The Bagels and Biographies Book Club will be showcasing the best in biography, memoir, true crime, and non-fiction every month. Each last Monday morning of the month, we'll get together for a rollicking good time, discussing books and eating bagels for brunch. Contact the Adult Services Department for more information. Pick up your copy of the book at the main desk on the first floor.

February's book is The Library Book by Susan Orlean. On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?