June, 2008
All Over But the Shoutin'
by Rick Bragg
“A child of ‘white trash’ America tells of how he escaped his dirt-poor Alabama upbringing to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, a journey made possible in large part by the sacrifice and suffering of his formidable mother.”  New York Times reviewer, Anthony Walton, called this a ''sad, beautiful, funny and moving memoir.''  New York Times review

May, 2008
The Double Bind
by Chris Bohjalian
Psychological thriller, crime novel and “what-if” sequel to The Great Gatsby—with significant twists.. Bohjalian’s novel is difficult to describe because at every turn there is the risk of spoiling the story by revealing its surprise ending. However, the author powerfully explores the haunting world of the homeless and the mentally ill, and he skillfully draws us into the lonely world of those unfortunate people whom society fears and rejects.

April, 2008
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald presents the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby.  His romantic illusions about the power of money to buy respectability and the love of Daisy—the "golden girl" of his dreams—are skillfully and ironically interwoven with episodes that depict what Fitzgerald viewed as the callousness and moral irresponsibility of the affluent American society of the 1920s.

March, 2008
The Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan
Recounting one of the worst man made ecological disasters to hit America (maybe even the world), Timothy Egan traces the history of the Dust Bowl before and during the Great Depression. This important book tells about the unbelievable austerity of the Dust Bowl era. Its message of human suffering and tenacity, of lessons learned too late about land use and conservation, about the price and sometimes the rewards of "sticking it out", are written here with the spirit of a somber thriller.

February, 2008
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid
Sitting down at a restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, with a mysterious man who appears to be an American military operative, Changez, a young Pakistani, tells the story of how he came to renounce the U.S. Beautifully nuanced with fragile immigrant hopes and the tragic annihilation of a promising future, the author paints a provocative picture of post-9/11 reality. This novel will make you think about our prejudices and preconceived ideas and it will prompt you to look deep within yourself also, and to ponder about our world which has changed so drastically, almost overnight.

January, 2008
Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
This is a soulful journey of self-discovery written as a travelogue. Suffering from despair after a difficult divorce, Gilbert over the course of a year visits three different countries. She goes from the physical pleasures of Italy to the search for the transcendent in the ashrams of India. In Bali, her experiences encompass both the physical and spiritual realms. The author has recorded a series of serious personal insights and written them in a personable, lighthearted, and endearing tone.

December, 2007
Abide with Me
by Elizabeth Strout
“How do we recover from terrible loss and redeem guilt? And how do we live the life we've been given? In this beautiful sophomore novel, Elizabeth Strout (Amy and Isabelle) carefully constructs Abide with Me, which explores faith, community, numbing loss, the tremendous power of words used carelessly, and redemption,” an Amazon reviewer.

November, 2007
Ike: an American Hero
by Michael Korda
In the words of one reviewer this book is “an enchanting, charming, flowing narrative of the man Ike. In a sense, we might call it "I Like Ike" for indeed, Korda likes Ike and expresses why millions of Americans did also.” Though not ground-breaking, the more human dimensions of Ike from child, to military hero, to world leader is what makes this work stand out. Crisp, fast-paced, filled with human interest, captivating story-telling--it's all here in Korda's telling of Ike's life.

October, 2007
American Bloomsbury:Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work
by Susan Cheever
Cheever's enthusiasm for her subjects comes through on every page of American Bloomsbury. In this non-academic introduction to some of our most important American writers, the author treats these literary giants like family and writes evocatively of their bucolic home town, Concord. After reading her book, you may well be inspired to read or reread the works of this extraordinary group of writers.

June, 2007
The Madonnas of Leningrad
by Debra Dean
Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. And while the elderly Russian woman cannot hold on to fresh memories — the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild — her distant past is preserved: vivid images that rise unbidden of her youth in war-torn Leningrad. Dean captures essences of life under seige, the horrors of war, the beauty of human endeavor in spite of hardships...all with just the right touch.

May, 2007
The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart
This mesmerizing travelogue recounts Stewart’s long walk across Afghanistan in early 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban. The author travels the ancient route from Herat to Kabul, encountering chest-deep snow in the mountain passes of Hazarajat, dysentery, and life-threatening confrontations along the way, but also local villagers and tribal elders, Taliban commanders and teenage soldiers, foreign-aid workers and dangerous rogues. Stewart's journey offers an edifying portrait of Afghanistan and the people who inhabit it.

