Atonement
Ian McEwan
This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive. It is in effect two, or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted.
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Back When We Were Grownups: a Novel
Anne Tyler
After recovering from the shock of becoming a widow in her mid-twenties, Rebecca "Beck" Davitch has spent several busy decades occupied with managing both her quirky clan of in-laws and their party-hosting business. She has become the heart and soul of the extended family and of The Open Arms, the family's historic row house, which is still popular as a rental for special occasions though the surrounding neighborhood is deteriorating. At 53, Beck is feeling a little rundown herself. She wonders what became of the serious college student she once was and whether she took the right path when she followed her heart to the altar at 19. Beck thus embarks on a quixotic interior journey, with results both funny and touching, as she explores the differences between being herself and playing the roles assigned to her by the family.
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Backstage with Julia : My Years with Julia Child
Barr Nancy Verde
This is an intimate portrait of the inimitable Julia Child by Nancy Verde Barr, her executive chef and friend for twenty-four years. Brimming with anecdotes, memorabilia, and snapshots, Backstage with Julia conveys Julia’s generosity, her boundless energy, and her love of food and life. This loving memoir celebrates the adventurous, unassuming essence of the chef who seasoned American palates and heightened our appreciation of food.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Denise Philpot
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Beyond the Sky and the Earth : a Journey Into Bhutan
Jamie Zeppa
Canadian-born Zeppa was 22 when she applied for a teaching position in Bhutan, a tiny country in the Himalayas, nestled between India and China. Leaving her fiance and graduate school applications on hold, Zeppa began the most challenging and transformative experiences of her life. In what would become both an outward and an inward journey, this observant, sensitive, and articulate young woman traveled halfway around the world to her teaching post in a remote village where language, customs, philosophy, food, weather, everything was strange to her.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Bialy Eaters : the Story of a Bread and a Lost World
Mimi Sheraton
A famed food writer tells the poignant, personal story of her worldwide search for a Polish town's lost world and the daily bread that sustained it. A passion for bialys, those chewy, crusty rolls with the toasted onion center, drew Mimi Sheraton to the Polish town of Bialystok to explore the history of this Jewish staple.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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Bleak House
Charles Dickens
Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Esther Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these are some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done. Bleak House, in its atmosphere, symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy, is often regarded as the best of Dickens. A 'great Victorian novel', it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Jack Hurwitz
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Changed Man, A
Francine Prose
On an unseasonably warm spring afternoon, a young neo-Nazi named Vincent Nolan walks into the Manhattan office of World Brotherhood Watch, a human rights foundation headed by a charismatic Holocaust survivor, Meyer Maslow. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change in his life. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger who claims to have read Maslow's books, who has Waffen-SS tattoos under his shirtsleeves, and who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him?" "As he gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do that, Vincent also transforms those around him: Maslow, who fears that heroism has become a desk job; Bonnie Kalen, the foundation's fund-raiser, a divorced single mother and a devoted believer in Maslow's crusade against intolerance and injustice; and Bonnie's teenage son, Danny, whose take on the world around him is at once openhearted, sharp-eyed, and as fundamentally decent as his mother's.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Sharon Levine
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Chicago in the Sixties: Remembering a Time of Change
Samors Neal
Chicago in the Sixties: Remembering a Time of Change is a book about the city during two "decades." One began in 1960 as a continuation of the 1950s and lasted until around 1965. Then, as if a tornado roared through the area, the period from 1965 and throughout the 1970s shifted dramatically in its social, economic and political directions. This is a book of memories provided by 80 current and former Chicagoans, all with different backgrounds and experiences, but with a common focus: remembrances of a decade of change.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Denise Philpot
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Chocolat : a Novel
Joanne Harris
When the exotic stranger Vianne Rocher arrives in the old French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique called 'La Celeste Praline' directly across the square from the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock. To make matters worse, Vianne does not go to church and has a penchant for superstition. Like her mother, she can read Tarot cards. But she begins to win over customers with her smiles, her intuition for everyone?s favourites, and her delightful confections.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Nancy Buehler
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Christmas Cookie Murder
Leslie Meier
The quiet town of Tinker's Cove, Maine is a place where everyone knows everyone else's business and doors or cars are never locked. It is Christmas time, but newspaper reporter Lucy Stone struggles with the season's spirit after an overflowing toilet drowned her cookie party. The newest female resident of Tinker's Cove is Tucker Whitney, is found strangled to death. All the townsfolk know that Tucker was having an affair with Steve Cummings, who was separated from his wife, Lee. Lucy begins to snoop, which lands her into more trouble than she ever has been in before and she knows trouble with a capital T.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Julie Anne Nitz-Weiss
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Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Marc Haddon
"Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Ruth Zabel
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Dirty Girls Social Club, The
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
