| 2003 Summer Reading List |
| includes title, author, and summary |
| One Book/One Region |
| Fahrenheit 451 By : Bradbury, Ray Summary : This book has been designated as our one book, one region selection for Southeastern Connecticut this summer! It is also a book used in our English Department. Students are encouraged to read the book, but it will not fulfill the Summer Reading requirement. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. |
| Adventure and Survival |
| A voyage for madmen By : Nichols, Peter Summary : In 1968 there remained one major nautical challenge yet to be accomplished: sailing single-handedly nonstop around the world. Nine men set out to achieve it in one of the most widely publicized yacht races. What could possess nine otherwise sane and responsible men to risk their lives, careers, and the well-being of their families by undertaking such a reckless endeavor? Nichols introduces the reader to the contestants, giving a vivid portrayal of the men attempting the feat. |
| After the storm By : Rousmaniere, John Summary : The author reconstructs 12 tales of sea wrecks and near-misses from captains' logs and eyewitnesses, which are as sad as they are compelling to read. The poet Shelley's romance with the sea comes to an end from careless sailing and a black squall; an African-American church congregation is decimated when the side-wheeler Portland rolls in Massachusetts Bay; during the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, sailors of the supply ship Pollux teeter between heroism and madness while their ship breaks apart on a rocky shelf. |
| Clan of the cave bear By : Auel, Jean Summary : An all-absorbing journey into man's possible past. Jean M. Auel, a storytelling genius, weaves a compellingly readable saga of human survival; an epic that transcends time and place. |
| Godforsaken Sea By : Lundy, Derek Summary : The Southern Ocean is the sailor's Everest. These are unquestionably the most dangerous waters in the world: hurricane infested, frigid, wholly unpredictable, and so remote, according to Derek Lundy, that "only a few astronauts have ever been further from land than a person on a vessel in that position." Encircling Antarctica, this fearsome body of water has terrorized sailors and wrecked the ablest of ships throughout maritime history. |
| Hunted: a True Story of Survival By : Fletcher, David Summary : Fletcher, an experienced climber and adventurer, recounts 10 days of terror in the Alaskan wilderness with this rather unspectacular telling of an otherwise spectacular tale. Fletcher offers a step-by-step account of his ultimately successful attempt to hike into the backwoods of some of America's roughest terrain and reach the summit of Mount Hess. |
| Night Flight By : Saint Exupery, Antoine de Summary : In this gripping novel, Saint-Exupery tells about the brave men who piloted night mail planes from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation. |
| The Coldest March By : Soloman, Susan Summary : The icy deaths of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions on their return from the South Pole in 1912 made them English icons of courage and sacrifice. Soon, however, Scott's judgments and decisions were questioned, and his reputation became one of inept bungler rather than heroic pioneer. Susan Solomon, senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado, approaches Scott's story from a meteorologist's point of view. |
| The Cyclist: a novel By : Berberian, Viken Summary : The Cyclist explores the background and motivations of its unnamed narrator, a Lebanese terrorist-in-training given the task of detonating a bomb (delivered on his bicycle) at a luxury hotel outside of Beirut. |
| The grey seas under By : Mowat, Farley Summary : A good book...merits the attention of those who love and respect the sea. Many of the men with whom it deals have duly earned their place in legend. |
| The heart of the sea: the tragedy of the whaleship Essex By : Philbrick, Nathaniel Summary : In the Heart of the Sea examines the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production--a vital source of oil--and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life aboard whalers. We are spared neither the nitty-gritty of open boats nor the sucking of human bones dry. |
| The Hill: a True Story of Tragedy, Recovery, and Redemption of North America’s Highest Peak By : Hommer, Ed Summary : Since he was a boy, Ed Hommer had dreamed of becoming a bush pilot in Alaska, but just as his wish was coming true at the age of 27, a nightmare harshly intervened. In December 1981, while flying a chartered plane, Hommer and three passengers crashed into the side of Mount McKinley. For five days the men huddled in the shell of the plane enduring serious injuries and subzero temperatures while fierce storms thwarted attempts to rescue them. By the time they were reached, two of the men were dead, including Hommer's brother-in-law Dan. Hommer ended up losing both of his feet above the ankles to frostbite. |
| The ice master: the doomed 1913 voyage of the Kaduk By : Niven, Jennifer Summary : Eighty-five years after a famous but ill-equipped Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 had sacrificed 16 lives, some artifacts appeared on an Internet auction site. They had originated at a "ghost camp," discovered in 1924, where four of the expedition's 28 men, one woman, and two children had perished. Jennifer Niven has completed the unfulfilled mission of survivor William McKinlay to produce a "more honest and revealing account" of the wreck of the Karluk and its aftermath. |
| Women sailors and sailors' women By : Cordingly, David Summary : A distinguished nautical historian provides an absolutely fascinating glimpse into the lives of the intrepid women who went to sea during the great age of sail. Countless females set sail for reasons of adventure, romance, or duty in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Included among their numbers were the wives or mistresses of ships' officers, prostitutes, female pirates, and women disguised as male sailors. |
| Biography |
| A Fascination for Fish By : Powell, David C. Summary : Powell, the former director of live exhibit development at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, has always loved the sea. He also loves the creatures that live in the oceans, and his autobiography reveals a man who has spent his life finding ways for people who live on the land to come face-to-face with the creatures who live under the sea. |
| A heartbreaking work of staggering genius By : Eggers, Dave Summary : At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. |
