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2011-2012 Booklist
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky: A Novel by Heidi W. Durrow
Join us for Everybody Reads, Multnomah County Library's annual community-wide book discussion. This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community in Portland, where her light brown skin, blue eyes and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The tale of two outcasts' journey down the Mississippi River, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a nostalgic portrayal of a world Twain knew intimately, and the moving story of a boy who must make his own way in an often cruel society that counts it a sin to help a runaway slave.
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The author of a number of biographies, British author Holmes presents a series of stories which collectively provide an account of the second scientific revolution, which produced a new vision -- Romantic science -- in 18th-century Britain.
Ahab's Wife, or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
The story of Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick fame, told through the eyes of his wife in the U.S., pre-Civil War.
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
The memoir of a cherished writer who had the good fortune to be born to literate, prosperous, non-conformist parents who gave her unconditional love -- and a microscope.
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. One day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner
This brilliant work is an emotional, poetic, political epic in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. Spanning the years of the Reagan administration, it weaves the lives of fictional and historical characters into a feverish web of social, political and sexual revelations.
Cody is an Oregon native who previously penned the Oregon Book Award winner Voyage of a Summer Sun. He's part of that crew of Northwestern nature writers who articulate what it means to reside at the confluence of loggers and tree-huggers, hunters and hippies, Portland urbanites and Clatskanie farmers. In languorous, meandering prose, he glides from a history of the area's humanity to ecstatic discourse on the spider that has taken up residence in his wooden boat, The Turtle.
Appetite for America by Stephen Fried
The legendary life and entrepreneurial vision of Fred Harvey helped shape American culture and history for three generations -- from the 1880s all the way through World War II -- and still influences our lives today in surprising and fascinating ways. Award-winning journalist Fried re-creates the life of this unlikely American hero, the founding father of the nation’s service industry, whose remarkable family business civilized the West and introduced America to Americans.
The Argonautika: The Story of Jason and the Quest for the Golden Fleece by Apollonius of Rhodes
Join Jason and the Argonauts, and Hercules, for amazing adventures as they sail the mythic first sea-going ship, the "Argo," in search of the Golden Fleece. The story was referred to by Homer. Its psychological realism, memorable picture of Medea, and unheroic portrayal of Jason makes this epic read like a novel, and it was made into a movie and TV series.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom is without question the definitive one-volume history of the Civil War. McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox.
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
Research done in the last 20 years on the Galapagos Islands finches proves Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, demonstrating that it is neither rare nor slow, but can be watched by the hour. Winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Egan paints the blazing picture of the massive forest fire that swept through Washington, Idaho and Montana in the summer of 1910, destroying towns in minutes and, secondarily, establishing Teddy Roosevelt's reputation as the president who saved our wild places.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.
The Black Tower by P.D. James
The book begins in a gloomy mood and in a setting that seems hardly designed to hold a reader's attention: a nursing home. Its plot depends more on intuition than detecting and culminates in a thrilling finale which prompts a reread. The quality of the writing propels this most heralded of the Adam Dalgliesh series to be considered one of the most perfectly crafted of books. As such, it stands with such works as The Great Gatsby, Jude the Obscure and Appointment in Samarra. What a surprise from a mystery novel.
Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederik Peeters
Originally published in Switzerland, Peeters's comic memoir of his romance with an HIV-positive woman named Cati (whose young son is also seropositive) is a new and sweeter kind of AIDS narrative -- set in the era when HIV has become a chronic condition rather than a death sentence.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
This novel tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster child living outside Munich during WWII. Liesel scratches out a meager existence by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist: books.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
McDougall reveals the secrets of the world's greatest distance runners -- the Tarahumara Indians of Copper Canyon, Mexico -- and how he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a 50-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of super-athletic Americans.
Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood by John Soennichsen
One of the best scientific whodunits of recent years, Soennichsen's account of Bretz's life and work will appeal to readers interested in geology and the Pacific Northwest.
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls comes a new story that expands on all the details of small-town existence and the claims of family, especially the ties that bind fathers and sons.
Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Tóibín
Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Tóibín's sixth novel is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky's last and greatest novel chronicles the bitter love-hate struggle between the outsized Fyodor Karamazov and his three very different sons. It is above all the story of a murder, told with hair-raising intellectual clarity and a feeling for the human condition unsurpassed in world literature. Exploring the secret depths of humanity's struggles and sins, Dostoyevsky unfolds a grand epic which attempts to venture into mankind's darkest heart, and grasp the true meaning of existence.
The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
The Camel Bookmobile is a fictional tale of an American librarian who leaves Brooklyn to work for a relief organization in Africa that sends books on the backs of camels to forgotten villages. Her intentions are entirely pure but, when the bookmobile causes a feud among the nomadic tribe it aims to help, she realizes her good deeds may come with a high price.
