BOOK CLUB BAGS

Book Club Bags

North Mankato Taylor Library

Included in each bag are at least 10 paperback copies of a single title along with discussion questions and author information.  Bags can be checked out on your library card for 6 weeks.

Aging with Grace:  What the Nun Study Teaches us About Leading Longer, Healthier and More Meaningful Lives.    David Snowden.

In 1986 Dr. David Snowdon, one of the world’s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease, embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging and – ultimately living.  Dubbed the “Nun Study” because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project has made headlines worldwide with its provocative discoveries.  The School Sisters of Notre Dame in Mankato are featured.

The Alchemist.  Paulo Coelho. 

The Alchemist presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a highly unique situation. Brazilian storyteller Paulo Coehlo introduces Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. And so he's off: leaving Spain to literally follow his dream.

All Over but the Shoutin’.  Rick Bragg.

A haunting memoir about growing up dirt-poor in the Alabama hills--and about moving on but never really being able to leave. The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for story- telling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life....

Atonement.  Ian McEwan.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend.  But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult movies—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.   masterpiece.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.  Dai Sijie

This is a beguiling fable that shines with the wonder of imagination, the beauty of romance, and the power of storytelling.  Set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the novel tells the story of two hapless city boys sent to a remote mountain village for reeducation.

Bee Season.   Myla Goldberg.

The bestselling, critically acclaimed debut novel about an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent for spelling. Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidactic father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam....

Bel Canto.  Ann Patchett

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage....

Beneath a Marble Sky.  John Shors.

Shors's spirited debut novel tells the story of the eldest daughter of the 17th-century emperor who built the Taj Mahal. From her self-imposed exile, Jahanara recalls growing up in the Red Fort; the devotion her parents, Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, had for each other; and the events that took place during the construction of the fabulous monument to their love.

Between, Georgia.  Joshilyn Jackson.

Nonny Frett knows the meanings of “rock” and “hard place” better than any woman ever born.  She’s got two mothers, “one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy.” She’s got two men: her husband, who’s easing out the back door; and her best friend, who’s laying siege to her heart in her front yard. And she has two families: one who stole her and raised her right…and one who lost her and won’t forget they’ve been done wrong. In the middle of a feud that’s igniting a stash of highly flammable secrets, Nonny must now make some hard choices about who she wants to be—and which way is truly home.

The Book Thief.  Markus Zusak.

Death meets the book thief, a 9-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger, when he comes to take her little brother, and she becomes an enduring force in his life, despite his efforts to resist her. "I traveled the globe . . . handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity," Death writes. "I warned myself that I should keep a good distance from the burial of Liesel Meminger's brother. I did not heed my advice." As Death lingers at the burial, he watches the girl, who can't yet read, steal a gravedigger's instruction manual. Thus Liesel is touched first by Death, then by words, as if she knows she'll need their comfort during the hardships ahead.

Breaking Clean.  Judy Blunt.

Poet and essayist Blunt grew up on a Montana cattle ranch in the 1950s and 60s, where "indoor plumbing" meant a door on the privy and "running water" was a fast ranch wife with two buckets. A natural tomboy, happiest around animals, Blunt dreaded leaving childhood. The gender rules of ranch life were unyielding: women married and kept to their kitchens, and they didn't own property or make decisions about the ranch…

A Can of Peas.  Tracy DePree (Minnesota Author)

After the death of his grandfather, Peter Morgan and his new bride, Mae, face a life-changing decision:  should they embrace the career-chasing ambitions of their family and friends in St. Paul or accept the absurd challenge of saving the family farm in Minnesota countryside?  Enticed by the romance of simple, quiet life, the Morgans set out to follow in the footsteps of Peter’s grandparents. 

The Cape Ann.  Faith Sullivan.

Lark Erhardt, the six-year-old narrator of The Cape Ann, and her fiercely independent mother dream of owning their own house; they have their hearts set on the Cape Ann, chosen from a house catalog.  But when Lark’s father’s gambling threatens the down payment her mother has worked so hard to save, Lark’s mother takes matters into her own indomitable hands.  A disarmingly involving portrait of a family struggling to stay together through the Great Depression, The Cape Ann is an unforgettable story of life from a child’s-eye view.

