Title List

In our contemporary life, where nearly any book we want to read can be quickly found and purchased with just a click of a mouse or read on an electronic device, it’s hard to remember when people had to search for specific books. This memoir, constructed entirely of letters, takes you back to those pre-Amazon days and into the life of writer Helene Hanff. What began in 1949 as a search for a collection of Hazlitt letters that was of better quality than “Barnes and Noble’s grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies” became a transatlantic friendship between the writer and Mr. Frank Doel of Marks & Co Booksellers of 84 Charing Cross Road, London. As the friendship develops it creates an image of the physicality of books-the scent, the feel of a tight binding, the leather cover, the turning of a page-that will renew your affection for books, reading, and friendship. Call Number: BG 921 Hanff

Will Lightman is coasting through his hip North London lifestyle of smug self-interest, proudly unconcerned with his rather shallow character and living off of the royalties of a popular jingle his father wrote years ago. While keeping score of his chart-topping coolness, Will devises a brilliant plan to meet vulnerable (read: desperate) single women in an effort to sustain his juvenile ego but ultimately relieve him of any form of long-term commitment or responsibility. So when he is drawn into the depressed life of Fiona and her precociously quirky twelve year-old son, Marcus, Will’s anxiety and refusal to see himself as anything but a indolent man-child comes to a head in a way that can only be About a Boy. Call Number: BG Hornby

Author Mary Lee Settle’s memoir is an unforgettable portrait, not only of her own childhood, but also the lives and fortunes of her feisty Grandmother Addie. Born in West Virginia, Addie ends up in Kentucky, and her life encompasses some of the themes of America itself: the Civil War, the pioneers’ move West, and, above all, family, Addie is a wonderful character: a Holy Roller and believer in ghosts, but also someone who interests her granddaughter in the great literature and helps to shape a future author. Settle’s account is a reminder that the past always shapes the future, and that family is always at the beginning of our story.Call Number: BG 921 Settle

Haven’t read this book since you were a kid? Then you may remember some of the lighter episodes in the book: the whitewashed fence, skipping school to play on the Mississippi River, or Becky and Tom falling in "love". But do you remember some of the book’s darker threads? Superstition, violence, racism, and poverty hover just under the surface of this book, and merit a re-reading by all adults. The fun and nostalgia are still there, but you’ll also uncover real truths about life in the America of Twain’s childhood.Call Number: BG Twain

Young Annie learns about the horrors of World War I through the suffering and stories of wounded soldiers recovering in a veterans’ hospital near her small Kansas hometown. Annie, who has lost a much loved uncle during the recent war, learns the real story of his death, and comes to a better understanding of the world outside her comfortable life. Author Rostkowski is an elementary teacher in Ogden, and this, her first novel, won multiple awards in Utah and across the nation.Call Number: BG Rostkowski

Newland Archer is a man unable to choose between the comfortable and the unknown. Set in New York’s high society at the end of the 1800’s, The Age of Innocence details the lavish lifestyle of an American “Gilded Age” and the emergence of a powerful American aristocracy. In the center of it, the calm and cultured Newland is engaged to the perfect woman: May Welland, equally cultured and rich, a true match. Nothing can go wrong, until the fascinating Countess Ellen Olenska arrives. Socially ostracized for her divorce, gossiped about and misunderstood, Countess Olenska represents freedom from social constraints and duty to self - the things Newland wants but is too timid to claim. A biting indictment of wealth and society, Wharton’s novel is also a bittersweet love story that won her the Pulitzer Prize. Call Number: BG Wharton

Anne Bronte is probably most famous for being the sister of Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre) and Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights). Instead of writing wild romantic tales (like her sisters), Anne Bronte created strong women who overcame opposition with commonsense and hard work. Her characters earned the right to be loved and, in turn, to love. Agnes Grey is based on Bronte’s personal experience as a governess, and is an ironic critique of nineteenth century English middle-class society. Call Number: BG Bronte

This classic work of political fiction won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Intrigue, corruption, propaganda, and the nature of power are explored in the rise of the book’s flamboyant main character Willie Stark (the fictional equivalent of the highly controversial ex-governor of Louisiana Huey Long). The novel has twice been adapted for the silver screen (including the 2006 version starring Sean Penn) and inspired the author of the book Primary Colors. In addition, Robert Penn Warren is one the most decorated authors of the last century. His career culminated in 1986 when he was named the country’s first poet laureate. Call Number: BG Warren

When Woodward and Bernstein first broke the Watergate story in the The Washington Post, they made history and altered the future of America. This story behind breaking this shattering series of articles is recorded in fascinating detail by the authors, and first introduced the nation to the infamous and shadowy “Deep Throat”. A thriller, a mystery story, and an important look at politics in America. Call Number: BG 364.132 B458

Michael and Pauline fall in love at first sight and subsequently marry in the patriotic fervor following Pearl Harbor. The two quickly discover their polar-opposite personalities, and frequent fighting strains their relationship and home. After decades of marriage, both must re-examine their lives, and how this marriage of opposites has quietly effected family and friends alike. Call Number: BG Tyler

The novel opens when wheelchair bound historian Lyman Ward decides to chronicle the lives of his extraordinary grandparents and their struggles to settle the western frontier. From boom towns in Colorado to near starvation on the banks of an Idaho river, and finally quiet and near-peace in California, Lyman travels with his grandparents to discover he is connected to his family in more ways that he ever imagined. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972, and was written when Stegner himself was presented with a brief biographical history and series of letters that would inspire the creation of one of American fiction’s most memorable couples: Susan and Oliver Ward. Call Number: BG Stegner

