Book Discussion Sets

To reserve a book discussion set, please contact Julie Linneman at jlinneman@wichita.gov or (316) 261-8590. Book discussion sets check out for six weeks. In addition to providing an easy way to reserve multiple copies of the same title, book discussion sets also provide author backgrounds and suggested questions for discussion. 

For other suggestions of great books to talk about, subscribe to the monthly Book Club Choices BookLetter.

Fiction - Nonfiction - Teen Fiction - Children's Fiction

Fiction

Albom, Mitch. The Five People You Meet in Heaven. 2003. (10 copies)
Killed in a tragic accident, Eddie, an elderly man who believes that he had an uninspired life, awakens in the afterlife, where he discovers that heaven consists of having five people explain the meaning of one's life. – Novelist

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 1991. (9 copies)
The four Garcia girls escape the Dominican Republic and a life of privilege in the 1960s to come to the United States and difficult adjustment. – Novelist

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. 1986. (10 copies)
In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic 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

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. 1995. (10 copies)
Wealthy Mr. Darcy and spirited Elizabeth Bennett dislike each other at first sight, and each must contend with their pride and prejudices while Elizabeth's mother plots economically advantageous marriages for all her daughters. – Novelist

Berg, Elizabeth. The Art of Mending: A Novel. 2004. (10 copies)
Returning home for a family reunion, Laura Bartone and her brother, Steve, are stunned by their sister's allegations of shocking behavior on the part of their mother, and must come to terms with the truth and lies within their family. – Novelist

Bloodworth-Thomason, Linda. Liberating Paris. 2005. (10 copies)
Successful doctor and family man Wood McIlroy has an affair that prompts an emotional maelstrom among his friends, a situation that is complicated by a national discount store's entry into their small-town community. – Novelist

Brown, Bertrand. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. 2005. (10 copies)
Sylvia Stanton has to wonder how every other man on campus can appreciate her except for that sorry, no-good Chad. After a bad decision on Sylvia’s part, Chad is intent on making her pay for her indiscretion. Will Chad’s actions on that traumatizing night pave the way for all of Sylvia’s future relationships? – iUniverse

Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth. 1931. (10 copies)
Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant, rises from poverty to become a rich landowner with the aid of his patient wife in the 1920s. – Novelist

Byatt, Antonia Susan. Possession: A Romance. 1990. (16 copies)
The lives of two modern scholars parallel the lives of the two Victorian poets that the scholars are researching. – Novelist

Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. 1992. (10 copies)
An expert at simulated war games, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin believes that he is engaged in one more computer war game when, in truth, he is commanding the last Earth fleet against an alien race seeking Earth's complete destruction. – Novelist

Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. 1918. (20 copies, two different editions)
Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s greatest novel, My Ántonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman’s simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm.– Gordon Tapper, Assistant Professor of English, DePauw University

Chevalier, Tracy. Falling Angels. 2001. (15 copies)
In a novel of manners and social divisions set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century England, two girls from different classes become friends, and their families' lives become intertwined in the process. – Novelist

Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. 1998. (10 copies)
Virginia Woolf is brought back to life in an intertwining of her story with those of two more contemporary women. In Woolf's life, she awakens one morning in London in 1923 with a dream that will become Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party in Greenwich Village for her oldest love, a poet dying from AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown is pregnant and unsettled, trying to prepare for her husband's birthday, but wanting nothing more than to sit and read Woolf. – Novelist

Dallas, Sandra. The Persian Pickle Club. 1995. (10 copies)
When city girl Rita marries local boy Tom and they move back to the farm, Queenie Bean goes out of her way to welcome them. She also encourages Rita to become part of the local quilting group, known as the Persian Pickle Club, so called because it refers to a particular paisley fabric owned by member Ceres Root. Rita, however, underestimates the importance of the Pickle Club, and in her haste to make a name for herself as a reporter, tries to solve the mysterious death of Ella Crook's husband, Ben. She discovers the members' lives are as tightly stitched together as their quilts. - Lynn McCullagh

Day, Robert. The Last Cattle Drive: A Novel. 1983. (14 copies)
Spangler Tukle takes his 250 steers 250 miles to Kansas City with the help of his tough wife, an old ranch hand, and a greenhorn schoolteacher. – Novelist

De Bernieres, Louis. Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel. 1994. (10 copies)
Corelli, an Italian army captain, falls in love with Pelagia Iannis on the island of Cephalonia after the Axis forces occupy the island in World War II. – Novelist

Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. 1997. (10 copies)
The story of Dinah, a tragic character from the Bible whose great love, a prince, is killed by her brother, leaving her alone and pregnant. The novel traces her life from childhood to death, in the process examining sexual and religious practices of the day, and what it meant to be a woman. – Novelist

Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime. 1975. (9 copies)
In America at the beginning of this century three families become entwined with Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, Theodore Dreiser, Sigmund, and Emiliano Zapata. – Novelist

Edgerton, Clyde. Walking Across Egypt. 1997. (10 copies)
The orderly life of 78-year-old Mattie Rigsby of Listre, North Carolina, is disrupted by a stray dog and a teenaged juvenile delinquent. – Novelist

Enger, Leif. Peace Like A River. 2001. (10 copies)
The quiet 1960s Midwestern life of the Land family--father Jeremiah, and children, Reuben, Davy and Swede--is upended when Davy kills two teenage boys who have come to harm the family. On the morning of his sentencing, Davy escapes from his cell and the Lands set out in search of him. Their search is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a love story, and a haunting meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world. – Novelist

Escandon, Maria. Esperanza's Box of Saints. 1999. (10 copies)
With her favorite saint to guide her, Esperanza Diaz, a beautiful young widow, leaves her humble Mexican village on a search for her missing twelve-year-old daughter and learns the nature of sin and forgiveness. – Novelist

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water For Chocolate: A Novel In Monthly Installments, Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies. 1992. (9 copies)
At the beginning of the 20th century, Tita, the youngest of three daughters, is expected to serve her mother for the rest of her life, but in order to show her love to Pedro, who is engaged to her sister, Tita cooks for him. – Novelist

Flagg, Fannie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Café. 1987. (10 copies)
Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life. – Novelist

Garland, Alex. The Beach. 1998. (10 copies)
A rootless young Westerner believes he has stumbled upon paradise on a remote island off Thailand, a place known as "The Beach," until he discovers the deadly underside of the island's culture. – Novelist

Goldberg, Myla. Bee Season. 2000. (25 copies)
An ordinary girl with an exceptional gift for spelling, young Eliza Naumann embarks on the rough-and-tumble spelling bee circuit, where her quirky family will collide with the realities of life.—Novelist

Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel. 1999. (10 copies)
Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s. – Novelist

Goodman, Allegra. Kaaterskill Falls. 1998. (22 copies)
A small Orthodox Jewish sect spends summers in a Dutch community, and in 1976, the townspeople begin to resent the intrusion, and female members of the group chafe under its laws and restrictions. – Novelist

Goodman, Carol. The Lake of Dead Languages. 2003. (10 copies)
Returning to the Heart Lake School for Girls as a Latin teacher to start a new life with her daughter, Jane is haunted by past tragedy and terrifying memories when she begins receiving menacing messages. – Novelist

Grafton, Sue. "F" is for Fugitive: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery. 1989. (10 copies)
Seventeen years after the murder of Jean Timberlake at Floral Beach, her self-confessed killer suddenly reappears, and the case reopens. – Novelist

Gruen, Sara. Water for Elephants. 2006(10 copies)
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. – Novelist

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. 2003. (10 copies)
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. – Novelist

Haigh, Jennifer. Mrs. Kimble. 2003. (10 copies)
Follows 25 years in the life of Ken Kimble as seen through the eyes of his three wives, from Birdie, who struggles with his abandonment; to heiress Joan, who is recovering from a personal loss; to Dinah, who suffers from an unhappy past. – Novelist

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. 1992. (10 copies)
Sam Spade's search for the murderer of his partner becomes entangled with the search for the Maltese falcon. – Novelist

Hammett, Dashiell. The Thin Man. 1992. (10 copies)
Nick Charles searches for a wealthy inventor who is the prime suspect in a New York City murder case. – Novelist

Hamill, Pete. Snow in August: A Novel. 1997. (10 copies)
Michael Devlin, an 11-year-old Irish American, meets Rabbi Hirsch, recently arrived from Europe, and in return for teaching the rabbi about baseball and English, the rabbi teaches Michael Yiddish and tells him about Prague, until an Irish gang becomes violent in its anti-Semitism. – Novelist

Haruf, Kent. Plainsong. 1999. (10 copies)
An unlikely extended family is formed when a high school teacher helps a pregnant student make a home with two elderly bachelor ranchers. – Novelist