April, 2007
Small Island
by Andrea Levy
This is the story of two island nations and five lives caught up in wartime and postwar conflict. The nations are colonial Jamaica and its "Mother Country,” England. The lives belong to three Jamaicans and a married English couple. And the subject is England's grudging welcome of colonial citizens immediately following the Second World War.  The winner of multiple British literary prizes, Small Island is a great read.

March, 2007
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
The following comment, submitted by an Amazon.com reviewer succinctly sums up the story of The Glass Castle. “Jeannette Walls leaves no stone unturned in her amazing, at times unsettling story of life growing up in a highly dysfunctional family. With unfailing candor and a never ending love for the family she must endure, The Glass Castle is, in the end, an uplifting and highly empowering read.”

February, 2007
Tales of the South Pacific
by James Michener
According to Orville Prescott whose review appeared in the New York Times on February 3, 1947, “This long book of eighteen loosely linked short stories is, I am convinced, a substantial achievement which will make Mr. Michener famous…It is original in its material and point of view, fresh, simple and expert in its presentation, humorous, engrossing and surprisingly moving.” These stories of the men and women in the combat units of the Pacific campaign earned a Pulitzer prize for Michener. As vibrant and compelling in terms of human interest today--as when it was written, these ‘tales’ will remain with you long after you’ve closed the book.

January, 2007
The Tipping Point
by Malcolm Gladwell
Using a wide range of case studies, such as, crime in the New York City subway and Hush Puppy shoe fashion trends, Gladwell, author and staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, investigates the relationship among the main forces behind events that pass the “tipping point” and become epidemics. What, at first glance, may appear to be a ho-hum topic, turns out to be a fascinating look at human behavior.

December, 2006
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See
In 19th century China young girls are subjected to the ritual of foot-binding and then spend the majority of their lives in the upper rooms spinning, sewing and telling stories. Yet, in this restrictive world two seven-year-old girls experience a deep lifelong friendship that supersedes their relationship with even their husbands and children. This universal tale of best friends, misunderstanding, and loss transcends time and cultural differences. Wonderful read.

November, 2006
Shadow Divers
by Robert Kurson
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson tells the tale of how two recreational divers spent six years, risking their lives and their relationships with family and friends to figure out one of the last mysteries of World War II. It is a true story of the discovery of a German submarine off the coast of New Jersey and the attempt to identify the U-boat. A real page-turner, you won’t be able to put it down.

October, 2006
Moon Tiger
by Penelope Lively
At the age of seventy-six and on her deathbed, Claudia Hampton decides to write "The history of the world as selected by Claudia: fact and fiction, myth and evidence, images and documents.” Taking a kaleidoscopic view, and doing away with chronology Lively writes the same way humankind thinks--constantly jumping from thought to thought. This story of life as a writer, historian, and mother ends as a saga of unfulfilled love. Lively was awarded Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for this deeply moving novel.

June, 2006
The Language of Baklava
by Diana Abu-Jaber
The author chronicles her own growing up as the oldest daughter of an American mother and her exuberant Jordanian father, Bud, who, like his large crowd of siblings, aches for his birth country. Abu-Jaber writes about the profound disorientation of both childhood and the immigrant experience with acute insight, poignancy, and expertly timed, self-deprecating comic narration. This story is as rich and full-bodied as the pungent recipes that are peppered throughout the book, both sweet and spicy, a peek into bi-cultural life that is amusing and heartwarming.

May, 2006
March
by Geraldine Brooks
The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Geraldine Brooks has written a richly conceived and dramatically plotted story of the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or "contraband." Brooks offers us a unique view of the Civil War and one that will stay with the reader long after the last chapter.

April, 2006
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
Set in the mid-1800s in a small New England town, Louisa May Alcott invites the reader into the home of the four March sisters as they deal with the struggles of having a father fighting in the Civil War, having to mature and grow up supporting themselves with little jobs and finding the joy of love and children, along with the sadness of death. Little Women retains a special place in the heart of American literature.

March, 2006
Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder
Paul Farmer, Harvard educated anthropologist and medical doctor has dedicated his life to the battle of conquering disease among the poorest people in the world. The Haitian proverb, “Beyond mountains there are mountains”: as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too, has become Farmer’s mantra. A gifted man, Dr. Farmer is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it. This is an inspiring book that shows the difference one person can make.