Picture a magical, sugar-fueled road trip with Willy Wonka behind the wheel and David Sedaris riding shotgun, complete with chocolate-stained roadmaps and the colorful confetti of spent candy wrappers flying in your cocoa powder dust. Almond's impossible-to-put down portrait of regional candy makers and the author's own obsession with all-things sweet, is your Fodor's guide to this gonzo tour. With Almond we travel through America's forgotten candy meccas: Philadelphia (Peanut Chews), Sioux City (Twin Bing), Nashville (Goo Goo Cluster), Boise (Idaho Spud) and beyond.
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
The exploits of Fabrizio del Dongo, an ardent young aristocrat who joins Napoleon's army just before the Battle of Waterloo. The hero's beautiful aunt, the alluring Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover, Count Mosca, plot to further Fabrizio's political career at the treacherous court of Parma in a sweeping story that illuminates an entire epoch of European history.
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Atlantic correspondent Shell (The Hungry Gene) tackles more than just discount culture in this wide-ranging book that argues that the American drive toward bargain-hunting and low-price goods has a hidden cost in lower wages for workers and reduced quality of goods for consumers. Shell deftly analyzes the psychology of pricing and demonstrates how retailers manipulate subconscious bargain triggers that affect even the most knowing consumers. The author urges shoppers to consider spending more and buying locally, but acknowledges the inevitability of globalization and the continuation of trends toward efficient, cost-effective production.
The City & the City by China Miéville
Twin southern European cities Beszel and Ul Qoma coexist in the same physical location, separated by their citizens' determination to see only one city at a time. Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad roams through the intertwined but separate cultures as he investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, who believed that a third city, Orciny, hides in the blind spots between Beszel and Ul Qoma.
A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
A true story of an epic courtroom showdown. The families of children who died sue two companies for dumping toxic waste: a tort so expensive to prove, the case could bankrupt their lawyer.
The Civil War by Bruce Catton
Infinitely readable and absorbing, The Civil War vividly traces one of the most moving chapters in American history, from the early division between the North and the South to the final surrender of Confederate troops. Catton's account of battles is carefully interwoven with details about the political activities of the Union and Confederate armies and diplomatic efforts overseas.
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
The comic book transfigured, this graphic novel tells the story of Spiegelman's parents Vladek and Anna, Jews reaching maturity in a Europe on the verge of Nazism, and their terrifying history and eventual survival in the concentration camps.
Confessions by Augustine
St. Augustine describes his life with a concubine, his exploration of Manichaeanism and Neoplatonism, and his conversion to Christianity. In this first autobiography in literature concerned entirely with the author's own spiritual and emotional experiences, he articulates views on marriage, morality and faith that have shaped our discourse ever since.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic 15-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Twins, born of a secret union between an Indian nun and a British surgeon, are adopted by two Indian doctors and come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the verge of revolution.
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Tey focuses on the legend of Richard III, the evil hunchback of British history accused of murdering his young nephews. With an American researcher's help, protagonist Grant delves into his country's history to discover just what kind of man Richard Plantagenet was and who really killed the little princes.
The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
Meet the author! Gloss turns her attention to the frontiers of the future, when the people of our over-polluted planet Earth voyage out to the stars to settle new worlds, to survive unknown and unpredictable hardships, and to make new human homes.
Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir by Wendy Burden
Burden's acknowledgment that she is focusing her memoir on her father's family (Vanderbilt heirs) because "rich people behaving badly are far more interesting than the not so rich behaving badly" reassures us at the outset that this will not be another standard-issue poor-little-rich-girl memoir. After her father's suicide when Burden was 6, she spends her childhood largely ignored, shuttling between the home of her self-centered, globetrotting mother and her eccentric Park Avenue grandparents. Burden offers fascinating and voyeuristic insights into a little-known segment of society, the mega-rich American plutocracy in decline.
Death with Interruptions by José Saramago
On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration: they have achieved eternal life. Then reality hits home, in this novel from a Nobel Prize-winning author.
Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach
This incident-packed biography reveals a woman whose achievements and independent spirit were especially remarkable for her times, and who brought the same passion and intensity to her explorations as she did to her rich romantic life.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing.
A humorous, fascinating, plain-spoken history of the elements and the scientists who discovered them. Whether you loved high school chemistry or had more of an adversarial relationship, a highly enjoyable read.
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Tuchman analyzes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Marlowe's powerful retelling of the story of the learned German doctor who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. One of the glories of Elizabethan drama. (First performed in 1588.)
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
A linguist offers a thought-provoking account of his experiences and discoveries while living with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians living in central Brazil and a people possessing a language that defies accepted linguistic theories and reflects a culture that has no counting system, concept of war or personal property, and lives entirely in the present.