Hijuelos, Oscar. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. 1989. (10 copies)
Brothers immigrate to New York City in 1949 and form a band with their popularity peaking in 1956 when they get to perform on I Love Lucy. – Novelist

Hillerman, Tony. Sacred Clowns. 1993. (10 copies)
A high school shop teacher is killed at school, and a sacred clown is savagely murdered while performing in a Pueblo ceremony. Two Navajo tribal police officers, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee, at times working at odds, must sort through a host of pieces before the puzzle can be solved. – Library Journal

Hoeg, Peter. Smilla's Sense of Snow. 1993. (10 copies)
Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Her childhood in Greenland gives her an appreciation for the complex structures of snow, and when she notices that the boy's footprints show he ran to his death, she decides to find out who was chasing him. – Amazon

Horan, Nancy. Loving Frank. 2007. (10 copies)
Fact and fiction blend in a historical novel that chronicles the relationship between seminal architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, from their meeting, when they were each married to another, to the clandestine affair that shocked Chicago society.—Novelist

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. 2003. (10 copies)
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. – Novelist

Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. 2007. (10 copies)
Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in war-torn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage. – Novelist

Hughes, Kathleen. Dear Mrs. Lindbergh: A Novel. 2003. (10 copies)
In the wake of their parents' carefully orchestrated disappearance, the adult children of the Gutterson's read a series of letters by their mother and learn how their parents finally discovered what was missing in their lives. – Novelist

Hull, Jonathan. Losing Julia. 2000. (10 copies)
From the French battlefields of World War I to a present-day nursing home in California, Patrick Delaney describes his long-time love for Julia, the wife of his best friend, Daniel, as he meets her as a young widow at a memorial service at Verdun, France, through their brief time together, to their ultimate separation and its impact on his life. – Novelist

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. 2006. (10 copies)
A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods. – Novelist

Kallos, Stephanie. Broken for You. 2005. (10 copies)
Margaret Hughes, a septuagenarian living in Seattle, takes in a series of boarders who help her cope with her illness, and whose lives become unexpectedly connected to each other. – Novelist

Kaplan, Johanna. O my America! 1995. (25 copies)
A provocatively and aggressively charming social critic, Ezra Slavin quotes De Tocqueville, Marx, and the rabbinic Ethics of the Fathers with equal measure. When he dies, his first daughter, Merry—product of the first of many marriages and affairs—must make sense of her father's life. Skipping back and forth in time—from the 1940s when Merry's mother, Pearl, a Polish immigrant socialist, drowned Ezra "in diapers and Palestinians" to the 1960s, when he talked politics with upper West Side psychoanalysts—Kaplan creates an colorful and cacophonous portrait of a man and his milieu. The novel brims with capacious wit and intelligence: "Ez, with that first-generation disease, had believed himself to be self-generated," Kaplan writes. "He had put all his money on an idea of America he had just gone and made up."—Nextbook

Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. 2002. (10 copies)
After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters. – Novelist

King, Cassandra. The Same Sweet Girls. 2006. (10 copies)
Every two years, a tight-knit group of Southern women, friends since college, come together for a reunion to renew their relationships with one another, each of them having an incredible story to tell about the course their lives have taken. – Novelist

Lanchester, John. Mr. Phillips. 2001. (10 copies)
A man who has settled into a safe, ordinary suburban life wakes one day to find himself "sacked"--fired and cast adrift to re-discover and re-invent himself. – Novelist

Landvik, Lorna. Patty Jane's House of Curl: A Novel. 1995. (10 copies)
Two Minnesota sisters establish a beauty shop that becomes a support group and community center. – Novelist

LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness. 2000. (10 copies)
While on a mission to the planet Gethen, earthling Genly Ai is sent by leaders of the nation of Orgoreyn to a concentration camp from which the exiled prime minister of the nation of Karhide tries to rescue him. – Novelist

Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn. 2000. (9 copies)
Lionel Essrog has always respected Frank Minna, who helped him out when he was young, and when Frank is found dead, Lionel and his friends, the Minna Men, scour the streets of Brooklyn in search of the killer. – Novelist

Lipman, Elinor. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift. 2003. (10 copies)
Alice Thrift, a socially inept surgical intern at a Boston hospital, is pursued romantically by shady social climber Ray Russo, until her roommate and her neighbor decide to guide Alice through the social complexities of life. – Novelist