Anil Tissera returns to her native Sri Lanka after many years. She is now a forensic anthropologist, part of an UN human rights commission sent to investigate the horrors of an ongoing civil war. Assigned to work with complex and withdrawn archeologist Sarath Diyasena, a man who loves the past more than he lives in the present, Anil is drawn deeper into the complex and devastating effects of war. Ignoring personal safety, Anil begins investigating a mysterious skeleton uncovered on a government sanctuary, and sets in motion consequences she cannot predict. Another poetic masterpiece from Michael Ondaatje, himself a native Sri Lankan, and celebrated author of The English Patient. Call Number: BG Ondaatje

An international classic, and perhaps the most honored Russian novel ever written. Anna Karenina is a nineteenth-century Russia socialite who must choose between her boring bureaucratic husband and the dashing Count Vronsky, and between becoming a social outcast or losing the love of her life. A romance that continues to enthrall readers around the world. Call Number: BG Tolstoy

Ian McEwan’s haunting novel details the devastating impact of one child’s mistake on a summer day in 1935. After observing her older sister Cecilia and the housekeeper’s son Robbie in a compromising situation she doesn’t understand, young Briony makes an accusation that will change lives. The book follows Robbie years later as he fights and suffers in World War II. Briony is now a nurse in war-torn London, more conscious of the effects her childish accusation has unleashed, and wanting to make amends to both Robbie and Cecilia. Part crime story, part romance, part history, this heartbreaking novel deserves its designation as a modern classic. Call Number: BG McEwan

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banned in America for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early example of the modern novel. Originally entitled “A Solitary Soul,” the novel serves as a portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier as she searches for love outside a stifling marriage, and finds herself, in turn, awakening to the beauty in nature and herself . Author Willa Cather described its style as “exquisite,” “sensitive,” and “iridescent.” Call Number: BG Chopin

Taylor Greer leaves Kentucky to begin a new life in the West, never imagining the strange shape her journey will take. Given a 3-year-old girl by a Cherokee woman in Oklahoma, Greer decides to keep the toddler, but a pair of flat tires in Tucson forces the two to settle down and try to make a real home. The novel is a tale of freedom, friendship, love, and resourcefulness, with a light dose of wit and humor. Thousands have enjoyed Kingsolver’s charming and insightful characters. Call Number: BG Kingsolver

This biography of mathematician John Nash details both his genius (Nash would win the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his outstanding work) and his complex personal life, including a nearly lifelong struggle with schizophrenia. Nasar also reveals a fascinating, insider’s portrait of Princeton, MIT, and the Nobel selection committee. This book made a splash when it was made into an Oscar-winning film, and deserves to be read in its own right. Call Number: BG 921 Nash

How do individuals manage to have spiritual interactions with deity? That question, and perhaps some answers, is at the core of Myla Goldberg’s novel. When she wins her school spelling bee, Eliza Naumann discovers her previously-unknown talent with letters, which changes her life completely. No longer the mediocre daughter in her family, she takes her brother Aaron’s place in her father’s attentions. Saul Naumann, a cantor, has devoted his life to Jewish mysticism; he uses this knowledge as he coaches Eliza, preparing her for both upcoming spelling bees and her own route through mysticism. Eliza’s mother, Miriam, has a secret life that is, in its peculiar way, an attempt to connect with the divine. Aaron, too, keeps his actions secret. In their own painful ways, each character is looking for what Aaron describes as “the sense of absolute assurance that filled him with the idea that God was right there.” Somewhere within the search, between spelling bees and obsessive behavior, the Naumann family begins falling apart, and the ways they both do and don’t put themselves back together will leave this novel embedded in your memory. Call Number: BG Goldberg

This autobiographical account of Wright’s youth in Mississippi and Tennessee has rightfully earned a place among the classic works of American literature. Abandoned by his father and burdened by a seriously ill mother, Wright struggles with racism, poverty, and segregation, while working and learning the craft of writing. During the Great Depression he aligns himself with the Communist party until he becomes disillusioned with party weaknesses. Black Boy is a look into the mind of an intriguing and determined man who became an icon in American fiction. Call Number: BG Wright

Set in 1940s New Mexico, this is Rudolfo Anaya’s award-winning Latino coming of age novel. The work’s main character, young Antonio, is torn between the lifestyles of his father’s cowboy family and his mother’s farming relations. One side wants him on a horse; the other would have him become a priest. However, Antonio’s life changes forever when Ultima, Antonio’s aunt, comes to live with the family. Ultima, a mystical healer, teaches Antonio how to gather the knowledge that will help him become a man. Call Number: BG Anaya

A young couple leaves a baby on Lydia Blessing's estate. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds the baby and decides to keep her. Secrets take center stage as the story progresses. As a result, fundamental questions like what makes a person or a life and who really makes decisions are addressed. The novel is a touching look at redemption and life’s central questions. Call Number: BG Quindlen

In this powerful story of courage, hardships, survival, and healing, a Chinese-born mother and her America-born daughter explore their past. Although tragedy has marred their lives, Tan explores three generations of women who, despite vastly different circumstances, are tied by the common bonds of heritage. Call Number: BG Tan