Carter Beats the Devil.  Glen Gold

Hypnotizing portrait of a 1920s magic-obsessed America and of Charles Carter – a.k.a. Carter the Great – a young master performer whose skill as an illusionist exceeded even that of the great Houdini.  Filled with historical references that evoke the excesses and exuberance of Roaring Twenties pre-Depression America,  Carter Beats the Devil is a complex and illuminating story of one man’s journey through a magical and sometimes dangerous world, where illusion is everything.

Cold Sassy Tree.  Olive Ann Burns.

Modern times come to a conservative Southern town in 1906 when the proprietor of the general store elopes with a woman half his age, and worse yet, a Yankee. The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson - a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward - the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner...

The Color of Water: a black man’s tribute to his white mother.  James McBride.

Who is Ruth McBridge Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve children. James McBridge, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful memoir.

Cry the Beloved Country.  Alan Paton

A beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s.  The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters’ situations.  It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind.  Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic tale, passionately African, timeless and universal, and beyond all, selfless.  An Oprah Classics book club selection.

Dandelions in a Jelly Jar.  Traci DePree.

Mae Morgan’s flamboyant art teacher sister, Trudy Ploog, moves to the quiet, rural town of Lake Emily, Minnesota, to be closer to Bert Biddle, her shy, unassuming farmer boyfriend. Everything is perfect and then…the school board cuts the Gifted and Talented program and rumors of more cuts fly. Outraged, Trudy kicks up a whirlwind, beginning with a letter to the paper that questions the very foundation of small-town life–high school sports! Soon the whole town is talking, and Trudy and Bert are put to the test. Meanwhile, the Morgan family is recovering from the loss of a child and the death of a life-long dream as Virginia Morgan helps a father and daughter rediscover life.

Death of a Salesman.  Arthur Miller.  

Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

The Elegant Gathering of White Snows.  Kris Radish.

Just after midnight in a small town in Wisconsin, eight women begin walking together down a rural highway. Career women, housewives, mothers, divorcées, and one ex-prom queen, they are close friends who have been meeting every Thursday night for years, sharing food, wine, and their deepest secrets. But on this particular Thursday, they decide to disappear from their own lives....

Ella Minnow Pea.  Mark Dunn

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina.  Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”  Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from memorial statue of Nevin Nollop.  As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel.  The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.  *pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet.

Empire Falls.  Richard Russo.

Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect.  What keeps him there?   It could be his bright sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school.  Or maybe, it’s Janine, Miles soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor.  Or perhaps, it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town – and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself.

A Fine Balance.  Rohinton Mistry.

A portrait of India featuring four characters. Two are tailors who are forcibly sterilized, one is a student who emigrates, and the fourth is a widowed seamstress who decides to hang on. A tale of cruelty, political thuggery and despair by an Indian from Toronto, author of Such a Long Journey.

For the Sake of Peace.  Daisaku Ikeda

Based on the 20 years’ worth of university lectures and proposals to the United Nations, this book addresses the issue of peace from the Buddhist perspective of compassion, interconnectedness of all life, and absolute respect for human life.  Informed by the teachings of Nichiren, the thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist teacher and reformer, this book is about the subject of peace from various angles, including economics, the environment, disarmament, religion, and culture.  Ikeda writes that “nothing is more precious that peace,” and through self-mastery, dialogue, and belief in the sovereignty of the people, the world may come to know a peaceful existence.

Gilead.  Marilynne Robinson.

From the first page of her second novel, the voice of Rev. John Ames mesmerizes with his account of his life—and that of his father and grandfather. Ames is 77 years old in 1956, in failing health, with a much younger wife and six-year-old son; as a preacher in the small Iowa town where he spent his entire life, he has produced volumes and volumes of sermons and prayers, "[t]rying to say what was true." But it is in this mesmerizing account—in the form of a letter to his young son, who he imagines reading it when he is grown—that his meditations on creation and existence are fully illumined.