In this irrepressible, can't-put-it-down novel of six friends-each one an unforgettable woman in her late twenties-you'll meet: --Lauren, the "caliente" columnist for the local Boston paper whose love live has recently led her to her boyfriend's closet...to catch him in the act with someone else --Sara, the perfect wife and mother who's got it all but who is paying a high price --Amber, raised a Valley girl without a word of Spanish but who is becoming a huge rock en espanol star --Elizabeth, the stunning black Latina whose TV anchor job conflicts with her intensely private personal life --Rebecca, hyper-in-command in the world of her glossy magazine, Ella, but totally at sea when it comes to men --Usnavys, fabulous and larger than life, whose agenda to land the kind of man who can keep her in Manolos almost prevents her finding true love
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Gabby Mancera
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Displaced Persons : Growing up American After the Holocaust
Joseph Berger
Displaced Persons speaks directly to a little-known slice of Holocaust history, illuminating as never before the experience of 140,000 refugees who came to the United States between 1947 and 1953.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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Dogs Never Lie About Love
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
In Dogs Never Lie About Love, the New York Times best-selling author of When Elephants Weep shifts his attention from the jungle to the living room to explore the exotic and unchartered territory of dog emotion.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Gail Inman
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight : an African Childhood
Alexandra Fuller
It is difficult for most people even to imagine the world described in this book, let alone live in it as a child: the nights are dark, scary, and filled with strange noises; the people welcome you and despise you at the same time; there is a constant anxious feeling burning in your stomach, which, you later realize, is fear of the unrest surrounding you. The British-born Fuller grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), losing three siblings to disease as her father fought in the Rhodesian civil war and her mother managed the farm. She approaches her childhood with reserve, leaving many stories open to interpretation while also maintaining a remarkable clarity about what really transpired in her homeland, in her own home, and in her head. The narrative seems complicated, weaving together war, politics, racial issues, and alcoholism, but its emotional core remains honest, playful, and unapologetic; it hardly seems possible that this 32-year-old has so much to say and says it so well.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Dream When You're Feeling Blue
Berg Elizabeth
As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front, meat is rationed, children participate in metal drives, and Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller play songs that offer hope and lift spirits. And now the Heaney sisters sit at their kitchen table every evening to write letters–Louise to her fiancé, Kitty to the man she wishes fervently would propose, and Tish to an ever-changing group of men she meets at USO dances. In the letters the sisters send and receive are intimate glimpses of life both on the battlefront and at home. For Kitty, a confident, headstrong young woman, the departure of her boyfriend and the lessons she learns about love, resilience, and war will bring a surprise and a secret, and will lead her to a radical action for those she loves. The lifelong consequences of the choices the Heaney sisters make are at the heart of this superb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Eva Moves the Furniture
Margot Livesey
On the morning of Eva McEwen's birth, six magpies congregate in the apple tree outside the window--a bad omen, according to Scottish legend. That night, Eva's mother dies, leaving her to be raised by her aunt and heartsick father in their small Scottish town. As a child, Eva is often visited by two companions--a woman and a girl--invisible to everyone else save her. As she grows, their intentions become increasingly unclear: Do they wish to protect or harm her? A magical novel about loneliness, love, and the profound connection between mother and daughter, Eva Moves the Furniture fuses the simplicity of a fairy tale with the complexity of adult passions.
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Fabulous Small Jews
Joseph Epstein
"Fabulous Small Jews is Epstein's first collection of stories since 1992's The Goldin Boys. In these pages are artists, writers, a commodities trader, a concert pianist, lawyers on the make, all at various crossroads and turning points in their lives. These are classic stories with universal themes.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Brooke Roothan
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First Mothers : the Women Who Shaped the Presidents
Bonnie Angelo
Bonnie Angelo, a veteran reporter and writer for Time, has captured the daily lives, thoughts, and feelings of the remarkable women who played such a large role in developing the characters of the modern American presidents. From formidably aristocratic Sara Delano Roosevelt to diehard Democrat Martha Truman, champion athlete Dorothy Bush, and hard-living Virginia Clinton Kelley, Angelo blends these women's stories with the texture of their lives and with colorful details of their times. First Mothers is an in-depth look at the special mother-son relationships that nurtured and helped propel the last twelve American presidents to the pinnacle of power.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Gatsby's Girl
Preston Caroline
Just as Jay Gatsby was haunted by Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald was haunted by his own great first love - a Chicago socialite named Ginevra. Caroline Preston evokes the entire sweep of Ginevra's life - from her first meeting with Scott to the second act of her sometimes charmed, sometimes troubled life.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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The Glass Castle : A Memoir
Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Anne Riddick
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The Great Escape: Nine Jews who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
Marton Kati
The story of nine men who grew up in Budapest and were driven from Hungary by fascism, just one step ahead of Hitler's era of terror. They came to the West, especially the United States, and their tremendous achievements changed life for us all.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Buford Bill
The former New Yorker fiction editor relates his life-altering culinary apprenticeship at Babbo with famed chef Mario Batali.
