An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, Brock Clarke

A lot of remarkable things have happened to Sam Pulsifer beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. Emerging at the age of 28, he creates a new life as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous writers go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist. (from the back cover)

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 motives; together with her precocious literary gifts;brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.
[Excerpted from Anchorbooks.com]

Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler

After presiding over a disastrous family picnic in Baltimore, fifty-three-year-old Rebecca Davitch suddenly begins to question who she is...and how she has turned into someone other than herself. The story of how she answers this question is beguiling, funny, and deeply moving.
[Excerpted from ReadingGroupGuides.com]

Bee Season, Myla Goldberg

Saul Naumann and his wife, Miriam, appear to have an unremarkable marriage. He works in the temple, and she is a compulsive lawyer. Of their two children, Aaron seems destined to become a rabbi, while Eliza is an underachiever. Suddenly, Eliza demonstrates a talent for spelling, and everyone's life is transformed. After finishing second in a national spelling bee, she becomes her father's pet project. Convinced that she has a gift that will allow her to receive shefa, a concept developed by a Jewish mystic named Abraham Abulafia in 1280, he begins daily study sessions with her that eclipse everything else in their lives. Saul fails to notice Aaron's growing disaffection and clandestine immersion in Hare Krishna. Miriam's behavior also becomes more distant and aberrant. Eventually, a family crisis ensues.
-Library Journal

The Black Madonna, Louisa Ermelino

Vibrant, dark-souled creatures who get their way, control their lives, and pass on arcane knowledge like family heirlooms from generation to generation, Teresa, Magdalena, and Antoinette, with their intersecting lives, take center stage in The Black Madonna. This is an exploration of how each woman, and her beloved son, is forever changed by the Madonna of Viggiano. Louisa Ermelino's wonderful novel reveals a delicious truth: that it is the Italian-American women who hold the secrets -- and the power -- from the "other side," and that they know how to use them.

[Excerpted from ReadingGroupGuides.com]

Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya

Bless Me, Ultima is a coming-of-age novel about a young boy's loss of innocence and approach to maturity. But it also deals with tradition and education, faith and doubt, and good and evil. And if Antonio doesn't find an absolute truth in his search, he still comes to believe with his father that "sometimes it takes a lifetime to acquire understanding, because in the end understanding simply means having a sympathy for people."
[Excerpted from NEA The Big Read]

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

"The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove - a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others - who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment."

Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe

The story is a drama about ambition, racism, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: the successful, arrogant, and very self-conscious bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow. [Wikipedia]

The Book of Flying, Keith Miller

"Pico is the librarian in his city by the sea: a humble, gentle man, a collector of books, a guardian and caretaker of the stories that are his breath and his life. One fateful day, he falls in love with Sisi, a beautiful, winged girl who cannot truly love a wingless creature like him. So Pico sets off to find Morning Town, where legend says he will find the Book of Flying and get his wings. On the way he has fabulous adventures and meets astonishing people, each of whom provides a gateway to learning something important about himself." -Booklist

The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak

This is a book that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel...from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family..[a]cross the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s.... Liesel [the titled Book Thief]...as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayor's reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines... Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesel's story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative. (School Library Journal, March 2006, p. 552)

The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller

"When Robert Kincaid drives through the heat and dust of an Iowa summer and turns into Francesca Johnson's farm lane looking for directions, the world-class photographer and the Iowa farm wife are joined in an experience of uncommon truth and stunning beauty that will haunt them forever." - Amazon.com

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fuku - a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from the Domincan Republic to the United States and back again.

Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

"This collection of 101 stories is based on the belief that true testimonies of goodness and loving transformations can nourish us to the bone and heal the cynicism in our hearts. Some of the authors are famous, such as Dan Millman, who writes an exquisite vignette on "Courage," and Gloria Steinem, who writes of "The Royal Knights of Harlem." Many, however, have a short, simple story to tell about an event, a person, an everyday miracle that exemplifies the best of the human spirit." -Gail Hudson, Amazon.com

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier

The Civil War is wearily entering its last, grisly year. Inman, a veteran of the Petersburg and Fredericksburg campaigns, recovering from his wounds in a Confederate hospital, decides he has had enough of the pointless slaughter and walks out, heading across the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina toward Cold Mountain, where he hopes to reclaim his spiritual homeland and Ada, the woman he loves. It is to be an unforgettable odyssey through the soon-to-be-defeated South, with Inman pursued by relentless Home Guard troops whose task it is to hunt out deserters. Interwoven with Inman's heart-stopping adventures is the story of Ada's own internal journey.