The Book Thief rotates around an unlikely pair: the narrator - death - and the young Liesel Meminger, whose father has disappeared for being a communist and whose mother soon vanishes. On the way to a foster home in Musling, Germany, her younger brother dies, and at the small grave side service, she steals a book from one of the grave diggers about how to dig graves. Books become intertwined with dying, with the powerful destructive forces of Nazi Germany all around her. Because she can't yet read, Liesel's new foster father teaches her how - using the gravedigger's manual as a reading primer. Once she can read, she becomes a book thief, stealing tomes from piles set aside for burning and from the mayor's wife. Death, unable to resist Liesel, comments and explains, adding a layer of sardonic wit to this story that will linger, haunting, in your memory. Call Number: BG Zusak

A random encounter with a book called Using Energy changed the world for William Kamkwamba. Living in Malawi, an African country hit hard in the early 2000’s by drought and famine, he was hungry. The drought ruined his family’s farm, and soon his family could no longer afford to pay for his tuition. Just a teenager, Kamkwamba turned to his small local library for education; when he learned about windmills he decided to build one. Scrapped together with pieces of bicycles, tractor parts, and scrap metal, the windmill brought to his family what only 2% of Malawians have: electricity and running water. His story spread beyond his small country, helping him become a source of inspiration about how ingenuity and determination create change. Call Number: BG 921 Kamkwamba

Wilder, the playwright of the American classic Our Town and the only person to win the Pulitzer Prize in both fiction and drama, uses the event of bridge collapse in 18th century Peru to examine the human condition through the eyes of an investigating monk. Call Number: BG Wilder

From the opening sentence, “For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other's existence.”, Potok’s magnificent story of two friends is unforgettable. When two Brooklyn boys meet through a softball game, they become fast friends, despite very different background. While Reuven comes from a Jewish family with modern, American leanings, Danny is heir-apparent to his father, a conservative Hassidic Rabbi. An exploration of fathers and sons, faith, Judaism, and a friendship that defies the odds. Call Number: BG Potok

The second most famous Christmas story ever told. Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly businessman, learns the true meaning of Christmas after he is visited by the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future. Bah humbug! Call Number: BG Dickens

Filled with memories from his childhood in Alabama, this memoir from Truman Capote pays tribute to his distant cousin Miss Sook Faulk. Capote spent his childhood with distant relatives, but it was the old-maid cousin with whom he formed a special bond; making fruitcake, cutting their own christmas tree, and celebrating a tipsy yuletide (from the leftover moonshine-soaked fruitcake). A Christmas Memory is full of the tenderness and innocence of childhood. In addition to Capote’s rightful literary fame, some readers may recognize Capote, a childhood friend of Harper Lee, as the basis for Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. Call Number: BG Capote

Critically acclaimed short story writer Peter Taylor writes of Southern men and women in the 1930s and 40s struggling to gain equilibrium in changing times. Filled with engaging voices and eccentric characters, Taylor’s stories were heralded by The New York Times as “rivaling Chekhov.” Call Number: BG Taylor

James McBride wrote this best selling work as a tribute to his mother, a Jewish woman who left her middleclass childhood home in Virginia to live a life of largely inner-city poverty. In the next fifty years Ruth McBride Jordan experienced two happy marriages to devoted Black men and raises twelve children. James celebrates this extraordinary woman’s love and determination while exploring his own identity, racially and culturally. Call Number: BG 921 McBride

A historical romance complicated not only by the Second World War but by lovers on opposing sides, Corelli’s Mandolin tells the story of Dr. Iannis and his daughter Pelagia who live on the idyllic Greek island of Cephalonia. When Pelagia’s fiancée Mandras, a gentle fisherman, joins the Greek partisans, it isn’t long before she begins a passionate love affair with invader Captain Antonio Corelli, the cultured mandolin-playing commander of the Italian garrison. Call Number: BG De Bernieres

When Larry and Sally Morgan, poor Westerners, move to Wisconsin to begin work at Wisconsin University during the Depression, it is the generosity of wealthy Easterner Sid, an established faculty member, and Charity, his headstrong domineering wife, which keeps them afloat. As time passes each character’s ambitions are tempered by personal choice and the unexpected trials of life. Decades later Charity reunites everyone after tragedy strikes one of the couples. The work is a touching tribute to friendship, family, and love. Call Number: BG Stegner

A murderer for a son and a prostitute for a sister – that is how Stephen Kumalo, a poor country pastor, finds his son Absalom and his sister Gertrude when he arrives in the troubled Johannesburg of the 1940s. A timeless story told in poetic prose in which dignity, love, and compassion triumph over crime, poverty, and racial injustice set in the heart of South Africa. Call Number: BG Paton

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding suddenly awakens to the world around him in the summer of 1928 in Green Town, Illinois. His new adolescent awareness takes him on a journey of first discoveries full of magic and exuberance. A joyful read, Ray Bradbury’s first novel is about childlike innocence and living in the present. Call Number: BG Bradbury

The demand for World War II munitions forces a backwoods Kentucky family to move to inner-city Detroit. As the pressures of the city mount, the family is held together by their amazing mother Gertie Nevells. Gertie’s dream is to purchase a farm and gather her family about her. However, it takes everything this powerful and compassionate matriarch (with a passion for wood sculpting and carrying on conversations with her daughter’s imaginary playmates) has to keep the family together and live by the rural values that have guided them for generations. Call Number: BG Arnow