Dune by Frank Herbert
This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
In this enthralling international bestseller, a widow and a 12-year-old girl live inconspicuous lives in the center of an elegant Paris apartment building. It is only when a stranger moves into their building — and sees through their disguises — that Paloma and Renée discover their kindred spirits.
Executive Privilege by Phillip Margolin
Meet the author! Margolin seized the imagination of thriller readers everywhere with his chilling breakout bestseller, Gone, but Not Forgotten. Executive Privilege, the first in his Washington, D.C., series, shows a master storyteller at the very peak of his craft.
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's passionate tale of the beautiful, headstrong farmer Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors firmly established the 34-year-old writer as a popular novelist. According to Virginia Woolf, "The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which . . . must hold its place among the great English novels."
Millions have seen the YouTube video of virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell busking in a Washington, D.C. subway station. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Weingarten tells the story of how that social experiment came about, as well as others that are equally brilliant, some hilarious, some heart wrenching.
Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley
This memoir documents the author's traditional childhood north of the Arctic Circle, his decision to pursue an education in the continental U.S., and his successful lobbying efforts that convinced the government to allocate land and monetary resources to Alaska's natives in compensation for incursions on their way of life.
Finding Nouf by Zoë Ferraris
Taut psychological suspense offers an unprecedented window into Saudi Arabia and the lives of men and women there. When 16-year-old Nouf goes missing and is found drowned in the desert outside Jeddah, Nayir — a desert guide hired by her prominent family to search for her — feels compelled to find out what really happened.
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler are old school friends who, despite a prickly relationship, have never lost touch with each other, or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. The three men spent a sweetly painful evening together reminiscing, until an unexpected violent attack brings everything they thought they knew into question.
Fiona: Stolen Child by Gemma Whelan
A cinematic novel that travels between Ireland and America, following the life of a writer and her fictional counterpart as they wrestle with bitter pasts.
Flight: A Novel by Sherman Alexie
Alexie has a knack for knocking the wind out of you, reaching inside your chest, yanking out your heart, and making you laugh the entire time. Flight — a surreal journey through time with a potentially homicidal, yet sardonically funny, teenager named Zits — is no exception. Zits has experienced grief and betrayal throughout his life: his American Indian father abandoned him at birth, his Irish mother died when he was a child, and he has since been shuffled through a series of abusive or indifferent homes. Just as he tries to take revenge on society (particularly white society) by massacring innocent people, he finds himself transported into the bodies of a series of Indians and whites, each of them participants in a wrenching cycle of violence and betrayal.
The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland
Vreeland’s subject is the courageous Canadian painter Emily Carr, who traveled through the native villages and wilderness of British Columbia in the early 1900s to paint totem poles and other artifacts. Carr was deeply respectful of the people she met, a respect she also brought to Paris where her art is exhibited. She returned to Vancouver in 1912 with a style so direct and colors so expressive that a reviewer called her a wild beast.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
In 1913, a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia, and is taken in by a dockmaster and his wife. She doesn’t know her name, and the only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales tucked inside a white suitcase. Shifting back and forth over a span of nearly 100 years, this is a sprawling, old-fashioned novel, as well-cushioned as a Victorian country house, replete with family secrets and stories-within-stories.
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
This fiercely concentrated and beautifully written novel tells the story of a Polish Jew who, at the age of 7, after seeing his parents murdered by the Nazis, is resurrected by a Greek scientist, and transformed from a half-wild survivor into a scholar and translator who extracts meaning from the unfathomable horror of our time.
Drawing on the lifelong correspondence of Galileo with his daughter, Sobel has written a fascinating history of the Medici era in Italy.
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Baldwin delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving and passionate story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the heart.
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
The author tells the story of her dysfunctional, yet vibrant, family and the intense love that held them together.
The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius
In this humorous and often bawdy “ancient novel,” Lucius, who is insatiably curious about magic, is mistakenly transformed into a donkey and wanders throughout Greece, passing through a series of owners who mistreat him, resulting in misadventures latter retold by Cervantes, Boccaccio and others. It also reflects seriously on the nature of knowledge, social problems and religious truth.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Although O'Connor produced only a small body of work during her relatively brief lifetime (two novels and 32 short stories), she has received much critical attention. She is known for her Southern Gothic style and the grittiness of her characters and settings. This is the collection that established O'Connor's reputation as one of the American masters of the short story.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey — a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Two Pulitzer Prize winners issue a call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women in the developing world. They show that a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad and that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women's potential.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The author of The Satanic Verses returns with his most humorous and accessible novel yet. This is the story of Haroun, a 12-year-old boy whose father Rashid is the greatest storyteller in a city so sad that it has forgotten its name. When the gift of gab suddenly deserts Rashid, Haroun sets out on an adventure of rescue.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
This novel is the work of a supreme artist, McCullers' enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides
Magnificent in scope, drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, this nonfiction thriller illuminates one of the darkest hours in American life -- an example of how history is so often a matter of the petty bringing down the great.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women — black and white, mothers and daughters — view one another.
Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage by Stephen Budiansky
As Queen Elizabeth's secretary of the Privy Council, Walsingham coordinated a number of official and unofficial spy networks. Corresponding equally with ambassadors and shadowy informants, supervising code breakers and couriers, teaching himself the rules of watching and waiting, Walsingham developed influential models for the roles of secretary and spymaster. Even readers who are already versed in Elizabeth's reign will find Budiansky's new angles on a much-examined era enlightening.
The Histories by Herodotus
Cicero called Herodotus the father of history. Compelled by his desire to "prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time," Herotodus recounts the incidents preceding and following the Persian Wars. He gives us much more than military history, though, providing the fullest portrait of the classical world of the 5th and 6th centuries.
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Autobiographical account of Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War, in which he and his wife, intellectual leftists, enlisted in the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. The book chronicles Orwell's observations and disillusionment with political infighting and totalitarianism.
A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg
Part memoir, part food writing, Wizenberg tells the story of caring for her father through his battle with cancer, and then turning to cooking to help work through her grief after his loss. A beautiful account of a life with the kitchen at its center. Wizenberg is also the author of the blog Orangette.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.
The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende
Allende tells the magnificent epic of the Trueba family -- their loves, ambitions, spiritual quests, relations with one another and participation in the history of their times. That history becomes destiny and overtakes them all.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in the Hunger Games. Collins' characters are completely realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds; the plot is tense, dramatic and engrossing.
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
A contemporary story of adventure and romance, identity and history, this novel brings two outsiders deep into one of the most fascinating regions on Earth -- tiny islands known as the Sundarbans off the coast of India -- where life is ruled by the unforgiving tides and the constant threat of attack by Bengal tigers.
The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives by Brian Dillon
The Hypochondriacs is a book about fear and hope, illness and imagination, despair and creativity. It explores, in the stories of nine individuals, the relationship between mind and body as it is mediated by the experience, or simply the terror, of being ill. And, in an intimate investigation of those lives, it shows how the mind can make a prison of the body by distorting our sense of ourselves as physical beings. Through witty, entertaining, and often moving examinations of the lives of these eminent hypochondriacs -- James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James (Henry's sister), Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol -- Dillon brilliantly unravels the tortuous connections between real and imagined illness, irrational fear and rational concern, the mind's aches and the body's ideas.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
In 1951 Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer, a poor African American migrant worker and mother of five. Cells from the tumor that killed her were taken without her knowledge. They would become the foundation of modern science, living on in thousands of labs worldwide, spawning discoveries that have changed the world. The family she left behind could not afford health insurance and knew nothing of their mother's unknowing contribution until a chance encounter in the 1970s.
The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman
Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Rachman's wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it -- and themselves -- afloat. As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper's rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder's intentions.
Interpreter of Maladies: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, Krakauer searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled 24-year-old Chris McCandless to leave civilization behind and head into the remote Alaskan wilderness.
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
Orringer weaves a tale that spans three generations, reeling from luminous 1937 Paris toward a crumpling, war torn Budapest, and culminating in present-day America. Based on her own grandfather's stories, she recounts the fate of Hungarian Jews during the war.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for 16 weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the invisible man he imagines himself to be.
The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein
The enchanting true story of a love affair that broke down the walls that divided a neighborhood. Bernstein has written a wonderfully charming and moving tale of working class life, social divide and forbidden love on the eve of World War I.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
In early 19th-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret.
The Johnstown Flood by David G. McCullough
McCullough's first book, written in 1987, is the story of a tragedy that became a national scandal. More than 2,000 people died and an entire town was nearly washed away in 10 minutes when on May 31, 1889, a hastily rebuilt dam failed after repeated warnings of instability. The scandal involved the most prominent business barons of the day and illustrated the danger of assuming that people in positions of responsibility are necessarily behaving responsibly.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
Hornby returns to his roots -- music and messy relationships -- in this funny and touching novel which thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but how they are never beyond redemption. Annie lives in a dull town on England's bleak east coast and is in a relationship with Duncan which mirrors the place; Tucker was once a brilliant songwriter and performer, who's gone into seclusion in rural America -- or at least that's what his fans think. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker's work, to the point of derangement, and when Annie dares to go public on her dislike of his latest album, there are quite unexpected, life-changing consequences for all three.
Just Kids by Patti Smith
The godmother of punk recalls her time with Robert Mapplethorpe and their yearnings for a life in art in New York City.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
This novel follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world’s toughest fifteen-year-old." Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
In her most accomplished novel, Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent
Okrent explores the origins, implementation, and failure of that great American delusion known as Prohibition. Last Call explains how Prohibition happened, what life under it was like, and what it did to the country.
Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
In The Aeneid, Virgil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in this novel set in the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
McCann offers a rich vision of the loveliness, pain and mystery of life in New York City in the 1970s. Weaving together seemingly disparate lives, McCann's allegory comes alive in the voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty and the "artistic crime of the century" -- a mysterious tightrope walker dancing between the Twin Towers.
Light in August by William Faulkner
Faulkner vividly brings to life an imaginary South in all of its impoverished, violent, fascinating glory. Joe Christmas, a desperate drifter, who does not know whether he is black or white, has an affair with a white woman with terrible consequences both in terms of Joe’s actions and the town’s response. A powerful indictment of racism.
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life for Elena's daughter, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story.
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers — one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.
Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Despite circumstances that could easily have left her embittered, Kalish, a retired English professor, recalls her formative years fondly. Through simple, honest prose punctuated with "her old pagan rhythms" (New York Times Book Review) and a host of memorable examples, Kalish performs her greatest feat, which is to make some of us under 80 just the slightest bit envious -- crazy to say, but such is human nature -- that we never experienced the Depression-era challenges and triumphs so lovingly recounted.
This is an engrossing and moving story of 12 men, all of them immigrants to the U.S., who were transformed by their brief but intense experiences as soldiers in WWI. Twenty percent of military draftees were foreign born, and many saw their service as a way to gain American citizenship.
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen
This book portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott's life: the effect of her father's self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family's chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings; her experience as a nurse in the Civil War; the loss of her health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
A man with the soul of a poet and the patience of a saint, Florintino Ariza has waited 50 years, nine months and four days to realize his love for Fermina Daza.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The story takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps -- a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an ordinary young man who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel by Helen Simonson
Major Ernest Pettigrew leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World by Lucette Lagnado
An exceptional memoir of a cosmopolitan Egyptian Jewish family's escape from the Nasser regime in 1963 to Paris and finally Brooklyn.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Unrepentant book thief Gilkey has stolen a fortune in rare books from around the country. Unlike most thieves, Gilkey steals for the love of books. Perhaps equally obsessive is the self-appointed bibliodick, Ken Sanders, who is driven to catch Gilkey. Sanders, a rare book collector, will stop at nothing to catch Gilkey.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
Neurologist Sacks draws from his years of medical practice to present tales of real people who suffer from a variety of syndromes which include symptoms such as amnesia, uncontrolled movements and musical hallucinations. Sacks recounts their stories in a riveting, compassionate and thoughtful manner.
March by Geraldine Brooks
Brooks tells the story of the absent father, March, in Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women. When March goes off to join the Union cause during the Civil War, his experiences change his marriage and his beliefs.
Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon by R. Gregory Nokes
Meet the author! In 1887, more than 30 Chinese gold miners were massacred on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon. Massacred for Gold is the first authoritative account of the unsolved crime. It traces the author's long personal journey to expose details of the massacre and its aftermath and to understand how one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West was for so long lost to history.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Written during the darkest, most repressive period of Stalin's reign, this novel gives substance to the notion of artistic and religious freedom. Despite its devastating satire of Soviet life and its audacious portrayals of Christ and Satan, the manuscript had somehow eluded Russian censors, and the enthusiasm of its readers assured the novel immediate and enduring success.
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
A drunken laborer sells his wife and child, and spends his life trying to atone for his wrongdoing -- while clinging to his social status. A spellbinding portrayal of ambition, rivalry, revenge and repentance.
Medea and Other Plays by Euripides
Euripides was the youngest of the three great Greek tragedians. He was born in Attica, probably in 485 B.C. In his tragedies, Euripides represented individuals not as they ought to be but as they are. His excellence lies in the tenderness and pathos with which he invested many of his characters.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen
A hilarious and moving memoir -- in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron -- about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
With sure and subtle touch, Eliot paints a luminous and spacious landscape of life in a provincial town, interweaving her themes with a proliferation of characters: an innocent idealist; a self-defeated young doctor; a naive young woman; and a cold man, who "lives too much with the dead."
Mink River by Brian Doyle
Meet the author! Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a small Oregon coast town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people. Although Neawanaka, Oregon, is impossible to find on a standard map, you should really spend some time there. It’s a magical coastal village with some “odd sweet corners,” very idiosyncratic residents and stories to last a lifetime.
Moby-Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself.
Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Militant Midwives by Michael Bond
Having delivered a particularly stirring speech at his recently deceased colleague's funeral, Monsieur Pamplemousse is more than a little disturbed when the coffin explodes into flames during the ceremony. Luckily his faithful hound Pommes Frites gives out a warning cry just in time so there are not casualties. But who exactly is behind this explosion -- and what was the actual cause of his late co-worker's demise? This latest in their wild romps find the entertaining duo meeting a CIA agent masquerading as a celebrity chef with a penchant for Krispy Kremes, causing chaos at a prestigious hotel, and experimenting with a dog translator.
