POPULAR BOOK CLUB TITLES
Non-Fiction
The
Innocent Man – John Grisham
Amazon.com
ReviewJohn Grisham
tackles nonfiction for the first time with
The Innocent
Man, a true tale
about murder and injustice in a small town (that reads like
one of his own bestselling novels). The Innocent
Man chronicles the
story of Ron Williamson, how he was arrested and charged
with a crime he did not commit, how his case was
(mis)handled and how an innocent man was sent to death row.
Grisham's first work of nonfiction is shocking, disturbing,
and enthralling--a must read for fiction and nonfiction
fans.
Under
the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy – Frances Mayes
Frances Mayes
entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an
abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside.
There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded
frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a
vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden,
and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and
delightful people. In Under the
Tuscan Sun, she brings the
lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler,
and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to
invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and
to feast at her table.
Bella
Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy – Frances Mayes
Amazon.com
ReviewFollowing up on
her bestselling novel, Under the
Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes
returns to her beloved villa in the small hill town of
Cortona, Italy. Welcomed back like an old friend, she is
soon puttering in the garden, and as Mayes devotees might
expect, busy in the kitchen as well. As Mayes rediscovers
her taste for la dolce vita, she embarks on a journey of
cultural awakening and embraces a newfound romance with the
Italian language and people. "I came to Italy expecting
adventure," reads Mayes. "What I never anticipated is the
absolute sweet joy of everyday life."
Honeymoon
with my Brother: A Memoir – Franz Wisner
From
Booklist True story of
two brothers rediscovering each other and the meaning of
life during 24 months of world travel. Jilted by his
fiancée mere days before the wedding and demoted at work,
Wisner collared his brother, Kurt, a Seattle Realtor, to
celebrate his Costa Rican non-honeymoon. That experience,
with the help of a Saab purchase in Sweden, grew into
subsequent lengthy trips to Eastern Europe, Latin America,
Asia, and Africa. Sandwiched between the chuckles are
letters to their grandmother and short, pointed chapters on
best trip advice--for instance, attend a professional
soccer match to understand culture--and some good lessons
in hustling (bid against yourself, pretend there's a
language barrier, among others). Humorous and
heartening.
Crossroads
of the Heart – Judith Conlon
The exciting
international tale of one woman’s adventurous spirit and
the risks she took in favor of it. Her story will appeal to
every reader who likes an honest and well-told account. –
Rosemary Daniell
Night – Elie Wiesel (Oprah’s Book Club)
Night
is
Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply
poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a
teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by
Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator,
presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit
truest to the author’s original intent. And in a
substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring
importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication
to ensuring that the world never forgets man’s capacity for
inhumanity to man.
The
Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the
Fair that Changed America – Erik Larson
Amazon.com
ReviewAuthor Erik
Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893
Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find
themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure
that The Devil in
the White City is not, in fact,
a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two
men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the
fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer
masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was
immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to
overcome the death of his partner and numerous other
obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which
the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project,
and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related
along with entertaining appearances by such notables as
Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The
activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to
be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the
fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the
World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas
chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as
his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining
the stories of an architect and a killer in one book,
mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice
but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side
of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's
skillful writing. --John Moe
Dead
Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in
the United States – Helen Prejean
When Helen
Prejean is invited to write to a prisoner on Death Row who
brutally killed two teenagers, she has little idea how much
it will change her life. Although she abhors his crime, she
befriends one man as he faces the electric chair. Dead Man
Walking is Helen Prejean's gripping true story, which
formed the basis for a major motion picture event. As
powerful an indictment of the death penalty as has ever
been written, her book was nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize.
Running
with Scissors: A Memoir – Augusten Burroughs
Synopsis:
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose
mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away
to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a
striking resemblance to Santa Claus. At the age of twelve,
Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor, living
with the doctor's bizarre family, and befriending a
pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an
outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the
Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was
consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an
electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment.
The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an
ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary
circumstances.
General Fiction
The
Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards
Kim Edwards's
stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and
Alice Sebold, articulating every mother's silent fear: what
would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without
you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to
deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one
of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision
that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse
to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her
birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city
to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and
deeply moving, The Memory
Keeper's Daughter is an
astonishing tale of redemptive love.