Fuller describes her childhood, armed with an Uzi, in Zimbabwe during the Rhodesian Civil War of the 1970s. The daughter of white settlers, Fuller’s understated observations of a harsh African existence (the family lost three children at childbirth and endured constant illness, even hunger) combines with her descriptions of an ongoing revolt for self-rule by Africans. The ensuing violent conflict is described from a child’s unique perspective. The experience of the Fuller family (including their own racism and quirks) is told without sentimentality, and this book explores the violent beauty of Africa, the strength of family life, the human capacity for brutality, and the unique nature of individual experience. Call Number: BG 968.91 F9581

Primo Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist who survived Auschwitz. Shortly before his death in 1987, Levi wrote this, his third book on the Holocaust. Its pages examine the cultural situation that created the Jewish genocide, and springs from Levi’s belief that understanding would prevent a recurrence of these brutal times. The book’s conclusion, in which Levi published letters he received from Germans who participated in the Holocaust, has particularly captivated many readers. Call Number: BG 940.5318 L578

James Joyce's collection of fifteen short stories explores 1900 Dublin, Ireland. The stories look at the lives of everyday Irish people - shop girls and students, office clerks and housemaids, businessmen and swindlers—and their everyday concerns. But within the seemingly - mundane events, Joyce brings us intelligence from the personal and often tragic lives of his characters. He intended the collection to act as a sort of lens for the people of Dublin, a way for them to examine their own lives and beliefs, but they also speak profoundly to the people of our contemporary world. Call Number: BG Joyce

Ella lives on the tiny island called Nollop, off the coast of South Carolina, a “nation of letter writers” named after Nevin Nollop, who wrote the sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet. (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.) All is peaceful and happy on Nollop, until letters begin falling off the statue of Nevin Nollop. The island’s leaders decide that the missing Z is a sign: that letter is no longer a part of the alphabet. Public floggings, banishment from the island, and even death are the consequences of using a Z in written or oral communication. As more letters fall from the statue and are banned, the people come up with more and more ingenious use of language-while their entire society begins to fall apart. Quirky and intelligent, the novel makes great use of wordplay as it works towards Ella’s attempt to save every letter. Even Z. Call number: BG Dunn

Miles Roby: single father, cook, and all-around “nice guy” is miserable but doesn’t know it. This unlikely hero of Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel realizes that his hometown of Empire Falls, Maine will never recover the glory days when the powerful Whiting Family ran a textile factory that employed the entire town. But he also can’t seem to leave. These days, Miles continues to run the Empire Grill, a restaurant that just manages to hold the community together. But even this outdated diner is controlled by the powerful vestiges of the town’s past: the widowed Francine Whiting, an elderly matriarch who still owns half the town, along with the Grill itself. This novel, sometimes haunting, sometimes funny, is the story of a man’s unplanned and unexpected quest to understand his family, the town he loves despite himself, and how he managed to end up doing the only thing he never wanted to do: stay in Empire Falls for the rest of his life. Call Number: BG Russo

J.G. Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel is the story of Jamie, a young boy caught in the politics of nations and the passions of war. When World War II breaks out, Jamie, a privileged and wealthy British boy living in Shanghai, is forced into one of the many concentration camps ran by the Japanese invaders to contain European and American citizens. Separated from his parents, Jamie must learn to survive and grow up in an alien world of hunger and bloody death. Befriended by the a-moral and opportunistic former ship’s steward, Jaime wills himself to survive and becomes a new kind of boy: the tough and agile Jim. This is not the typical observation of a world at war, although battles, death, and cruelty are all present. Jim remains a child: in love with airplanes even when they drop bombs, fascinated by the adults around him, willing to do mischief whenever he can. The work is one of the most unique, and disturbing, accounts of World War II. Call Number: BG Ballard

Thirteen-year-olds Evie Verver and Lizzie Hood have been best friends forever. To Lizzie, whose parents are divorced, the Verver family—a charming, involved father, a glamorous older sister, and a mother who stays on the fringes of things and doesn’t push—is alluring. Seemingly perfect, even, and her friendship with Evie is that intense sort that young teenage girls have, the kind where they seem to know everything about each other. When Evie disappears, Lizzie, who saw her last, tries to figure out what happened using that knowledge she has. A novel of secrets, families, mothers, friendships and their inevitable breaking points, The End of Everything casts a mysterious, sensual spell.
Call Number: BG Abbott

Set in the fictional British county of Wessex, famously invented by Thomas Hardy as the setting for his most important novels, Far From the Madding Crowd was Hardy’s first recognized masterpiece. It tells the story of the beautiful and passionate Bathsheba Everdene, who seems destined for happiness when she inherits her uncle’s wealthy farm. Thus equipped, Bathsheba prepares to settle down to a life of relative ease, together with her trusted shepherd Gabriel Oaks. However, Bathsheba, always unconventional, sends a teasing valentine to a wealthy neighbor saying only “Marry Me.” Shocked, he promptly falls in love and proposes. The same night, however, Bathsheba meets a dashing but unscrupulous soldier named Sergeant York, and falls in love herself. The inevitable tragedy that results from this triangle is one of the most famous in literature, and established Thomas Hardy’s reputation as one of the great chroniclers of 19th century England. Call Number: BG Hardy