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
The true story of Dr. Paul Farmer, who grew up in a bus and on a boat and became an international health doctor, "a man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it."
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Probably Woolf's most famous stylistic accomplishment, this brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman's life.
My Abandonment by Peter Rock
Caroline and Father are scavenging for materials to make a shelter in the forest park outside of Portland, Oregon, where they seem to be hiding out. They make cautious trips into the city to the supermarket and the library, but a lapse by Caroline brings police attention, and they are taken into custody.
My Life in France by Julia Child
Upon first arriving in France with her husband Paul in 1948, Child spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever.
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
In Istanbul, in the 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book, but any work of art -- an affront to Islam -- is dangerous. My Name Is Red is a murder mystery played amidst the perils of religious repression.
My Sister's Keeper: A Novel by Jodi Picoult
Thirteen-year-old Anna was conceived after her older sister developed a rare form of leukemia at the age of two, and has donated bone marrow and blood to her sister. Now she has been asked to donate a kidney, and she intends to refuse.
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
On the morning of December 10, 1996, Taylor, a brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke. Now she shares her unique perspective on the brain and its capacity for recovery.
My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy by Nora Titone
Using an array of Booth family letters, diaries and memoirs, the author has reconstructed the life of John Wilkes Booth’s older brother, Edwin, a successful actor.
1984 by George Orwell
Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, 1984 is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
This is the story of a young Japanese student devoted to a beautiful young woman, but their mutual passions are marred by the tragic death of their best friend.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
This story follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years — a chaotic period that saw the unchallenged rise to power of Kim Jong II and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population.
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, born in 1809, was an English naturalist who founded the theory of Darwinism, the belief in evolution as determined by natural selection. Although Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and then studied at Cambridge University to become a minister, he had been interested in natural history all his life. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a noted English poet, physician, and botanist who was interested in evolutionary development. Darwin's works have had an incalculable effect on all aspects of the modern thought. Darwin's most famous and influential work, On the Origin of Species, provoked immediate controversy.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The story of a man whose rebelliousness pits him against the head nurse of a mental ward and the full spectrum of institutional repression.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Acclaimed for both his craft and his imagination, García Márquez has been called a master of myth and magical realism, a style of literature that makes use of fantastical, highly improbable, and sometimes supernatural events and characters. Skillfully blending the fantastic, the mythical and the commonplace in a humorous and powerful narrative, García Márquez tells a moving tale of people locked in isolation, partly of their own making and partly due to U.S. and European cultural and political domination of Latin America.
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
Welty's novel is a miracle of compression, the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work. The story has all the qualities peculiar to the finest short novels: a theme that vibrates with overtones, suspense and classical inevitability. The best book Welty has ever written is a long goodbye in a very short space not only to the dead but to delusion and to sentiment as well.
After tackling such topics as the fate of cadavers, the existence of ghosts, and sex in scientific research, Roach settles her gaze on the not-so-glamorous lives of astronauts, their training, and the quirky experiments performed in the name of space science.
Palace Walk by Najib Mahfuz
This first volume in the Cairo Trilogy describes the disintegrating family life of a tyrannical, prosperous merchant, his timid wife and their rebellious children in post-World War I Egypt.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels by Katherine Ann Porter
Texas-born in 1890, Porter was a master of the short novel or long story, as she preferred to call her pieces. Noon Wine; Old Mortality; and Pale Horse, Pale Rider are considered among the most beautifully wrought narratives in American fiction.
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Olivier is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected in the United States by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.
The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
Contributor to NPR's This American Life, Vowell nails it with her observational powers, smarts, and wit in this collection of essays about historical moments, social commentary, and why she's happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Gettysburg and Salem.
Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss
A stunning look at the complex nature of race relations in America from the post-Civil War years through the turn of the century in this story of Clarence King, a celebrated white scientist and writer who lived a double life as a black Pullman porter and steelworker in order to marry the woman he loved, a former slave.
Meet the author! In a world of growing traffic congestion, expensive oil and threats of cataclysmic climate change, a grassroots movement is carving out a niche for bicycles on the streets of urban cityscapes. In Pedaling Revolution, Mapes explores the growing urban bike culture that is changing the look and feel of cities across the U.S. He rides with bike advocates who are taming the streets of New York City, joins the street circus that is Critical Mass in San Francisco, and gets inspired by the everyday folk pedaling in Amsterdam, the nirvana of American bike activists.
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
The bestselling author of Oryx and Crake draws on Greek mythology to tell the story of Homer's Odyssey from the point of view of Penelope and her 12 hanged maids.