McBride, James. Miracle at St. Anna. 2003. (10 copies)
Set in Italy during World War II, Miracle of St. Anna is the story of four Negro soldiers in the 92nd all-black, segregated Buffalo Division. Sam Train, one of these soldiers, befriends a six-year-old Italian boy who leads the soldier and his squad into the Serchio Valley and the site of a tragic massacre. – Novelist

McCall Smith, Alexander. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. 2002. (19 copies)
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." – author’s website

McEwan, Ian. Saturday. 2006. (10 copies)
A successful, happily married neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne is drawn into a confrontation with Baxter, a small-time thug, following a minor motor vehicle accident, an encounter that has savage consequences. – Novelist

McFadden, Bernice. Sugar. 2001. (10 copies)
Set in a small Arkansas town in the 1950s, a tale of loyalty and friendship between two African American women finds Jude turning to the church after the death of her daughter, and to a young woman who turns out to be a prostitute. – Novelist

Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West: A Novel. 1995. (10 copies)
Set in an Oz where a morose Wizard battles suicidal thoughts, the story of the green-skinned Elphaba, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West, profiles her as an animal rights activist striving to avenge her dear sister's death. – Novelist

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi: A Novel. 2001. (10 copies)
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and hungry Bengal tiger remain. – Novelist

Moriarty, Laura. The Center of Everything. 2004. (10 copies)
Fending for herself in the wake of a chronically unemployed, dysfunctional mother, ten-year-old Evelyn Bucknow experiences feelings of confinement in their small Midwestern town and suffers the heartache of a first love. – Novelist

Muller, Marcia. The Shape of Dread. 1989. (10 copies)
Private detective Sharon McCone takes on the case of former crack addict Bobby Foster, who had confessed to and been convicted of the kidnap-slaying of a woman whose body had not yet been found. – Novelist

Niffenegger, Audrey. The Time Traveler's Wife. 2003. (10 copies)
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel. – Novelist

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. 1990. (10 copies)
Heroic young men carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness. – Novelist

Ondaatje, Michael. Anil's Ghost. 2000. (20 copies)
A young forensic anthropologist is sent by an international human rights group to her homeland, Sri Lanka, to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. – Novelist

Otto, Whitney. How to Make an American Quilt. 1991. (10 copies)
As members of a women's quilting group work their art, their stories of grief, passion, youth, and age are played out in a multigenerational, multi-layered narrative. – Novelist

Paolini, Christopher. Eldest. 2005. (10 copies)
After successfully evading an Urgals ambush, Eragon is adopted into the Ingeitum clan and sent to finish his training so he can further help the Varden in their struggle against the Empire. – Novelist

Paolini, Christopher. Eragon. 2003. (10 copies)
In Aagaesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters. – Novelist

Paretsky, Sara. Tunnel Vision. 1994. (10 copies)
Private investigator V.I. Warshawski pits her sleuthing skills against high-level government and financial powers when she investigates Home Free, a homeless advocates' group; financial fraud; and murder. – Novelist

Parks, Gordon. The Learning Tree. 1989. (10 copies)
During the 1920s, Newt grows up as a young minority boy in a Kansas community. – Novelist

Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto: A Novel. 2001. (10 copies)
When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxane Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan. – Novelist

Perrotta, Tom. Little Children. 2005. (10 copies)
A group of young suburban parents, including a stay-at-home dad, a former feminist, and an over-structured mom, finds its sleepy existence shattered when a convicted child molester moves back into town and two of the parents have an affair. – Novelist

Phillips, Scott. The Ice Harvest. 2000. (10 copies)
As lawyer Charlie Arglist prepares to leave Wichita, Kansas, with a suitcase full of stolen money, he revisits the scenes of his past--his angry ex-wife, ex-lovers, cops on the take, and bars filled with secrets that others will do anything to hide. – Novelist

Pickard, Nancy. The Virgin of Small Plains. 2006. (10 copies)
Seventeen years after the discovery of a female murder victim near Small Plains, Kansas, the girl's grave has become the source of strange miracles and legends, until the return of prodigal son Mitch Newquist threatens to bring old secrets to light. – Novelist

Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead: A Novel. 2006. (10 copies)
As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets. – Novelist

Roth, Philip. American Pastoral. 1997. (25 copies)
A former athletic star, devoted family man, and owner of a thriving glove factory, Seymour "Swede" Levov finds his life coming apart during the social disorder of the 1960s, when his beloved daughter turns into a revolutionary terrorist out to destroy her father's world.—Novelist