These short mysteries place the chubby and unprepossessing priest Father Brown in the role of detective. His knowledge, gleaned in part from years of experience taking confessions, of how human evil works, provides the basis for his skill at solving crimes. These stories are quite unrealistic, but Chesterton is serious about ideas, and those he formulates here are always clever and often thought-provoking. Call Number: BG Chesterton

After immigrating to Canada from India at the age of 23, Rohinton Mistry spent more than a decade as a bank clerk before writing and publishing the short story ‘One Sunday’ which proceeded to win first prize in the prestigious Canadian Hart House Literary Contest. A Fine Balance, Mistry’s second novel, is set in the India of 1975, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, defying a court order calling for her resignation, declares a state of emergency and imprisons the parliamentary opposition. These events serve as backdrop for an intricate tale of four ordinary people struggling to survive. Naive college student Maneck Kohlah, whose parents' general store is failing, rents a room in the house of Dina Dalal, a 40-ish widowed seamstress. Dina acquires two additional boarders: hapless but enterprising itinerant tailor Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash, whose father, a village untouchable, was murdered as punishment for crossing caste boundaries. These four unlikely people begin a family of sorts, and together suffer both the corruption and promise of modern India. A bittersweet novel of politics and people. Find out why Rohinton Mistry has been short-listed for the Booker Prize an astonishing three times. Call Number: BG Mistry

Charlie Gordon has always been described as slow but with a passion for learning. When a new procedure hopes to triple his IQ, Charlie agrees to have the experimental process performed on him. The surgery and its effects change this simple, quiet man in lasting ways. The delicate prose of this touching novel moves toward a fantastic tear-jerker ending. Call Number: BG Keyes

Beau Boutan is dead, lying in the yard of the only black man in Bayonne strong enough to stand up to the racist bully. When Sherriff Mapes arrives, he finds all the old men of the quarter with 12-gauge shotguns and empty shells ready to confess. As he questions the men, they recall a litany of injustices committed by Boutan and others against themselves and their families. As each character takes a turn at narration, they relay both the anguish of racial inequity and hope for changing times. Call Number: BG Gaines

Reverend John Ames knows he is dying, and Gilead is written as a letter to his six year old son, a boy Ames realizes will never otherwise have any real record of his father. Writing in 1956 from his lifelong home of Gilead, Iowa, Ames’ story includes two world wars, the Great Depression, the death of his first wife and child, and his attempts to create a meaningful life through his writing (mostly of sermons). Ames also goes back in time to tell the story of the lifelong rivalry and misunderstandings between his own father and grandfather, an inter-generational conflict that continues to have repercussions in the present day. This is a magical novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and an unforgettable examination of fatherhood and faith. Call Number: BG Robinson

Charles Chipping is a terrible teacher – uninspiring and unloved by his students at the (somewhat) prestigious Brookfield school for boys in England. But everything changes when he meets and marries the lovely and intelligent Katherine on a summer vacation. With some of shyness finally overcome, Chips discovers a way to begin connecting with the young men in his classes, helping them to uncover the beauty of language and history. This novel is not only a sweet and sometimes tragic life story, it is also a record of the sweeping changes in England from the Victorian Era (Mr. Chips begins teaching in 1870) through the beginning of World War II. A great record of a great teacher. Call Number: BG Hilton

In what critics and readers have deemed a universal story, Nobel Laureate Pearl Buck creates the tale of Wang Lung, a poor peasant in rural China in the early 20th century. Describing the joys and sorrows, trials and triumphs of Wang Lung’s family, Buck powerfully examines the human condition and masterfully reveals the common denominators that link the members of the human race. Call Number: BG Buck

 Local author Shannon Hale reinvents the goose girl fairy tale in this award-winning novel. Princess Anidori is born with a word on her tongue, which means as she grows she learns, under her aunt’s encouragement, how to speak to animals. This strangeness does not sit well with the queen, so when the king dies, Princess Ani’s mother forges a marriage between her and the prince of Bayern, a neighboring country. But Ani’s betrayal by trusted people is just beginning; on her way to Bayern her friend Selia plots to kill Ani and take her place. Ani escapes, makes it to Bayern, and works as a goose girl while trying to take her future back. A story about a character working out her own fate instead of waiting to be rescued, Hale’s book is a magical tale.  Call number:  BG Hale

The American reading public was shocked many of Melville’s complex psychological and political writing. As a result, many of his great works disappeared into magazine archives. When early Twentieth century critics recognized the long-dead Melville’s brilliance, readers scoured for Melville’s work. This work combines nineteen of these respected works. Two of them,“Billy Budd, Sailor” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” are contained in almost any anthology of American literature as two of the nation’s most revered short stories. Call Number: BG Melville

Crane’s death at 28 took one America’s most promising authors at an early age. However, tuberculosis did not take its final toll until after the author left a substantial literary contribution. A daring journalist and eloquent poet, Crane often transformed the life and death situations he witnessed into moving works of literature. This collection includes the classics “The Red Badge of Courage” and “The Blue Hotel.” Call Number: BG Crane