Charles Frazier writes about his native territory with the eye of a lifelong countryman and the voice of a poet. Cold Mountain is a saga of discovery, terror, and knowledge that is epic in its passion and mythic in scope. [Excerpted from ReadingGroupGuides.com]

The Color of Water, James McBride

The Color of Water tells the remarkable story of Ruth McBride Jordan, the two good men she married, and the 12 good children she raised. Jordan, born Rachel Shilsky, a Polish Jew, immigrated to America soon after birth; as an adult she moved to New York City, leaving her family and faith behind in Virginia. Jordan met and married a black man, making her isolation even more profound. The book is a success story, a testament to one woman's true heart, solid values, and indomitable will. -Amazon.com

Consumption, Kevin Patterson

Born in the 1950's, Victoria knows nothing but the nomadic life of the Inuit until, at age ten, she is sent to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis. Six years later, she returns to a radically different world, a stranger to her family and culture. She marries a non-Inuit, Robertson; as their children gravitate toward the pop culture of the mainland, and as her husband exploits the economic opportunities that the Arctic offers, Victoria is torn between her family and her ancestors, between the communal life of the North and the material life of the "South".
- from the back cover

Crossing the Mangrove, Maryse Condé

A gripping story imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture. Francis Sancher; a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others; is found dead on a path outside a small village in Guadeloupe. None of the villagers are particularly surprised, since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself. As the villagers come to pay their respects they each reveal another piece of the mystery behind Sancher's life and death. Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community.

Crow Lake, Mary Lawson

For generations, learning has been the valued goal in Kate's family, but when her parents die, oldest brother Luke's college acceptance must be put aside so that he can keep the family together. Real help comes from their community in rural northern Canada, and the initial efforts of the two oldest brothers make it possible for the younger children, including seven-year-old Kate, to remain in a household filled with love and humor. As an adult, however, Kate, a professor of environmental science in Toronto, looks back with a sense of tragedy and loss, not so much for her parents, but for her brother Matt. The reader knows that something terrible is going to happen, although which of the dire events is deemed worst is based on the child Kate's values and judgment. Lawson achieves a breathless anticipatory quality in her surprisingly adept first novel, in which a child tells the story, but tells it very well indeed.- Booklist

The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.
-Amazon.com

Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons

Ellen Foster is an 11-year-old who has been dealt a rotten hand in life. Her early childhood is spent with a sickly mother and an alcoholic and abusive father. After her mother commits suicide (or is it murder?), Ellen goes to live alone with her father, doing the best she can to avoid being raped or abused. When the courts finally take action, she is sent to live with her grandmother, a bitter and spiteful woman. Yet when her grandmother dies, Ellen manages to take charge of her own life. This beautifully written story, compelling in its innocence, is sweet, funny, and sad.
-Library Journal

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.

Enemy Women, Paulette Jiles

"From critically acclaimed, award-winning poet and memoirist Paulette Jiles comes a story of survival and love in the midst of a torn nation's bitter agony. For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War Between the States is a plague that threatens devastation despite the family's avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare seen at its most terrible on the day the Union Militia arrives to set her house on fire, driving her brother into hiding and dragging her widowed father away, beaten and bloodied. Left to care for two young sisters, Adair sees no road but the one that leads away, as they start out on foot into the winter mountains in search of a safe haven. Even the least of hopes is doomed, however, in a world forever changed, as the treachery of a fellow traveler brings about Adair's arrest on charges of "enemy collaboration." Torn from her terrified sisters, the girl suddenly finds herself consigned to a filthy women's prison in St. Louis. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and she finds herself returning her feelings despite herself. Before he returns to war, he leaves her with a last precious gift: freedom. Weakened in body but not in spirit, Adair must now travel alone through dangerous, unknown territory an escaped "enemy woman" surrounded by perils and misery on all sides. She makes her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise, seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory."

Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman

"This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family. As someone who played at blocks with her father's 22-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who only really considered herself married when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proof-reading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading out loud. There is even a foray into pure literary gluttony--Charles Lamb liked buttered muffin crumbs between the leaves, and Fadiman knows of more than one reader who literally consumes page corners."

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

The temperature at which all books catch fire and burn;
Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires. And he enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames ...never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think...and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!

Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick

Publisher Comments: In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick's struggle to find herself in love and in work. As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader's admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter's mother.