The
Cold Mountain: A Novel – Charles Frazier
Amazon.com
ReviewThe hero of
Charles Frazier's beautifully written and deeply-imagined
first novel is Inman, a disillusioned Confederate soldier
who has failed to die as expected after being seriously
wounded in battle during the last days of the Civil War.
Rather than waiting to be redeployed to the front, the
soul-sick Inman deserts, and embarks on a dangerous and
lonely odyssey through the devastated South, heading home
to North Carolina, and seeking only to be reunited with his
beloved, Ada, who has herself been struggling to maintain
the family farm she inherited. Cold
Mountain is an
unforgettable addition to the literature of one of the most
important and transformational periods in American
history.
Corelli’s
Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
The time --
fifty years ago. The setting -- the Greek Island of
Cephallonia -- an idyllic world that is only slowly
entering the twentieth century when the inexorable and
transforming tide of World War II rolls onto its shores.
Louis de Bernieres's stunning novel chronicles the lives of
the people of Cephallonia as they contend with the Axis
invasion and occupation, and the unexpected acts of God and
man that shape their lives during the five decades that
follow. It chronicles the days and nights of the island's
inhabitants -- the widowed doctor, his brainy daughter and
her innocent (or deadly) fisherman fiancé, the
wine-besotted priest, the gentle strongman giant, the
ancient political debaters down at the tavern, and the
uninvited newcomers: in particular, the reluctant head of
the Italian garrison -- the charming, mandolin-playing
Captain Corelli -- and his aide-de-camp, who harbors a well
of secrets and shame.
Atonement
– Ian McEwan
This "New York
Times" bestseller is enthralling in its depiction of
childhood, love and war, England and class, making it a
profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and
forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of
absolution. Atonement
is
set in 1935, when 13-year-old Briony Tallis is a girl on
the cusp of womanhood. Based on events she sees but doesn't
quite understand, she becomes the reason an innocent man,
(Robbie, her older sister's beau) is convicted of a crime
that occurred on her family's estate. Years later during
World War II, Briony is trying to atone for her guilt by
working as a nurse tending to the mountainous piles of
wounded that are arriving from Dunkirk, where Robbie
himself is fighting? This is the faint outline of a novel
about childhood, love, and war by acclaimed British
novelist Ian McEwan that has garnered high praise from all
quarters. The New York Times calls Atonement
"his
most complete and compassionate work to
date."
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
An unforgettable
story of honor, courage, and betrayal set in war-torn
Afghanistan. The Kite
Runner follows the
story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman
in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant.
As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the
early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic
days running kites and telling stories of mystical places
and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes
the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually
cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever
predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America,
Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and
disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes
impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his
war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban
rule.
Five
People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
From the author
of the phenomenal #1 New York
Times bestseller
Tuesdays
with Morrie, a novel that
explores the unexpected connections of our lives, and the
idea that heaven is more than a place; it's an answer.
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived,
in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at
a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic
accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a
falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns
that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your
life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you
knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from
childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people
revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the
mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the
haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I
here?"
Balzac
and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel – Dai Sijie
At the height of
Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among
hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for
“re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo,
guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a
remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix
Mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and
down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions
include a violin—as well as, before long, the beautiful
daughter of the local tailor.But it is when
the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in
Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most
surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their
forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they
had thought lost forever. And after listening to their
dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little
Seamstress will be forever transformed. From within the
hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in
human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and
unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit,
the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of
storytelling.
Midwives
– Chris Bohjalian (Oprah’s Book Club)
The trial of a
midwife in 1980s Vermont. Sybil Danforth, with several
hundred deliveries to her name, claims the mother was dead
when she opened her to save the baby. The prosecution
claims the mother was alive and the operation was illegal.
The story is narrated by Sybil's daughter, portraying the
trial as another round in the persecution of midwives by
the New England medical profession. -- Synopsis
copyright Fiction
Digest
Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follet (Oprah’s Book Club)
The Pillars of
the Earth sweeps through four decades of 12th Century
England drawing the reader into the raw, flamboyant middle
ages. It is a shining saga of good and evil, treachery and
intrigue, violence and beauty. Not-so-noble knights,
righteous heroes, valiant heroines and both virtuous and
immoral men of God highlight this story. They manipulate,
and are in turn manipulated by, the political turmoil and
unrest between the reigns of Henry I and Henry II. The
reader will cheer on the fates of the virtuous and hiss at
the evil-doers. A truly fascinating story that the reader
will never forget.