Girl Named Zippy.  Haven Kimmel

Named "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around her home, Kimmel's witty memoir takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent post-war period, where people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

The Glass Castle.  Jeannette Walls.

Walls opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them.

Grand Opening. Jon Hassler.

The Foster family; Catherine, Hank, their 12-year-old son, Brendan, and Catherine's elderly father are urging a 1928 De Soto toward the town of Plum, Minn., and a time-honored American Dream: ownership of a business (they have purchased a dilapidated grocery store), a home and a sense of belonging. But Plum turns out to be a lemon; sour in spirit, pitted with religious bias and general mistrust.

Handmaid’s Tale.  Margaret Atwood.

In the world of the near future, who will control women’s bodies?   Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead.  She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read.  She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.   Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge.  But all of that is gone now.

Homestead.  Rosina Lippi.

Each life has its place, and every variation ripples the surface of the tiny alpine villages called Rosenau.  Be it a mysteriously misaddressed love letter, or a girl’s careless delivery of two helpless relatives into Nazi hands, the town’s balance is ever tested, and ever tender.  Here is a novel spanning eighty years – years that bring factories and wars, store bought cheese, and city-trained teachers – weaving the fates of the wives, mothers, and daughters in this remote corner of Austria.

I Capture the Castle.  Dodie Smith

The Story of a seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle.  Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills.   She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries.  Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle’s walls, and her own first descent into love.  By the time she pens her final entry, she has “captured the castle” – and the heart of the reader – in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  Maya Angelou.

In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence.

The Kite Runner.  Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted.

The Kitchen Boy.  Robert Alexander.

Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra as seen through the eyes of the Romanovs’ young kitchen boy, Leonka.  Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims to be the last living witness to the Romanov’s brutal murders and sets down the dark secrets of his past with the imperial family.  Does he hold the key to the many questions surrounding the family’s murder? 

Last of her Kind.  Sigrid Nunez.

Two women meet as freshmen on the Columbia campus in 1968. Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. She is mortified by Ann's romanticization of the underprivileged class, which Georgette herself is hoping college will enable her to escape....

Leaving Mother Lake.  Yang Erche Namu.

With the help of anthropologist Mathieu, singer Namu describes growing up on the Chinese-Tibetan border in Moso country, "the Country of the Daughters." Detailing her late-1960s, early-'70s upbringing-she was known in her village as "the girl who was given back three times"-she sheds light on the unique matrilineal Moso culture, with its "walking marriages," where women take as many lovers as they want and the men continue to reside in their mothers' homes. The interweaving of the customs of this remote part of China with Namu's determination to have a worldly life despite her family's poverty and her own inability to read and write lend this tale poignancy.

A Lesson Before Dying. Ernest J. Gaines.

From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel.   A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach, visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.  Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.

Life of Pi. Yann Martel.

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes....

Looking for Lost Bird: A Jewish Woman Discovers her Navaho Roots.  Yvette Melanson

While growing up as an adopted child in a Jewish family, the author of this compelling memoir never quite fit in with expectations of who she was supposed to be. On the Internet, with help she attributes to both kind strangers and the Great Spirit, Melanson discovers the reason she didn't fit in, uncovering the bizarre truth that she is, in fact, Navajo. "Funny," everyone says to her, "you don't look Indian." This memoir of an extraordinarily eventful life is crafted like the rugs that Melanson has learned to make in the tradition of her birth family.

The Memory of Running.  Ron McLarty.

By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson “Smithy”” Ide is a loser.  An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy’s life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his beloved parents and long lost sister all within the span of one week.  Rolling down the driveway of his parents’ house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle in an effort to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption.

Memory Keeper’s Daughter.  Kim Edwards.

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret....

Miracle Life of Edgar Mint.  Brady Udall.

If I could tell you only one thing about my life, it would be this:  when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.  As formative events go, nothing else comes close.

