Posts by Melissa Scheurer

Discussion questions for A Walk in the Woods.

When the novel Eleven Days opens, all we know is that Sara’s son Jason is a Navy SEAL who has been missing for nine days.

It is May 11, 2011. Sara is a single mother living in a quiet Pennsylvania town. Her son Jason, a Navy SEAL, has been missing for nine days.

Well, here we are past the end of April and that means it's my final post for A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Even though the Reader's Den will be moving on to a new book in May, you can always read previous posts and comment on them.

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Post 1

A Visit from 

Welcome back to the Reader’s Den. In the early chapters of A Visit from the Goon Squad we meet Bennie Salazar. In his middle age Bennie is divorced, has a son and works as a record company executive. But Bennie fondly remembers his days playing bass in a punk rock band.

While Bennie and his bandmates are fictional, the bands they listened to made real music. You can borrow punk rock music CDs by the

Hello readers. This month the Reader's Den is reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Titles and cover images often give readers a clue as to what lies within a book but I admit I was baffled about this one. 

A guitar and a goon squad? It didn't make sense. On the other hand, A Visit from the Good Squad was awarded a

Welcome back to the Reader's Den. We've just finished reading The Maltese Falcon. This is the final post and finally — spoiler alert — the identities of the murderers will be revealed!

In these last five chapters there's another murder and the black bird gets delivered to Sam's office by the dying Captain Jacobi of the ship La Paloma. Gutman's daughter sends Sam on a wild goose chase, giving the thieves a chance to set up an ambush of sorts at Sam's apartment. When he returns 

Welcome back to NYPL’s August Reader's Den. We’re three quarters through Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. In chapters 11-15 things begin to fall into place.

Sam rules out Iva Archer as Miles’ murderer and he meets the final player on the hunt for the falcon, Caspar Gutman (the “Fat Man”). It’s from him that Sam learns the provenance of the Maltese falcon and he leads Gutman to believe he can get the bird; Gutman is willing to pay $10,000 for 

Welcome back to the New York Public Library's Reader's Den, a monthly online book discussion. For August, we are reading Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Maltese Falcon, as part of Mystery Summer.

In chapters 6-10, Sam Spade is very busy. Iva Archer is begging to see him. While Sam is trying to figure out how much of the truth Brigid O'Shaughnessy is telling, their relationship seems to become more intimate. Sam discovers a young man tailing him around town. He sets up a meeting with Brigid and Joel 

Welcome to the New York Public Library's Reader's Den, a monthly online book discussion. For August, we will be reading Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon as part of Mystery Summer.

You can borrow a print copy from the library or listen to the downloadable audiobook.

Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon was published