Four Spirits, Sena Jeter Naslund

During the civil rights conflict, Birmingham, Ala., was notorious for the ferocity of its racial bigotry: peaceful demonstrators attacked with fire hoses and dogs by police chief Bull Connor; the Klan-set explosion at a black church that killed four little girls. The four victims are only background figures in Naslund's faithful and moving evocation of the city and the era, but they appear to several characters in the form of spirits who promise the reconciliation to come. The novel is constructed as a series of vignettes that follow a dozen or so characters whose lives finally intersect in entirely credible ways, and who serve as emblems of the divided citizens of Birmingham, some who bitterly fought integration and others who persevered in their struggle for equality.
-Publishers Weekly

Gap Creek, Robert Morgan

"There is a most unusual woman living in Gap Creek. Julie Harmon works hard, "hard as a man," they say, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. She is just a teenager when her little brother dies in her arms. That same year she marries and moves down into the valley where floods and fire and visions visit themselves on her, and con men and drunks and lawyers come calling. Julie and her husband discover that the modern world is complex and that it grinds ever on without pause or concern for their hard work. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay."

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son. This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten. (2005 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction & 2004 National Book Critics Circle Winner:)

Go With Me, Castle Freeman Jr.

The Vermont hill country is the stark, vivid setting for this gripping and entertaining story of bold determination. The local villain, Blackway, is making life hellish for Lillian, a young woman from parts elsewhere. Her boyfriend has fled the state in fear; and local law enforcement can do nothing to protect her. She resolves, however, to stand her ground, and to fight back. A pair of unlikely allies; Lester, a crafty old-timer; and Nate, a powerful but naive youth; join her cause, understanding that there is no point in taking up the challenge unless you're willing to "go through". In this modern-day drama, a kind of Greek chorus; wry, witty, digressive; obsessively, amusingly reminiscent; skeptical, opinionated, and not always entirely sober; enriches the telling of this unforgettable tale as the reader follows the threesome's progress on their dangerous, suspenseful quest.
-Publisher

Grace, Richard Paul Evans

Told by an older and wiser narrator looking back over the years to his first love, the tragedy that followed, and discovering the purpose for his life. Grace is the story of a young runaway girl and the boy who hides her from a frightening world too large and unfathomable for him to comprehend. It is about two brothers and the love that binds them together through difficult times. It is a tale told during the conflicting times of the early sixties.

Half-Past Nowhere, Joseph Cavano

Patterned after Ernest Hemingway's seminal collection of short stories, "In Our Time," Joseph Cavano's acclaimed collection, "Half-Past Nowhere," chronicles the life of a young hero as he moves from "innocence to experience." Most of the stories take place in and around the Hudson Valley, and long-time residents are likely to recognize many local spots. Born into a close knit Italian American family dominated by a loving but alcoholic father, young Joey Fusaro is eventually able to free himself from the insulated life his father has planned for him and escape into a world much richer than he ever imagined. His freedom, however, comes with a price, as he is forced to struggle with his own prejudice, the joys and pains of first love, a crisis of faith and, finally, the kind of freedom that comes only with self awareness. If you were ever young, you may find yourself inside.

The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood

In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the mono theocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be.
-Library Journal

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by JK Rowling (Young Adult title)

"Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny."

Heart of a Woman, by Maya Angelou

"This engaging book chronicles the changes in Maya Angelou's life as she enters the hub of activity that is New York. There, at the Harlem Writers Guild, she rededicates herself to writing, and finds love at an unexpected moment. Reflecting on her many roles - from northern coordinator of Martin Luther King's history-making quest to mother of a rebellious teenage son - Angelou eloquently speaks to an awareness of the heart within us all."

Here on Earth, by Alice Hoffmann

As this novel opens, March Murray Cooper returns to her hometown, ostensibly to bury the woman who raised her but needing to resolve the unfinished business of her youthful love for Hollis, from whom she has been separated for years. Hollis has now grown into a man embittered by loneliness. He has learned neither to forgive nor to forget, and March must discover whether he can ever learn to love.
-Library Journal

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss Coming Soon

A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.

This extraordinary book was inspired by the author's four grandparents and by a pantheon of authors whose work is haunted by loss-Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, and more. It is truly a history of love: a tale brimming with laughter, irony, passion, and soaring imaginative power. (From the publisher.)

Holidays on Ice, by David Sedaris

David Sedaris' darkly playful humor is common thread through the book, worming its way through "Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" a chipper suburban Christmas letter that spirals dizzily out of control, and "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol," a vicious theatrical review of children's Christmas pageants. As always, Sedaris's best work is his sharply observed nonfiction, notably in "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," the tale of a memorable Christmas during which the young Sedaris learns to see his family in a new light. Worth the price of the book alone is the hilarious "SantaLand Diaries," Sedaris's chronicle of his time working as an elf at Macy's, covering everything from the preliminary group lectures to the perils of inter-elf flirtation. Along the way, he paints a funny and sad portrait of the way the countless parents who pass through SantaLand are too busy creating an Experience to really pay attention to their children. In a sly way, it carries a holiday message all its own.
-Amazon.com

