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top | All the Numbers
What begins as a sunny August afternoon on a bucolic lake turns into a tragedy when a Jet Ski swerves fatally close to shore. It's a day Ellen Banks could never have prepared for, a day no mother should ever have to live through. The moment her son James is killed, Ellen must face the unimaginable while trying to remain strong for her older son, Daniel, who witnessed the fateful accident and blames himself. . . . More | |
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top | Amish Grace
A gunman entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. In front of twenty-five horrified pupils, thirty-two-year-old Charles Roberts ordered the boys and the teacher to leave. After tying the legs of the ten remaining girls, Roberts prepared to shoot them execution style with an automatic rifle and four hundred rounds of ammunition that he brought for the task. The oldest hostage, a thirteen-year-old, begged Roberts to "shoot me first and let the little ones go" . . . More | |
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top | Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Kingsolver takes readers through the seasons, chronicling the joys and challenges of eating only foods that she, her husband, and two daughters grew in their backyard or purchased from neighboring farms. Part memoir, part cookbook, and part exposé of the American food industry, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one family's inspiring story of discovering the truth behind the adage "you are what you eat" and a valuable resource for anyone looking to do the same. | |
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top | Astrid and Veronika
Veronika, a young writer from New Zealand, rents a house in a small Swedish village as she tries to come to terms with a recent tragedy while also finishing a novel. Her arrival is silently observed by Astrid, an older, reclusive neighbor who slowly becomes a presence in Veronika's life, offering comfort in the form of companionship and lovingly prepared home-cooked meals. Set against a haunting Swedish landscape, Astrid and Veronika is a lyrical and meditative novel of love and loss. . . . More | |
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top | Atonenment
"On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper's son Robbie Turner, a childhood friend who, along with Briony's sister, has recently graduated from Cambridge." By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever.. . . . More | |
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top | Back When We Were Grownups
After presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. . . . More | |
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top | Behind the Scenes at the Museum
From the moment Ruby Lennox announces her own conception ("I exist!"), it is clear that she is a narrator who will leave no stone unturned in her account of family life above a pet shop in England. Not content simply to describe her own circumstances, Ruby investigates the lives of the women in family both past and present, from her great-grandmother's affair with a French photographer to her mother's unfulfilled dreams of Hollywood glamour. Hurtling in and out of both World Wars, economic downfalls, the onset of the permissive '60's, and up to the present day, Ruby paints a rich and vivid portrait of heartbreak and happiness, and from it draws a rare understanding of the shared secrets, hopes and failures that unite every family. . . . More | |
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top | Beloved
Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the decade.
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top | Blindness
A city is hit by an epidemic of 'white blindness.' The blindness spreads, sparing no one. Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards. Inside, the criminal element among the blind hold the rest captive: food rations are stolen, women are raped. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers through the barren streets. The developments within this oddly anonymous group make for one of the most challenging, thoughtprovoking, and ultimately exhilarating novels. . . . More | |
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top | Centaur in the Garden
One Jewish family's struggle to make a living in these unfamiliar and lonely surroundings is thwarted by the birth of the youngest child, Guedali, who is a centaur. The family has a hard time hiding its little monster from curious neighbors and an even harder time getting him through the rituals of circumcision and bar mitzvah, so they immigrate to the city. Their quandary, however, is as nothing compared to that of Guedali himself. . . . More | |
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top | Chocolat
In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival. . . . More | |
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top | Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Christopher Boon is an autistic child who takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbors--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. . . . More | |
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top | Daughter of Time
Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains -- a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower. . . . More | |
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top | Dead
On its surface, The Dead, is a short story in which nothing much happens: A man and his wife travel to a Christmas party in Dublin hosted by two maiden aunts and return to their hotel, where they have a conversation. No murder or betrayal cries out for vengeance or forgiveness. And yet this quiet classic is so powerfully constructed that it leads us to contemplate ordinary relationships, with their mundane roles and rituals, as revealing of deeper mysteries of love and forgiveness, which, in the end, we are still incapable of fully understanding. . . . More | |
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top | Death of Ivan Ilyich