A People's History of the United States: 1492–Present by Howard Zinn
Consistently lauded for its lively, readable prose, A People's History of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that spans American history from Christopher Columbus's arrival to an afterword on the Clinton presidency.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
This is a wise, funny and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages 6 to 14, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Austen's last completed novel features a heroine much older and wiser than her predecessors in earlier books, and presents a more intimate and sober tale of a love found long after such happiness had been deemed hopeless.
The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
Six short stories, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby," a tale of a scrivener who repeatedly distills his mordant criticism of the workplace into the deceptively simple phrase "I would prefer not to."
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Enthralled by a portrait of himself, young Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to exchange his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Thus he is able to indulge in his desires, as only the portrait bears the traces of his decadence and becomes a nightmarish picture of his soul.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The epic story of the building of a cathedral in 12th century England and the lives of the people entwined with it and each other is a sensuous, enduring narrative, and a gripping tale of faith, ambition, bloodshed and betrayal.
The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon
Written by the Court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book is one of the greatest works of Japanese literature. A fascinating exploration of life amongst the nobility at the height of the idyllic Heian period, it describes the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion and whim dominated, and harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance.
A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry
The world of Port William, Kentucky, as viewed by a gentle, stoical, 61-year-old farmer who wants desperately to share his farm with his only son, Virgil, who is killed in World War II. Time and action in the novel are framed by the length of one full growing season, concurrent with the closing months of the war.
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
This bestselling work tells the quintessentially American story of the unsolved murder of a farm family that haunts the small, white town of Pluto, North Dakota, as well as the nearby Ojibwe reservation.
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
In Jazz Age New York, science had no place in the coroner's office and corruption ruled the day. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Blum gives a delicious blend of history and drama, biochemistry and toxicology, sociology and public service, and the beginning of the science of forensics as we know it today.
Pope Joan: A Novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross
Set in the Dark Ages, this historical fiction delivers mystery, romance and belief in the impossible. It is an enjoyable rich tale of a true heroine whose unyielding devotion leads her to make self-sacrificing choices. The writing is vividly descriptive and contains intense, complex characters.
Private Life: A Novel by Jane Smiley
As her husband's obsessions with science take a darker turn on the eve of World War II, Margaret Mayfield is forced to consider the life she has so carefully constructed.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury
The true story of the decade-long art fraud that stymied Britain. One of the largest art cons of the modern age.
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø
A tale moving from the final months of World War II to the present, and from the Russian front to contemporary South Africa, follows the dual adventures of a freedom-seeking war martyr and an alcoholic police officer who is drawn into a mystery with past origins.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen
What sets this little missive apart from other books about Darwin, is that it totally ignores the years of travel on HMS Beagle and begins with what happened afterwards. Quammen gives us a great biography of Darwin, without all the fawning to the 'great man' and gives us the actual man (one who was a hypochondriac and probably suffered from bouts of anxiety and had trouble dealing with the 'real' world), with all his warts.
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, Mary Anning learns she has "the eye" and finds what no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight.
Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of an Oregon Activist, Legislator, and Community Leader by Avel Louise Gordly
Meet the author! Remembering the Power of Words recounts the personal and professional journey of Gordly, the first African American woman elected to the Oregon State Senate.
Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities by Elizabeth Edwards
Edwards focuses on her life after a second cancer treatment and learning of her husband's affair. She talks upon the death of her father and son and then living with breast cancer after going through those personal ordeals. She learned to live with her prognosis and came to terms with why it had to be her going through the years of turmoil and torment.
The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
At age 11, Conway left the arduous life on her family's sheep farm in the Australian outback for school in war-time Sydney, burdened by an emotionally dependent, recently widowed mother. A lively curiosity and penetrating intellect illuminate this unusually objective account of the author's progress from a solitary childhood to public achievement.
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful -- and attempts a nail-biting escape.
Solar: A Novel by Ian McEwan
When Nobel prize-winning physicist Michael Beard's personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This tragic masterpiece explores the mind of an artist in alternately joyful and despairing letters recounting an unhappy romance. Goethe addresses issues of love, death and redemption in an influential portrayal of a character who struggles to reconcile his artistic sensibilities with the demands of the objective world.
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man's remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him — a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. An extraordinary writer, Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Feynman recounts his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums -- and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce passes her time tinkering in the chemistry lab she's inherited from her deceased mother and an eccentric great uncle. When Flavia discovers a murdered stranger in the cucumber patch outside her bedroom window early one morning, she decides to leave aside her flasks and Bunsen burners to solve the crime herself, much to the chagrin of the local authorities.
A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim
Poignant and powerful, this debut collection from preeminent writer and critic Asim heralds his arrival as an exciting new voice in African American fiction.
The Thirteenth Tale: Novel by Diane Setterfield
A reclusive author, Vida Winters, hires a young woman to tell her story. She has created so many fictional versions of life that her young biographer finds it difficult to determine what is fantasy or fiction. Determined to find the truth, she encounters a ghost, a fire, a topiary garden, and the remnants of an old family. A story to relish and enjoy; you’ll be kept guessing until the end.