The
Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
Synopsis: Pat
Conroy has created a huge, brash, thunderstorm of a novel,
stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning
forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his
gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and the dark and
violent past of the extraordinary family into which they
were born. Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South
Carolina low country as well as the dusty glitter of New
York City, The Prince of Tides is Pat Conroy's most
magnificent novel yet.
Three
Junes – Julia Glass
An astonishing
first novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over
a decade as they confront the joys and longings,
fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises. In
June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent
widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young
American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about
his marriage. . ..Six years later, again in June, Paul’s
death draws his three grown sons and their families back to
their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry,
introspective gay man, narrates the events of this
unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate
life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned
by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully
crafted defenses.... Four years farther on, in yet another
June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings
Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once
captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her
guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and
decide what family means to her. In prose rich with
compassion and wit, Three
Junes paints a
haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.
Songs
in Ordinary Time – Mary McGarry Morris (Oprah’s Book Club)
Songs in
Ordinary Time is set in the summer of 1960 - the last of
quiet times and America's innocence. It centers on Marie
Fermoyle, a strong but vulnerable woman whose loneliness
and ambition for her children make her easy prey for the
dangerous con man Omar Duvall. Marie's children are Alice,
seventeen - involved with a troubled young priest; Norm,
sixteen - hotheaded and idealistic; and Benjy, twelve -
isolated and misunderstood, and so desperate for his
mother's happiness that he hides the deadly truth only he
knows about Duvall. Among a fascinating cast of characters
we meet the children's alcoholic father, Sam Fermoyle, now
living with his senile mother and embittered sister; Sam's
meek brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "love" calls from
the bathroom of his ailing appliance store; and the Klubock
family, who - in complete contrast to the Fermoyles - live
an orderly life in the perfect house next
door.
The
Poisonwood Bible: A Novel – Barbara Kingsolver (Oprah’s
Book Club)
This story of
Nathan Price, a Baptist missionary to the Belgian Congo in
1959, on the eve of Congolese independence, is a deep,
multifaceted narrative. Told in alternating chapters by
Nathan's wife and four daughters, it's the compelling story
of a wife stretched beyond her limits, of daughters
struggling to grow up in an alien environment, and of the
Congo's development. Reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness, it is a story of the insanity that can befall
a white man set on bending Africa's landscape and people to
his own will. Kingsolver is a great talent, ably using
African languages in her prose while developing a story
with all the elements of a true classic.
Summer
Sisters – Judy Blume
In the summer of
1977, Victoria Leonard's world changed forever—when Caitlin
Somers chose her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin
welcomed Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric
family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege,
sweeping her away to vacations on Martha's Vineyard, a
magical, wind-blown island where two friends became summer
sisters. . . . Now, years later, Vix is working in New York
City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the
early magic of their long, complicated friendship has
faded. But Caitlin has begged Vix to come to her wedding,
to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—for
the friend whose casual betrayals she remembers all too
well. Because Vix wants to understand what happened during
that last shattering summer. And, after all these years,
she needs to know why her best friend—her summer
sister—still has the power to break her heart....
The
Mutant Message Down Under – Marlo Morgan
Mutant
Message Down Under is the fictional
account of an American woman's spiritual odyssey through
outback Australia. An underground bestseller in its
original self-published edition, Marlo Morgan's powerful
tale of challenge and endurance has a message for us all.
Summoned by a remote tribe of nomadic Aborigines to
accompany them on walkabout, the woman makes a
four-month-long journey and learns how they thrive in
natural harmony with the plants and animals that exist in
the rugged lands of Australia's bush. From the first day of
her adventure, Morgan is challenged by the physical
requirements of the journey—she faces daily tests of her
endurance, challenges that ultimately contribute to her
personal transformation. By traveling with this
extraordinary community, Morgan becomes a witness to their
essential way of being in a world based on the ancient
wisdom and philosophy of a culture that is more than 50,000
years old.
