Auntie’s mystery-thriller book group tackles modern terror

(Photo: Bookwormex.com)

As I write this, I’m listening to music. It’s a selection of light classical music that I had no hand in choosing.

I left all that to my Alexa .

Sometimes, I admit, I find that a bit creepy. I mean, the fact that artificial intelligence is making decisions for me can be unnerving. I’ve come to accept it, though, along with so many other decisions that we make every day in 21st-century life.

We tend to notice the strangeness of it only when things go wrong. Such as when our home Internet service goes on the blink. Or when we push a button on our home computer and something totally unexpected occurs.

(I’ve used the same password to unlock my keyboard for years. Why won’t it let me in? Why? )

Strange happenings such as this remind me of the old “Twilight Zone” episode titled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” It’s the one where power outages and other unexplained phenomenon cause chaos in a suburban neighborhood.

It’s also, apparently, the basis of the plot that novelist Ruth Ware uses in her novel “The Turn of the Key.” Reimagining Henry James’ 1898 novel novella “The Turn of the Screw,” Ware tells the story of a nanny whose troubles begin when she goes to work in a house set in the Scottish Highlands.

As Annalisa Quinn explained in her review for National Public Radio , the house is “wired with a smart home app called, horribly, ‘Happy,’ that lets its owners surveil every room in the house from afar, control the lights, heat, and locks – and even talk through speakers in the walls.”

Pretty soon, things begin to go wrong. Horribly wrong.

Sound like something that would make for a great discussion, right? If you’re interested in such a discussion, then you’re in luck: You can tune into Thursday’s meeting of the Auntie’s Bookstore Mystery-Thriller Book Group . The virtual meeting begins at noon.

You can click here to obtain the Zoom link.

Let’s just hope that the ghosts in the machine will grant you access.