The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans

A terrible riding accident leaves 13-year old Grace and her horse, Pilgrim, physically and emotionally damaged.
Grace's mother, Annie, takes them all the way from New York to Montana to see the horse whisperer. Surrounded by the serene magnificence of the mountains, the girl, the horse, and the mother fall under the gentle, healing spell of Tom Booker, the horse whisperer.
[Excerpted from penguinreaders.com]

House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III

In this riveting novel of almost unbearable suspense, three fragile yet determined people become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Colonel Behrani, once a wealthy man in Iran, is now a struggling immigrant willing to bet everything he has to restore his family's dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a troubled young woman whose house is all she has left, and who refuses to let her hard-won stability slip away from her. Sheriff Lester Burdon, a married man who finds himself falling in love with Kathy, becomes obsessed with helping her fight for justice.

Impulse, Frederick Ramsay

Frank Smith, famed writer of murder mysteries, travels from Phoenix to Baltimore for his 50th class reunion at Scott Academy, leaving behind him the highly suspicious disappearance of his wife and the officer that is convinced that Smith has killed her and buried the body in the desert. But at the Academy a 25-year old mystery awaits him: a group of young boys walked from campus into the woods and disappeared. Frank is talked into looking into the mystery along with his long-lost friend and new love interest, Rosemary. Both are "pushing seventy" but try to solve the various mysteries with the style, audacity and intelligence of a Sun City version of Nick and Nora Charles.[
Excerpted from Poisoned Pen Press and Publishers Weekly]

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

Capote's nonfiction novel retraces the murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and the subsequent capture and execution of the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.

Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (Non-fiction)

"God, he was a smart kid.." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. -Amazon.com

Jewel, Bret Lott

The year is 1943 and life is good for Jewel Hilburn, her husband, Leston, and their five children. Although there's a war on, the Mississippi economy is booming, providing plenty of business for the hardworking family. And even the news that eldest son James has enlisted is mitigated by the fact that Jewel, now pushing 40, is pregnant with one last child. Her joy is slightly clouded, however, when her childhood friend Cathedral arrives at the door with a troubling prophecy: "I say unto you that the baby you be carrying be yo' hardship, be yo' test in this world.
]Excerpted from Amazon.com]

The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara

"In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history, two armies fought for two dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Shattered futures, forgotten innocence, and crippled beauty were also the casualties of war. Unique, sweeping, an unforgettable, THE KILLER ANGELS is a dramatic re-creation of the battleground for America's destiny." (Winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for fiction)

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hossein

Hosseini's debut novel opens in Kabul in the mid-1970s. Amir is the son of a wealthy man, but his best friend is Hassan, the son of one of his father's servants. His father encourages the friendship and dotes on Hassan, who worships the ground Amir walks on. But Amir is envious of Hassan and his own father's apparent affection for the boy. Amir is not nearly as loyal to Hassan, and one day, when he comes across a group of local bullies raping Hassan, he does nothing. Shamed by his own inaction, Amir pushes Hassan away, even going so far as to accuse him of stealing. Eventually, Hassan and his father are forced to leave. Years later, Amir, now living in America, receives a visit from an old family friend who gives him an opportunity to make amends for his treatment of Hassan.
-Booklist

The Ladies of Garrison Gardens, Louise Shaffer

Charles Valley’s legendary dowagers, the three Miss Margaret's, have lost one of their own: Peggy Garrison, who married into a huge fortune but was constantly overshadowed by the legacy her husband’s first wife, the great Myrtis Garrison. When Peggy’s will is read, the news of who will take over the Garrison fortune shakes the town to its core. To everyone’s shock, Peggy has left all of the Garrison holdings–the world-famous botanical gardens, the massive resort, and the lovely Garrison “Cottage,” where FDR once visited–to the town’s down-and-out wild child, Laurel Selene McCready. [Excerpted from Random House]

The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier

A set of bewitching medieval tapestries hangs today in a protected chamber in Paris. They appear to portray a woman's seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown-until now. In The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier weaves fact and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry-an extraordinary story exquisitely told.
[Excerpted from Dutton Publishing]

The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

Sebold offers a powerful first novel, narrated by Susie Salmon, in heaven. Brutally raped and murdered by a deceptively mild-mannered neighbor, Susie begins with a compelling description of her death. During the next ten years, she watches over her family and friends as they struggle to cope with her murder. She observes their disintegrating lives with compassion and occasionally attempts, sometimes successfully, to communicate her love to them. Although the lives of all who knew her well are shaped by her tragic death, eventually her family and friends survive their pain and grief.
-Library Journal

Lucia, Lucia, Adriana Trigiani

It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris’ honor is tested.
[Excerpted from RandomHouse.com]

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Lucette Lagnado

Lucette Lagnado, senior writer for the Wall Street Journal, revisits her family’s comfortable, cosmopolitan life in Cairo’s vibrant Jewish community prior to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rising dictatorship in Egypt and then contrasts this time with subsequent life in the New World. When the Eqyptian government nationalized the Suez Canal, the Lagnados were caught in a downward financial spiral, and were forced to relocate first to Paris and then to New York in the mid 1960s.