Water
For Elephants: A Novel – 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. A veterinary
student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of
caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met
Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August,
the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met
Rosie, an un-trainable elephant who was the great gray hope
for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew
among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and,
ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
The
Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
Synopsis:
Published to
extraordinary acclaim, The
Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran
Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. She
illuminates the pain of exile and the ambiguities of
post-colonialism with a tapestry of colorful characters: an
embittered old judge; Sai, his sixteen-year-old orphaned
granddaughter; a chatty cook; and the cook’s son, Biju, who
is hop-scotching from one miserable New York restaurant to
another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS. When a
Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai’s
new-sprung romance with her handsome tutor, their lives
descend into chaos. The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy
being overturned and discarded. The judge revisits his past
and his role in Sai and Biju’s intertwining lives. A story
of depth and emotion, hilarity and imagination, The
Inheritance of Loss tells a story of love, family, and
loss.
The
Notebook – Nicholas Sparks
Synopsis: A man
picks up a very special notebook and begins reading to his
beloved wife, his voice recalling the story of their
poignant and bittersweet journey to happiness . . . so
begins The Notebook, a touching novel that is a dual tale
of love lost and found, and of a couple's gentle efforts to
retrieve the most cherished moments of their lives. The
Notebook is irrepressibly romantic and has become a
classic. In 1932, two North Carolina teenagers from
opposite sides of the tracks fall in love. Spending one
idyllic summer together in the small town of New Bern, Noah
Calhoun and Allie Nelson do not meet again for 14 years.
Noah has returned from WWII to restore the house of his
dreams, having inherited a large sum of money. Allie,
programmed by family and the "caste system of the South" to
marry an ambitious, prosperous man, has become engaged to
powerful attorney Lon Hammond. When she reads a newspaper
story about Noah's restoration project, she shows up on his
porch step, re-entering his life for two days. Will Allie
leave Lon for Noah?
The
Kitchen God’s Wife – Amy Tan
Pearl Louie
Brandt deplores her mother Winnie's captious criticism and
cranky bossiness, her myriad superstitious rituals to ward
off bad luck, and her fearful, negative outlook, which has
created an emotional abyss between them. Dreading her
mother's reaction, Pearl has kept secret the fact that she
is suffering from MS. But as she learns during the course
of the narrative, Winnie herself has concealed some
astonishing facts about her early life in China, abetted by
her friend and fellow émigré Helen Kwong. The story Winnie
unfolds to Pearl is a series of secrets, each in turn
giving way to yet another surprising revelation. Winnie's
understated account--during which she goes from a young
woman "full of innocence and hope and dreams" through
marriage to a sadistic bully, the loss of three babies, and
the horror and privations of the Japanese war on China--is
compelling and heartrending. As Winnie gains insights into
the motivations for other peoples' actions, she herself
grows strong enough to conceal her past while building a
new life in America, never admitting her deadly hidden
fears. Integrated into this mesmerizing story is a view of
prewar and wartime China--both the living conditions and
the mind-set. Tan draws a vivid picture of the
male-dominated culture, the chasm between different classes
of society, and the profusion of rules for maintaining
respect and dignity. But the novel's immediacy resides in
its depiction of human nature, exposing foibles and
frailties, dreams and hopes, universal to us
all.
The Reading Group: A Novel – Elizabeth Noble
Synopsis:
A bestseller in the UK, THE READING GROUP is about a group
of women who meet regularly to read and discuss books, and
how their lives become intertwined, both with the books
they read and with each other's lives. What starts out as a
good idea born from a glass of wine and the need to
socialize, turns into much more. Over the span of a year,
Clare, Harriet, Nicole, Polly and Susan -- five women of
different ages, backgrounds and contrasting dilemmas --
transform themselves through the shared community of a book
group.
Their reading group becomes a forum for each of the women's
views, expressed initially by the book they're reading and
increasingly openly as the bonds of friendship cement. As
the months pass, these women's lives become more and more
intertwined.
In the THE READING GROUP, Nobel reveals the many
complicated paths in life we all face as well as the power
and importance of friendship.
Vinegar
Hill – A. Manette Ansay (Oprah’s Book Club)
In a stark,
troubling, yet ultimately triumphant celebration of
self-determination, award-winning author A. Manette Ansay
re-creates a stifling world of guilty and pain, and the
tormented souls who inhabit it. It is 1972 when
circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to
Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly
unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into
the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill -- a loveless house
suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine
-- where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and
perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry
God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and
secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young
woman's passionate spirit. And here Ellen must find the
straight to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading
darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and
everyone she loves.