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich transports the reader to nineteenth-century Russia, a world that may seem remote to twenty first-century Americans. Certainly Tolstoy grounds his novella in a particular social, political, and religious context. But the universal questions transcend time and place: What provides true happiness? What does it mean to live a good life? Does God exist? If so, why would He allow suffering? What is one’s responsibility to other human beings?" . . . More | |
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top | Devil in the White City
. . . The Devil in the White City is about more than just two men. It is about America on the threshold of the twentieth century—a time of widespread violence, fantastic wealth growing labor unrest, and financial panic; a time when Buffalo Bill could take a bow to Susan B. Anthony; and a time when men and women as diverse as Jane Addams, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, and Frank Lloyd Wright—could all gaze in wonder at the magnificence of the White City. . . . More | |
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top | Digging to America
Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport – the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the instant babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate: an “arrival party” that from then on is repeated every year as the two families become more and more deeply intertwined. Even Maryam is drawn in – up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by Bitsy Donaldson’s recently widowed father, all the values she cherishes – her traditions, her privacy, her otherness–are suddenly threatened. . . . More | |
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top | Disgrace
In post-apartheid South Africa, David Lurie, a twice divorced, 52-year-old professor of Communications and Romantic Poetry believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. But when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced. . . . More | |
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top | Dive from Clausen's Pier
On a sun-kissed Memorial Day afternoon, a handsome, athletic, kind young man dives into a reservoir about 60 miles outside Madison, Wisconsin, and becomes paralyzed. The novel poses a plenitude of moral questions: what defines love, the meaning of responsibility, the concept of "being there" for people vs. pursuing one's personal destiny. Packer does not offer easy answers. . . . More | |
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top | Double Bind
When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt. As Laurel’s fascination with Bobbie’s former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret . . . More | |
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top | Eat, Pray, Love
Gilbert leaves behind an excruciating divorce, tumultuous affair, and debilitating depression as she sets off on a year-long quest to bridge the gulf between body, mind, and spirit. In the book's early pages, a flashback finds the smart, savvy, successful Gilbert on her knees on the bathroom floor of the Westchester house she inhabits with her husband, wailing and wallowing in sorrow, snot, and tears. . . . More | |
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top | Empire Falls
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. . . . More | |
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top | Eventide
In many ways, Eventide is about the pain of separation. As the novel opens, Victoria Roubideaux is preparing to move away from the McPherons’ ranch to attend college in Fort Collins. Harold and Raymond had taken her in back when she was three months pregnant and turned out of her home. Victoria and her daughter, Katie, now more than a year old, have come to occupy a central place in the McPherons’ lives. Running parallel to this narrative are several other stories of loss and separation. Betty and Luther Wallace, poor and ill-equipped to raise their children, face losing them to foster care. Mary Wells is raising her two young girls alone, while her husband works in Alaska. DJ Kephart has lost his mother and has never known his father. And all of these characters face even greater losses to come. How they respond to those losses – with sadness, outrage, bitter anguish, or hard-won stoicism – reveals the full depth and range of human emotion. . . . More | |
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top | Farewell to Manzanar
On the morning of December 7, 1941, a little seven-year-old Japanese American girl says goodbye to her papa as he sails out in his sardine boat. When he returns at the end of the day, their life will never be the same. No longer will her father and family have the freedoms that they once knew. . . . More | |
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top | Garden Spells
The Waverleys are a curious family to the townspeople of Bascom, North Carolina. Legend has it that their feisty apple tree is enchanted, and that eating its fruit can show you the future. But no one foresaw how two very different sisters would spring from the same family roots. . . . More | |
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top | Gilead
As the Rev. John Ames approaches his 77th birthday (and an impending death from heart disease), he decides to record something of his family's history and his own inner life. The result, he trusts, may be of value to his young son, now 7, as well as a testament of his love for the boy and the boy's mother, the unexpected blessing of his old age. . . . More | |
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top | Glass Castle
When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family. . . . More | |
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top | Great Gatsby
The narrator, Nick Carraway, is a young Princeton man who works as a bond broker in Manhattan. His neighbor at West Egg, Long Island, is Jay Gatsby, a Midwesterner of considerable self-made wealth whose mysterious origin turns out to be bootlegging. For many years Gatsby has been in love with Nick's cousin Daisy, who is married to the wealthy but coarse Tom Buchanan. Daisy and Gatsby begin an affair. . . . More | |
