The list below was updated as of May, 2015 via the last updated list from Monmouth County Library.org dated 12/28/14.
Berendt, John – Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil – 386 pages (paperback)
Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
(Nonfiction) – 20 copies
McDermott, Alice – Someone – 232 pages (hardcover) An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott’s extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections—of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age—come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott’s deft, lyrical voice. Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an “amadan,” a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott’s novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.
(Fiction) – 30 copies
Moriarty, Liane – The Husband’s Secret – 394 pages (hardcover) Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . . Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her. Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.
(Fiction) – 20 copies
Ng, Celeste – Everything I Never Told You – 297 pages (hardcover)
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins this debut novel about a mixed-race family living in 1970s Ohio and the tragedy that will either be their undoing or their salvation. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.
(Fiction) – 20 copies
Quindlen, Anna – Still Life With Breadcrumbs – 252 pages (hardcover) Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life. Brilliantly written, powerfully observed, Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman, her heart, her mind, her days, as she discovers that life is a story with many levels, a story that is longer and more exciting than she ever imagined.
(Fiction) – 30 copies
Shteyngart, Gary – Little Failure – 368 pages (hardcover)
A Memoir
Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own. Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him. And somebody to lend him sixty-nine cents for a McDonald's hamburger. Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, "Little Failure" reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart's prose.
(Nonfiction) – 30 copies
Simsion, Graeme – The Rosie Project – 295 pages (hardcover) Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver. Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.
(Fiction) – 30 copies
Woodrell, Daniel – The Maid’s Version – 192 pages (paperback) Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident? Alma thinks she knows the answer—and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace—and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it"—tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs.
(Fiction) – 30 copies
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh: The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go,
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.
Bill Lynn’s Long Half time Walk by Ben Fountain: A satire set in
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines: set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to
A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein: Pete Dizinoff has spent years working toward a life that would be, by all measures, deemed successful. A skilled internist, he’s built a thriving practice in suburban
The House on
Lunch With Buddha by Roland Merullo: (this is a sequel) Otto Ringling, who's just turned 50, is an editor of food books at a prestigious New York publishing house, a middle-of-the-road father with a nice home in the suburbs, and children he adores. His sister, Cecelia, is the last thing from mainstream. For two decades she's made a living reading palms and performing past-life regressions. She believes firmly in our ability to communicate with those who have passed on. When Otto faces what might be the greatest of life's emotional challenges, it is Cecelia who knows how to help him. As she did years earlier-- in this book's best-selling predecessor, Breakfast with Buddha--she arranges for her brother to travel with Volya Rinpoche, a famous spiritual teacher--who now also happens to be her husband.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien: The story of the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.
The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman: In pre-war
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Russell: A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes, has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions–and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie–enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.
The Light Between Two Oceans by M.L. Stedman: After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to
The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles: On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alverez: This is considered a young adult novel. “The Garcías belong to the uppermost echelon of Spanish Caribbean society. Their family compound adjoins the palacio of the dictator’s daughter. So when Dr. García’s part in a coup attempt is discovered, the family must flee. They arrive in
The Sense of an
Ending by Julian Barnes: “Tony Webster is a middle-aged man who
never thought much about his past until his closest childhood friends return
with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony
thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career
has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his
ex-wife and daughter. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is
forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.”
Heartburn by
Nora Ephron: “Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel Samstat discovers that
her husband, Mark, is in love with another woman. Rachel writes cookbooks for a
living. Between trying to win Mark back and loudly wishing him dead, Ephron's
irrepressible heroine offers some of her favorite recipes.
Netherland by
Joseph O’Neill: In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11,
and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den
Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he
revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and
charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life
and his adopted country.
Foreign Bodies
by Cynthia Ozick: Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose
life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her
estranged, difficult brother asks her to travel to Europe
to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of
his family.
Zookeeper’s Wife
by Diane Ackerman: “When Germany
invaded Poland , Stuka
bombers devastated Warsaw
Once We Were
Brothers by Ronald Balson: “Elliot Rosenzweig, is attending opening night at the
opera. Ben Solomon, a retired Polish immigrant, makes his way through the
crowd and shoves a gun in Rosenzweig's face, denouncing him as former SS
officer, Otto Piatek. Solomon is blind-sided, knocked to the floor and
taken away. Rosenzweig uses his enormous influence to get Solomon
released from jail, but Solomon commences a relentless pursuit to bring
Rosenzweig before the courts to answer for war crimes. Solomon finds a
young attorney, Catherine Lockhart, to whom he recounts his family's struggles
and heroisms during the war, revealing to her that he and Piatek grew up as brothers
in the same household. A contemporary legal thriller and a poignant look back into
the lives of small town Poland
The Man Who Loved
Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
“Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art
theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals
purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better,
journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust
and discovered just how dangerous it can be.” This is based on a true story.