From her vivid childhood memories and later extensive research, Lagnado breathes new life into her deceased but beloved father Leon Lagnado and recreates his earlier life in their Eqyptian homeland. A successful businessman, a dandy and womanizer, a religious man, yet an active participant in the vibrant nightlife of Cairo, Leon Lagnado is an absent but committed provider for his family while his young, beautiful, cultured wife Edith remains at their Malaka Nazli home to care for their four children. As Nasser consolidates his powers Leon Lagnado decides the family must leave Egypt and seek haven wherever they are welcomed. They arrive, penniless and dispirited, first in Paris and then make their way to a Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York a year later. Older, unwell, Leon finds work as a street peddler of neckties, a job that cannot provide a decent life for his wife and children, yet as he remembers his past life, Leon Lagnado is unable to change. Edith quietly supports her husband’s sense of self-worth while letting go of her own dreams and opportunities. She sacrifices much to give their children a fresh start in a new community.

This unusual memoir depicting immigrant lives changed from prosperity to poverty and poignantly told by the family’s youngest survivor is the winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America's notorious villain. A Confederate sympathizer and a member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame, wealth, and promise for a chance to avenge the South's defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying them the justice they sought.

Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln's own blood relics, Manhunt is a fully-documented work, but it is also a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before."
[From http://www.jameslswanson.com/]

Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

In this collection of 27 fairly short essays, some of which appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker, Sedaris gives the impression of ease and naturalness. Whether he is writing about overcoming a lisp, learning to play the guitar, trying to master French, or taking an IQ test, whether the locales are North Carolina, New York, or France, the author is both amused and amusing. Call what he writes essays, sketches, minor discourses, whimsicalities, reminiscences, curiosities, vignettes, chronicles, orbits of narrative no convenient blanket phrase covers them all it is a testimony to his talent that he manages to infect the pieces with his geniality. They are all based on the author's own experiences and are all nicely constructed, cheerful, and absolutely not taxing on the brain.
-Library Journal

The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards

David Henry leads the perfect life; he's an orthopedic surgeon married to a wonderful, beautiful woman. It is 1964, and there's a terrible snowstorm in Lexington, KY, when his wife goes into labor. The bad weather keeps Norah's ob/gyn from making it to the hospital, so her husband, along with his nurse, Caroline Gill, decides to deliver the baby in his clinic. Under sedation, Norah gives birth to a healthy boy. As David is thrilled by the birth of his son, Norah starts to have more contractions. He quickly sedates her again, and she gives birth to a girl with Down syndrome. Wanting to protect Norah and feeling she would not be able to cope with a mentally challenged child, David gives the baby to Caroline and asks her to place her in an institution and never reveal their secret.
-Library Journal

Murder Off the Books, Evelyn David

Recently divorced Rachel Brenner meets Mackenzie 'Mac' Sullivan, a private investigator who is staking out her house and following her to her new job at a funeral home. Always accompanied by Whiskey, a charming Irish wolfhound, Mac is looking for Rachel's brother, who is a suspect in a murder investigation. Rachel begins to enjoy the single life, and finds herself able to cope in ways she never suspected, when she joins forces with the attractive Mac and his charming assistant, Whiskey, to find the real killer and prove her brother's innocence.

My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of pre implantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged ...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
[Excerpted from ReadingGroupGuides.com]

The Night Birds, Thomas Maltman

The intertwining story of three generations of German immigrants to the Midwest : their clashes with slaveholders, their journey west to Minnesota, the impact of the Great Sioux War of 1862 and its aftermath - seen through the eyes of young Asa Senger as he learns that violence will not stay buried, that the past is as close as his own heartbeat. - From the back cover

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives." Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witch doctors.[Excerpted from Random House]

On Beauty, Zadie Smith

"Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. Faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Or the encore. Then Jerome, Howard's older son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps, and the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives. How do you choose the work on which to spend your life? Why do you love the people you love? Do you really believe what you claim to? And what is the beautiful thing, and how far will you go to get it? Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions."

