The History Book Group will discuss Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” at 6:30 p.m. Thurs. Dec. 20^th on the 2^nd floor of the library. The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. Barbara Tuchman examines not only the rhythms of history but the texture of domestic life in this time: what childhood was like, what marriage meant, and how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike.

The Happy Hour Book Group will meet at Rubaiyat on Wed. Jan. 16^th at 5:15 p.m. to discuss Heather Morris’ “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.” In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a tattooist, tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. One day, he comforts a young woman waiting in line to have her number tattooed. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.

The Friday Book Group will meet at 2:00 p.m. Fri. Jan. 18^th on the 2^nd floor of the library to discuss Hillary Jordan’s “Mudbound.” It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband’s Mississippi Delta farm when two young men return from the war to work the land: Jamie McAllan, Laura’s brother-in-law, and Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm. The men and women of each family relate their versions of tragic events.