House on Mango Street
“Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking,
sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in
Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become.”
The Gathering by
Anne Enright: “The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in
Dublin
The Painted Drum
by Louise Erdrich: “When a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise
the estate of a family in her small New
Hampshire
The Nazi Officer’s
Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn-Beer:
“Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna Munich
Confessions of a
Failed Southern Lady by Florence King: A “memoir of her upbringing in
an eccentric Southern family. Florence Florence
Unbearable
Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera: “A young woman in love with a man
torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his
mistresses and her humbly faithful lover—these are the two couples whose story
is told in this masterful novel.”
Girls in
Translation by Jean Kwok. A coming of age novel. “When Kimberly Chang
and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins
a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown
sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her
life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's
future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who
shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate
not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she
straddles.”
Razor’s Edge
by W. Somerset Maugham: “Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the
absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves - his fiancée Isabel
whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott
Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham
himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling
with their fates.”
The Paris Wife by
Paula McLain: “Chicago Paris
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Magge O’Farrell: Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from
Portnoy’s
Complaint by Philip Roth: “Roth's masterpiece takes place on the couch
of a psychoanalyst, an appropriate jumping-off place for an insanely comical
novel about the Jewish American experience.”
The God of Small
Things by Arundhati Roy: The “story focuses on two tragic events in
1969-the drowning of the twins' 9-year-old Anglo-English cousin, Sophie Mol,
and the murder of Velutha, the Untouchable carpenter beloved by the twins and
their divorced mother, Ammu. Moving back and forth through time, guiding us
through the many-splendored mansion of her tale, Roy ingeniously
reveals-chamber by chamber, heartbeat by heartbeat-the details, the "small
things" that fill her characters' lives and furnish the dwellings that
cannot protect them.”
Cleopatra: A Life by
Stacy Schiff: “Though her life spanned fewer then forty years, it reshaped the
contours of the ancient world.”
This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman: “Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school. But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an e-mail in his in-box from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, and scared—a jumble of adolescent emotion—he forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend. Within hours, it’s gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world.”
Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck: “In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon: The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways–and with unexpected consequences– Miles Cheshire can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous.
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. A startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption. (October 2012 Book Lover's selection).
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin: More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: In what could be construed as a coming-of-age story for thirtysomethings, Gilbert leaves behind an excruciating divorce, tumultuous affair, and debilitating depression as she sets off on a yearlong quest to bridge the gulf between body, mind, and spirit.
All Other Nights by Dara Horn: A gripping epic about the great moral struggles of the Civil War in which a Jewish soldier in the Union army is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln.
Nemesis by Philip Roth: A wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the center of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. (September 2012 Book Lover's selection).
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: This brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman’s life. Direct and vivid in her account of the details of Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for a party she is to give that evening, Woolf ultimately managed to reveal much more.
Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow: Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.
Intuition by Allegra Goodman: Sandy Glass, a charismatic publicity-seeking oncologist, and Marion Mendelssohn, a pure, exacting scientist, are codirectors of a lab at the Philpott Institute dedicated to cancer research and desperately in need of a grant. Both mentors and supervisors of their young postdoctoral protégés, Glass and Mendelssohn demand dedication and obedience in a competitive environment where funding is scarce and results elusive. So when the experiments of Cliff Bannaker, a young postdoc in a rut, begin to work, the entire lab becomes giddy with newfound expectations. But Cliff's rigorous colleague --- and girlfriend --- Robin Decker suspects the unthinkable: that his findings are fraudulent. As Robin makes her private doubts public and Cliff maintains his innocence, a life-changing controversy engulfs the lab and everyone in it.
Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini: Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow - From the publisher:
Having quit his longtime job, left his wife and children, and taken a room in a residential hotel, Wilhelm seems intent on unburdening himself of the attachments and responsibilities that limit his freedom. He shares with Huck Finn the belief that personal autonomy somehow leads to personal fulfillment. (Book Lover's 2012 selection).
