shelf will be discussing the classic American mystery, The Circular Staircase (eBook, audio), by Mary Roberts Rinehart (known as the American Agatha Christie). This book was serialized in a magazine in 1907 and published in book form in 1908 by Bobbs-Merrill in Indianapolis. The story follows Rachel Innes, a city woman, who gets talked into renting a large house in the country for the summer. Shortly after her arrival at the house, all the staff quits, and there’s some strange goings-on in the night, including a murder! The book was made into a silent film in 1915 by director Edward LeSaint, starring Guy Oliver and Stella Razeto. It wasn’t terribly successful, and is now lost. It was later adapted more successfully for television in 1956, with Judith Anderson playing the lead role. Its most successful adaptation was as a play on Broadway, The Bat. The play ran for 878 performances starting in August of 1920 and made quite a lot of money for Rinehart.
Although there are similarities between Rinehart’s writing and Agatha Christie, the story is distinctly American, and I have found it to be very enjoyable, Melinda is leading discussion this month, But I’ll be in and out as it develops. If you enjoy The Circular Staircase, check out some of the other book listed below that are similar. They’re also all available at no charge in both eBook and audio through Hoopla. In May, I’ll be moderating a discussion of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. Hope to see you there!
Similar titles:
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie) – eBook, audio
- Deathworld 1 (Harry Harrison) – eBook, audio
- The Secret Adversary (Agatha Christie) – eBook, audio
- The French Powder Mystery (Ellery Queen) – eBook, audio
- Trent’s Last Case (E.C. Bentley) – eBook, audio
- The Red Thumb Mark (R. Austin Freeman) eBook, audio
- The Lodger (Marie Belloc Lowndes) – eBook, audio
- The Red House Mystery (A.A. Milne) – eBook, audio
- The Hand of Fu-Manchu (Sax Rohmer) – eBook, audio