| A pitcher's story: innings with David Cone By : Angell, Roger Summary : In pitcher David Cone, a cerebral student of his game and articulate practitioner of his craft, Angell finds a subject as perfect as the perfecto Cone hurled against the Expos on Yogi Berra Day at Yankee Stadium in 1999. Better still, he finds in Cone a partner unwilling to shrink beneath the hot light of what would prove to be an agonizing and introspective year. One of the game's premier pitchers, Cone came unglued in 2000; his 4-14 season was a disaster. |
| Admissions Confidential By : Toor, Rachel Summary : A former admissions officer at Duke, Toor calls this a "Dear John" letter to her old job, but it's really a description of the relatively honest and complicated process by which thousands of eager, qualified applicants are evaluated every year by a typical "elite"university. |
| All Shook Up! : The Life and Death of Elvis Presley By : Denenberg, Barry Summary : This personable biography of the man who ushered in the age of rock 'n' roll chronicles not only the turbulent life of Elvis but the sweeping shifts he brought to popular culture. |
| Alpine circus By : Finkel, Michael Summary : Michael Finkel has spent more than a decade journeying across six continents in a quest to unearth the wonders and eccentricities of the world's snowy regions. These are his remarkable discoveries. In this collection of seventeen mesmerizing, often uproarious tales, Finkel ventures from the underside of an avalanche to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro - capturing the joys, the mishaps, and the magic of each trip with rare skill. |
| Always faithful: a memoir of the Marine dogs of WWII By : Putney, William Summary : A retired Marine Corps captain and veterinarian, Putney writes a moving and heartrending account of his days as commander of the 3rd Marine War Dog Platoon, in which some 72 dogs and their handlers were his responsibility. The dogs and handlers trained in scouting, mine detection, and other patrol duties and went into combat together. Here we read about Peppy, Big Boy, and Lady and a host of other courageous dogs who lived and died during some of the worst fighting of the war. |
| An American Story By : Dickerson, Debra Summary : Dickerson's American story is about her disheartening discovery of the gaping holes in America's well-touted meritocracy. Dickerson grew up in a poor black St. Louis neighborhood, with five siblings and parents with rural southern roots. Her ex-marine father was a domineering, abusive man, ardent in his vocation as a junk man but disappointed that the U.S. held such little promise for a black man. |
| Ava’s Man By : Bragg, Rick Summary : Bragg's telling of his maternal grandfather's life is eloquent and touching, and his spare prose is alive with fresh metaphors and memorable sentences. Bragg never knew Charlie Bundrum, who died prematurely at age 51 in 1958; the story of this proud, flawed, loving and much-loved hero of Depression-era Appalachia is derived from family and community oral history. |
| Bad boy: a memoir By : Myers, Walter Summary : The world knows Myers as a gifted black writer. In BAD BOY, he tells us about growing up in Harlem in the 1950s. Though he was athletic and energetic, he also had a passion for reading. Secretly he haunted libraries, reading stories, poems, even philosophy as he hunted for his voice. That, even more than fighting and basketball, defined who he was. |
| Belle of the West By : Rau, Margaret Summary : Rau makes a coherent narrative out of the tangled life of bandit Belle Starr, who was born Myra Maybelle Shirley and grew up in the frontier town of Carthage, Missouri. Belle's well-to-do family were Southern sympathizers in the Civil War, and her brother Bud ran with Quantrill's Southern guerrillas. Belle could shoot: she also had a fierce temper and a controlling nature. |
| Blackbird: a childhood lost and found By : Lauch, Jennifer Summary : Jennifer Lauck conveys the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of a frightened child with utter conviction and vivid immediacy in her remarkable memoir of the six years during which both of her parents died. Lauck opens in 1969, when she is 5 and her 31-year-old mother is entering the final phase of a decade of severe health problems. Momma is beautiful and loving; we feel the tender intimacy between mother and daughter, even as we see that Jennifer has assumed a lot of adult responsibilities that make her fearful and obsessed with rules. Eight-year-old brother Bryan responds to Momma's illnesses with anger, and is often cruel to his sister. High-powered, workaholic Daddy does his best, but is not around a lot. |
| Body toxic: an environmental memoir By : Antonetta, Susanne Summary : Susanne Antonetta writes with a poet's precision about the almost unspeakable series of ills that have assaulted her body: cysts on her ovaries, a divided uterus, endometriosis, rampant thyroid tumors, a quadruplet pregnancy (no fertility drugs involved) that ended in miscarriage, and manic-depressive illness treated with the wrong drugs until she was in her 30s. There's not a trace of self-pity as she lists the toxic substances leaked into the air, ground, and water by the chemical company, nuclear power plant, and nuclear missile bunker near her family's summer home in Holly Park, New Jersey. |
| Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats By : Paulsen, Gary Summary : On the coattails of Guts comes another collection of Paulsen's autobiographical vignettes, this time about sailing. His love for the sea began at age seven, aboard a troopship headed to the Philippine Islands. A plane crashed into the water and Paulsen watched as sharks attacked the women and children. Though gruesome, the account is typical of the author's unaffected, matter-of-fact writing style. |
| China’s Son: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolutuion By : Chen, Da Summary : Born in 1962 in southern China, Da Chen had monumental hurdles to overcome before he could even walk or talk. Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution was in full swing, and the descendents of landlords, who were despised, were routinely stripped of their wealth, beaten, humiliated, and sent off to labor camps. Da Chen, the grandson of a landlord, lives several parallel lives: he excels in school but then gives up studying in the face of unbearable pressure and harassment from teachers, students, and administrators. |
| Dante By : Lewis, R. W. B. Summary : History, literature, love, and religion come together in this graceful biography of the world's most revered and influential poet. |
| Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight By : Fuller, Alexandra Summary : A classic is born in this tender, intensely moving and even delightful journey through a white African girl's childhood. Born in England and now living in Wyoming, Fuller was conceived and bred on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five "learn[ed] how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." |
| Edith's story By : Velmans-VanHessen, Edith Summary : This significant Holocaust memoir of a girl hiding in Holland will be compared to Anne Frank's diary, though it is very different. |
| Flirting With Danger By : Darrow, Siobhan Summary : Darrow covered civil wars in Georgia and Chechnya, the Soviet "dis-Union" of the early 1990s and the troubles in Northern Ireland, and did so with remarkable, bullet-dodging courage; she also found herself struggling with difficult family relationships and a host of lamentable boyfriends. |
| Galileo's daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith, and love By : Sobel, Dava Summary : Everyone knows that Galileo Galilei dropped cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, developed the first reliable telescope, and was convicted by the Inquisition for holding a heretical belief--that the earth revolved around the sun. But did you know he had a daughter? In Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun, whom Galileo described as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and tenderly attached to me." Their loving correspondence revealed much about their world: the agonies of the bubonic plague, the hardships of monastic life, even Galileo's occasional forgetfulness. |
| Hard Fought Victories By : Gogol, Sara Summary : Gogol, a professor of English and women's studies, spotlights women collegiate coaches from several sports--basketball, tennis, softball, volleyball, and lacrosse, among others--and chronicles the changes that have taken place in women's athletics over the years. |
| Hole in My Life By : Gantos, Jack Summary : The author uses the same bold honesty found in his fiction to offer a riveting autobiographical account of his teen years and the events may well penetrate the comfort zone of even the most complacent young adults. |
| How to Be Like Mike By : Williams, Pat Summary : This motivational book uses Michael Jordan as a prime example of how to achieve one's dream career goals whether they are in the sports arena or in other fields. Each chapter focuses on one ingredient in the recipe for success. |
| Ida Tarbel By : Somervill, Barbara A. Summary : A well-researched biography of the investigative journalist and author. Starting with Tarbell's childhood in the oil fields of western Pennsylvania, Somervill presents a lively and interesting portrait of this ambitious, adventurous woman. |
| James Madison By : Wills, Garry Summary : Pulitzer Prize winning historian Wills writes a compelling biography of the great politician, James Madison. |
| Jessie DeLaCruz By : Soto, Gary Summary : From the age of five in the 1920s, Jessie De La Cruz worked the fields in the San Joaquin Valley in California with her migrant family, sleeping in tents and scavenging for food, with no respite from the backbreaking labor. Now, Chicano writer Soto (who worked in the fields in high school and college) has written her biography, based on personal interviews. It's a story of her daily work over six decades and also of her role as a United Farm Worker organizer. |
| John Coltrane: Jazz Revolutionary By : Barron, Rachel Summary : Beginning with his upbringing in small-town North Carolina in the segregated South through his move to Philadelphia as a young man and his later emergence as a professional jazz musician, this biography emphasizes Coltrane's love of music and intense spirituality. |
| Letters From the Dust Bowl By : Henderson, Caroline A. Summary : In "Letters from the Dust Bowl," Alvin O. Turner has collected and edited Henderson’s published materials and personal correspondence dating from 1908 to 1966. She had moved to Oklahoma’s panhandle to homestead and teach in 1907, and her writing mirrored her love of the land and of the literature that sustained her as she struggled for survival during the Great Depression of the 1930s. |
| Lincoln as I knew him By : Holzer, Harold Summary : For many Americans, Lincoln is our secular saint, and he, too, remains an elusive but always fascinating figure. This is an eclectic collection of personal remembrances. |
| Listening to Whales By : Morton, Alexandra Summary : Orca researcher Morton describes her more than 20 years studying the movements and sounds of orcas, the mammals, actually dolphins, commonly known as killer whales. |
| Martin Luther King Jr. By : Frady, Marshall Summary : Unheroic in appearance, given to "deacon-sober suits" and "ponderous gravity," Martin Luther King Jr. ushered in an epochal era of change in the United States. Closely watching King's journey from Montgomery to Birmingham to the Lincoln Memorial to Memphis was journalist Marshall Frady, who honors the minister's achievement and spirit in this lucid biography. |
| Memphis Tennessee Garrison By : Garrison, Memphis Tennessee Summary : When Appalachian school teacher and union organizer Memphis Tennessee Garrison was 78 years old, she recounted her life story reaching back to a time when members of her family were slaves and into the civil rights struggle. |
| Miriam's song: a memoir By : Mathabane, Miriam Summary : Mark Mathabane first came to prominence with the publication of Kaffir Boy, which became a New York Times bestseller. His story of growing up in South Africa was one of the most riveting accounts of life under apartheid. Mathabane's newest book, Miriam's Song, is the story of Mark's sister, who was left behind in South Africa. It is the gripping tale of a woman -- representative of an entire generation -- who came of age amid the violence and rebellion of the 1980s. |
| More than a game: Phil Jackson and Charley Rosen By : Jackson, Phil Summary : This book is for the basketball junkie. It tells more about the intricacies of the triangle system of offense than most people would ever want to know. But for the serious fan, this is the book. On the surface, it examines the 1999-2000 season of the L.A. Lakers--"the Shaq and Kobe Show." Actually, it is about the journeys of two men through the several worlds of basketball: high school, small college, minor league professional, and the NBA. |
| Not even my name By : Halo, Thea Summary : An eloquent and powerful account of this tragic chapter of Turkish history. Sano's is truly an amazing story of survival and resilience. An important and revealing book. |
