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Fort Bend County Libraries’ virtual book club – FBCL Reads – will meet online on Wednesday, June 22, beginning at 10:00 am. The book to be discussed is The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story, written by Douglas Preston.

FBCL Reads book-club meetings will be live-streamed through Webex so that readers can participate virtually and interact with others in real time. The book club will meet online on the fourth Wednesday of every month.

In The Lost City of the Monkey God, acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest with a riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery.

Since the days of the conquistadors, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior. Indigenous tribes warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God -- but then committed suicide without revealing its location.

In 2012, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a new quest using advanced technology. Flying over an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, they discovered tantalizing evidence of an undiscovered lost civilization.

Venturing into this treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. It was not until they returned, however, that Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal (and incurable) disease.

Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists, this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller is the true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

This book selection is available in print, audio, and digitally as an e-book and e-audiobook through FBCL’s e-Library OverDrive collection. Additional print copies are available at George Memorial Library in Richmond.

The book club is free and open to the public. Registration is required; a link to the Webex teleconference will be emailed to all who register. To register online at the library’s website (www.fortbend.lib.tx.us), click on “Classes & Events,” select “Virtual Programs,” and find the program on the date indicated. Participants may also register by calling George Memorial Library (281-342-4455).