On the tiny Channel island of Guernsey, an impromptu literary society is formed when four friends, walking home from a dinner party, are stopped by German officers. On the spot they claim they're walking home from a literary society meeting; their quick thought helps them avoid prison and leads to the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. This society becomes a place where the group members can "almost forget, now and then, the darkness" of living in occupied England during World War II. A decade later, English writer Juliet Ashton stumbles across the stories from the society and strikes up a conversation via letters with its members. This epistolary novel tells the story of an occupation by the Germans that was first intended to be "model," but worsened until a concentration camp was built there. Not just a war novel, it examines the way books can connect, redeem, and sometimes even save us.  Call number: BG Shaffer

Booker Prize winning author Margaret Atwood tells the story of Offred, a handmaid in a post-nuclear war United States (now called the Republic of Gilead) where women are stripped of many of their rights in order to protect the sacred nature of womanhood. A chilling dystopian tale, and a modern classic. Call Number: BG Atwood

Twelve-year-old Annie loves to run. At home, her parents are having a new baby and her grandfather, once a champion runner himself, is falling into dementia. Although her best friend Max, struggling with the inevitable moods of adolescence, runs to escape the problems in his life, Annie runs for the pure pleasure. Sharon Creech’s narrative poetry uses the rhythm of Annie’s stride to illustrate her journey as she adapts to changes in her everyday life. Heartbeat is an easy, delightful read. Call Number: BG Creech

Written in three distinct voices, The Help tells the story of the reality of the racial divide in the 1960's South. Aibileen, a black maid who is raising her seventeenth white child, finds it harder as she grows older to hold back her bitterness toward her white employeers. Minny is Aibileen's best friend, also a maid, but never afraid to speak her mind, which means she's out of work yet again. There's also Skeeter, a white socialite; recently graduated from Ole Miss, she's expected to find a husband, but  has other ambitions: she wants to write a book about the experiences black maids have raising white children and taking care of white people's homes. The maids in the community initially resist Skeeter's idea, but when a tragedy befalls one of their friends, thirteen of them take the risk of telling of the hardship of their positions. With its trio of funny, touching, and lyrical voices, the novel seeks to illustrate the personal sacrifices that must be made for social changes to occur.  Call number: BG Stockett

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of six Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and published their accounts in 1946. The book offered the world a chilling and touching perspective on the effects of nuclear weapons. The work’s timelessness has earned it the status of classic and it continues to be read over half a decade after its publication. This 1985 edition includes Hersey’s tender account of his return trip to Hiroshima to find out what happened to each of his interviewees. Call Number: BG 940.5449 H439

In the process of writing this novel, Krauss wanted to write “a book that people would take personally.” By touching on themes we all relate to personally-the fear of dying without being seen or remembered, the way grief changes a person into someone else, the persistence of love-she accomplishes just that. The eponymous The History of Love is a novel written by Leo Gursky during the beginning of World War II; he loses it, along with Alma, the woman he loved. Unbeknownst to him, the novel is published and, decades later, translated from the Spanish by thirteen-year-old Alma’s mother, who is caught up in the grief of losing her husband to cancer. Alma searches for the origin of her name while Leo searches for a way to be seen before his death; as the novel progresses the threads of all the stories work their way together into a satisfying ending, detailing along the way the power of creativity to act as a healing force. Call Number: BG Krauss

  The story of The Hobbit began as a tale Tolkein told his children and evolved into a book, published in 1937. Inside its pages you’ll discover the timid hobbit Bilbo Baggins, who is ordered by the wizard Gandalf to act as a smuggler on an expedition to retrieve the dwarves’ treasure, stolen by the dragon Smaug. But Bilbo’s adventure grows bigger than just a trip to a dragon. He encounters trolls, goblins, giant spiders, evil wolves called Wargs, and the strange creature Gollum, who lives alone in a cave with his Precious. Bilbo accidentally discovers Gollum’s golden ring, a fortuitous find that helps him and his companions out of several tight spots. In the end, Bilbo’s adventures going there and back again create a changed hobbit, full of confidence and self-assurance.  Call Number: BG Tolkien

Matteo Alacran is not your everyday boy. Cloned from the DNA of a powerful leader, hatched in a petri dish and grown in the womb of a cow, he's now growing up next to a poppy field in the small cottage of Celia, the only person he's ever known. All that changes the day he makes friends with some other children, and his remarkable coming-of-age experience begins. Surrounded by danger-most people in his community despise clones-Matt comes to love El Patron, the man who he was cloned from, even as he discovers an entirely sinister plot behind his existence. This fast-paced, adventure-filled novel will keep you reading and give you plenty of material for discussion. Winner of the National Book Award in 2002, and recognized as both a Newbery and Printz honor book, Farmer's work deserves to be recognized. Call Number: BG Farmer

Marilynne Robinson's modern classic novel tells the story of two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, who have been raised partly by their grandmother, marginally by two great-aunts, and then, haphazardly and somewhat completely, by their strange and scattered aunt Sylvie. Sylvie, who "talks a great deal about housekeeping," is nearly vagrant in her care of the sisters, a situation that grows increasingly difficult for Lucille. When family court finally intervenes, Ruth and Sylvie form a family unit of their own, vanishing into the world without Lucille. This gorgeously written novel focuses on relationships between women and the process of finding individual happiness.  Call number:  BG Robinson

