 | John McKnight and Peter Block c2010 The Abundant Community gives voice to the ideal of a beloved community. It assures us that when we join together with our neighbors we are the architects of the future where we want to live. [173 pages] NON-FICTION |
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 | c2012
In the aftermath of the Civil War, Josephine Weatherly vows to rebuild her family's once-grand Virginia plantation, but her privileged life has now turned into a daily struggle for survival.* [413 pages] FICTION
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 | c2001 Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion. At dinner each one is accused of harboring a guilty secret. One by one each of the visitors dies. Who is the murderer? Original title - Ten Little Indians. [183 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2012 A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate, and the president's daughter.. * [512 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2008
Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television and by listening closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. On the night before his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through, hoping, in his next life, to return as a human.* [321 pages] FICTION |
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Which are better mothers, Chinese or American? Read Amy Chua’s book for information on the differences and make your own decision. [237 pages] NON-FICTION
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 | c1994 When Mary Russell meets famous detective Sherlock Holmes, she discovers that he is also a beekeeper. Soon she finds herself on the trail of kidnappers and discovers a plot to kill both Holmes and herself. * [347 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2011
The setting is Anniwaldi, India, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels behind the Mumbai International Airport. From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities. [256 pages] NON-FICTION
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 | Markus Zusak
c2006
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel – a young German girl who’s book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. [550 pages] FICTION
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 | c2006
Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence. * [215 pages] FICTION
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 | c2011 Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up in Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Inspired by a true story and narrated by Bethia, Caleb’s Crossing brilliantly captures the triumphs and turmoil of two brave, openhearted spirits. [306 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | At the age of twenty-two, Jennifer Worth leaves her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in post war London's East End slums. Beautifully written and utterly moving, The Midwife will touch the hearts of anyone who is, and everyone who has, a mother. [340 pages] NON-FICTION |
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 | c2011 Grace Clark, a retired black schoolteacher, gives Roxanne Reeves a tour of their southern town in order to help her research the area’s African American history. Roxanne listens to Grace’s stories of the past and meets her friends, and begins to see life differently. [312 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | In a city ravaged by war, a musician plays his cello for twenty-two days at the site of a mortar attack, in memory of the fallen. Among the strangers drawn into the orbit of his music are a young father in search of water for his family, an older man in search of the humanity he once knew, and a young woman, a sniper, who will decide the fate of the cellist and the kind of person she wants to be. [235 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2004
A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles and genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Haruki Murakami, Umberto Eco, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. [509 pages] FICTION
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 | c2006
Biography of James McBride, one of 12 children of a white mother and an African-American father. This book is a tribute to the mother who raised him. [382 pages] NON-FICTION
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 | c2002
In the rural farm country of northern Ontario, the lives of two families--the farming Pye family, and zoologist Kate Morrison and her three brothers--are brought together and torn apart by misunderstanding, resentment, family love, and tragedy. * [288 pages] FICTION
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 | c2003
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. * [226 pages] FICTION
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 | c2010
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. [541 pages] FICTION
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 | c2009 A man leaves his teaching job in England and travels to Siberia on his bicycle, encountering many adventures on the way. [399 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c1985 For Davita Chandal, growing up in the New York of the 1930s and '40s is an experience of joy and sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope of a new and better world. But as the deprivations of war and depression take a ruthless toll, Davita unexpectedly turns to the Jewish faith that her mother had long ago abandoned, finding there both a solace for her questioning inner pain and a test of her budding spirit of independence. [371 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2011
If you have read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen or seen the movie you know all about the aloof Mr. Darcy, the beautiful Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters and the vile Mr. Wickham. In the novel by PD James the story continues. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are now happily married and living at Pemberly. Suddenly Elizabeth’s silly sister Lydia arrives late at night in a carriage, screaming that Mr. Wickham has been murdered and stately Pemberley is thrown into a murder mystery. [291 pages] FICTION
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 | c2012
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban
Massachusetts County for more than twenty years. He is respected in
his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his
wife, Laurie, and his son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters
their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next. His
fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. * [421 pages] FICTION
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 | c2003
Erik Larson intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. [447 pages] NON-FICTION