| Pearl's secret: a black man's search for his white family By : Henry, Neil Summary : A white bloodline in a black family isn't unusual, but documentation of it is. Journalism professor Henry possessed such documentation in a photograph of his English immigrant great-great-grandfather A. J. Beaumont and in a letter acknowledging the parentage of his great-grandmother Pearl Brumley. Using his old reporter's skills and tenacity, he learned about the white branch of his family and how years of American racial history had treated his white kin. |
| Speak you also: a survivor's reckoning By : Steinberg, Paul Summary : Arrested in Paris in 1943, the sixteen-year-old Steinberg was deported to Auschwitz. As a chemistry student, he was assigned to work in the camp's laboratory alongside Primo Levi, who would later immortalize him as "Henri," the prisoner who clung to his life at the cost of his own humanity in Survival in Auschwitz. Fifty years later, in this unsparing act of self-examination, Steinberg ultimately confirms Levi's judgment of him. |
| Standing Like a Stone Wall By : Robertson, James I. Summary : A strong and complete biography of the famous Confederate general, Stonewall Jackson. Robertson's detailed portrait of his subject's youth reveals the many experiences that shaped the man. |
| Stick figure: a diary of my former self By : Gottlieb, Lori Summary : Feeling as though she has lost control over her rapidly changing world, Lori focuses all her concentration on one subject: dieting. Her life narrows to a single goal--to be "...the thinnest girl on the entire planet." But once she achieves her "stick figure," Lori really sees herself for the first time in a restaurant bathroom mirror and decides then and there to bring herself back from the brink of starvation. |
| Stolen lives: 20 years in a desert jail By : Oufkir, Malika Summary : At the age of 5, Malika Oufkir, eldest daughter of General Oufkir, was adopted by King Muhammad V of Morocco and sent to live in the palace as part of the royal court. There she led a life of unimaginable privilege and luxury alongside the king's own daughter. King Hassan II ascended the throne following Muhammad V's death, and in 1972 General Oufkir was found guilty of treason after staging a coup against the new regime, and was summarily executed. Immediately afterward, Malika, her mother, and her five siblings were arrested and imprisoned, despite having no prior knowledge of the coup attempt. |
| Surviving Hitler: a Boy in the Nazi death camps By : Warren, Andrea Summary : Through the words and memories of Jack Mandelbaum, Warren presents a harrowing account of a Jewish boy's experience in Nazi prison camps. Mandelbaum had lived a comfortable life with his family in Gdynia, Poland, until the German invasion forced them to flee to a relative's village in 1939. |
| Tales of a war pilot By : Kirkland, Richard Summary : More than just another memoir of events, Tales of a War Pilot provides an accurate, intimate, informative, close-up look at how airmen behaved, survived, and sometimes died, during one of the century's most war-torn decades. |
| Tender at the bone By : Reichl, Ruth Summary : New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl shares lessons learned at the hands (and kitchen counters) of family members and friends throughout her life, from growing up with her taste-blind mother to the comfort of cream puffs while away at boarding school on "Mars". |
| The Bear’s Embrace By : Van Tighem, Patricia Summary : On a chilly autumn morning in 1983, during a relaxing escape to the Canadian Rockies, Patricia Van Tighem and her husband were attacked by a grizzly bear. Although they survived, their ordeal was just beginning. |
| The Belly Gunner By : Aldrich, Dale Summary : Hipperson has done an excellent job of telling the story of Dale Aldrich, writing in a first-person narrative based on hours of interviews with him. Aldrich describes his life after being drafted and sent to mechanics school, where he volunteered to attend gunnery school. |
| The Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien By : Grotta, Daniel Summary : A critical biography of the author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy traces Tolkien's fascinating and unusual life and examines his definitive fantasy works. |
| The monk in the garden By : Henig, Robin Summary : The Moravian monk and naturalist Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) labored quietly over the years in his abbey's garden, becoming known locally as a reliable meteorologist with an unusually green thumb. He was much more than that, of course, but his transforming experiments in what a later acolyte would call "genetics" were less well known. When he published the results of his many attempts to discover the mechanisms by which traits are passed from one generation to the next--in Mendel's case, in sweet peas--it was in the proceedings of a local scientific study group, and it would take nearly two decades before researchers in more august institutions would in turn discover Mendel's work and apply it to their own revolutionizing biology in the process. |
| The oldest rookie: big league dreams from a small town guy By : Morris, Jim Summary : You really can't make this stuff up: a kid who so loves throwing a ball that at age three, he takes his ball and bat to bed with him; an army brat who learns early that he can make friends and fit in if he follows the church of high-school athletics (the football denomination); a guy whose time in the minors sours in a sea of pain, poverty, and surgery. Morris has a coauthor, but you can't fake the utter guyness of him: charming, homespun, real. |
| The Orlando Cepeda Story By : Markusen, Bruce Summary : Disgraced in his home country and not entirely welcomed in America, Cepeda started his life anew in plain sight of those who thought of him as a criminal who had thrown away fame, wealth, and respect. He made it back to the major leagues as a coach, but didn't last long in any place. |
| The Pirate Hunter By : Zacks, Richard Summary : We all know Captain Kidd, the bloodthirsty pirate who murdered and plundered his way across the seven seas, sailing under the skull and crossbones. Well, it turns out that pretty much everything we know about Kidd is wrong. He wasn't a pirate; he was a privateer, commissioned by the British government to hunt pirates. He wasn't ruthless; as a matter of fact, he was a family man, with a wife and daughter waiting back home, which wasn't some decrepit shanty but a well-appointed house on New York's Wall Street. |