A Mirthful Spirit.  Mary Huntley & Edna Thayer.

A self-help resource for people in their journey through life.  The authors speak with a tone of warmth, engagement, and exploration as they capture and convey the preciousness of a mirthful spirit and laughter in overall wellness.

Mountains Beyond Mountains.  Tracy Kidder.

At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

My Sister’s Keeper.  Jodi Picoult.      

Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned. Meanwhile, Jesse, the neglected oldest child of the family, is out setting fires, which his firefighter father, Brian, inevitably puts out. Picoult ably explores a complex subject with bravado and clarity, and comes up with a heart-wrenching, unexpected plot twist at the book's conclusion.

1984    George Orwell.

The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One. In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit.

 Nanny Diaries. Emma McLaughlin, and Nicola Klaus

A graduate from New York University takes a position caring for the only son of a weathly Manhattan family. She rapidly learns the work and time involved to ensure that the Park Avenue wife doesn't work, cook, clean or raise her own child. A satirical and comical look at the upper class of Manhattan.

The Neon Bible.  John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole – who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces – wrote the The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of sixteen.   The manuscript languished in a drawer and became the subject of a legal battle among Toole’s heirs.  It was only in 1989, thirty-five years after it was written and twenty years after Toole’s suicide at thirty-one, that this amazingly accomplished and evocative novel was freed for publication.  The Neon Bible tells the story of David, a young boy growing up in a small Southern town in the 1940s.  David’s voice is perfectly calibrated, disarmingly funny, sad, shrewd, gathering force from page to page with an emotional directness that never lapses into sentimentality. 

Nickel and Dimed.  Barbara Ehrenreich.

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour?...

Night.  Elie Wiesel.

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died.

Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen.  Bob Greene.

Millions of American soldiers, many of whom had never left their hometowns before, crossed the nation by rail during the years of World War II on their way to training camps and distant theaters of battle. In a little town in Nebraska, countless thousands of them met with extraordinary hospitality--the "miracle" of veteran journalist Bob Greene's title.

The Pact: A Love Story.  Jodi Picoult.

Popular high-school swimming star Chris Harte and talented artist Em Gold bonded as infants; their parents have been next-door neighbors and best friends for 18 years. When they fall in love, everyone is ecstatic. Everyone, it turns out, except for Em, who finds that sex with Chris feels almost incestuous. Her emotional turmoil, compounded by pregnancy, which she keeps secret, leads to depression, despair and a desire for suicide, and she insists that Chris prove his love by pulling the trigger. The gun is fired in the first paragraph, and so the book opens with a jolt of adrenaline.

Patty Jane’s House of Curl.  Lorna Landvik.

Maybe Patty Jane Dobbin should know better than to marry a man as gorgeous as Thor Rolvaag.  Soon, with a baby on the way, Thor is gone.  It’s a good thing Patty Jane has her irrepressible sister, Harriet, to rely on.  Before long, the sisters have opened a beauty parlor, a place where women can come together when life threatens to tear them apart.  National ads/media.

Peace Like a River.  Leif Enger

Hailed as one of the year’s top five novels by Time, and selected as one of the best books of the year by nearly all major newspapers, national bestseller Peace Like a River captured the hearts of a nation in need of comfort.  Enger tells the story of eleven-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy who has reason to believe in miracles.  Along with his sister and father, Reuben finds himself on a cross-country search for his outlaw older brother who has been controversially charged with murder. 

Population 485:  Meeting your neighbors one siren at a time.  Michael Perry

 Being a volunteer EMT is no small challenge, even in a town as small as New Auburn, Wisconsin. Perry mixes his tales of heroic rescues with his stories of small-town life. His book opens with his team attempting to rescue a teenage girl from a disastrous car wreck on a dangerous bend of road. As part of the volunteer fire department, Perry--along with his brother and mother-- pulls people from mangled cars and answers 911 calls from critically ill people. Tragic at times, funny at others, Perry's memoir will appeal to anyone curious about small-town life.