Schweighardt, Joan. Gudrun's Tapestry. 2003. (10 copies)
Set in the 5th Century, Gundrun's Tapestry follows the adventures of Sigfried, Brunhilda, Gundrun, and the gang in the ancient Niebelungen Saga. Scholars think this legend tells the history of the arrival of the Huns in Europe, and Schweigherdt gives us that history with full measure, woven into a thrilling plot that fills out the action of the legend. – Amazon

Scliar, Moacyr. The Centaur in the Garden. 2003. (22 copies)
A centaur recounts his family's flight from Russia to settle in Brazil, and describes how an operation changed his life. – Novelist

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones: A Novel. 2002. (10 copies)
Looking down from heaven, 14-year-old Susie Salmon recounts her rape and murder and watches her family as they cope with their grief and "the lovely bones" growing around her absence. – Novelist

Shields, Carol. Unless. 2002. (10 copies)
A mother's grief over a daughter's break with the family revises her feminist outlook and pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction. – Novelist

Sholem Aleichem. Tevye the Dairyman, and The Railroad Stories. 1987. (25 copies)
Israeli professor Hillel Holkin introduces his translation of Sholem Aleichem's stories with an informative, critical look at the turn-of-the-century Jewish author and his work. In the first eight stories of this collection, Tevye, the Russian Jew so familiar from Fiddler on the Roof, bemoans his fate. In these as well as the following 21 tales, the author displays his splendid storytelling skills, exhibiting a sense of comedy that Holkin terms neither cheering nor escapist, but intended to "confront the reader with reality in its full harshness." These portraits of eastern European shtetl life, of Jews coping with the persecution of czarist Russian, provide a compelling, vital study of the era. Beyond their historical significance, they are phenomenally entertaining as fiction.—Booklist

Smiley, Jane. The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: A Novel. 1998. (10 copies)
In Quincy, Illinois, Lidie, 20, marries abolitionist Thomas Newton and goes with him to Kansas, but when Thomas is murdered, she disguises herself to get revenge. – Novelist

Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 2003. (10 copies)
A young girl in a shabby neighborhood lives with dreams in an innocent time before the war. – Novelist

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth: A Novel. 2000. (10 copies)
Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British Empire--as they make their way in modern England. – Novelist

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939. (10 copies)
The Joad family, Okie farmers forced from their dustbowl home during the Depression, try to find work as migrant fruitpickers in California. – Novelist

Stokes, Penelope J. The Blue Bottle Club. 1999. (10 copies)
A reporter finds slips of paper on which four teenage girls wrote down their dreams in 1929 and tracks down the now senior women whose dreams have been torn, but who still have a common thread running through their lives. – Novelist

Tan, Amy. The Bonesetter's Daughter. 2001. (10 copies)
Over the course of one fog-shrouded year, mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history, and inexpressible qualities of love. – Novelist

Trigiani, Adriana. Big Stone Gap. 2000. (10 copies)
The 35-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of a small Virginia village discovers a skeleton in her family's formerly tidy closet that completely unravels her quiet, conventional life. – Novelist

Umrigar, Thrity N. The Space Between Us. 2007. (10 copies)
Captures the delicate balance of class and gender in contemporary India as witnessed through the lives of two women--Sera Dubash, an upper middle-class housewife, and Bhima, an illiterate domestic hardened by a life of loss and despair. – Novelist

Wroblewski, David. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. 2008. (10 copies)
A tale reminiscent of Hamlet that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death. – Novelist

Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers: A Novel. 1975. (25 copies)
Yezierska, who emigrated from Poland to America in 1890, tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest of five daughters living on the Lower East Side's Hester Street in the 1920s. Sara's father is a rabbi, a learned man who studies undisturbed while his wife and daughters struggle to cobble together a meager existence. After her father marries each of her sisters off in loveless (and often dubious) arrangements, Sara flees home, desperate to escape the same fate and determined to breathe in "the new air of America."—Nextbook

Young, William P. The Shack. 2007. (10 copies)
Four years after his daughter is abducted and evidence of her murder is found in an abandoned shack, Mackenzie Allen Philips returns to the shack in response to a note claiming to be from God, and has a life-changing experience. – Novelist