| The prisoner's wife By : Bandele, Asha Summary : When one hears of a woman marrying a man in prison, especially a man she met while he was already in prison, it is hard not to question her motives or sanity. Poet asha bandele writes of her relationship with Rashid, a man serving 20-to-life for murder. She tells of how she met this man while she was visiting the prison to read her poetry; of how she visited him as a friend/lover, waiting five years before she married him; of love letters, long collect phone calls, and the horror and indignity of their prison situation. |
| They Went Whistling By : Holland, Barbara Summary : A girl-power version of women's history, Holland's entertaining book chronicles the lives of women who have defied convention by daring to live as career criminals, soldiers, artists and religious seekers. |
| Things that must not be forgotten: a childhood in wartime China By : Kwan, Michael Summary : This powerful memoir by writer and translator Kwan (Broken Portraits) recounts his tumultuous coming-of-age in China during and after WWII. This straightforward and poetic work illuminates the contradictions of wartime as seen through the eyes of a child. Kwan is estranged from his Swiss mother as a young boy and goes from being raised by servants to the Englishwoman his father remarries. Although emotionally distant, Kwan's father, the wealthy administrator for China's railroads, was a model of honor to his family and country, and Kwan's story is as much about his father as it is about himself. After Japan invaded China, Kwan's father took a position in the pro-Japanese government in order to work for the Resistance covertly. As a half-caste, Kwan was tormented in school and, without friends, became a silent voyeur of the world around him. |
| Trauma junkie: memoirs of an emergency flight nurse By : Hudson, Janice Summary : Devotees of medical adventures will enjoy this exciting and well-written account of the 10 years the author spent as a flight nurse for CALSTAR (California Shock/Trauma Air Rescue), a helicopter ambulance service based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on a journal she kept to help herself cope with the stress of dealing with so many critically wounded victims, Hudson describes the dramatic rescues she participated in daily. |
| Typhoid Mary By : Bourdain, Anthony Summary : In Typhoid Mary, Bourdain, renowned chef and author of Kitchen Confidential (2000), reexamines the legend of Mary Maflon, otherwise known as the infamous Typhoid Mary. Unwittingly responsible for an outbreak of typhoid fever in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1904, Mary, a cook, fled when authorities began to suspect that she was a carrier. Resurfacing in New York City, she continued to infect victims with the typhoid bacillus until she was caught and incarcerated by the authorities. Investing a tragic tale with a new twist, Bourdain plays historical detective, providing an entertaining and suspenseful evocation of turn-of-the-century New York. |
| Uphill walkers By : Blais, Madeline Summary : Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Blais (author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle, a high school basketball team narrative that was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in 1995) turns her impressive reporting skills to her own 1950s rural Massachusetts childhood in this occasionally dense memoir. Her attraction to journalism, she explains toward the end of the book, is rooted in its "power to capture... what was real, the music of what happens, and to impound all those details that defy embellishment," yet it proves to be a power that both benefits and bogs down her memoir. For the most part, Blais evokes her family with verve, particularly her widowed mother's feisty spirit in the face of raising six young children on her own in 1952. |
| Upon the Head of the Goat By : Siegal, Aranka Summary : These memoirs of a Hungarian girl liberated from Bergen-Belsen, are among the most powerful accounts yet written by a survivor of the Third Reich. |
| Classics and College Bound |
| A brief history in time By : Hawking, Stephen Summary : Cosmology becomes understandable as the author discusses the origin, evolution, and fate of our universe. |
| A death in the family By : Agree, James Summary : Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed. |
| A man for all seasons By : Bolt,Robert Summary : The classic play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII. |
| A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man By : Joyce, James Summary : The novel portrays the early years of Stephen Dedalus, who later reappeared as one of the main characters in Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Each of the novel's five sections is written in a third-person voice that reflects the age and emotional state of its protagonist, from the first childhood memories written in simple, childlike language to Stephen's final decision to leave Dublin for Paris to devote his life to art, written in abstruse, Latin-sprinkled, stream-of-consciousness prose. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/-/frameset.html |
| All the kings men By : Warren, Robert Penn Summary : This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. |
| Around the World in 80 Days By : Verne, Jules Summary : One day in the Reformer's Club in London, in 1872, Phileas Fogg takes up a wager to journey round the world in 80 days. He is accompanied by his valet, Passepartout, and a detective named Fix, who has been assigned by the Reformer's Club to observe his movements. Showing fortitude and endless resourcefulness, Fogg and his companions narrowly escape from barbarians, hostile mobs and schemers during their journey. Does Fogg win the bet? Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/55/100/frameset.html |
| Babbitt By : Lewis, Sinclair Summary : The central character, George Follansbee Babbitt, is a middle-aged realtor living in Zenith, the Zip City. He is unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly middle class. Vaguely dissatisfied with his position, he tries to alter the pattern of his life by flirting with liberalism and by having an affair with an attractive widow, only to find that his dread of ostracism is greater than his desire for escape. He does, however, encourage the rebellion of his son, Ted. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bartleby.com/162/ |
| Bonfire of the vanities By : Wolfe, Tom Summary : He wasn't aging; he was growing up. Bonfire's pyrotechnic satire of 1980s New York wasn't just Wolfe's best book, it was the best bestselling fiction debut of the decade, a miraculously realistic study of an unbelievably status-mad society, from the fiery combatants of the South Bronx to the bubbling scum at the top of Wall Street. Sherman McCoy, a farcically arrogant investment banker (dubbed a "Master of the Universe".) |