Meet Cassandra Mortmain: 17, living in a falling-down castle with her impoverished family in 1930s England, trying to learn how to write by keeping a journal. Meet her, because you’ll fall in love with this delightful, quick-witted, eccentric character. Dodie Smith’s classic novel tells Cassandra’s coming-of-age story. Initially disdainful of love, but still full of romantic ideas, she experiences an Austen-esque series of adventures with the wealthy American family who moves into the estate near the castle. Cassandra’s charisma pulls you through the novel as she discovers the type of woman she really wants to be. Call Number: BG Smith

I Heard the Owl Call My Name is the simple yet powerful story of a young vicar sent to live with the Kwakiutl tribe in the Pacific Northwest. Unaware of his own impending death, he finds that the tribe’s ways are being eroded by an encroaching American culture. Craven’s classic story is filled with the lush landscape of the Pacific Coast and the heartbreaking alienation felt by Native Americans caught between cultures. Call Number: BG Craven

HeLa cells are a necessity in medical and biotech research. These "immortal" cells—given food and warmth, they continue to grow forever—influenced the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping, in vitro fertilization, and numerous other scientific advancements. The cells originated in the body of Henrietta Lacks, a thirty-year-old woman suffering from cervical cancer that rapidly killed her. Taken without her knowledge or consent, her cells revolutionized modern medicine, yet for two decades her family did not know about them. Skloot's book examines the medical repercussions of HeLa cells, but it looks more closely at the personal effects. Lacks's family, who can't afford health insurance, struggles to pay for medical procedures that exist because of their mother's cells and have never been compensated for the cells. Medical ethics and legalities are examined, but in the end Skloot's book, winner of several major literary awards, gives a face to what was previously a pile of cells growing in a test tube.  Call number:  BG 616.0277 Sk45

Did you know that Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was actually based on a true story? Philbrick takes you on an exciting tale of seafaring, awhale attack, survival, starvation and the eventual cannibalism of the crew. This National Book Award winner is a must read. Call Number: BG 910.9164 P534

Lahiri’s debut, a lyrical representation of life in India and among immigrants in America and Britain, earned her some of the most prestigious awards in fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Hemingway awards. Each story considers the interplay between culture and nationality, and how people can or can’t come together. A man fears for his family in the Pakistani Civil War, and must rely on the kindness of friends; one couple mourns for a stillborn baby while another contemplates items left behind in an old house: each story has a special beauty and resonance. Lahiri demonstrates her outstanding ability to paint human experience. Call Number: BG Lahiri

Ralph Ellison took the literary world by storm in 1952 when he published this National Book Award winning-novel. The first Black author to win the award, Ellison’s work follows the intellectual journey of a young Black man through the South and 1940’s Harlem. The novel’s provocative, brilliant prose is underscored by a subtle sense of humor. Perfect for any group that wants to explore social and psychological conditions. Call Number: BG Ellison

The novel is a Victorian classic. Having been raised as an unloved orphan in her aunt’s home, Jane Eyre finds her place as governess in Thornfield Hall. Before long Jane’s life is intertwined with the mysterious characters that make up her new home, from the dark Mr. Rochester to his odd servant Grace Pool. Eventually love and drama intertwine as Jane must attempt to understand both strange happenings in the house and the desire in her own heart. Call Number: BG Bronte

Famed historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author McCullough (author of 1776) explores the life of one of America’s founding fathers in this highly readable biography. McCullough details Adams’ early life and famed marriage to Abigail Smith, his role in shaping the new republic, his complex relationship and sometimes rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, his presidency, and his unerring sense of rightness and justice. A brilliant re-telling of an extraordinary American life. Call Number: BG 921 Adams

Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel takes the reader into the minds and hearts of the leaders of the Blue and Gray. Based on the diaries and letters of the men themselves, Shaara brings the complex characters of Lee, Longstreet, and Chamberlain alive for the battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest three days in American history. This easily accessible novel is recommended for anyone interested in the nation’s heritage. Call Number: BG Shaara

Scrutinizing themes of power, greed, loyalty and human relationships, Shakespeare’s masterful tragedy, King Lear, is as timely today as the day it was first performed. Set in pagan England, Shakespeare retells the tale of a legendary all-powerful king from England’s mysterious ancient history and chronicles the path of his tragic downfall. Call Number: BG 822.33 T3

Anemone for abandonment, caledula for enduring the heavy cares of the world, a dahlia for instability and a geranium for melancholy: At 18, Victoria Jones has gathered a bouquet of sorrows. She’s just aged out of the foster care system and, with a string of difficult placements behind her and no one to take care of her, she begins living in a park. Using the knowledge of the Victorian language of flowers—taught to her by the one foster parent with whom she might have had a future, if things had not taken a dark turn—she plants a small garden. When a local florist notices the unique message of Victoria’s flowers, she gives her a job, starting a process that will bring Victoria both the possibility of a strong future and the necessity of facing the impact of old secrets. Call Number: BG Diffenbaugh

Oliver La Farge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a thought provoking Western adventure, insightfully examining both the culture of the Navajo and the American Southwest at the turn of the 20th century. Through the turbulent relationship of two young Navajos, the traditional silversmith Laughing Boy and the American educated Slim Girl, La Farge examines loss of innocence, cultural collision, and the changing American Southwest. Call Number: BG La Farge

A terrific book by one of the finest humorists of our day; it is at turns hilarious and poignant. The work is a collection of the author’s Prairie Home Companion radio shorts. Lighthearted and full of warmth, Keillor celebrates the common events that fill our lives. Although the pieces are set in fictional Lake Woebegone, Minnesota, the stories remind us of our shared human experience. Call Number: BG Keillor