Breathing
Lessons – Anne Tyler
Synopsis:
Maggie and Ira
Moran have been married for twenty-eight years–and it
shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their
ability to tolerate with affection each other’s
eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an
irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her
son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a
man “who should have married Ann Landers.” And what begins
as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the
unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists
and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of
eccentrics–and rediscover the magic of the road called life
and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the
ride . . . bumps and all.
One
Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Oprah’s
Book Club)
One of the 20th
century's enduring works, One Hundred
Years of Solitude is a widely
beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and
the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.
The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the
mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía
family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and
death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble,
ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía
family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history,
myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin
America.
Drowning
Ruth – Christina Schwarz (Oprah’s Book Club)
Synopsis:
Deftly written
and emotionally powerful, Drowning
Ruth is a stunning
portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the
forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping
secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are
exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful
debut.
The Shack – William Paul Young
Mackenzie Allen
Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during
a family vacation and evidence that she may have been
brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in
the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his
Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently
from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.
Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a
wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare.
What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a
world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant
"The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is
God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The
answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform
you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to
read this book!
Divine
Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel – Rebecca Wells
Synopsis:
When
Vivi and Siddalee Walker, an unforgettable mother-daughter
team, get into a savage fight over a New York Times article
that refers to Vivi as a 'tap-dancing child abuser,' the
Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back
together. In 1932, Vivi and the Ya-Yas were disqualified
from a Shirley Temple Look-Alike Contest for unladylike
behavior. Sixty years later, they're 'bucking 70' and still
making waves. With passion and a rare gift for language,
Rebecca Wells moves from present to past, unraveling Vivi's
life, her enduring friendships with the Ya-Yas, and the
reverberations on Siddalee. The collective power of the
Ya-Yas, each of them totally individual and authentic,
permeates this story of a tribe of Louisiana wild women who
are impossible to tame.
Where
the Heart is – (Oprah’s Book Club)
Synopsis: With a
warm and utterly honest voice right out of Steinbeck's
Oklahoma and Fannie Flagg's green tomato South, Billie
Letts has spun an irresistible story that won the Walker
Percy Award and goes on to win every reader's heart. For
17-year-old Novalee Nation, seven months pregnant, the
phrase "home is where your history begins" has a special
meaning. Leaving behind a trail of foster homes in
Tennessee trailer parks to live in a real house with her
boyfriend, Willy Jack Pickens, Novalee instead finds
herself abandoned in front of a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Okla.
With nowhere to turn, she cleverly conceals herself within
the store, keeping careful accounts until giving birth to
the "Wal-Mart baby" turns her into a local celebrity.
Happily, the community reaches out to Novalee and baby
Americus. Sequoyah's one-woman welcoming committee, Sister
Husband, takes them in; cultured librarian Forney Hull
takes a shine to them; photographer Moses Whitecotton
encourages Novalee's raw talent for photography by teaching
her all he knows; Lexie Coop, who has a huge appetite for
food, diet fads and the wrong men, befriends her; and
legendary Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton gives her a job.
Meanwhile, Willy Jack, an aspiring musician, gets a shot at
the big time before hitting bottom and realizing what he's
left behind. Letts's wacky characters are depicted with
humor and hope, as well as an earnestness that rises above
the story's uneven conceits, resulting in a heartfelt and
gratifying read.
The
Pilot’s Wife – Anita Shreve (Oprah’s Book Club)
Synopsis:
The Pilot's
Wife by Anita Shreve
is an engrossing thriller woven between the pages of a
stirring meditation on love and betrayal. With one
late-night knock on her door, Kathryn Lyons's worst fears
as a pilot's wife come true: Her husband, Jack, has died in
a mid-air explosion off the coast of Ireland. Later, a
phone number found among Jack's papers leads Kathryn to
London and the unfathomable truth about her husband's
secret other life. A second wife and two young children are
just the beginning of what Jack was hiding in England. With
each staggering revelation, Kathryn must reconcile her
memories of the man she loved with the disturbing portrait
unfolding before her.
A Million Little Pieces – (Oprah’s Book Club)
NATIONAL
BESTSELLER - “The most lacerating tale of drug addiction
since William S. Burroughs’ Junky.”