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History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization
Kirsch Jonathon
In a compulsively readable style, Kirsch shows how the Book of Revelation, which almost didn’t make it into the New Testament, has been used as a justification for culture wars from the earliest times to the present. A fascinating and controversial mix of history, current events, and religion.
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Hours, The
Michael Cunningham
In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Samuel, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Shannon Davis
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House of Sand and Fog
Andre Dubus
Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force under the Shah, now lives in exile with his wife and teenage son near San Francisco. Working on a road crew as a "garbage soldier" by day and as a deli clerk by night, Behrani is obsessed with restoring his family to the position of glittering wealth and prestige it once enjoyed. At a county auction, he sinks his savings into a bungalow seized for non-payment of taxes, and quickly moves his family into it, planning to resell the house at a sizable profit. But when the house's previous occupant, recovering coke addict Kathy Lazaro, resurfaces with valid claims for repossession, Behrani's plan begins to unravel.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Barbara Friedman
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In a Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson
Bryson relates wacky anecdotes and random facts gathered on multiple trips to Australia, all the while lightening the statistics with infusions of whimsical humor. Bryson revels in the beauty of this country, home to ravishing beaches and countless unique species. He glorifies the country, alternating between awe, reverence and fear, and he expresses these sentiments with frankness and candor, via truly funny prose and a conversational pace that is at once unhurried and captivating.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Interpreter of Maladies : Stories
Lahiri Jhumpa
The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion an wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Anne Riddick
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Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope
Ebadi/Ibadi Shirin
The Nobel laureate tells her life story, from growing up in pre-revolutionary Iran to taking on the authorities as a foremost defender of human rights.
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Kindred Souls : the Friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and David Gurewitsch
Edna P. Gurewitsch
In a letter to David Gurewitsch, Eleanor Roosevelt's personal physician and friend during the last fifteen years of her life, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote, "Above all others, you are the one to whom my heart is tied...." This defines the intense relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and David Gurewitsch-- friends who often traveled and entertained together and eventually, after his marriage to Edna Perkel, bought and shared a town house in Manhattan. Their private friendship, a companionship they both treasured, has always intrigued historians, but not much was known about it. David kept diaries and took thousands of photographs, but he never publicly discussed their time together. Now, for the first time, his wife, Edna, has decided to reveal their story and hers after she married into their complicated relationship.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Irene Nathan
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Kissing the Virgin's Mouth
Gershten Donna
Gershten pens a stunning debut novel and the first winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for a work of socially or politically engaged fiction. Magda climbs from the poor barrio of a Mexican town to American affluence, from wide-eyed childhood to worldly courtesan life, from full-blooded youth to oncoming blindness in middle age.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Annica Glenn
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Language of Threads, The
Gail Tsukiyama
In a sequel to "Women of the Silk", Pei leaves for Hong Kong in the 1930s, arriving with a young orphan, Ji Shen, in her care. Finding a new life with Mrs. Finch, a British expatriate who welcomes them as the daughters she never had, Pei finds herself once more struggling during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid : A Memoir
Bryson Bill
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century - 1951 - in the middle of the United States - Des Moines, Iowa - in the middle of the largest generation in American history - the baby boomers. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons) - in his head - as "The Thunderbolt Kid." Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality - at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Lighting the Way : Nine Women Who Changed Modern America
Schiff Karenna Gore
Lighting the Way chronicles how nine remarkable women worked behind the scenes and against the odds in the major political movements of the last century. The stories collected in Lighting the Way add color and texture to iconic moments in history, from the triumph of women's suffrage, to the decision to enter World War II, to the struggle for civil rights, to the effort to address the AIDS crisis. They also illustrate the value of honoring dissent; each of these women was ridiculed and ostracized for arguing for the changes in national policy that are taken for granted today.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
An aviator whose plane is forced down in the Sahara Desert encounters a little prince from a small planet who relates his adventures in seeking the secret of what is important in life.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Gail Inman
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March
Brooks Geraldine
As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the Civil War, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Anne Riddick
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Edwards Kim
On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over a quarter of a century - in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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Million Dollar Mermaid, The
Esther Williams
In a celebrity tell-all with fascinating insights and startling candor, the legendary swimming and movie star reveals what it was like to work with and be molded by the MGM studio during Hollywood's Golden Era.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
Shields Charles J.