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top | Guernsey Literary and Patato Peel Pie Society
During World War II, Amelia Maugery secretly kept a pig from the Germans, and she invited several friends to eat it with her. When the party ran late and the group members found that they had missed curfew, they tried to sneak home and were caught. Elizabeth McKenna immediately apologized to the officer who had detained them and told him that they were members of the Guernsey Literary Society and that their meeting had run late. The German officers seemed interested in attending future meetings of the Guernsey Literary Society, so Elizabeth set about forming a real one. Thus, the people who had been at the party, many of whom were not enthusiastic readers at the time, started reading and collecting books so that the Germans would believe their excuse for having been out past curfew if the German officers chose to attend meetings . . . More | |
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top | Handmaid's Tale
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force. . . . More | |
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top | Hours
Clarissa Vaughan, a book editor in present-day Greenwich Village, is organizing a party for her oldest friend, Richard, an AIDS-stricken poet who has just won a major literary prize. Laura Brown, a young wife and mother in 1949 Los Angeles, cares for her toddler and prepares a birthday cake for her husband as she tries to resist increasing waves of panic and feelings of alienation from her humdrum yet demanding life. And Virginia Woolf herself, the third woman, works on her new novel, Mrs. Dalloway, chats with her husband and sister, bickers with her cook, and attempts to come to terms with her deep, ungovernable longings for escape and even for death. . . . More | |
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top | House of Sand and Fog
Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani was once a powerful and respected officer in the Shah of Iran's air force. Having fled the country with his family, he works by day spearing trash on California highways and by night as a clerk in a convenience store while deceiving his family into believing that he has a loftier job. Now, willing to risk the modest remainder of his fortune to restore his family's dignity, he buys a small house at a county auction, planning to sell it again for three or four times what he paid. But the house has been auctioned because of a bureaucratic error, and Behrani's fragile plans are jeopardized by Kathy Nicolo, the owner of the house. . . . More | |
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top | In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and their two children. At the center of Capote’s study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcok, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. . . . More | |
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top | Into the Wild
Into the Wild is the true story of the mysterious life and death of Christopher Johnson McCandless, a talented young man from a good family who inexplicably turned his back on everything he seemed to have going for him. He graduated from Emory University in 1990, lost no time in giving away to charity the sizeable balance in his bank account, and then abruptly abandoned his past life and the personal identity all knew him by to basically disappear from the lives of family and friends . . . More | |
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top | Jane Austen Book Club
“Real people are really complicated,” says Jocelyn, the founder of the “Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club.” And the members of her newly founded book club certainly prove this to be true. Each has a story to tell, and much like an Austen novel, the intricate plots that are their own lives are slowly revealed. . . . More | |
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top | Jazz
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life . . . More | |
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top | Kaaterskill Falls
Kaaterskill s a Catskill Mountains community in upstate New York, where the Kirshners have long been accustomed to summer. Some have bought property with German reparation money; others rent, seasonally. The little Orthodox group, with their shul and their synagogue and their day camp, makes a striking contrast with the laconic Yankee year-rounders, and with the lush, wooded natural environment of the town and the spectacular Kaaterskill Falls. . . . More | |
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top | Kite Runner
The Kite Runner follows a young boy, Amir, as he faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood—testing friendships, finding love, cheating death, accepting faults, and gaining understanding. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant's son. Amir lives in constant want of his father's attention, feeling that he is a failure in his father's eyes. Hassan, on the other hand, seems to be able to do no wrong. Their friendship is a complex tapestry of love, loss, privilege, and shame. . . . More | |
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top | Life of Pi
When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? . . . More | |
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top | Look me in the Eye
John Elder Robison’s story is one of alienation, desperate loneliness, and an intense desire to connect with others in spite of poor social skills. His clumsy attempts at relationship-building are chronicled throughout the memoir. As a toddler, he is taught to “make friends” with a dog by petting it. When he applies the same practice in his efforts to befriend a little girl on the playground, he is discouraged when she smacks him. Undaunted, he modifies his strategy by using a stick to pet her, and is crushed and confused when his efforts are rejected and a teacher scolds him.