—The Boston
GlobeFilled with
graphic scenes of epic substance abuse and the torments of
withdrawal, A Million
Little Pieces was widely
heralded upon its publication as a harrowing,
self-lacerating, and courageously confessional
autobiography. It received many admiring critical reviews,
carried cover endorsements from noted literati, and was
selected by Barnes & Noble as a 2003 Discover pick.
(Our reviewer called Frey “prodigiously talented,”
“poetic,” and “unflinchingly honest”). In January 2006,
the author acknowledged the truth of charges that many
details in the book were embellished or fabricated. In a
note to readers that was prepared for subsequent printings,
he apologized to those who felt they had been misled and
explained why he wrote the book the way he did. Reactions
to these revelations included soul-searching by publishers
about their responsibilities for ensuring accuracy,
ruminations by critics on the line between fact and fiction
in modern culture, and spirited defenses of the author by
readers who maintained that the book's inspirational
message was of primary importance. One thing seems
certain: A Million
Little Pieces is a book that
promises to have a long-lasting impact.
Tara
Road – Maeve Binchy (Oprah’s Book Club)
Synopsis: 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.
By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New
England unable to come to terms with her only son's death
and now separated from her husband. The two women exchange
houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each
learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be
revealed.
Drawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at
first each resents the news of how well the other is
getting on. Ria seems to have become quite a hostess,
entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first
irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who
has always guarded her privacy. Marilyn seems to have
become bosom friends with Ria's children, as well as with
Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss
terribly. At the end of the summer, the women at last meet
face-to-face. Having learned a great deal, about themselves
and about each other, they find that they have become,
firmly and forever, good friends.
A moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master
artisan, Tara
Road is Maeve Binchy
at her very best—utterly beautiful, hauntingly
unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable.
All
He Ever Wanted – Anita Shreve
In the wake of
such acclaimed #1 bestsellers as The Pilot's Wife, The Last
Time They Met, and Sea Glass, Anita Shreve gives us a
brilliant new novel about love, jealousy, and loss. It is
the story of a man whose obsession with a young woman
begins when he meets her fleetingly—as he helps her escape
from a fire in a restaurant—and culminates in a marriage
doomed by secrets and betrayal. Written with the
intelligence and grace that are Anita Shreve's hallmarks,
this gripping tale is peopled by unforgettable characters
as real as the emotions that bring them together.
The
Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
This bestselling
and innovative debut novel from Audrey Niffenegger explores
the perfect marriage, one that is tested by challenges the
couple can neither control nor predict. An imaginative
extension of everyday life, the story asks: What if two
people who loved each other deeply, married, and faced a
life in which one person remained constant while the other
slipped fluidly in and out of time? Henry De Tamble is a
Chicago librarian with "Chrono Displacement" disorder; at
random times, he suddenly disappears without warning and
finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or
place of importance in his life. This leads to some
wonderful paradoxes. From his point of view, he first met
his wife, Clare, when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up
to him exclaiming that she'd known him all her life. He,
however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his
40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself
time traveling to Clare's childhood and meeting her as a
6-year-old. The book alternates between Henry and Clare's
points of view.
Skipping
Christmas – John Grisham
Synopsis: Luther
and Nora Krank are fed up with the chaos of Christmas. The
endless shopping lists, the frenzied dashes through the
mall, the hassle of decorating the tree... where has all
the joy gone? This year, celebrating seems like too much
effort. With their only child off in Peru, they decide that
just this once, they'll skip the holidays. They spend their
Christmas budget on a Caribbean cruise set to sail on
December 25, and happily settle in for a restful holiday
season free of rooftop snowmen and festive parties. But the
Kranks soon learn that their vacation from Christmas isn't
much of a vacation at all, and that skipping the holidays
has consequences they didn't bargain for... A modern
Christmas classic, Skipping Christmas is a charming
and hilarious look at the mayhem and madness that have
become ingrained in our holiday tradition.
