Fiction

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi … Half of a yellow sun.  The lives of three characters, a houseboy, a mistress and a shy Englishman come together in the turbulence of 1060’s Nigeria.

 

Adrian, Chris … The Children’s Hospital.  A hospital is preserved, afloat, after the Earth is flooded beneath seven miles of water. Inside a young medical student finds herself gifted with strange powers.

 

Allende, Isabel … Ines of My Soul.  Ines, a seamstress, finds herself condemned to a life of hard work. It is the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and when her shiftless husband disappears to the New World, Ines uses the opportunity to search for him.

 

Baker, Kevin … Strivers Row.  The story of Malcolm X and the tinderbox that was World War II era Harlem.

 

Boyle, T.C. ... Talk Talk  Dana discovers she is a victim of identity theft when she is arrested.  Now she is determined to find the person who has stolen her life.

 

Cox, Michael … The Meaning of Night.  The extraordinary story of Edward Glyver - booklover, scholar, and murderer. His path to reclaim his birthright leads him to the depths of Victorian London.

 

Doig, Ivan … The Whistling Season.  A newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-I housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909.

 

Eggers, Dave … What is the What.  The story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refuge of the Sudanese civil war. Fleeing from his village in the mid-1980s, Deng becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys.

 

Ford, Richard … The Lay of the Land.  Realtor Frank Bascombe is enjoying life but then discovers he has cancer as his family life suffers. 

 

Hempel, Amy … The Collected Stories

 

Horn, Dara … The World to Come.  The theft of a Chagall painting leads to the story of the painting’s conception in 1920’s Soviet Russia.

 

Kittredge, William … The Willow Field.  The settlers, cowboys, and gamblers who opened up this country pivot between the ghosts of the old frontier and the modern world that engulfs them

 

McCarthy, Cormac … The Road.  A father and his son walk alone through burned America, in a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son are sustained by love.

 

McDermott, Alice … After this.  A family lives through the Sixties.

 

Meno, Joe … The Boy Detective Fails.  Billy, a one time boy detective, emerges as a thirty year old from an institution, and enters a bizarre world.

 

Powers, Richard … The Echo Maker.  Mark emerges from a coma convinced that his sister is really an imposter.

 

Pynchon, Thomas … Against the Day.  History is skewed in this novel spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I.

Saunders, George … In Persuasion Nation.  A collection of satirical stories.

 

See, Carolyn … There will Never be another You  Set in a security-obsessed world that eerily mirrors our own, Phil's life takes a dramatic turn: He is recruited for a top-secret team whose task is to act quickly in the event of a biological or chemical attack, with profound effects upon his family.

 

Turner, Frederick … Redemption.  Francis Muldoon is a special policeman in New Orleans in 1913. His job is to see that the District's volatile mixture of sex, alcohol, and gambling doesn't boil over but instead rolls along at a continuous simmer.

 

Tyler, Anne … Digging to America.  Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport - each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea.

 

Umrigar, Thrity … The Space between Us.  Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another woman's house, hoping for a better life for her granddaughter.

 

Updike, John … Terrorist.  An 18 year old New Jersey Muslim believes his faith is threatened by the materialistic world.

 

Woodrell, Daniel … Winter’s Bone.  Ree Dolly’s father has skipped bail, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. Sixteen-year-old Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake

 

 

 

Nonfiction

Allgor, Catherine…A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the creation of the American Nation.

Angell, Roger … Let me finish

Dunlop, Nic … The Lost Executioner

Feinstein, Elaine … Anna of all Russians: The Life of Anna Akhmatova

Fergusson, Maggie … George Mackay Brown

Fraser, Antonia … Love and Louis XIV

Perry, Michael … Truck: A love story

Peterson, Dale … Jane Goodall: The Woman who redefined man

Delaney, Frank … Simple Courage:  A true story of peril on the sea

Hunt, Tristram … Building Jerusalem: The rise and fall of the Victorian City

Kirsch, Jonathan … A History of the end of the world: How the most controversial book in the Bible changed the course of Western Civilization.

Philbrick, Jonathan … Mayflower: A story of courage, community and war

Washington, Harriet … Medical Apartheid:  The dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial times to the present.

Albright, Madeleine … The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs

Baker, James … The Iraq Study Group Report

Conyers, A.J. … The Listening Heart: Vocation and the crisis of Modern Culture

Hurley, Dan … Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America’s Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry.

Maathai, Wangari … Unbowed

Press, Eyal … Absolute Convictions: My father, a city and the conflict that divided America

Wilson, Edward … The Creation: An appeal to save life on Earth

 

Poetry

Creech, Morri … Field Knowledge