February, 2006
The Hamilton Case
by Michelle De Kretser
The novel deals with powerful colonial themes - race and class. Sam Obeysekere, an upperclass Ceylonese attorney, is the vehicle for this study. Even with his elevated status, inequities suffered by him, his family, and his culture from living in a British colony become clear. The novel is complex and multilayered with rich writing and wonderful imagery. The Hamilton Case received critical acclaim and was a New York Times Notable Book.

January, 2006
Too Close to the Falls
by Catherine Gildiner
A clinical psychologist and advice columnist, the author has written a fascinating and nostalgic memoir about her unconventional upbringing in the sleepy town of Lewiston NY in the 50s. She was raised by older, free-thinking parents, who gave her room to think for herself and take responsibility for her actions, an approach that contrasted sharply with her stringent Catholic school education. Too Close to the Falls is told in the child’s voice – her world seen through her eyes – but as a microcosm of a larger world with dark woods and dangerous waterfalls at the edges. A story that has you laughing at one sentence and crying with the next, this book has it all.

December, 2005
The Lost Garden
by Helen Humphreys
England in 1941 is the setting for this beautifully crafted coming-of-age story, where maturity means a stoic acceptance of the constant presence of death and the sadness of unfulfilled loves. The narrator, 35-year-old Gwen Davis, is a horticulturist who flees bombed-out WWII London to manage a team of "land girls"-women who grow vegetables as part of the war effort-at a country estate. She struggles to manage her wayward charges, who are more interested in the Canadian soldiers billeted in the main house than in cultivating potatoes. The Lost Garden is a beautiful little gem of a novel, a wonderful read about one woman's perfect moment and time and how it quickly eluded her.

November, 2005
To The Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
Considered one of the great novels of the twentieth century Virginia Woolf's lovely, poignant novel is based on her own family. In this book, the author chronicles the lives of the Ramsay family and some friends, examining human relationships and emotions with great insight. The characters are elegant and well developed, the writing is lovely, and the form is daring and innovative. To the Lighthouse is a rare kind of book that can change the way you read characters.

October, 2005
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family
by Mary S. Lovell
The Sisters is a multigenerational story of one of the most dazzlingly complex families ever to grace the pages of Burke's Peerage. The author has written with insight, humor and skilled analysis of the English Aristocracy of the 20-60's, the tragedies and triumphs of a brilliant family and of Anglo-American culture in the 20th century.

June, 2005
After the Ball
by Patricia Beard
The year, 1905. The setting, New York City. Flamboyant heir to the controlling interest in Equitable Life Assurance Society, James Hazen Hyde becomes the central figure in a financial scandal that shocks the country. After the Ball tells a tale that is as fresh today as it was in 1905. The themes are of greed and chicanery, the flawed love between fathers and sons, and contradictory American attitudes about wealth – all this set against a backdrop of magnificence, excess, and corrupting glamour.

May, 2005
Ship Fever and Other Stories
by Andrea Barrett
This collection of beautifully written stories offers splendid descriptions of the human dimensions of science and medicine. All of the tales are set in the 1800s and involve what one reviewer aptly calls, "the great explorers of mind and geography." Barrett portrays such noted figures of science as botanist Linnaeus and naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace as poignant, sympathetic men. The most powerful is the last tale about a doctor who works on Grosse Island in Canada, the receiving point for boatloads of Irish immigrants fleeing famine in Ireland, and bringing horrible typhoid fever in sickening and deadly droves. There are thousands of books written about the hearts and emotions of the poets, philosophers, and politicians of the nineteenth century. To have a glimpse, even an imaginary one, of the scientists' as well, is a rare treat.

April, 2005
Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World
by Yang Erche Namu
The isolated Moso country in the foothills of the Himalayas is called “the Country of the Daughters.” This matrilineal society frowns upon traditional marriage, has no word for father, and passes property down from mother to daughter. The Moso practice “walking marriage,” men visit women by night and are gone by morning. This is a fascinating look at an almost unknown culture that is both primitive and generous and in many ways seems almost Utopian.

March, 2005
Secret Father
by James Carroll
Suspense, history, literary fiction, espionage, romance and psychological drama—this compelling novel is all of this and more. Two families, two sons, and the devastating complications that engulf their lives during one weekend in April, 1961, provide a unique perspective on international gamesmanship in Berlin during the Cold War.