Power of the Dog.  Thomas Savage

A Major rediscovery!  This gripping domestic drama set in the 1920s Montana is the finest, most powerful work by a much-admired (and unjustly overlooked) novelist of the American West.  It tells the story of two brothers – and a woman and her son, whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already uneasy peace.

Pride and Prejudice.  Jane Austen.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.  However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.  “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said this lady to him one day, ‘have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?’”

Prodigal Summer.  Barbara Kingsolver.

In a beautiful hymn to wildness, Kingsolver celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature and of nature itself.  Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate takes over the countryside, the novel’s characters find their connections to one another in the forested mountains of southern Appalachia.

Purgatory Ridge.  William Kent Krueger.

Krueger's page-turner revisits Cork O'Connor, the part-Irish, part-Anishinaabe/Ojibwe ex-sheriff of Aurora, Minn., a tiny lumber town on the edge of the Superior National Forest, whose exploits were depicted in Boundary Waters. This narrative opens with a bang, as Karl Lindstrom's lumber mill explodes in the early morning hours, killing Ojibwe elder Charlie Warren. The local Native Americans are up in arms over Lindstrom's plan to cut down Our Grandfathers, a grove of old-growth white pines sacred to tribal lore. Outside conservationists have also descended on the town, eager to save the 300-year-old trees. When a person identifying himself as the Eco-Warrior, soldier of the Army of the Earth, claims responsibility for the bombing, the Native Americans are suspected of collusion as The quest to identify the Eco-Warrior bomber ultimately focuses on a young outsider, Brent Hamilton, and his zealous mother, who was crippled in a similar bombing.

The Reader.  Bernhard Schlink.

The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust?

Reading Lolita in Tehran.  Azar Nafisi.

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics.  As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov.  In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading.

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey.  Candice Millard.

This book focuses on an episode in Teddy Roosevelt's search for adventure that nearly came to a disastrous end. A year after Roosevelt lost a third-party bid for the White House in 1912, he decided to chase away his blues by accepting an invitation for a South American trip that quickly evolved into an ill-prepared journey down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon known as the River of Doubt. The small group, including T.R.'s son Kermit, was hampered by the failure to pack enough supplies and the absence of canoes sturdy enough for the river's rapids. An injury Roosevelt sustained became infected with flesh-eating bacteria and left the ex-president so weak that, at his lowest moment, he told Kermit to leave him to die in the rainforest.

Secret Life of Bees.  Sue Monk Kidd.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.  When Lily’s fierce-hearted “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the town’s fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina – a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past.  There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to the mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household.  This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love – a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  Linda See.

In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misunderstanding arises, their friendship threatens to tear apart.

Summer of Ordinary Ways: A Memoir.  Nicole Helget.

Helget's debut begins with a staggering example of her father's brutality: he mercilessly beats a cow to death for not weaning her calf. Yet Helget refuses to succumb to a "woe is me" attitude, and she layers vignettes to create a lyrical story of growing up on a Minnesota farm in the 1980s, where her mother verges on insanity, her five unruly younger sisters get underfoot, and death is a familiar part of life.

Sweet Charity?: Emergency food and the end of entitlement.  Janet Poppendieck.

An examination of whether volunteerism, food pantries, and soup lines do more harm than good. The author explores the bitterness and frustration on both sides of the charity business of keeping people fed. During a bad economy, people "did the right thing" by pulling together to help each other. In the current strong economic times, she reports, people question the number of homeless and hungry and wonder why things haven't improved. The author investigates whether our present system is actually contributing to the problem instead of solving it by letting the government off the hook.

Sweet Land: New and Selected Stories.  Will Weaver.

