Get ready to read along with
Mayor Pam in May

Discussion Questions for Tangerine by Edward Bloor

May's Guest Author is Michael Connelly

Mayor Pam Iorio’s guest on the May episode of “Mayor’s Book Talk” is multi-award winning novelist, Michael Connelly.  The two discuss Connelly’s soon-to-be released crime novel, The Scarecrow. The book is the 20^th of Connelly’s career. Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing.  After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat.  In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times.  After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel.  Michael lives with his family in Florida.

May's Discussion Group Book

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

It's 1943, and 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is traveling west to live with her scientist father. No one, neither her father nor the military guardians who accompany her, will tell her exactly where she is going. When she reaches Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: her father is working on a top-secret government program. In Los Alamos, Dewey gets to know eminent scientists, starts tinkering with her own mechanical projects, and becomes friends with a budding artist who is as much of a misfit as she is. All the while, she has no idea how the Manhattan Project her father is working on is about to change the world.  Ellen Klages lives in San Francisco, California. 

Discussion Questions for The Green Glass Sea

May's Recommended Reads

• American Lion by Jon Meacham
• Change the World for Ten Bucks by We Are What We Do
• Just When I Thought I'd Dropped My Last Egg by Kathie Lee Gifford
• Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl
• The Protest Singer by Pete Seeger
• Showing Up for Life by Bill Gates Sr.
• We Are Our Mother's Daughters  by Cokie Roberts
• What We Eat When We Eat Alone by Deborah Madison