| Candide By : Voltaire Summary : The book traces the picaresque adventures of the guileless Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunegonde, tortured by the Inquisition, et cetera, all without losing his resilience and will to live and pursue a happy life. Also available in E-Book format at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/v/v93c/ |
| Catch-22 By : Heller, Joseph Summary : In this satirical novel, Captain Yossarian confronts the hypocrisy of war and bureaucracy as he frantically attempts to survive. |
| Coming up for Air By : Orwell, George Summary : COMING UP FOR AIR is about coping. Orwell hooks a character from among the struggling middle class and, close-up, lets us watch him wiggle. George (Tubby) Bowling is a "fat, middle-aged bloke with false teeth and a red face." He sells insurance, a task at which he grimly excels. The father of two ingrates and husband to a slattern, he dutifully makes mortgage payments on their dreary home. As the years roll by, he comes to feel like a hostage to his family. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/0200031.txt |
| Democracy: An American Novel By : Adams, Henry Summary : The story of Madeleine Lee, a young widow who comes to Washington, DC, to understand the workings of government. "What she wanted was POWER." During the course of the novel, she sees enough of power and its corruptions to last her a lifetime. Also available in E-Book format at ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext01/demam10.txt |
| Don Quixote By : Cervantes, Miguel De Summary : A man named Alanso Quixano, dreams of becoming a knight. The only problem is that there haven't been any knights around for many years. Into the mind of Alanso comes the character named Don Quixote of La Mancha, a knight. Along with his squire Sancho Panza, and his trusty horse Rocinante, he sets out on an adventure, honoring and telling of Don Quixote's love, Dolcinea del Toboso. Along his way, Don Quixote mistakes fantasy for reality. Also available in E-Book format at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=996 |
| Ender's game By : Card, Orson Summary : In a world decimated by alien attacks, the government trains young geniuses like Ender Wiggin in military strategy with increasingly complex computer games. |
| Heart of Darkness By : Conrad, Joseph Summary : The story reflects the physical and psychological shock Conrad himself experienced in 1890, when he worked briefly in the Belgian Congo. The narrator, Marlow, describes a journey he took on an African river. Assigned by an ivory company to take command of a cargo boat stranded in the interior, Marlow makes his way through the treacherous forest, witnessing the brutalization of the natives by white traders and hearing tantalizing stories of a Mr. Kurtz, the company's most successful representative.Also available in E-Book format at http://www.litrix.com/hartdark/hartd001.htm |
| House of Seven Gables By : Hawthorne, Nathaniel Summary : An old mansion in Salem, moss-covered and gabled, broods over the destiny of a distinguished but troubled New England family -- the Pynchons. A haunting centuries-old curse, a forceful probing of national and personal guilt, a romance between the young heroine and an attractive stranger -- all intertwine in this work that Henry James declared "the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel." Also available in E-Book format at http://www.eldritchpress.org:8080/nh/sg.html |
| Howard’s End By : Forster, E.M. Summary : A chance acquaintance brings together the prosperous bourgeois Wilcox family and the clever, cultured, and idealistic Schlegel sisters. As clear-eyed Margaret develops a friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, the impetuous Helen brings into their midst a young bank clerk named Leonard Bast, who lives at the edge of poverty and ruin. When Mrs. Wilcox dies, her family discovers that she wants to leave her country home, Howards End, to Margaret. Thus Forster sets in motion a chain of events that will entangle three different families and brilliantly portrays their aspirations for personal and social harmony. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.litrix.com/howards/howar001.htm |
| Ivanhoe By : Scott, Sir Walter Summary : The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft--but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/41/80/frameset.html |
| Journey to the Center of the Earth By : Verne, Jules Summary : Otto Lidenbrock, an impetuous German professor of geology, discovers an encoded manuscript in which a 16th-century explorer claims to have found a passageway to the center of the Earth. Otto impulsively prepares a subterranean expedition, enlisting his young nephew Axel and a stoic Icelandic guide, Hans Bjelke. After descending into an extinct volcano in Iceland, the men spend several months in a underground world of luminous rocks, antediluvian forests, and fantastic sea creatures until they ride a volcanic eruption out of Stromboli Island, off the coast of Italy. Also available in E-Book format at http://jv.gilead.org.il/vt/c_earth/ |
| Little Women By : Alcott, Louisa May Summary : Little Women is one of the best-loved books of all time. Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, spoiled Amy: these are hard lessons of poverty and of growing up in New England during the Civil War. Through their dreams, plays, pranks, letters, illnesses, and courtships, women of all ages have become a part of this remarkable family and have felt the deep sadness when Meg leaves the circle of sisters to be married at the end of Part I. Part II, chronicles Meg's joys and mishaps as a young wife and mother, Jo's struggle to become a writer, Beth's tragedy, and Amy's artistic pursuits and unexpected romance. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/5/4/frameset.html |
| Lucky Jim By : Amis, Kingsley Summary : Although Kingsley Amis's acid satire of postwar British academic life has lost some of its bite in the four decades since it was published, it's still a rewarding read. And there's no denying how big an impact it had back. |
| Madame Bovary By : Flaubert, Gustave Summary : Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.litrix.com/madameb/madam001.htm |
| Moby Dick By : Melville, Herman Summary : The story of Captain Ahab's obsession with destroying the white whale that crippled him in a previous encounter, Moby Dick transcends its subject by exploring the bigger picture of man and his precarious and often contradictory relationship with the universe he inhabits, a universe of the greatest good and the most profound evil. Also available in E-Book format at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2489 |