In this paperback original, a stable of fresh stories by award-winning writer Will Weaver are complemented by a hand-picked selection of favorites from his original collection, A Gravestone Made of Wheat, to offer a fresh, vivid portrait of the changing midwestern landscape. New highlights include “Blaze of Glory,” an enchanting tale of an RV road trip and a senior couple’s “last time”; “The Trapper,” the story of a hard split between an old trapper and a younger female environmentalist; and “The Last Farmer,” the capstone story of this elegant collection that examines the discovery by a high-tech farmer of the history of the old houses on his land. Fourteen stories in all portray the bountiful and whimsical and cruel human spirit and the swirling transformation of America’s heartland.

Tales of a Female Nomad.  Rita Golden Gelman.

The story of Rita Golden Gelman, an ordinary woman who is living an extraordinary existence.  At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of connecting with people in cultures all over the world.  In 1986 she sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, and residing everywhere from thatched huts to regal palaces.  She has observed orangutans in the rain forest of Borneo, visited trance healers and dens of black magic, and cooked with women on fires all over the world.  Rita’s example encourages us all to dust off our dreams and rediscover the joy, the exuberance, and the hidden spirit that so many of us bury when we become adults.

The Things They Carried.  Tim O’Brien

Depicts the men of Alpha Company:  Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O’Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.  They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy) and occasionally each other.

Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Zora Neale Hurston.

Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can "tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."

They Poured Fire on us from the Sky.  Alphonsion Deng, Benson Deng, Benjamin Ajak, Judy Berstein

As gunshots, flames, and screams engulfed their village, three cousins fled into the cover of the forest. Every step led the boys away from their peaceful, agrarian world--a traditional world were spear-toting fathers protected their huts from the lions that roamed by night. With each footstep they were drawn deeper into the horrific violence of Sudan's civil war: a world of bombed-out villages, mine-sown roads, and relentless desert, a world where starving adults would snatch the grain from a weak child's fingers....

 The Thirteenth Tale.  Diane Setterfield.

When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School At a Time.  Greg Mortenson

An inspirational story of one man's efforts to address poverty, educate girls, and overcome cultural divides. Critics quibbled over the awkward prose and some melodrama. But, a story as dramatic and satisfying as this should tell itself.

To Kill a Mockingbird.  Harper Lee.

Set in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus – three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman.  Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child.  The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  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. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny.

Tuesdays with Morrie.  Mitch Albom.

The best-selling author recounts his weekly visits with a dying teacher who years before had set him straight. It reminds us of the affection and gratitude that many of us still feel for the significant mentors of our past.

Unless.  Carol Shields.

Reta Winters, 44-year-old successful author of light summertime fiction has always considered herself happy, even blessed.  That is, until her oldest daughter, Norah, mysteriously drops out of college to become a panhandler on a Toronto street corner – silent, with a sign around her neck bearing the word “Goodness”

Waiting for White Horses.  Nathan Jorgenson.

The gentle morning breeze was beginning to blow the cloud of fog off the lake in puffs. Each small fragment of the fog seemed to tumble and gallop across the water before it disappeared. At first she didn't see it. 'He got me out of bed to watch fog,' she thought. For a moment she wasn't sure if he was serious. Then she saw the horses. 

Water for Elephants.  Sara Gruen.

A novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie....

We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lionel Shriver.

Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacherTelling the story of Kevin's upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters....

When the Emperor Was Divine.  Julie Otsuka.    

Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen.  With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination – both physical and emotional – of a generation of Japanese Americans.  In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view –the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family’s return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four year in captivity—she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion.

Wonder Spot.  Melissa Bank.

A refreshingly honest interpretation of one young woman's journey into adulthood. As we follow heroine Sophie Applebaum through a comfortable, yet awkward childhood in suburban Pennsylvania to the challenges of finding love and a career in midtown Manhattan, The Wonder Spot is never guilty of the self-indulgent traps set by other members of the Chick Lit genre Bank helped launch.

The Worst Hard Time: the untold story of those who survived the great American dustbowl..  Timothy Egan.

The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out....

Year of Wonders.  Geraldine Brooks.

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Ann Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer.  Through Anna’s eyes, we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.  As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.  As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a “year of wonders.”

 Junior Books—Great Reading for Adult Groups, too!

Because of Winn-Dixie.  Kate DiCamillo.