A secret operator in America's 1902 labor movement, leading a double life that balances precariously on the knife-edge of discovery, finds his mission entangled with the fate of a young man accused of murder.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic that has been translated into more than 40 languages.
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Shute's most beloved novel, a tale of love and war, follows its enterprising heroine from the Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback.
Trask by Don Berry
Set in 1848 along the Oregon coast, this book follows the eponymous mountain man, Elbridge Trask, through physical and spiritual journeys.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely — to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child.
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle
On a beautiful spring day, March 25, 1911, workers were preparing to leave the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village when a fire started. Within minutes it consumed the building's upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside. The final toll was 146 -- 123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in New York City history until September 11, 2001. Triangle is both a chronicle of the fire and a vibrant portrait of an entire age. The story shows how the fire dramatically transformed politics and gave rise to urban liberalism.
True Grit by Charles Portis
Portis has been acclaimed as one of America’s foremost comic writers. His most famous novel tells the story of Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, who sets out in the winter of eighteen seventy-something to avenge the murder of her father. True Grit is eccentric, cool, straight and unflinching, like Mattie herself, who tells the story a half-century later in a voice that sounds strong and sure enough to outlast us all.
Angell explains how a huge portion of the revenue generated by "Big Pharma" goes not into research and development but into aggressive marketing campaigns to sell their product.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Why is the young governess the only one who can see the ghosts? Are her young charges haunted or evil? Or is the governess herself mad? The book that claims to start out as a Christmas Eve ghost story quickly becomes a tale of psychological horror as the governess struggles -- and ultimately fails -- to protect the children from the "corruption" that only she can conceive of ... but cannot name.
Ulysses by James Joyce
This carefully structured stream-of-consciousness novel chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Homer's Odyssey. Journeys in Dublin are matched by inward journeys. It has been called the greatest novel of the 20th century.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
Using a crime committed by two brothers as a focal point, the author explores the nature of radical Mormon sects.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell
In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend's attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital where she has been locked away for years.
Water for Elephants: A Novel by Richard Adams
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.
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
In a thrilling tale that is equal parts suspense and humor, Carnegie Medalist Pratchett spins the story of a young witch-to-be named Tiffany who must journey through the terrifying and ever-shifting dreamscape of Fairyland to rescue her kidnapped brother.
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Friend and contemporary of Isak Dinesen, Markham grew up in British East Africa in the early 1900s. She was a bush pilot for many years and the first woman to fly the North Atlantic solo from east to west. This gorgeously written memoir is considered a classic of outdoor literature.
What Maisie Knew by Henry James
The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world. Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while she herself becomes the pretext for all sorts of adult sexual intrigue. In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens.
What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
This anthology of Gladwell's New Yorker essays is like a greatest-hits compilation from one of the most gifted and influential journalists in America and author of the bestsellers The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers.
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Winner of the National Book Award, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys -- radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings -- pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man, Thomas Cromwell, dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power. In inimitable style, Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage.
The Women: A Novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Recounts the life of Frank Lloyd Wright as told through the experiences of the four women who loved him: the Montenegrin beauty Olgivanna Milanoff; the passionate Southern belle Maud Miriam Noel; the spirited Mamah Cheney, tragically killed; and his young first wife, Kitty Tobin.
Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
In pre-war China, young Pei is sold to Auntie Yee, who runs a home for silk workers. Eventually, their lives are touched by the war with Japan, and the combined difficulties of monsoons, isolation, strike, war and death.
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Assassination Vacation comes an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, deep-rooted idealism, political and cultural relevance, and their myriad oddities.
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs
Raised in a secular family but interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, Jacobs decides to attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal, and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.
You Know Your Way Home: A Modern Initiation Journey by Suzanne Jauchius
Meet the author! A memoir of a gifted Oregon psychic who triumphed over a difficult childhood where her nature was neither welcome nor tolerated.
Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto by Maile Chapman
Sunny Taylor is an American nurse who hides behind a mask of crisp professionalism at a Finnish convalescent hospital called Suvanto. On a late-summer day, a new patient arrives on Sunny's ward, and soon Suvanto's reliable calm begins to show signs of strain. As summer turns to fall, and fall to a long, dark winter, the escalating menace of Chapman's astonishing debut novel builds to a terrifying conclusion.
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Eggers tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a successful Syrian-born painting contractor living in New Orleans, married, father of four, when Hurricane Katrina hits. Zeitoun sends his family out of harm’s way while he remains. After the levees break he uses a canoe to perform rescues and distribute food and supplies until he is arrested and then accused of being a member of Al Qaeda. He is moved (disappears) into a temporary prison, more of a wire cage, and subjected to the brutality of the era's 'crisis management' methods.