Nonfiction

Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate. 2000. (15 copies)
Barbara Mikulski, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche L. Lincoln share something deeper than their political proclivities: gender has been the strongest characteristic of their personal and professional lives, and each one has overcome enormous obstacles to reach the old boys' club that is the Senate. As evidence of their remarkable camaraderie, they've now collaborated to share their stories in the hopes of encouraging other women to follow suit. – Amazon (15 copies)

Aciman, Andre. Out of Egypt: A Memoir. 1994. (22 copies)
Aciman presents a rich and captivating portrait of a Jewish family from cosmopolitan Alexandria, Egypt. From their arrival there at the turn of the century until their departure three generations later, the members of Aciman's clan experienced adventures and harrowing disappointments. – Library Journal

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1969. (10 copies)
Maya Angelou's autobiography was the first book I ever read that made me feel my life as a colored girl growing up in Mississippi deserved validation. I loved it from the opening lines. – Oprah Magazine

Armstrong, Lance. It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. 2000. (10 copies)
Multiple Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong is a winner in the game of life itself: He has survived cancer, found love, and become a father. In the pages of his memoir, Armstrong tells his own moving and inspiring story, writing in his signature down-to-earth Texas style. This is an amazing tale of recovery in the face of tragedy and victory against overwhelming odds. – Barnes and Noble

Berendt, John. Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story. 1994. (18 copies)
In charming, beautiful, and wealthy old-South Savannah, Georgia, the local bad boy is shot dead inside of the opulent mansion of a gay antiques dealer, and a gripping trial follows. – Novelist

Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences. 1965. (9 copies)
An account of the senseless murder of a Kansas farm family and the search for the killers. –Novelist

Clift, Eleanor. Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment. 2003. (15 copies)
Beginning with the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention of 1848, Clift introduces the movement's leaders, recounts the marches and demonstrations, and profiles the opposition--antisuffragists, both men and women, who would do anything to stop women from getting the vote. - CBS News

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. 2001. (10 copies)
Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an hour, she left behind her middle class life as a journalist except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop computer to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a time. - Publishers Weekly

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. 1995. (19 copies)
An uncut edition of Anne Frank's diary includes entries originally omitted by her father and provides insight into Anne's relationship with her mother. – Novelist

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. 2005. (10 copies)
Goodwin makes the case for Lincoln's political genius by examining his relationships with three men he selected for his cabinet, all of whom were opponents for the Republican nomination in 1860: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates. These men, all accomplished, nationally known, and presidential, originally disdained Lincoln for his backwoods upbringing and lack of experience, and were shocked and humiliated at losing to this relatively obscure Illinois lawyer. Yet Lincoln not only convinced them to join his administration--Seward as secretary of state, Chase as secretary of the treasury, and Bates as attorney general--he ultimately gained their admiration and respect as well. How he soothed egos, turned rivals into allies, and dealt with many challenges to his leadership, all for the sake of the greater good, is largely what Goodwin's fine book is about. Had he not possessed the wisdom and confidence to select and work with the best people, she argues, he could not have led the nation through one of its darkest periods. –amazon.com

Hessler, Peter. River Town: Two Years Along the Yangtze. 2006. (10 copies)
The erudite Hessler volunteered to teach English literature at a teacher's college in Fuling, China, a small city -- by Chinese standards -- of 250,000 along the Yangtze River. Fuling wasn't renowned for anything in particular, but the city's fate was soon to change as the Chinese government unrolled its highly controversial Three Gorges river dam project. – Barnes and Noble

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. 1989. (21 copies)
Hoffman's penetrating, lyrical memoir casts a wide net as it joins vivid anecdotes and vigorous philosophical insights on Old World Cracow and Ivy League America; Polish anti-Semitism; the degradations suffered by immigrants; Hoffman's cultural nostalgia, self-analysis and intellectual passion; and the atrophy of her Polish from disuse and her own disabling inarticulateness in English as a newcomer. – Publishers Weekly

Kimmel, Haven. A Girl Named Zippy. 2001. (10 copies)
Kimmel's smooth, impeccably humorous prose evokes her childhood as vividly as any novel. Born in 1965, she grew up in Mooreland, Ind., a place that by some "mysterious and powerful mathematical principle" perpetually retains a population of 300, a place where there's no point learning the street names because it's just as easy to say, "We live at the four-way stop sign." Hers is less a formal autobiography than a collection of vignettes comprising the things a small child would remember: sick birds, a new bike, reading comics at the drugstore, the mean old lady down the street. The truths of childhood are rendered in lush yet simple prose. – Publisher’s Weekly