John’s struggle is compounded by an unstable, dysfunctional home environment. Growing up in the household described by his brother, Augusten Burroughs, in the bestselling Running with Scissors, John’s difficulties are worsened by abuse and neglect. . . . More | |
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top | Loving Frank
I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. . . . More | |
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top | Maytrees
Literate Provincetown bohemians Toby and Lou Maytree meet and marry, have a son, and begin to grow old before Toby decides to leave for Maine to build a new life with a family friend. Toby and Lou remain estranged as the book follows both characters through life's progress: Lou raises their son and Toby and Deary develop a successful business. When Deary falls ill and Toby loses his ability to care for her, the families are reunited. . . . More | |
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top | Memory Keepers Daughter
The roads are dangerous, yet Dr. David Henry is determined to get his wife, Norah, to the hospital in time to deliver their first child. But despite David’s methodical and careful driving, it soon becomes clear that the roads are too treacherous, and he decides to stop at his medical clinic instead. There, with the help of his nurse, Caroline, he is able safely to deliver their son, Paul. But unexpectedly, Norah delivers a second child, a girl, Phoebe, in whom David immediately recognizes the signs of Down syndrome. . . . More | |
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top | Mermaid Char
What inspires the yearning for a soul mate? Few writers have explored, as Kidd does, the lush, unknown region of the feminine soul where the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic exists. The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body; one that illuminates a woman's self-awakening with the brilliance and power that only a writer of Kidd's ability could conjure. . . . More | |
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top | Middlesex
Cal Stephanides is a 41-year-old man who was raised until puberty as a girl, Calliope. Callie has a hereditary 5-alpha-reductase deficiency — likely the result of the fact that his grandmother and grandfather were siblings — that gives her the prepubertal anatomy of a girl. At adolescence, she begins her transformation into ambiguity, or middle-sex, then maleness, and then, gradually, masculinity . . . More | |
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top | Mockingbird
At the center of Shields's lively book is the story of Lee's struggle to create her famous novel. But her life contains many other highlights as well: her girlhood as a tomboy in overalls in tiny Monroeville, Alabama; the murder trial that inspired her great work; her journey to Kansas as Capote's ally and research assistant to help report the story of the Clutter murders; the surrogate family she found in New York City. . . . More | |
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top | Moonflower Vine
The Moonflower Vine opens in the early 1950's with the Soames family gathered on the family farm outside Renfro, Missouri, for their annual summer visit. Matthew Soames, a retired school teacher, and his wife, Callie, are enjoying the last days of summer with three of their daughters and one grandson. The opening scenes paint a touching portrait from the youngest daughter’s point of view, of rural life and family ties: strong ties that bring them home on their annual pilgrimage, but only hint at the secrets and sorrows that lie beneath. The last day of their visit coincides with the blooming of the moonflower vine, a flower that blooms only a few days each season at sunset. . . . More | |
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top | My Antonia
Perhaps the most popular of Cather's novels, My Antonia is at once the intimate portrait of an American heroine, an elegy for a vanished frontier, and the story of an unconsummated love affair. Jim and Antonia grow up together, and he harbors vague and contradictory romantic yearnings toward her. But they are separated in their youth and spend most of their lives apart. While Jim pursues his education and becomes a lawyer for the railroad, Antonia goes into domestic service, survives a near-rape, is seduced and abandoned by a heartless lover, and bears a baby out of wedlock. Much of her story unfolds secondhand, as Jim gathers it from other sources. They are reunited only briefly at the novel's end, and by then both of them are married, Jim unhappily so. . . . More | |
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top | My Sister's Keeper