The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession - "The thief in question and offbeat genesis for New Yorker writer Orlean's book is ever-quotable eccentric John Laroche, whose craving for the rare orchid eventually lands him and three Indian accomplices in a Florida courtroom--and allows Orlean to write her appreciative and lyrically funny profile of obsession and Florida."
-Library Journal

A Painted House, John Grisham

It's September 1952 in rural Arkansas when young narrator Luke Chandler notes that "the hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day." These folk are in Black Oak for the annual harvest of the cotton grown on the 80 acres that the Chandlers rent. The three generations of the Chandler family treat their workers more kindly than most farmers do, including engaging in the local obsession playing baseball--with them, but serious trouble arises among the harvesters nonetheless.
[Excerpted from Amazon.com]

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

An adult, full-length graphic novel, whose film adaptation was the winner of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize. Persepolis is the story of the authors "unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution....It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the controversial trials and joys of growing up."(from the publisher)

The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett

An epic set in twelfth-century England, The Pillars of the Earth
tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known...of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect-a man divided in his soul...of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame...and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.

The Pilot's Wife, Anita Shreve

"Being married to a pilot has taught Kathryn Lyons to be ready for an emergency, but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock on her door and the news of her husband's fatal crash. As Kathryn struggles through her grief, a bizarre mystery swims into focus, and she is forced to confront disturbing rumors about the man she loved and the life that she took for granted." - Oprah's Book Club

Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver

"Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place."

Queenmaker: A Novel of King David's Queen, India Edghill

For over forty years, Michal lived and reigned in David's court. She was the beautiful and proud daughter of King Saul and the prize David would risk his kingdom to win. Behind the palace doors, beneath the burning sun of the desert, or fleeing from Absalom';s warriors, Michal was at the center of court intrigues. As a sister, a wife, a mother, a lover, a woman both scorned and worshipped, and above all, as a friend to David's other women, Queen Michal uses courage and wit to weave her own life; and reveals the court of the kings as only a woman could see it.

Rainmaker, John Grisham

"Rudy Baylor, a new law school graduate, once dreamed of the good life as a corporate attorney. Now he faces joblessness and bankruptcy--unless he can win an insurance case against a heavyweight team of lawyers, a case that starts small but mushrooms into a frightening war of nerve and legal skill that could cost Rudy not only his future, but also his life." - Amazon.com

The Reader, by Bernard Schlink

"When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder."

Redemption, Julie Chibbaro (Young Adult title)

Gr. 9-12. Set in the early sixteenth century before colonists settled in North America, this ambitious first novel tells the story of Lily, 12, who flees religious persecution in England. She boards a ship to follow her banished father to the New World, where eventually she finds home and family with an Indian tribe in the northeast forests. Chibbaro works in a huge amount of historical background that will be new to most readers, but Lily's immediate present-tense narrative makes the drama personal: the religious conflict and betrayal that drove her beloved father from England; the horror of the voyage (including the sexual abuse of her mother); the shipwreck and landing in the New World, where she finds both kindness and unspeakable savagery among Indians and whites. From survival adventure to classical father quest, there's too much coincidence. It's the exciting nonstop action and Lily's spiritual battle with her own guilt and with God that draw readers along. Lily's discovery of a religious community is a powerful climax. -Hazel Rochman, Booklist

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

"A post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. -Dennis Lehane

The Saffron Kitchen, Yasmin Crowther

In a powerful debut novel that moves between the crowded streets of London and the desolate mountains of Iran, Yasmin Crowther paints a stirring portrait of a family shaken by events from decades ago and worlds away. On a rainy day in London the dark secrets and troubled past of Maryam Mazar surface violently, with tragic consequences for her daughter, Sara, and her newly orphaned nephew. Maryam leaves her English husband and family and returns to the remote Iranian village where her story began. In a quest to piece their life back together, Sara follows her mother and finally learns the terrible price Maryam once had to pay for her freedom, and of the love she left behind. Set against the breathtaking beauty of two very different places, this stunning family drama transcends culture and is, at its core, a rich and haunting narrative about mothers and daughters. Penguin Group

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter, written in 1850 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story constructed around the worldwide theme of good versus evil. Hester Prynne is publicly admonished by the strict rulers of the Puritan church and made to wear an "A" on her clothing signifying her sin of adultery.
The shunning results in Hester and her beautiful daughter Pearl living outside of the Puritan community both physically and emotionally. Hester's refusal to implicate the father of her child further complicates the plot.
The story, filled with irony, highlights the Puritan religion. The fact that the uncompromising group left England to avoid persecution and then shuts out one of its own, seems in itself, cynical. The book is also testimony to a woman's strength.