Laskin, David. The Children's Blizzard. 2005. (10 copies)
The morning of January 12, 1888, dawned so unseasonably mild that many children in the Midwest walked to school without heavy coats or gloves. That afternoon, the quiet skies broke suddenly into a raging chaos of hurricane-force winds and blinding snows. Thousands of people, many of them schoolchildren returning home from class, were stranded in this bone-numbing blizzard. By the next morning, more than 500 people lay dead, many of them children caught just a few yards from shelter. David Laskin's The Children's Blizzard captures a weather event so horrific that its savage blasts are still remembered in Nebraska, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. – Barnes and Noble

Latifa. My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s Story. 2001. (15 copies)
A young woman born into a middle-class Afghan family describes the 1996 revolution in which the Taliban seized power in Kabul, the resulting changes in her life as a victim of Taliban fanaticism, and her eventual escape with her family. – Novelist

Mayle, Peter. A Year in Provence. 1990. (10 copies)
An amusing account of an English couple's first year as residents of rural Provence, from the unpleasantness of the winter mistral to the transgressions of summer tourists. Since the old farmhouse they purchased needed repairs, they were immediately beset with problems in dealing with the foibles of local craftspeople and officialdom, not to mention the neighbors--human and animal. Nowhere in France is the consumption of food and drink taken more seriously, and food preparation, dining, and wining anecdotes are prominent in virtually every chapter. – Sondra Brunhumer, Western Michigan Univ. Libs.

McCourt, Frank. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir. 1996. (10 copies)
The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies. – Novelist

Mortenson, Greg. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace—One School at a Time. 2006. (10 copies)
One man's campaign to build schools in the most dangerous, remote, and anti-American reaches of Asia: In 1993, Greg Mortenson was an American mountain-climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan's Karakoram. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of a Pakistani village, he promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time--Mortenson's one-man mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for girls, throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban. In a region where Americans are often feared and hated, he has survived kidnapping, death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children. But his success speaks for itself—at last count, his Central Asia Institute had built fifty-five schools. – publisher notes

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. 2003. (9 copies)
In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." – Amazon

Norris, Kathleen. Cloister Walk. 1997. (6 copies)
After spending two extended residences at a Benedictine monastery, Kathleen Norris takes readers through one liturgical year--its rituals, its prayers, its daily activities. Through her accessible prose, a seemingly archaic world becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to people of all faiths. – Barnes and Noble

Osborne, David. Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government. 1997. (11 copies)
In an age of disillusionment with public service, Banishing Bureaucracy offers inspiring stories of organizations that really work and provides specific recipes for effective change. Here is a road map by which reinventors can actually make "reinvention" work. – Penguin

Osborne, David. The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis. 2004. (11 copies)
In this volume, Osborne, coauthor of Reinventing Government (Addison-Wesley, 1992), and Plastrik, a Michigan political strategist, assess the "reinvention" movement and recommend five strategies to institutionalize the process. – Library Journal

Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 1984. (13 copies)
Arguably one of the most profoundly important essays ever written on the nature and significance of "quality" and definitely a necessary anodyne to the consequences of a modern world pathologically obsessed with quantity. Although set as a story of a cross-country trip on a motorcycle by a father and son, it is more nearly a journey through 2,000 years of Western philosophy. – Amazon

Sobel, Dava. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Lifetime. 1996. (10 copies)
In 1714, England's Parliament offered a reward to anyone whose method or device for measuring longitude proved successful. John Harrison imagined a clock that would withstand pitch and roll, temperature and humidity, and keep precise time at sea--something no clock had been able to do on land. This is the story of Harrison's 40-year effort to build his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. – Barnes and Noble

Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. 1998. (10 copies)
When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary put out a call during the late 19th century pleading for "men of letters" to provide help with their mammoth undertaking, hundreds of responses came forth. Some helpers, like Dr. W.C. Minor, provided literally thousands of entries to the editors. But Minor, an American expatriate in England and a Civil War veteran, was actually a certified lunatic who turned in his dictionary entries from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. – Amazon

Teen Fiction

Bertrand, Diane Gonzales. Trino's Choice. 1999. (18 copies)
Frustrated by his poor financial situation and hoping to impress a smart girl, seventh grader Trino falls in with a bad crowd led by an older teen with a vicious streak. – Novelist