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 | Digging to America  
Anne Tyler
c2006 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. They decide to meet together every year. [277 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Elizabeth Gilbert. c2006 Traces the author's decision to quit her job and travel the world for a year after suffering a midlife crisis and divorce, a journey that took her to three places in her quest to explore her own nature and learn the art of spiritual balance. * [334 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2008 In a fancy apartment building in Paris we meet Rene, an intelligent consierge and Paloma, a moody adolescent girl who lives with her rich family, and does not like living among the wealthy. When a Japanese businessmen moves in to the apartment complex, the three become friends. [325 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2006
17-year-old Enrique travels to America to visit his mother, who left him in the Honduras to work in the United States when he was five years old. [291 pages] NON-FICTION
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 | c1981 Mary Ingles was twenty-three, married, and pregnant, when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement, killed the men and women, then took her captive. For months, she lived with them until she escaped, and followed a thousand mile trail to freedom--an extraordinary story of a pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her people. [399 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2009
A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday, they tell her the truth, and "Nell" sets out to trace her real identity. [552 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2005
Set in 17th century Delft, Holland, this novel was inspired by Delft school painter Johannes Vermeer's painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. Chevalier presents a fictional account of Vermeer, the model, and the painting. [233 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2005
Jeanette Walls, a writer, tells her story of growing up in a home with alcoholic parents and a dysfunctional family. [288 pages] NON-FICTION
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 | Ira Wagler c2011 A memoir recounting the author's childhood on the family farm, his Rumspringa rite of passage at age 16, and his ultimate decision to leave the Amish church for good at age 26. * [271 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2008 January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. She finds it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey. Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters and she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends. [277 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2009
Lily Casey Smith was Jeannette Walls’s no-nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town—riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. And, with her husband, Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette’s memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle. [272 pages] FICTION
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 | c2008 For forty-one years, Samson Brown has been caring for Hannah, the lone elephant at the down-at-the-heels Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Sam rejoices when smart, compassionate Neva Wilson is hired as the new elephant keeper. Using her contacts in the zookeeping world, Neva and Sam hatch a plan to send Hannah to an elephant sanctuary. [319 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2009
Relates the author's efforts to eulogize a beloved rabbi who is near death, while at the same time befriending a Detroit pastor who gives spiritual guidance to the poor and homeless, and describes how observing these two different religious leaders rekindled his own faith.* [254 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2010 The four-year-old son of a Nebraska pastor nearly dies during emergency surgery and enters heaven for a short time. [163 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2009 Twenty-year old Skeeter has returned home to Mississippi after graduating from Ole Miss. She meets Abileen and Minny, two black maids, and writes about their work as maids in the south during the 1960s. [451 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Alan Brennert c2009 Journeying to 1914 Hawaii as a mail-order bride, Korean-born Jin finds her hopes devastated by the realities of a rushed marriage to a bitter laborer; a situation throughout which she works to overcome limited opportunities. * [360 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Daniel J. Wolff c2009 Presents the lives of 12 famous Americans and their education, both in school and at home. [345 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2008
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games," a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. [374 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2010 Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up living a life so different from the one she dreamed of as a child. But just when things seem completely hopeless, Maggie discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems, has at least one little secret. [314 pages] FICTION |
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 | c2010
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. [384 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2011 William E. Dodd becomes America’s ambassador to Berlin in 1933, shortly before World War II. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and the country descends into war. [448 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | Laura Schroff c2011
He asked for spare change; she kept walking. But something made her
turn around and go back. They met nearly every week for years, and
built an unexpected, life-changing friendship that has today spanned
almost three decades * [238 pages] NON-FICTION
|
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 | c2004
Barry Lafferty takes a job as a young doctor in Ballybucklebo, a small village in Northern Ireland. There he works with Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, a cantankerous older physician. [351 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2004
A history of the Dutch role in the establishment of Manhattan discusses the rivalry between England and the Dutch Republic, focusing on the power struggle between governor Peter Stuyvesant and politician Adriaen van der Donck. * [384 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2007
Debbie Rodriguez, a beautician from Holland, Michigan travels to Afghanistan where she teaches her skills to women there and becomes immersed in the culture of the country. [275 pages] NON-FICTION
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| |