Shipping News, Annie Proulx

In this touching and atmospheric novel set among the fishermen of Newfoundland, Proulx tells the story of Quoyle. From all outward appearances, Quoyle has gone through his first 36 years on earth as a big schlump of a loser. He's not attractive, he's not brilliant or witty or talented, and he's not the kind of person who typically assumes the central position in a novel. But Proulx creates a simple and compelling tale of Quoyle's psychological and spiritual growth. Along the way, we get to look in on the maritime beauty of what is probably a disappearing way of life. -Amazon.com

Silk, Alessandro Baricco

This startling, sensual, hypnotically compelling novel tells a story of adventure, sexual enthrallment, and a love so powerful that it unhinges a man's life. Set in 1861, Herve Joncour is a French merchant of silkworms, who travels to Japan, legendary for the quality of its silk and its implacable hostility to foreigners. There he meets a woman. They do not touch; they do not even speak, but Joncour is possessed. This book has the compression of a fable, the evocative detail of the greatest historical fiction, and the devastating erotic force of a dream. [excerpted from Vintage International]

Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, Robert James Waller

Michael Tillman, a tenured economics professor enjoying his role of academic maverick, feels an immediate attraction to Jellie Braden when she walks into a dean's reception with her husband. Their common past experiences in India provide a basis for friendship, which develops into a spiritual link; Michael realizes that he has waited a lifetime to meet Jellie. Within a year, their love intensifies, and the affair is consummated. Yet there is much Michael doesn't know about Jellie, and her sudden, unannounced visit to India prompts his quest for the secret of her past.
- Library Journal

Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson

"Set on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound, in Washington, where everyone is either a fisherman or a berry farmer, the story is nominally about a murder trial. But since it's set in the 1950s, lingering memories of World War II, internment camps and racism helps fuel suspicion of a Japanese-American fisherman, a lifelong resident of the islands." - Amazon.com

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

Set in nineteenth-century China, Lily is the daughter of a farmer in Puwei Village, and Snow Flower is the daughter of a respectable family from Tongkou, and though the two girls have very different backgrounds, Madame Wang pairs the two as laotong, or "old sames," a bond that will last them a lifetime. The two begin to exchange messages in nu shu, a secret language known only to women. Their friendship is cemented during their youth and then put to the test when the girls prepare for marriage and Lily discovers a startling secret about Snow Flower's family. As Lily solidifies her place in her new family, Snow Flower suffers in her marriage, and the two grow apart as Lily's pride in her position swells.
-Booklist

Someone Knows My Name, Lawrence Hill
Coming Soon

An eighteen century historical fiction scanning six decades over three continents- Africa, North America, and Europe. This is about Aminata Diallo and the freedom she so desperately seeks. Aminata's story is a devastating journey of a young girl from a stolen childhood, thrown into slavery and then the chaos of the Revolutionary War. Seeing her continue the saga into old age, her spirit undaunted in spite of those who would own or use her.

Stones From the River, by Ursula Hegi

Trudi Montag, a dwarf born in Germany during World War I, narrates her life story from her earliest memories through post-World War II. Being different sometimes renders Trudi almost invisible to those around her, allowing her to eavesdrop on the daily dramas of her neighbors' adultery, cowardice, heroism, insanity, and Jewish persecution.
-Library Journal

Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky

Irene Nemirovsky began working on Suite Francaise when she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. She was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For 64 years, this novel remained hidden and unknown. Suite Francaise begins in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940 and tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. As Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way. Moving on to a provincial village now occupied by German soldiers, the locals must learn to coexist with the enemy – in their town, their homes, even in their hearts
-Back Cover of Suite Francaise

Tara Road, by Maeve Binchy

"Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend."

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Three Cups of Tea is the true story of one of the most extraordinary humanitarian missions of our time. In 1993, a young American mountain climber named Greg Mortenson stumbles into a tiny village high in Pakistan';s beautiful and desperately poor Karakoram Himalaya region. Sick, exhausted, and depressed after a failing to scale the summit of K2, Mortenson regains his strength and his will to live thanks to the generosity of the people of the village of Korphe. Before he leaves, Mortenson makes a vow that will profoundly change both the villagers' lives and his own; he will return and build them a school.
-Penguin Reading Guides

The Turtle Warrior, Mary Relindes Ellis

The story of the Lucas family, who live in a beautiful and remote part of Wisconsin inhabited by working-class European immigrants and the Ojibwe. By 1967 the Lucas farm has fallen into disrepair, thanks to the hard drinking of John Lucas, who brutalizes his wife and two sons. When the eldest, James, escapes by enlisting to fight in Vietnam, he leaves young Bill alone to protect his mother with only his own will and the spirit of his brother to guide him. Beautifully written and deeply felt, The Turtle Warrior takes readers from the heartland of America to the battlefields of World War II and Vietnam weaving a haunting tale of an unforgettable world where the physical and spiritual, the past and the present, merge. [Excerpted from ReadingGroupGuides.com]