My Sister's Keeper is about 13- year-old Anna Fitzgerald, who enlists the help of an attorney, Campbell Alexander, to sue her parents for rights to her own body. Anna was conceived as a donor for her sister Kate, who is 16 and has leukemia. Anna donated genetic material throughout her life, and the latest donation is for her to give a kidney to Kate. If she wins the lawsuit, she would not have to donate. . . . More | |
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top | Olive Kitteridge
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance . . . More | |
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top | On Chesil Beach
The year is 1962. Florence, the daughter of a successful businessman and an aloof Oxford academic, is a talented violinist. She dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, the earnest young history student she met by chance and who unexpectedly wooed her and won her heart. Edward grew up in the country on the outskirts of Oxford where his father, the headmaster of the local school, struggled to keep the household together and his mother, brain-damaged from an accident, drifted in a world of her own. Edward’s native intelligence, coupled with a longing to experience the excitement and intellectual fervor of the city, had taken him to University College in London. Falling in love with the accomplished, shy and sensitive Florence – and having his affections returned with equal intensity – has utterly changed his life. . . . More | |
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top | Other Boleyn Girl
The daughters of a ruthlessly ambitious family, Mary and Anne Boleyn, are sent to the court of Henry VIII to attract the attention of King Henry VIII. He first takes Mary as his mistress, in which role she bears him an illegitimate son, and then takes Anne as his wife.
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top | Out of Egypt: a memoir
This richly colored memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, Andre Aciman introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped his life--Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything "at least twice in their lives." And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world, does not want to be led, forever, out of Egypt. . . . More | |
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top | Paula
Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch-a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"-none of them of the textbook variety-Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse. . . . More | |
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top | Pilot's Wife
Who can guess what a woman will do when the unthinkable becomes her reality? Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if not extraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening effect of time. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to expect both intense exhilaration and long periods alone—but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died in a crash. . . . More | |
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top | Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth Bennet is a country gentleman's daughter in 19th Century England. Elizabeth is her father’s favorite because of her level-headed approach to life when his own wife's greatest concern is getting her daughters married off to well-established gentlemen. Only Jane, Elizabeth's older sister, is nearly as sensible and practical as Elizabeth, but Jane is also the beauty of the family, and therefore, Mrs. Bennet's highest hope for a good match. . . . More | |
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top | Reader
Michael Berg is fifteen and suffering from hepatitis. When he gets sick in the street one day on his way home from school, a woman brings him into her apartment and helps him to wash up. Later, he visits the woman to thank her and is drawn into a love affair that is as intoxicating as it is unusual--their meetings become a ritual of reading aloud (Michael reads to Hanna, at her request), taking showers, and making love. When Hanna disappears following a misunderstanding, Michael is overcome with guilt and loss. Years later, when Michael is studying law at the university, he is part of a seminar group attending one of the many belated Nazi war crime trials. He is shocked when he recognizes Hanna in the courtroom, on trial with a group of former concentration camp guards. During the proceedings, it becomes clear that Hanna is hiding something that is--to her--more shameful than murder, something that could possibly save her from going to prison. She chooses not to reveal her secret and as a result is sentenced to life. . . . More | |
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top | Reading Lolita in Tehran
For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.