Brashares, Ann. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. 2003. (10 copies)
Four teen girls further forge their bond of friendship through a pair of thrift-store jeans that magically, impossibly, fits them all perfectly. Like the summer before, Carmen, Bridget, Tibby, and Lena share their individual adventures with the Pants collective, creating an engaging, kaleidoscopic narrative of four voices. Sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. – amazon

Cooney, Caroline. The Ransom of Mercy Carter. 2001 (15 copies)
In 1704, in the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, eleven-year-old Mercy and her family and neighbors are captured by Mohawk Indians and their French allies, and forced to march through bitter cold to French Canada, where some adapt to new lives and some still hope to be ransomed. – Novelist

Jacques, Brian. Redwall. 1986. (22 copies)
When the peaceful life of ancient Redwall Abbey is shattered by the arrival of the evil rat Cluny and his villainous hordes, Matthias, a young mouse, determines to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior which, he is convinced, will help Redwall's inhabitants destroy the enemy. – Novelist

McKinley, Robin. The Outlaws of Sherwood. 1988. (10 copies)
The author retells the adventures of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws who live in Sherwood Forest in twelfth-century England. – Novelist (10 copies)

Philbrick, W. R. The Last Book in the Universe. 2000. (23 copies)
After an earthquake has destroyed much of the planet, an epileptic teenager nicknamed Spaz begins the heroic fight to bring human intelligence back to the Earth of a distant future. – Novelist

Salisbury, Graham. Lord of the Deep. 2001. (15 copies)
Working for his stepfather on a charter fishing boat in Hawaii teaches thirteen-year-old Mikey about fishing, and about taking risks, making sacrifices, and facing some of life's difficult choices. – Novelist

Shusterman, Neal. The Shadow Club. 1988. (18 copies)
A junior high school boy and his friends decide to form a club of "second bests" and play anonymous tricks on each other's archrivals. When the harmless pranks become life threatening, however, no one in the club will admit responsibility. – Novelist

Zindel, Paul. The Gadget. 2001. (15 copies)
In 1945, having joined his father at Los Alamos, where he and other scientists are working on a secret project to end World War II, thirteen-year-old Stephen becomes caught in a web of secrecy and intrigue. – Novelist

Children's Fiction

Bauer, Joan. Sticks. 1996. (24 copies)
Ten-year-old Mickey's chances of winning the pool tournament improve when a mysterious man moves into town who not only is a pool ace himself, but who also knew Mickey's pool champion father. – Novelist

Ibbotson, Eva. Island of the Aunts. 2000. (25 copies)
As they get older, several sisters decide that they must kidnap children and bring them to their secluded island home to help with the work of caring for an assortment of unusual sea creatures. – Novelist

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 2007. (8 copies)
Burdened with the dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task of locating and destroying Voldemort’s remaining Horcruxes, Harry, feeling alone and uncertain about his future, struggles to find the inner strength he needs to follow the path set out before him. – publisher notes

Scieszka, Jon. Summer Reading Is Killing Me! (Time Warp Trio #7) 1998. (24 copies)
At the beginning of summer vacation Joe, Sam, and Fred find themselves trapped inside their summer reading list, involved in a battle between good and evil characters from well-known children's books. – Novelist

Seely, Debra. Grasslands. 2002. (40 copies)
In the 1880s, thirteen-year-old Thomas moves west from the aristocratic Virginia home of his grandparents to a poor Kansas farm to live with a father he barely remembers and his new stepfamily.—Novelist

Soto, Gary. Taking Sides. 1991. (13 copies)
Fourteen-year-old Lincoln Mendoza, an aspiring basketball player, must come to terms with his divided loyalties when he moves from San Francisco's Chicano Mission District to a white suburban neighborhood. – Novelist

Van Leeuwen, Jean. Cabin on Trouble Creek. 2004. (7 copies)
In 1803 in Ohio, two young brothers are left to finish the log cabin and guard the land while their father goes back to Pennsylvania to fetch their mother and younger siblings. – publisher notes

Whelan, Gloria. Chu Ju's House. 2004. (5 copies)
In order to save her baby sister, fourteen-year-old Chu Ju leaves her rural home in modern China and earns food and shelter by working on a sampan, tending silk worms, and planting rice seedlings, while wondering if she will ever see her family again. – publisher notes (5 copies)

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