Vinegar Hill, by A. Manette Ansay

Set a decade ago, this novel is about gritty small-town life in Wisconsin. Ellen along with her unemployed husband, James, and their two young children, Amy and Herbert, have returned to live with her in-laws, a bitter and narrow-minded couple, irascible and tough as the farm life they've endured, carefully cloaking their dark secrets. For Ellen, the pressures of her teaching job and raising a family often collide with life in this morbid household, and her marriage to a distant man, still under his father's thumb, is crumbling. It doesn't help that when James does find a job, it is as a salesman of out-of-date farm machinery, which keeps him on the road. But in the end, Ellen triumphs over a multitude of domestic and marital problems to grasp her emerging sense of self.
-Booklist

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

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 ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell.
[excerpted from saragruen.com]

Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris

This wickedly funny, big-hearted novel about life in the office signals the arrival of a gloriously talented new writer. The characters in Then We Came to the End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work." by Syndetic Solutions, LLC

We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates

The Mulvaneys are blessed by all that makes life sweet—a hardworking father, a loving mother, three fine sons and a bright, pretty daughter. They are confident in their love for each other and their position in the rural community of Mt. Ephraim, New York. But something happens on Valentine's Day, 1976: an incident that is hushed up in the town and never spoken of in the Mulvaney home. -Oprah.com

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Peter Hedges

Grape is 24 and stuck in a rut. Trapped by feelings of responsibility to his eccentric family, he works bagging groceries in their small Iowa town. And what a family! At its core lies his beached whale of a mother; she never leaves her TV chair and clamors constantly for more food and cigarettes. There is Ellen, his maddeningly pubescent sister; 17-year-old retarded brother Arnie, whom Gilbert loves dearly; and his older sister Amy who devotes herself to keeping everyone happy. Gilbert is saved by a beautiful and strange girl who startles him into life.
-Library Journal

While I Was Gone, Sue Miller

In expert strokes, Sue Miller captures the precariousness of even the strongest ties, the ease with which we abandon each other, and our need to be forgiven. An extraordinary book, her best, from a beloved American writer. -Oprah.com

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

An epic tale of two interconnected families. It begins with the suicide attempt of hapless, coin-flipping Archibald Jones on New Year's Day, 1975, and ends, after a 100-year ramble back and forth through time, on New Year's Eve, 1992, with his accidental (or preordained?) release of a poor mutant mouse programmed to do away with the randomness of creation. Smith's characters are tossed about by decisions made deliberately, rashly, or by the flip of a coin. As Smith pieces together this story with bits of fabric from different times and places, the reader must contemplate whether our choices determine our future or whether fate leads us to an inevitable destiny.
-Library Journal

Wicked, Gregory Maguire

"When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?"

The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan

Egan tells an extraordinary tale in this visceral account of how America's great, grassy plains turned to dust, and how the ferocious plains winds stirred up an endless series of "black blizzards" that were like a biblical plague: "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains" in what became known as the Dust Bowl. But the plague was man-made, as Egan shows: the plains weren't suited to farming, and plowing up the grass to plant wheat, along with a confluence of economic disaster; the Depression;and natural disaster "eight years of drought" resulted in an ecological and human catastrophe that Egan details with stunning specificity. He grounds his tale in portraits of the people who settled the plains: hardy Americans and immigrants desperate for a piece of land to call their own and lured by the lies of promoters who said the ground was arable. Egan's interviews with survivors produce tales of courage and suffering: Hazel Lucas, for instance, dared to give birth in the midst of the blight only to see her baby die of "dust pneumonia" when her lungs clogged with the airborne dirt. With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' mind

You Kill Me, Alison Gaylin

Post-9/11 Manhattan is the ominous setting for Gaylin's deliciously chilling second thriller (after Hide Your Eyes), in which preschool teacher Samantha Leiffer is still recovering from her brush with a murderer a year earlier. Her live-in cop boyfriend, John Krull, has suddenly gone emotionally (and sometimes physically) AWOL, so after a mysterious visitor leaves Samantha a series of warning notes about her safety, she's forced to grapple alone with what they could mean, if anything at all. As if on cue, people around Samantha start to die, beginning with the woman who lived in Samantha's old apartment, gorily murdered. If the signs point where Samantha thinks they're pointing, maybe she'd rather be in the dark.
-Publisher's Weekly