 | c2012
Saudi lead inspector Ibrahim Zahrani discovers that a serial killer has been burying women's bodies in Jeddah for more than ten years at the same time his mistress disappears, and he seeks assistance from Katya, one of the few women on the force.* [363 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2010
When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. [368 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2003
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. [371 pages] FICTION
|
| |
 | c2011
Story of how a young woman who grew up in foster care uses her gift of working with flowers to help change the lives of others. [322 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2006 A Pakastani family and a Jewish family both lived in the same house in Palestine at different times. This book tells of the meeting of the two familes and the history in Israel after World War II. [362 page] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2001
16-year-old Pi Patel, sone of a zookeeper, is raised in India. Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. [401 pages] FICTION
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 | c2012
A novel set on a remote Australian island, where a childless couple live quietly running a lighthouse, until a boat carrying a baby washes ashore--. * [345 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Chris Cleave c2008 Presents a tale of a precarious friendship between an illegal Nigerian refugee and a recent widow from suburban London, a story told from the alternating and disparate perspectives of both women. * [271 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2009
The inspirational story of a woman who takes on Corporate America to save her home. [397 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2012
When his father and sister are injured in an accident that has rendered his father comatose, estranged son Edward decides to stop his father's life support so that his organs can be donated, a choice his sister urges him to reconsider. * [421 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2007 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. * [362 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2007,2006
Reluctantly giving up her California practice working with troubled children, Julia Cates is forced to draw on all her skills to deal with a young mute girl found abandoned and terrified in her Pacific Northwest hometown. *
[391 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2010 In a small village in the English countryside lives Major Ernest Pettigrew, a retired older gentleman and a widower. He meets Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Their friendship soon blossoms into romance. [358 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2009 Rhoda Janzen, a professor at Hope College, describes how after her husband left her for a relationship with a man and she subsequently was seriously injured in a car crash, she returned home to her close-knit Mennonite family and came to terms with her failed marriage and her choices in life. [241 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2003
Seven-year-old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family's 1890s Honolulu home when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her to reenter the world. * [384 pages] FICTION
|
| |
 | Tracy Kidder c2003 Dr. Tracy Kidder, a Harvard professor and infectious disease specialist, is dedicated to providing health care in Haiti to impoverished people who need it the most. [317 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2013
Presents a fictionalized account of the friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln and her dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave.* [356 pages] FICTION |
| |
 |
Jude Farraday is a mother to teenage twins, Mia and Zach. When Mia becomes friends with Lexi, a foster child with a questionable past, Jude is concerned but accepts her as Mia’s friend. One night in their senior year of high school, a tragedy occurs which changes all of their lives. [385 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2003
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiancé, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story. [389 pages] FICTION
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| |
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An American mother and her young daughter escape from an abusive husband in Iran.[420 pages] NON-FICTION
|
| |
 | c2008
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her. [270 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Bonnie Jo Campbell c2011 Margo Crane lives in rural Michigan with her father. When she is only sixteen her father dies and she leaves to find her mother who left the family years ago. National Book Award finalist. [348 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c1998
Story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world [304 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2011
Fictional account of the first wife of Ernest Hemingway, Hadley, who lived with him in Paris before he became a famous writer. [324 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a book which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. . When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. [372 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Plain Truth
Jodi Picoult
c2000 In Plain Truth, a shocking murder shatters the picturesque calm of Pennsylvania's Amish country—and tests the heart and soul of the lawyer who steps in to defend the young woman at the center of the storm. [405 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c1989
Follows Peekay, a white British boy in South Africa during World War II, between the ages of five and eleven, as he survives an abusive boarding school and goes on to succeed in life and the boxing ring, with help from a chicken, a boxer, a pianist, black African prisoners, and many others. * [518 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2011 To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. [321 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2006
Memoir of a dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in the south, an upscale art dealer and his wife, and how they became friends. [237 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2007
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door to door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released. Sixty Years Later: Sarah’s story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own future. [288 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2002
Story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters. [302 pages] FICTION
|
| |
 | c2012
Two star-crossed lovers—Enza and Ciro—meet and separate, until,
finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever.