When ten-year-old India Opal Buloni moves to Naomi, Florida, with her preacher father, she doesn’t know what to expect.  She is lonely at first—that is until she meets Winn-Dixie, a stray dog who helps her make some unusual friends.  Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal begins to let go of some of her sadness and finds she has a whole lot to be thankful for.

Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown.  Maud Hart Lovelace.

Betsy, Tacy and Tib are twelve – old enough to do lots of things… even go downtown on their own.  There they see their first horseless carriage, discover the joys of the public library, and see a real play at the Opera House.  They even find themselves acting in one!  Best of all, they help a lonely new friend feel at home in Deep Valley—the most wonderful place in the whole world to grow up.  Ever since the first publication in the 1940s, the Betsy-Tacy stories have been loved by each generation of young readers.

Boston Jane.  Jennifer Holm.

Sixteen-year-old Jane Peck has ventured to the unknown wilds of the Northwest to wed her childhood idol, William Baldt.  But her impeccable training at Miss Hepplewhite’s Young Ladies Academy in Philadelphia is hardly preparation for the colorful characters  and crude life that await her in Washington Territory.  Thrown upon her wits in the wild, Jane must determine for herself whether she is truly proper Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia, faultless young lady and fiancée, or Boston Jane, as the Chinook dub her, fearless and loyal woman of the frontier.

Bud, Not Buddy.  Christopher Paul Curtis

It’s 1936 Flint, Michigan.  Times may be hard, and 10-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy, but Bud’s gota  few things going for him: 1.  He had his own suitcase full of special things; 2.  He’s the author of “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself”; 3.  His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: posters of Herman E. Calloway and his band of renown, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression.  Bud is sure those posters will lead him to his father.  Once he decides to hit the road, nothing can stop him, not hunger, not fear, not would-be vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself.

The Giver.  Lois Lowry.

Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear of pain.  There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community. When Jonas turns 12, he is singled out to receive special training from the Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life.  It is time for Jonas to receive the truth.  

Hatchet. Gary Paulsen.

Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single engine plane in which he is flying crashes.  Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother has give him as a present—and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart ever since his parent’s divorce.  But now Brian has no time for anger, self-pity, or despair – it will take all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive.

Holes.  Louis Sachar.

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse.  A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats.  Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys “build character” by spending all day, every day, digging holes:  five feet wide and five feet deep.   It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake.  The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something.  Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment – and redemption.

A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt.  C. Coco DeYoung.

In 1933, eleven-year-old Margo Bandini, her parents and young brother, Charlie, face losing their house if they do not find a way to pay back the bank loan used to cover hospital expenses for Charlie's emergency leg operation. In a letter, Margo appeals to Eleanor "Everywhere" Roosevelt, the person she admires most, for help.

Little House on the Prairie.  Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The Adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for Kansas.  They travel for many days in their covered wagon until they find the best spot to build their little house on the prairie.  Soon they are planting and plowing, hunting wild ducks and turkeys, and gathering grass for their cows. Pioneer life is hard, but Laura and her folks are always busy and happy in their new little house.

Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.  Kate DiCamillo.

Edward Tulane is an exceedingly vain, cold-hearted china rabbit owned by 10-year-old Abilene Tulane, who dearly loves him. Her grandmother relates a fairy tale about a princess who never felt love; she then whispers to Edward that he disappoints her. His path to redemption begins when he falls overboard during the family’s ocean journey.

Penny from Heaven.  Jennifer Holm.

Holm’s semiautobiographical story of 1953 Brooklyn. It's the summer Penny Falucci turns 12. Although she lives with her plain, ordinary mother, grandparents, and poodle, Scarlett O'Hare, she spends a lot of time with her deceased father's large, loving Italian-American family as she tries to know the father she can't remember.

A Wrinkle in Time.  Madeleine L’Engle.

Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door.  He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a “tesseract,” which, if you didn’t know, is a wrinkle in time.  Meg’s father had been experimenting with a time-travel when he suddenly disappeared.  Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?