
This event has passed
Thursday Mystery Club
Past event
Featured Book

The Girl in the Green Dress: A Mystery Featuring Zelda Fitzgerald
From the author of The Lindbergh Nanny comes an evocative mystery about the 1920 murder of the gambler Joseph Elwell, featuring New Yorker writer Morris Markey and Zelda Fitzgerald.
New York, 1920.
Zelda Fitzgerald is bored, bored, bored. Although she’s newly married to the hottest writer in America, and one half of the literary scene’s "it" couple, Zelda is at loose ends while Scott works on his next novel, The Beautiful and the Damned.
Meanwhile, Atlanta journalist Morris Markey has arrived in New York and is lost in every way possible. Recently returned from the war and without connections, he hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first big story.
When notorious man-about-town Joseph Elwell is found shot through the head in his swanky townhouse, the fortunes the two southerners collide when they realize they were both among the last to see him alive. Zelda encountered Elwell at the scandalous Midnight Frolic revue on the night of his death, and Markey saw him just hours before with a ravishing mystery woman dressed in green. Markey has his story. Zelda has her next adventure.
As they investigate which of Elwell’s many lovers―or possibly an enraged husband―would have wanted the dapper society man dead, Zelda sweeps Markey into her New York, the heady, gaudy Jazz Age of excess and abandon, as the lost generation takes its first giddy steps into a decade-long spree. Everyone has come to do something, the more scandalous the better; Zelda is hungry for love and sensation, Markey desperate for success and recognition. As they each follow these ultimately dangerous desires, the pair close in on what really happened that night―and hunt for the elusive girl in the green dress who may hold the truth.
Based on the real story of the unsolved deaths of Joseph Elwell and New Yorker writer Morris Markey, Mariah Fredericks’s new novel is a glittering homage to the dawn of the Jazz Age, as well as a deft and searing portrait of the dark side of fame.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
Reading a broad range of mystery/true-crime books, from classics to cozies and historical to procedurals. Featuring a new release in paperback each month. Led by Sam
Based on the real story of the unsolved deaths of Joseph Elwell and New Yorker writer Morris Markey, Mariah Fredericks’s new novel is a glittering homage to the dawn of the Jazz Age. New York, 1920. Zelda Fitzgerald is bored, bored, bored. Although she’s newly married to the hottest writer in America, and one half of the literary scene’s "it" couple, Zelda is at loose ends while Scott works on his next novel, The Beautiful and Damned. Meanwhile, Atlanta journalist Morris Markey has arrived in New York and is lost in every way possible. Recently returned from the war and without connections, he hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first big story. When notorious man-about-town Joseph Elwell is found shot through the head in his swanky townhouse, the two southerners realize they were both among the last to see him alive. Markey has his story. Zelda has her next adventure.As they investigate which of Elwell’s many lovers—or possibly an enraged husband—would have wanted the dapper society man dead, Zelda sweeps Markey into her New York, the heady, gaudy Jazz Age of excess and abandon, as the lost generation takes its first giddy steps into a decade-long spree. Everyone has come to do something, the more scandalous the better; Zelda is hungry for love and sensation, Markey desperate for success and recognition. As they each follow these ultimately dangerous desires, the pair close in on what really happened that night—and hunt for the elusive girl in the green dress who may hold the truth.
About the Venue

Aaron's Books
Founded in 2005, Aaron’s Books is a fiercely independent bookstore, offering new and used books for all ages and interests. As with every good independent bookstore, the store’s focus is on community involvement – providing goods and services that enhance the quality of life in Lititz and throughout Lancaster County. Visit us in person at 35 E. Main Street, Lititz PA!
Visit store pageMore at Aaron's Books

Don't Read After Midnight Book Group
Our purpose is simple; we’re folks reaching beyond the veil in search of spine-tingling tales. Whether you are new to the genres of horror and thriller, or a devoted consumer of it all, this group just might be for you. In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes .Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Fic Pick Book Group
A monthly discussion of buzzworthy new fiction. Selections are announced as they're published! Led by Alexis From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, literary debut novel about the murder of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself. Rich Milford is dead. At last. We find ourselves in 1920’s Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Race Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. Now, on the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford was an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with only his women to mourn him, but a question remains: Who killed him, and why?Top suspects are his four “wives,” Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne. But as their stories burst to light, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes. In an electric follow-up to her acclaimed debut collection, Nafissa Thompson-Spires once again serves up a brilliant distillation of front-of-mind happenings—think, cults of personality, capitalism run amok in politics, and rampant societal distrust—structured like a stupefying line dance. In her uniquely powerful, humorous manner, Thompson-Spires takes on the interdependent clash of the traditional and the newfangled in this gobsmackingly excellent novel.

Long Story Short Book Group
New releases and older favorites, all under 250 pages. For those that don't have time for longer books, but still want to be in a book club. Selections will be across all genres, so get ready to read widely (but briefly)! Led by Sam Virginia Woolf’s classic novel Orlando tells the story of a poet adrift in time; he starts out his life as a nobleman in Queen Elizabeth I’s court, and her story concludes as a thirty-six year-old woman in the present. Jules Scheele’s graphic novel adaptation of this important queer work tells the complete story of Orlando’s journey through history that examines the shifting and changing ideas of gender and sexuality, and plumbs the depths of the human heart. Taking us through love affairs, betrayals and exiles, struggles against conformity and poetry through the ages, Orlando is a fantastical adventure filled with satirical wit. A powerful and essential graphic novel adaptation of a vital British classic.