Set during the years preceding and during World War I. * [475 pages] FICTION
|
| |
 | c2008 Evelyn Dixon moves from Fort Worth, Texas to New Bern, Connecticut where she opens a quilt shop and meets some women who take quilting classes and become her close friends. [344 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Tony Hillerman c1986
Along with the attempted murder of Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo
Tribal Police, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn uncovers three unsolved
homicides that may be linked to witchcraft buried deep within the
Navajo culture. This is Book 7 of the Joe Leaphorn and Jimm Chee
Mystery Series. [216 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See
c2005
Lily, an eighty-year old woman, recalls her life as a child and her childhood friend, Snow Flower. This book covers Chinese history and the practice of foot-binding. [258 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2008 The story of an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.* [287 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2011
A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh journeys into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years--a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.* [353 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | As a little girl, Bich Minh Nguyen immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan with her family in 1975. She writes about her life in the United States and her love of American food. [256 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | c2009
Alice, happily married with three grown children, is a Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. She receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away.[320 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | David Wroblewski c2008
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. * [562 pages] FICTION
|
| |
 | Irene Nemirovsky c2006 Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940. Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. When Irène Némirovsky began working on Suite Française, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown. [395 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2009
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is propelled into a mystery when a man is found murdered on the grounds of her family's decaying English mansion and Flavia's father becomes the main suspect.* [373 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | Sandra Dallas c2007
During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers. [305 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2006
In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, the second highest mountain on the earth. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. [338 pages] NON-FICTION
|
| |
 | c1960
Scout’s father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. [281 pages] FICTION
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| |
 | c2012
Historical fiction novel which tells the story of the Mormon Handcart Tragedy. In 1856 a group of Mormons, many of them new converts from Europe, travelled from Iowa to Salt Lake City pushing handcarts instead of riding in covered wagons. Unfortunately, the group left too late in the spring to arrive at their destination before winter storms arrived, resulting in disastrous consequences. [341pages] FICTION
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 | |
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 | c1852 Classic novel telling of the evils of slavery, written over 150 years ago. It tells of the slave Uncle Tom and his different owners, one kind and one cruel. [379 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c1998
Journalist Bill Bryson walks the Appalachian Trail and tells of his adventures. [276 pages] NON-FICTION
|
| |
 | c2010
Story of three African Americans who travel to the north in the early to mid 1900s. They are part of a group of millions of people who left the segregated south in search of a better life in the north. [622 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | Water for Elephants Sara Gruen
c2006
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. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. There he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. [335 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Gary D. Schmidt c2007 Seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood is stuck spending Wednesday afternoons with his teacher Ms. Baker, who is killing him with Shakespeare. As time goes on Shakespeare begins to grow on him. Holling is courageous, funny, and unique, and readers will love seeing him evolve beyond the expectations of others to become his own fabulous self.
[264 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | c2011 Alice Grace Ripley lives in a dream world. But The life she's planned on suddenly falls apart when her boyfriend breaks up with her. Then she loses her beloved library job because of cutbacks due to the Great Depression. Alice flees to the mountains of eastern Kentucky to deliver donated books to the tiny coal-mining town of Acorn. When she is forced to stay in Acorn far longer than she planned, she discovers that real-life adventure, mystery--and especially romance--may be far better than her humble dreams could have imagined. [391 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | Timothy Egan c2006 The dust storms that terrorized America’s High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan tells the epic story of this environmental disaster and its impact on the communities choked by dust. [340 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | Geraldine Brooks c2002 When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. [308 pages] FICTION |
| |
 | You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know Heather Sellers
c2010
Heather Sellers, a professor at Hope College, has face blindness, also called prosopagnosia. She is unable to recognize people’s faces. This memoir tells of her disability and her life growing up in a dysfunctional family. [356 pages] NON-FICTION |
| |
 | Zeitoun Dave Eggersc2009 In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. In the days after the storm, Abdulrahman traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared-- arrested and accused of being an agent of al Qaeda. * [351 pages] NON-FICTION |