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris - From the publisher: The characters in Then We Came to the End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work." (2011 Booklover's bookclub selection).
There Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston - From readinggroupsguide.com:
Under "a blossoming pear tree" in West Florida, sixteen-year-old Janie Mae Crawford dreams of a world that will answer all her questions and waits "for the world to be made." But her grandmother, who has raised her from birth, arranges Janie's marriage to an older local farmer. This classic 1937 novel follows Janie from her Nanny's plantation shack, to Logan Killicks's farm, to all-black Eatonville, to the Everglades, and back to Eatonville. She returns to a gossip-filled Eatonville, where she tells her story to her best friend, Pheoby Watson, and releases Pheoby to tell that story to the others. Janie has "done been to the horizon and back." She has learned what love is; she has experienced life's joys and sorrows; and she has come home to herself in peace.
Washington Square by Henry James - From online-literature.com:
Originally published in 1880, Washington Square was praised for its depiction of the complicated relationship between a father and daughter. Catherine Sloper lives in New York City's fashionable Washington Square district with her aunt and her physician father. As Catherine is courted by Morris Townsend, her father threatens disinheritance, and Townsend abandons her. Only after her father dies, many years later, does Townsend attempt to return to the Washington Square house and to Catherine.
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - From: Readinggroupsguide.com
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. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones - From Readinggroupguides.com
After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda’s island, only one white person stays behind. Mr. Watts, whom the kids call Pop Eye, wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley, and he steps in to teach the children when there is no one else. His only lessons consist of reading from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend Mr. Dickens. (2011 Book Lover's bookclub selection)
So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell - From allreaders.com:
Set in rural Illinois this novella starts with the murder of a tenant farmer Lloyd Wilson by his neighbour Clarence Smith and the subsequent suicide of Clarence. The story then unfolds through the eyes of the various protagonists telling their own stories as to how the dreadful events came about. The main character was a teenage boy at the time and the story is also about how he tries to terms with a silence that fell between him and the shattered murderer's son. A story about childhood, farming life, infidelity in a small town and the trauma of a murder. It brilliantly portrays the events of small town life and the childhood of the narrator. "
Colour of Water by James McBride - From the publisher: James McBride grew up one of twelve siblings in the all-black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white. The object of McBride's constant embarrassment, and his continuous fear for her safety, his mother was an inspiring figure, who through sheer force of will saw her dozen children through college, and many through graduate school. McBride was an adult before he discovered the truth about his mother: the daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi in rural Virginia, she had run away to Harlem, married a black man, and founded an all-black Baptist church in her living room in Red Hook. In this remarkable memoir, she tells in her own words the story of her past. Around her narrative, James McBride has written a powerful portrait of growing up, a meditation on race and identity, and a poignant, beautifully crafted hymn from a son to his mother.
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy - From the publisher: Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and over $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim's burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes that Moss and his young wife are in desperate need of protection. One party in the failed transaction hires an ex-Special Forces officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular violence and mayhem. The pursuit stretches along and across the border, each participant seemingly determined to answer what one asks another: How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life? A harrowing story of a war that society wages on itself, an enduring meditation of the ties of love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape destinies, and a novel of extraordinary resonance and power.
Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers - From the publishers: Twelve-year-old Frankie Addams is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother's wedding. Bolstered by lively conversations with the family's servant, Bernice, and her six-year-old cousin John Henry — not to mention her own unbridled imagination — Frankie takes an overly active role in the wedding, even hoping to go on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to be a member of something larger, more accepting than herself. Book Lover's 2014
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - From powells.com: A landmark of modern fiction, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse explores thesubjective reality of everyday life in the Hebrides for the Ramsay family
Master by Colm Toibin - From reviewsofbooks.com: The Master is Colm Toibin's fictional account of five years of Henry James's life when he moved from failure to a renowned fiction writer. The novel begins with the opening, and closing, of his play Guy Domville and James's escape to Ireland to hide from his humiliation. James then comes back to London, follows Oscar Wilde's trial, acquires his retreat in Rye, and falls in love with a young sculptor in Italy.
Brooklyn by Colin Toibin - From the publisher: Eilis Lacey has come of age in Enniscorthy, Ireland, in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love… But just as Eilis begins to establish her life in Brooklyn, devastating news from Ireland brings her back to Enniscorthy. Eilis is forced to choose between America and Ireland--and two men who embody these places--in the midst of the sweeping economic and social changes of the 1950s.” (2011 Book Lovers bookclub selection).