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top | Rise and Shine
It’s an otherwise ordinary Monday when Meghan Fitzmaurice’s perfect life hits a wall. A household name as the host of Rise and Shine, the country’s highest-rated morning talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial break–but not before she mutters two forbidden words into her open mike. In an instant, it’s the end of an era, not only for Meghan, who is unaccustomed to dealing with adversity, but also for her younger sister, Bridget, a social worker in the Bronx who has always lived in Meghan’s long shadow. . . . More | |
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top | Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly that revolves around two starkly different sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. While Elinor is thoughtful, considerate, and calm, her younger sister is emotional and wildly romantic. Both are looking for a husband, but neither Elinor’s reason nor Marianne’s passion can lead them to perfect happiness—as Marianne falls for an unscrupulous rascal and Elinor becomes attached to a man who’s already engaged. Startling secrets, unexpected twists, and heartless betrayals interrupt the marriage games that follow. . . . More | |
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top | Snow Falling on Cedars
Ishmael has never forgiven Hatsue for breaking his heart as a teenager. Now that her husband Kabuo is being tried for murder years later, does revenge or justice prevail? David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars analyzes the effects of the Japanese-American internment during World War II, racism, human motivation, and redemption in a story that's a combination murder mystery, courtroom drama, and tragic love story . . . More | |
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top | Songs Without Words
Songs Without Words is a novel about friendship and about family, but it is also very much about suicide. Sarabeth remarks that Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, which she is reading at a retirement home, are not so much about adultery as about suicide. Adultery is an issue, too, in Songs Without Words, as Sarabeth struggles to climb out of the wreckage of one adulterous affair and to avoid falling into another. But suicide is the mother lode in this novel, just as it is in Flaubert’s and Tolstoy’s. When Sarabeth’s mother took her own life, which for Sarabeth was a “devastating relief,” it deepened the bond between her and Liz. But decades later, when Liz’s daughter tries to kill herself, it threatens to destroy their friendship. . . . More | |
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top | Thousand Acres
Larry sees his three daughters as on entity with no personality, their only reason for existence being to serve him. Ginny, the protagonist, her indecision swinging like a pendulum, selflessly wants to please everyone. Rose, the witty, sarcastic middle sister, is at first the only person with whom Ginny can identify. The confident Caroline left the farm to become a lawyer; now she drifts through Ginny's and Rose's lives like an outsider. Just when it seems the reader knows everything about these complex characters, Jane Smiley sneaks up from behind and exposes another layer of their lives . . . More | |
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top | Thousand Splendid Suns
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made "The Kite Runner" a classic, Hosseinis latest novel is at once an incredible chronicle of 30 years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation found in love . . . More | |
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top | Three Cups of Tea
The inspiring account of one man’s campaign to build schools in the most dangerous, remote, and anti- American reaches of Asia. In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time—Greg Mortenson’s one-man mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for girls, throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban. . . . More | |
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top | To Kill a Mockingbird
In To Kill a Mockingbird, southern children learn lessons about courage, cruelty and honor as they and the mysterious town recluse, Arthur “Boo” Radley, react to the events and prejudices surrounding a rape trial. Scout (Louise) and Jem Finch and their friend Dill are growing up in a small Alabama town during the 1930s. Lawyer Atticus Finch, father of Scout and Jem, is defending a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. . . . More | |
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top | Travels With Charley in Search of America
The non-fictional story of Steinbeck's road trip across America accompanied by his aging poodle, Charley, would be the other great popular success of Steinbeck's late career. Travels with Charley (1962) was a project that developed after Steinbeck suffered a stroke in December, 1959. He recovered completely, but the more times those around him begged him to slow down and take better care of himself, the more he found in himself a desire to do the very opposite: "I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly slow reluctance to leave the stage. It's bad theater as well as bad living," . . . More | |
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top | Water for Elephants
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now 90, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. . . . More | |
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top | Whistling Season
Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch-a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"-none of them of the textbook variety-Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse. . . . More | |
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top | World Below
When Catherine inherits her grandparents' house in Vermont, she takes a sabbatical from her teaching job in San Francisco and returns to the place she has always thought of as home. There, amid papers packed away in the attic, Catherine finds her grandmother's diaries--a careful, almost impersonal record of Georgia's role in keeping her family together as the oldest child in a motherless home, the bout with tuberculosis that sent her to a sanatorium at age nineteen, and her long, placid marriage to Dr. John Holbrooke, a man twenty-years her senior. . . . More | |
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top | Year of Magical Thinking
In her memoir, Didion contemplates how the rituals of daily life are fundamentally altered when her life's companion is taken from her. Her impressions, both sharply observed and utterly reasonable, form a picture of an intelligent woman grappling with her past and future. The year referred to in the title would take its toll on Didion in another way, as well: Despite showing signs of recovery, Didion's daughter died in August of this year, several weeks after Didion submitted her final manuscript. . . . More | |
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