White
Oleander – Janet Fitch (Oprah’s Book Club)
"Oprah's
Book Club(r) May 1999 SelectionAstrid is the
only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant,
obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate
and manipulate men. Astrid worships her mother and
cherishes their private world full of ritual and
mystery-but their idyll is shattered when Astrid's mother
falls apart over a lover.Deranged by
rejection, Ingrid murders the man, and is sentenced to life
in prison. White Oleander is the unforgettable story of
Astrid's journey through a series of foster homes and her
efforts to find a place for herself in impossible
circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new
set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination
and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness
and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in
an indifferent world can become. Tough, irrepressible,
funny, and warm, Astrid is one of the most indelible
characters in recent fiction. White Oleander is an
unforgettable story of mothers and daughters, burgeoning
sexuality, the redemptive powers of art, and the
unstoppable force of the emergent self. Written with
exquisite beauty and grace, this is a compelling debut by
an author poised to join the ranks of today's most gifted
novelists."
The
Feast of Love – Charles Baxter
From
"one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago
Tribune), here is a superb
new novel that delicately unearths the myriad
manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary
people. Feast of
Love is a radiant
work of art that evokes the romance that the characters
describe. To find out how things play out for this
extraordinary bunch of ostensibly ordinary Midwesterners,
pick up this funny, sad, gorgeous novel.
Snow
Falling On Cedars: A Novel – David Guterson
On San Piedro,
an island of rugged, spectacular beauty in Puget Sound, a
Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for murder. Set in
1954 in the shadow of World War II, Snow Falling
on Cedars is a beautifully
crafted courtroom drama, love story, and war novel,
illuminating the psychology of a community, the ambiguities
of justice, the racism that persists even between
neighbors, and the necessity of individual moral action
despite the indifference of nature and circumstance.
The
Deep End of the Ocean – Jacquelyn Mitchard (Oprah’s Book
Club)
Synopsis: "Watch
your brother," says Beth Cappadora to her seven-year-old
son, Vincent. She's checking in at her high school reunion
in Chicago. Even with a hotel clerk who is, in Beth's
estimation, slower than weight loss, it's not more than
five minutes before she turns again and asks, "Where's
Ben?" It's the moment every mother dreads. Three-year-old
Ben is gone. And no one can find him. Despite a police
search that will turn into a nation-wide obsession, Ben has
vanished, seemingly without a trace. His disappearance will
leave Beth frozen on a knife-edge of suppressed agony for
nine years and drive a shattering wedge through her
marriage to Pat - who, though he is a man of consummate
kindness, can do nothing to bring his boy back. It will
transform their other son, Vincent, into a delinquent who
courts danger in an attempt to break the bell jar of
silence that surrounds the whole Cappadora family. Then,
just after the Cappadoras move back to Chicago to help
start a family restaurant, something so unexpected happens,
it changes everything that once seemed true or possible.
And perhaps, only perhaps, it will give Beth what she
thought was gone forever: a reason to live.
Summer
Island – Kristin Hannah
In
a poignant tale of tangled emotions and triumphant
redemption, Kristin Hannah highlights the troubled
relationship between a mother and her daughter in
Summer
Island. Forced to
learn things about the mother she's hated for years, Ruby
Bridge learns some tough lessons about love, forgiveness,
and understanding. But it's a lesson that comes at a
painfully high cost.
Eat,
Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy,
India and Indonesia – Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert
(The Last
American Man) grafts the
structure of romantic fiction upon the inquiries of
reporting in this sprawling yet methodical travelogue of
soul-searching and self-discovery. Plagued with despair
after a nasty divorce, the author, in her early 30s,
divides a year equally among three dissimilar countries,
exploring her competing urges for earthly delights and
divine transcendence. First, pleasure: savoring Italy's
buffet of delights--the world's best pizza, free-flowing
wine and dashing conversation partners--Gilbert
consumes la dolce
vita as spiritual
succor. "I came to Italy pinched and thin," she writes, but
soon fills out in waist and soul. Then, prayer and ascetic
rigor: seeking communion with the divine at a sacred ashram
in India, Gilbert emulates the ways of yogis in grueling
hours of meditation, struggling to still her churning mind.
Finally, a balancing act in Bali, where Gilbert tries for
equipoise "betwixt and between" realms, studies with a
merry medicine man and plunges into a charged love affair.
Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully
engages readers in the year's cultural and emotional
tapestry--conveying rapture with infectious brio, recalling
anguish with touching candor--as she details her exotic
tableau with history, anecdote and
impression.