Terrorist by John Updike - From the publisher: John Updike tackles one of America's most burning issues – the threat of Islamist terror from within. Set in contemporary New Jersey, Terrorist traces the journey of one young man, from radicalism to fundamentalism to terrorism, against the backdrop of a fraying urban landscape and an increasingly fragmented community. In beautiful prose, Updike dramatizes the logic of the fundamentalist terrorist – but also suggests ways in which we can counter it, in our words and our actions...
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris - From powells.com: Completely autobiographical and, as always, hilarious, Me Talk Pretty One Day is my favorite of all the David Sedaris collections. The first half of the book focuses on his childhood in North Carolina and his very unusual family; the second half details his move to Paris with his boyfriend Hugh. While in France, Sedaris prides himself on his refusal to learn any useful French — even though he has spent six summers plus two years in the country. He finally decides to devote himself to learning ten new words per day — and the words he chooses don't cease to surprise and amuse.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer - From the publisher: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is the story of an English author living in the shadow of World War II—and embarking on a writing project that will dramatically change her life. Unfolding in a series of letters, this enchanting novel introduces readers to the indomitable Juliet Ashton. Through Juliet’s correspondence with her publisher, best friend, and an absorbing cast of characters, readers discover that despite the personal losses she suffered in the Blitz, and author tours sometimes marked by mishaps, nothing can quell her enthusiasm for the written word. One day, she begins a different sort of correspondence, responding to a man who found her name on the flyleaf of a cherished secondhand book. He tells her that his name is Dawsey Adams, a native resident of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands recently liberated from Nazi occupation. Soon Juliet is drawn into Dawsey’s remarkable circle of friends, courageous men and women who formed the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as a cover to protect them from the Germans. (2011 Book Lovers bookclub selection).
Enemies, A Love Story by Isaac Singer - From the publisher: Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives: Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha, his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of perpetually impending doom. (Book Lover's 2012 selection).
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall-Smith - From the Publisher: When Precious Ramotswe decides to use the money her beloved father left her to open the first ever Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, everyone is skeptical. "Can women be detectives?" asks the bank's lawyer. Mma Ramotswe herself feels unsure of her success. After all, her only assets are a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, an old typewriter, a teapot, and three teacups. But she does possess the intangible assets of intuition and intelligence. These she has in great supply, along with perseverance, a keen knowledge of the human mind and heart, a steadfast sense of right and wrong, and a personality that inspires trust and loquaciousness in nearly all who meet her. What she also has is a deep love for Africa generally and for Botswana and its people especially. "They are my people, my brothers and sisters.”
Tender at the Bone by Ruth REICHL - From the publisher: At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making sense of the world. . . . If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were." Her deliciously crafted memoir, Tender at the Bone, is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by a passion for food, unforgettable people, and the love of tales well told. Beginning with Reichl's mother, the notorious food-poisoner known as the Queen of Mold, Reichl introduces us to the fascinating characters who shaped her world and her tastes, from the gourmand Monsieur du Croix, who served Reichl her first soufflé, to those at her politically correct table in Berkeley who championed the organic food revolution in the 1970s. Spiced with Reichl's infectious humor and sprinkled with her favorite recipes, Tender at the Bone is a witty and compelling chronicle of a culinary sensualist's coming-of-age.
Driving Mr. Albert by Michael PATERNITI - From readinggroupguides.com: Rare-book sleuth Lucas Corso is hired to authenticate a manuscript chapter from Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, and to find the original copy of a manual for summoning the devil. These assignments lead him into dangerous waters as he becomes the target of devil worshipers, unscrupulous bibliophiles, and a cast of characters that seems to come straight out of Dumas's masterpiece, complete with a femme fatale and her sinister henchman. Aided by an enigmatic young beauty named for Sherlock Holmes's nemesis, Corso follows the violent trail of Dumas and the devil across Europe as he begins to uncover the dark and horrifying secret linking the two books. Arturo Pérez-Reverte has woven a brilliant intertextual puzzler, at once sophisticated and playful, in the tradition of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino.
Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munroe - From the publisher: Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met—the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her—she must count on herself. Some choices are made—in a will, in a decision to leave home—with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences.
