Reasons why Danger At the Gates is a terrific choice for a Book Group:
- Like its prequel Danger in the Air, Danger at the Gates is a page-turner! Fast-paced adventure keeps the reader engaged, entertained, and staying up past bed-time.
- Alice Ott, amateur sleuth, is a compelling role model – elderly but feisty, she is a wizard on line; she follows the call of her conscience and her taste for adventure.
- In the first of the Alice Ott mysteries, the geography changes radically from a rural town in New England, into the dark confines of a laboratory at Ft Detrick, Maryland,and even includes a one-of-a-kind chase scene through the aisles of Candle Land. In Danger at the Gates, the reader journeys through the bucolic villages and a farmland of rural New England overshadowed by the menacing chill of a looming nuclear power plant and the intricate secrets of a sunny nursing home.
- While learning about the perils of an abandoned local nuclear power plant, the humor of the characters and the quirky twists of the story will keep readers laughing out loud.
- Alice Ott is someone you will want to keep hearing from: regular blogs by Alice, and previews of the third in the Alice Ott trilogy, ensure that this is a character who isn’t going to disappear!
Sample questions for book group discussion:
- How does Alice Ott challenge stereotypes about older people? Do you know anyone like Alice Ott?
- What stays with you as you read about Alice and her friends? Have you experienced friendships that led you to be bolder and take more risks than usual?
- What are your responses to the complex romance of Alice Ott and her long-lost lover Gerard? How do you feel about Alice’s struggle to protect her relationship with Gerard while staying true to her commitments as a perennial activist?
- Could you relate to Lucy’s complicated feeling about her workplace? Do you know anyone who has had to leave their workplace, family or community because of potential danger?
- What interests you about the younger characters in Danger at the Gates?
- Do you identity with any of the characters in the book?
- How do you see yourself as a “concerned citizen’?
- What issues do you think Alice Ott is likely to take on in the future?