A brilliant and beautiful novel destined to become an American classic, A Lesson Before Dying explores faith, dignity and redemption. Grant Wiggins has returned to the Louisiana plantation of his youth to teach the local schoolchildren. Jefferson is a young man from the quarter, sentenced to die for a crime he did not commit. At his grandmother’s request, Grant grudgingly accepts the task of teaching Jefferson to face death as a man. In the process, Grant struggles with his own humanity and Jefferson wrestles with his ability to see beyond himself. The novel is a heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful, look at the emotional consequences of prejudice. Call Number: BG Gaines

After deciding that city life as a laundress wasn't for her, Elinore Pruitt, a young widowed mother, accepted an offer to assist with a ranch in Wyoming, work that she found exceedingly more rewarding. In this delightful collection of letters, she describes these experiences to her former employer, Mrs. Coney. Call Number: BG 978.709 ST943

Gore Vidal's Lincoln, though not without controversy over its historical inaccuracies, provides a fascinating portrayal of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. The novel is told almost exclusively through everyone but Lincoln’s point of view: his secretary John Hay, his political enemies Secretary of State Seward and Secretary of the Treasury Chase, a member of the group that will attempt his assassination, and his increasingly insane wife Mary Todd Lincoln. The president that emerges in Vidal’s chronicle is both mythic and achingly human. Anyone interested in the Civil War will delight in this unique retelling of the time, told from the White House instead of the battlefield. Vidal, generally acknowledged as the greatest living master of American historical fiction, tells the story of the creation of the modern United States of America. Call Number: BG Vidal

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein were professors at Oxford University, and both were members of Inklings, a literary group who met on Thursday evenings to discuss their work. While Tolkein’s Christian references are subtly woven within his story, Lewis’s are more obvious in his beloved Chronicles of Narnia. The story is also influenced by Celtic, Norse, and Greek mythology. When the Pevensies, four children from England, stumble upon a connection between our world and Narnia, they discover magic, talking animals, friendly satyrs, and a battle between good and evil.  Call number:  BG Lewis

A classic and much-loved book about the four March sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy), Little Women is Alcott’s semi-autobiographical novel. When their father leaves to serve in the Civil War, each sister must discover her own inner strengths and talents in order to make her way in the world. As the pranks, mishaps, tragedies, successes and small dramas in the girls' lives unfold, the novel explores themes such as transcendental and feminist ideals, the struggle between caring for others and developing individual happiness, the need to be focused on the inner spiritual self, and the resistance of societal expectations.  Call number:  BG Alcott

After winning the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for her non-fiction work (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), Dillard turned her hand to fiction. The result is an intricate description of frontier life in late 19th century Puget Sound settlement. Although the novel bluntly presents the frontier’s harsh reality, Dillard’s fascinating characters (including a kleptomaniac, an Eastern socialite, and a flamboyant frontiersman) come alive under her understanding prose. The result is a novel that doesn’t hide from pain, but faces it with a contagious optimism. Call Number: BG Dillard

The book is a set of hilarious tales of an eccentric gun-toting grandmother and her two grandchildren, visiting on their annual summer hiatus from Chicago. The novel, written by the award-winning Richard Peck, is a perfect and beloved yarn for seekers of all ages. Call Number: BG Peck

Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, published in 1929, is the autobiographical Look Homeward Angel. This classic work of American fiction chronicles life in a small Southern town through the eyes of the tempestuous Gant family. Young Eugene ages from an infant to eighteen years old, while his family sinks further into dysfunction and confusion. His mother, the redoubtable Eliza, struggles with the family boarding house and chases money and real estate. Eugene’s father Oliver is her opposite, interested only in art, and taking out his frustrated dreams of sculpture on carving tombstones for the town’s dead. Still, quiet Eugene will manage to leave home for school and become the author he dreams of being. Wolfe’s ode to childhood, small towns, and the kind of dreams that both save and drown us remains a quintessential American novel. Call Number: BG Wolfe

A swashbuckling love story set in 17th century England: murder, forbidden love, lost heiresses, highway men, knighthood, and revenge weave together the tale of John Ridd and his love for a woman of an enemy clan, Lorna Doone. Call Number: BG Blackmore

Louisa May Alcott's classic novel, Little Women, is a partly autobiographical retelling of her childhood, but only of the high points. Not intending to write a beloved classic, she wrote the book—with the features of "moral pap" found in the best sellers of the day—in order to make money for her family. In her thoroughly-researched, narrative biography of Alcott, Harriet Reisen looks behind the public face of an enormously successful writer (Alcott sold more books than Hawthorne, Emerson, or Melville) to the real woman. Alcott's writing motivation was to provide wealth for her family, but she was a layered and complicated personality. The Woman Behind Little Women explores this personality, revealing Alcott's imperfect, caring, intelligent identity.  Call number:  BG 921 Alcott

When Gabriel García Márquez won the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, the committee wrote he had been chosen “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts.” Love in the Time of Cholera perfectly reflects García Márquez’s commitment to the fantastic and magical, and his realistic depiction of life in South America. When Florentino Ariza falls deliriously in love with Fermina Daza, a beautiful student, his love will survive more than half a century, war, marriage, and, yes, even cholera. An excellent introduction to this unique author’s unforgettable world. Call Number: BG Garcia Marquez