To Kill a Mockingbird—the twentieth century’s most widely read American novel—has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million yearly. Yet despite her book’s perennial popularity, its creator, Harper Lee, has become a somewhat mysterious figure. Now, after years of research, Charles J. Shields brings to life the warmhearted, high-spirited, and occasionally hardheaded woman who gave us two of American literature’s most unforgettable characters—Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Denise Philpot
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Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball
O'Neill Molly
Molly O'Neill's father believed that baseball was his family's destiny. He wanted to spawn enough sons for an infield, so he married the tallest woman in Columbus, Ohio. Molly came out first, but eventually her father's plan prevailed. Five boys followed in rapid succession and the youngest, Paul O'Neill, did, in fact, grow up to be the star right fielder for the New York Yankees. In Mostly True, celebrated food critic and writer O'Neill tells the story of her quintessentially American family and the places where they come together - around the table and on the ball field.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Murder on the Orient Express : a Hercule Poirot Mystery
Agatha Christie
One of Christie's most famous mysteries was inspired by two real-life crimes and the author's own experience being stranded on the Orient Express during Christmas of 1931.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Rebecca Wolf
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My Sister's Keeper
Jodi Picoult
Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Annie Dougherty
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My Suburban Shtetl : a Novel About Life in a Twentieth-Century Jewish American Village
Robert Rand
An endearing story of growing up in an insular Midwestern suburb of Jewish Holocaust survivors trying to fit into the world around them
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri
The Namesake is the multi-generational story of the Ganguli family, who arrive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Calcutta in the 1960s. Over 40 years, we follow the arranged marriage of Western-oriented Ashoke and his traditional wife, Ashima, and the efforts of their children to live both American and Indian lives.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Anne Riddick and Takumi Iseda-Williams
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Now they call me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror
Darwish Nonie
When Nonie Darwish was a girl of eight, her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. A high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society." "Educated by Catholic nuns in Cairo, Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. Why the love of violence and hatred of Jews and Christians? Why the tolerance of glaring social injustices? Why blame America and Israel for every problem? Darwish was devastated to discover that even her own family - well educated and upper middle class - believed America had it coming on September 11." "Today Darwish thrives as an American citizen, a Christian, a conservative Republican, and an advocate for Israel. To many, she is now an infidel. But she is risking her comfort and her safety to reveal the many politically incorrect truths about Muslim culture that she knows firsthand."--
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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Pilot's Wife: a Novel, The
Anita Shreve
Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home; a fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to expect both intense exhilaration and long periods alone - but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died in a crash. As the crash investigation proceeds, could there be any truth to the increasingly disturbing rumors that he had a secret life?
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Connie Adelman
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Place in the Country, A
Laura Cunningham
For anyone who has ever wanted a country house, this account of a young woman from the Bronx improbably finding her place in the country is a breath of fresh Atlantic air. This is a lovely and lyrical account, filled with charm and wit, and of finding one's true home.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Plot Against America*
Philip Roth
Charles A. Lindbergh defeats FDR in the 1940 presidential election, and Philip, his parents and his brother weather the storm in Newark, N.J. in Roth spellbinding tale.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Barbara Friedman
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Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Jane Austen's elegant novel reveals her complex view of the human condition. The story centers around the charming and vibrant Elizabeth Bennett, one of five sisters whose family circumstance dictates that they marry well, and the misunderstandings that can result--sometimes hilariously--from hasty judgements.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Rebecca Wolf
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Prince of West End Avenue, The
Alan Isler
This witty, comic, and ultimately quite serious novel recounts an amateur production of Hamlet at the Emma Lazarus retirement home in New York City. 83-year-old holocaust survivor Otto Korner,narrates the story with a rich series of memories, gradually revealing his life in Europe before and during World War II, and in the United States after the war.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Sophie Black
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Quilter's Apprentice
Jennifer Chiaverini
The Quilter's Apprentice teaches deep lessons about family, friendship, and sisterhood -- and about creating a life as you would a quilt: with time, love, and patience, piecing the miscellaneous and mismatched scraps into a harmonious, beautiful whole.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Mary Zedler
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Raquela, a Woman of Israel
Ruth Gruber
Alive with the courage of a rare woman and a rugged nation, Raquela tells the powerful and deeply moving story of an Israeli woman who knew passionate love, great danger, and shattering loss and who witnessed the darkest -- and most triumphant -- moments in the history of the Jewish people.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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The Ride of our Lives : Roadside Lessons of an American family
Leonard Mike