February, 2005
The Bookseller of Kabul
by Asne Seierstad
An insightful portrayal of the everyday life of Sultan Khan and his family. The author’s account centers on events in the lives of individual members of Khan's large clan (two wives, assorted children, mother, brothers, sisters, nephew), updates the reader with information about recent Afghani history, offers a glimpse from the inside at an Islamic family, and an understanding of the harshness and difficulty of the daily grind in Afghanistan--both under the Taliban and after the U.S. antiterrorist campaign.

January, 2005
The Soloist
by Mark Salzman
A fine novel, interweaving three stories that all center on the narrator: the rise and fall of a child prodigy cellist, the sole member of a jury at a murder trial who finds meaning in a defendant's case, and a teacher of a budding, gifted young Korean cellist. It is, in part, a story of losing and searching to recover one's sense of identity.

December, 2004
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
by Alexandra Fuller
A fascinating memoir of Alexandra (Bobo) Fuller growing up as a White African living in rural Africa during tumultuous times. The period when the Fuller family lived in Africa was one of great upheaval and strife throughout the continent, as one by one African countries threw off their British reins and began governing themselves.

November, 2004
The Distant Land of My Father
by Bo Caldwell
Anna, the narrator of this riveting first novel, lives in a storybook world: exotic pre-World War II Shanghai, with handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father, the son of missionaries, leads a charmed and secretive life. When Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to California, he stays behind, believing his connections and a little bitof luck will keep him safe. Through Anna's memories and her father's journals we learn of his fall from charismatic millionaire to tortured prisoner, in a story of betrayal and reconciliation that spans two continents.

October, 2004
Waiting for Snow in Havana
by Carlos Eire
The memories of Carlos' life in Havana, cut short when he was just eleven years old, are at the heart of this stunning, evocative, and unforgettable memoir. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a eulogy for a native land and a loving testament to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.

June, 2004
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
A moving story about love and bravery is told through the eyes of a British autistic boy. Since the boy faces situations without emotion or feelings he deals with life in a purely logical and orderly way. This unique human approach makes for a very original novel.

May, 2004
The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson
In this dual tale, Erik Larson first gives us the fascinating story of the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. This World's Fair was a demonstration that America, particularly Midwestern America, could compete successfully with the Old World. Running concurrently with the story of the Fair itself is the tale of a psychopath who imprisoned and murdered numerous young women and children while the Fair was going on.

April, 2004
Reading Lolita in Tehran
by Azar Nafisi
This memoir deals with life in Tehran around the time of the revolution and the Iraqi-Iranian war, particularly the repression of women and intellectuals in the country. Seven bright young women secretly meet with the author once a week over a two-year period to read and discuss forbidden western literature. From these readings the students begin to draw parallels to their own lives.

March, 2004
Embers
by Sandor Marai
The story is of two lifelong friends of military school and service background, now in old age, meeting again after 41 years. Their separation was brought about by an act of betrayal by one of them. Set against the backdrop of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the novel provokes discussion about loyalty, friendship and its responsibilities, wealth and privilege, the eternal love triangle, and much more.

February, 2004
Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
Considered by many to be a modern day classic, this is the story of a bright young couple living in the mid-fifties who find themselves unfulfilled in their marriage and with their suburban lifestyle, which ultimately leads to a disastrous conclusion.

January, 2004
Blue Latitudes
by Tony Horwitz
This true story retraces many of the South Pacific, Antarctic and Arctic routes that Captain James Cook surveyed back in the 1768-1779 period. It is a fast paced and often humorous look at the lands that Cook visited and their current situation as seen by the author when he visited in the late 1990s.

December, 2003
Madam Secretary
by Madeleine Albright
For eight years, during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms, Madeleine Albright was an active participant in the most dramatic events of recent times. In an outspoken memoir, the highest-ranking woman in American history shares her remarkable story and provides an insider's view of world affairs during a period of unprecedented turbulence.

November, 2003
When the Emperor was Divine
by Julie Otsuka
A fictional account of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In short, the story, told in a straightforward style, is of the emotional impact felt by one Japanese American family that was relocated during the difficult early war years following the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.

October, 2003
Signal & Noise
by John Griesemer
In this epic page-turning story of the laying of the trans-Atlantic cable and the men and women who are caught in its monumental tide, the reader is brought face to face with the collision of worlds seen and unseen: the present and the future; the living and the dead; the real and the imagined.