| Mrs. Dalloway By : Woolf,Virginia Summary : As Clarissa Dalloway walks through London on a fine June morning, a sky-writing plane captures her attention. Crowds stare upwards to decipher the message while the plane turns and loops, leaving off one letter, picking up another. Like the airplane's swooping path, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway follows Clarissa and those whose lives brush hers--from Peter Walsh, whom she spurned years ago, to her daughter Elizabeth, the girl's angry teacher, Doris Kilman, and war-shocked Septimus Warren Smith, who is sinking into madness. |
| Native Son By : Wright, Richard Summary : The novel addresses the issue of white American society's responsibility for the repression of blacks. The plot charts the decline of Bigger Thomas, a young African-American imprisoned for two murders--the accidental smothering of his white employer's daughter and the deliberate killing of his girlfriend to silence her. In his cell Thomas confronts his growing sense of injustice and concludes that violence is the only alternative to submission to white society. Also available in E-Book format at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=3312 |
| Oliver Twist By : Dickens, Charles Summary : The novel was the first of the author's works to depict realistically the impoverished London underworld and to illustrate his belief that poverty leads to crime. Oliver Twist used the tale of a friendless child, the foundling Oliver Twist, as a vehicle for social criticism. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.litrix.com/olivertw/olive001.htm |
| Silence By : Endo,Shusaku Summary : Endo's novel is a fascinating look at the Christian faith in the midst of brutal, cruel persecution. The novel is set in the 17th century. Two Portuguese Catholic priests journey into Japan with two goals in mind: to minister to the Japanese, and to find their former mentor, a priest named Ferreira, who may or may not have apostatized. |
| Silent Spring By : Carson, Rachel Summary : This landmark book, first published in 1962, alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. |
| Slaughterhouse-five By : Vonnegut, Kurt Summary : The book tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist, World War II veteran, and apparent UFO abductee who becomes "unstuck in time." We accompany Billy back and forth from his wartime experiences to his encounters with aliens and to other events in his remarkable life. |
| Sons and Lovers By : Lawrence, D.H. Summary : Lawrence's first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly-knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. Paul Morel is caught between his need for family and community and his efforts to define himself sexually and emotionally. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/32/69/frameset.html |
| Tess of D’Ubervilles By : Hardy, Thomas Summary : Tess's tale of seduction by a man she did not love, and rejection by a man who should have loved her, assailed the conventional morality of Victorian society, with its unforgiving religion and class system. This richly evocative narrative brings the Wessex landscape to life to deepen and intensify Tess's experience. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/26/56/frameset.html |
| The fall By : Camus, Albert Summary : Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality. |
| The Good Soldier By : Ford, Ford Madox Summary : The Good Soldier relates the complex social and sexual relationships between two couples, one English, one American, and the growing awareness by the American narrator John Dowell of the intrigues and passions behind their orderly Edwardian facade. It is the attitude of Dowell, his puzzlement, uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration that make the book so powerful and mysterious. Despite its catalogue of death, insanity, and despair, the novel has many comic moments. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.eldritchpress.org:8080/fmf/gs.htm |
| The invisible man By : Ellison, Ralph Summary : A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue. |
| The leopard By : Lampedusa, Guiseppe Summary : In Sicily in 1860, as Italian unification grows inevitable, the smallest of gestures seems dense with meaning and melancholy, sensual agitation and disquiet: "Some huge irrational disaster is in the making." All around him, the prince, Don Fabrizio, witnesses the ruin of the class and inheritance that already disgust him. |
| The Marrow of Tradition By : Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Summary : This novel is based on a historic event from 1898, a racially based incident in which about a dozen African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina, were brutally murdered by Caucasians who'd lost political power, after Reconstruction, and successfully gained that power back by massacring some and completely intimidating all of the other African Americans in that community. Also available in E-Book format at http://docsouth.unc.edu/chesnuttmarrow/chesmarrow.html |
| The Mill on the Floss By : Eliot, George Summary : This novel's unsentimental evocation of childhood in the English countryside stands as an enduring triumph; but equally memorable are its portrayal of a narrow, tradition-bound society, its striking, superbly drawn heroine, Maggie Tulliver, and its dramatic unfolding of tragic human destiny. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bartleby.com/309/ |
| The Red Badge of Courage By : Crane, Stephen Summary : The setting is the Civil War...the hero is Henry Flemming, who, swept up in the current of events, joins the Union Army. He plunges heedlessly into battle, at first loses his courage, then later regains it for the crucial confrontation. One of the most realistic war stories ever written, The Red Badge of Courage gives a striking depiction of how soldiers behave under fire. Also available in E-Book format at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Crane/RedBadge/ |
| To the Lighthouse By : Woolf, Virginia Summary : The three sections of the book take place between 1910 and 1920 and revolve around various members of the Ramsay family during visits to their summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. A central motif of the novel is the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles at work in the universe. With her emotional, poetical frame of mind, Mrs. Ramsay represents the female principle, while Mr. Ramsay, a self-centered philosopher, expresses the male principle in his rational point of view. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/0100101.txt |
