It's October and what better way to celebrate this spooktacular month than by diving into something by the master of scary, Stephen King! King has received many awards and nominations over the years including multiple Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards as well as the National Medal of Arts, Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the O. Henry Award. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire oeuvre, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award (2002), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).

This month, we've selected Joyland, a story set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973. The novel follows college student Devin Jones who takes a summer job at Joyland, hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he winds up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life—and what comes after—that will change his world forever.

A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old—and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time--Joyland is Stephen King at the peak of his storytelling powers. With all the emotional impact of King masterpieces such as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, Joyland is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled reader profoundly moved.

"High Pulp: Stephen King's "Joyland" -- LA Review of Books
"Joyland by Stephen King" -- The Guardian
"Stephen King on Growing Up, Believing in God and Getting Scared" -- NPR
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This month we're meeting to discuss a bestselling nonfiction title, The City of the Lost Monkey God by Douglas Preston. I'm very excited about this book because it sounds like a real life Indiana Jones story. 

Here's the summary:

Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.

Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.

Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease.

Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, this novel is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

This is sure to be an interesting book and a fun book club. I look forward to discussing this book and I hope you'll join us on Saturday, March 31st at 7:30pm at the bookstore. Until then, you can purchase the book at our store in paperback for 15% off the list price of $15.99. You can also purchase it from us online in various formats and have it shipped to your home for free or available to download immediately. See below for links and prices. 

Paperback: $15.99
E-book: $9.99
Audiobook: $29.88 (or just $0.99 with your first month of membership on Libro.fm!)
Audio CD: $20.00