Mike Leonard wanted to give his parents the ultimate family reunion. And so, one February morning, three generations of Leonards set out on their journey under the dazzling Arizona sky. In the course of their humorous, often poignant cross-country tour, from the desert Southwest to the New England coastline, the Leonards reminisce about their loves, their losses, and their rich and heartwarming (and sometimes heartbreaking) lives, while encountering a veritable Greek chorus of roadside characters along the way.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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The Road
Cormac McCarthy
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. They sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Anne Riddick
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Samuari's Garden, The
Gail Tsukiyama
Set in Japan just before WWII, Tsukiyama's novel tells of a young Chinese man's encounters with four locals while he recuperates from tuberculosis.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Nancy Buehler
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Soup has Many Eyes, The
Joann Rose Leonard
Our lives are made rich by those who came before us. Like ingredients in a long-simmering soup, they flavor who we are and what we do. In this beautiful, haunting, and larger-than-life memoir, one woman shares with us the humor, heartbreak, and triumph of her Jewish ancestry, to comfort and strengthen us all, whatever our faith.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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Stolen Lives : Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
Malika Oufkir
Malika Oufkir was the eldest daughter of General Oufkir, the King of Morocco's closest aide. Malika spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the court harem, surrounded by luxury and privilege. In 1972, her father was executed after an attempt to assassinate the king. Malika, her five brothers and sisters, and her mother were immediately imprisoned in a desert penal colony. After twenty years, the Oufkir children managed to dig a tunnel with their bare hands and make an audacious escape. Malika was finally able to leave Morocco and begin a new life in exile in 1996. Stolen Lives is an unforgettable story of one woman's journey to freedom.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Suite Française
Irène Némirovsky
By the early 1940s, when Ukrainian-born Irene Nemirovsky began working on what would become Suite Francaise - the first two parts of a planned five-part novel - 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: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France - where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis - she'd begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Takumi Iseda-Williams
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Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court
Greenburg Jan Crawford
A long-time Supreme Court correspondent, first for The Chicago Tribune and now for ABC News, looks to answer the enduring question of how Republicans have failed to attain a long-term majority on the court.
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Taking Lottie Home : a Novel
Terry Kay
From the author of "Shadow Song" and "To Dance with the White Dog" comes a poignant, beautifully evocative love story set in turn-of-the-century Georgia. When Foster Lanier and Ben Phelps are cut from their baseball team, they meet a river-shanty woman who will shape their destinies.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Tender at the Bone
Ruth Reichl
Tender at the Bone is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by unforgettable people, the love of tales well told, and a passion for food. In other words, the stuff of the best literature.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Suzanne Hales
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Three Cups of Tea : One Man's Mission to Promote Peace -- One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson
The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Talibans backyard Anyone who despairs of the individuals power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistans treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schoolsespecially for girlsthat offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortensons quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, "Three Cups of Tea" combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Denise Philpot
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Time Traveler's Wife, The
Audrey Niffenegger
Meet Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry was thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals - steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Mary Zedler
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Tribe of Tiger : Cats and Their Culture
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Intrigued by the hunting behavior of her pet cats and those in the neighborhood, particularly since they did not need to hunt in order to survive, Thomas has penned a study of the cat family that could well become a best seller like her Hidden Life of Dogs.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Gail Inman
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Volcano Lover : A Novel, The
Susan Sontag
Based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his celebrated wife, Emma, and Lord Nelson, the young British admiral who was the greatest hero of the time, this novel is about revolution, nature, emotions, the condition of women, and above all, love.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Judy Levin
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Walk to Remember, A
Nicholas Sparks
In Sparks's latest sentimental tale, a 17-year-old boy in 1950s North Carolina finds all his expectations overthrown by the Baptist minister's daughter.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Connie Adelman
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Water for Elephants : A Novel
Gruen Sara
A novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Anne Riddick
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Women of the Silk
Gail Tsukiyama
This is the story of a Chinese woman's coming-of-age in the interval between the two world wars. Against a 19-year background of acrimony among communists, followers of Chiang Kai-shek, and Japanese invaders, Pei, a mulberry-leaf farmer's daughter, is "sold" into a silk factory to help support her family. She discovers the sisterhood of workers, and along the way, learns that independence and freedom are not hollow words.
Reviewed/Facilitated by: Elise Ginsparg
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