Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. School for Love by Olivia Manning is our selection this month. Jerusalem in 1945 is a city in flux: refugees from the war in Europe fill its streets and cafés, the British colonial mandate is coming to an end, and tensions are on the rise between the Arab and Jewish populations. Felix Latimer, a recently orphaned teenager, arrives in Jerusalem from Baghdad, biding time until he can secure passage to England. Adrift and deeply lonely, Felix has no choice but to room in a boardinghouse run by Miss Bohun, a relative he has never met. Miss Bohun is a holy terror, a cheerless miser who proclaims the ideals of a fundamentalist group known as the Ever-Readies—joy, charity, and love—even as she makes life a misery for her boarders. Then Mrs. Ellis, a fascinating young widow, moves into the house and disrupts its dreary routine for good. A Reader's Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel calls it, "A subtle and touching novel....The feelings of a sensitive and warmhearted boy, as well as his occasional sillinesses, are captured by Manning with great sympathy and without sentimentality."

Co-presented with the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE, in association with the BACKBONE CAMPAIGN. Astute blogger, activist, and organizer David Swanson, cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org and creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org, visits with his new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (Seven Stories). "Daybreak is an eye-opener about how our nation was hijacked by the Bush administration and how much repair work we, as citizens, must do. David Swanson, who has been a one-man wonder leading the charge for accountability, writes a compelling narrative that inspires not just outrage, but ACTION." - Medea Benjamin. "David Swanson will be remembered and well recognized as the citizen who held up a lamp in the darkness and cried, as did good Tom Paine, 'We have it in our power to begin the world all over again.'" - John Nichols, from the Foreword. $5 ticket are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m. or in advance via www.brownpapertickets.com (also 1-800-838-3006). Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. For more information, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, Town Hall at (206) 652-4255, or see www.townhallseattle.org.