| Vanity Fair By : Thackeray William Summary : Vanity Fair is a story of two heroines--one humber, the other scheming and social climbing--who meet inboarding school and embark on markedly different lives. Amid the swirl of London's posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Through it all, Thackeray lampoons the shallow values of his society, reserving the most pointed barbs for the upper crust. What results is a prescient look at the dogged pursuit of wealth and status--and the need for humility. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/51/94/frameset.html |
| War and Peace By : Tolstoy, Leo Summary : More than a historical chronicle of Russia's struggle with Napoleon, War and Peace is a record of the lives of individuals involved, of the physical realities of human experience, in short, a complete portrait of the human experience--from happiness and greatness, to grief and humiliation. Also available in E-Book format at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/52/96/frameset.html |
| Fine Arts |
| Andy Warhol By : Koestenbaum, Wayne Summary : Warhol, who once observed that in time everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, himself earned early fame "as artist and whirlwind, as impresario and irritant." That fame endured over a career that stretched over four decades. |
| Artemisia By : Lapierre,Alexandra Summary : Small wonder that biographer Alexandra Lapierre was drawn to write about Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the first female painters to gain acclaim in the male-dominated 17th-century art world. Her story has all the ingredients of high drama: rape, jealousy, and an infamous court trial set against a backdrop of art and passion. |
| Concerning the spirital in art By : Kandinsky, Wassily Summary : If you consider yourself religious, and you also love art, this is a book you need to read. Kandinsky was one of our past masters of art. His works were beautiful essays on music, love, and other spiritual issues. |
| Cool, hot and blue By : Boeckman, Charles Summary : This book is an introduction to the world, people, and sounds of jazz music. |
| Daybook: the journey of an artist By : Truitt, Ann Summary : Anne Truitt is a sculptor, painter, mother, and grandmother. Daybook, her first published journal, is illuminating and nourishing: "It is as if there are external equivalents for truths which I already in some mysterious way know. In order to catch these equivalents, I have to stay 'turned on' all the time, to keep my receptivity to what is around me totally open. Preconception is fatal to this process. Vulnerability is implicitly in it; pain, inevitable." For Anne Truitt, art is life. |
| Diary of a Genius By : Dali, Salvador Summary : With an introduction by J G Ballard, this is a seminal Surrealist text that reveals the intimate details of Dali's life and work as figurehead of the 20th century art movement. |
| Fear of art By : Carmilly-Weinberger Moshe Summary : This book is about the censorship and expression that artists have when they create. |
| La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl By : Huddle, David Summary : In this richly drawn novel about life, art, and the intriguing connections between them, art professor Suzanne Nelson becomes fascinated with Georges de La Tour, the 17th-century French painter famous for his sympathetic depictions of peasants. But as Suzanne discovers in some newly available source material, La Tour's actual conduct with peasants appears to have been violent and unscrupulous. |
| Life with Picasso By : Gilot, Francois Summary : At 21, Gilot met 62-year-old Picasso. For nearly a decade, she shared her life with this complex artist, giving birth to two of his children. In her recollections, she describes the exuberant, if exhausting, world they knew together. |
| Moon and a sixpence By : Maugham, Somerset Summary : Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art. As Strickland pursues his artistic vision, he leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes sacrifices that leaves the lives of those closest to him in tatters. |
| Nothing but the best By : Kogan, Judith Summary : The Julliard School is said to be the best music school in the world. This is the story of life at Julliard: the nerve-racking audiiton, the constant pressure, the encounters with godlike teachers, the agony of practice, the joy of artistic triumph, the tenuous friendships and romance between people. |
| Nothing if not critical By : Hughes, Robert Summary : Time 's art critic assesses four centuries of Western art. |
| Portrait of an artist as a young man By : Joyce, James Summary : Published in 1916, James Joyce's semiautobiographical tale of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, is a coming-of-age story like no other. A bold, innovative experiment with both language and structure, the work has exerted a lasting influence on the contemporary novel. |
| Portraits By : Kimmelman, Michael Summary : One can only speak properly about paintings in front of paintings, Paul Cézanne once said. It is usually, though, critics who speak in front of paintings, not artists. With an eye toward rectifying that situation, Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, constructed Portraits |
| Prospects: the journal of an artist By : Truitt, Ann Summary : More reflections on art, life, and growing older; a sequel to the celebrated Daybook |
| The Passion of Artemisia By : Vreeland, Susan Summary : Following her best-selling Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland tells of Artemisia Gentileschi, a 16th-century painter and the first woman admitted to the Accademia dell' Arte in Florence. The book begins with Artemisia's public humiliation in a papal court after she accuses her father's friend and her painting teacher, Agostino Tassi, of rape. |
| The philosophy of Andy Warhol By : Warhol, Andy Summary : The Philosophy of Andy Warhol is intensly funny, witty, and real. Andy tells of daily acounts with many super stars and various B's and it just goes to show you that Andy Warhol is a true master mind. |
| The rape of Europa By : Nicholas, Lynn Summary : The world is still trying to fathom the enormity of the violence perpetrated by the Nazis. While the unending horror of the Holocaust continues to shock and baffle us, other facets of this unprecedented attempt at ethnic and cultural annihilation are still being revealed. One such facet consists of the mind-boggling facts about the Germans' wholesale pillaging of the art treasures of Europe. |
| The Unknown By : Spurling, Hilary Summary : A biography of an artist who, more than any other, is associated with Mediterranean heat, brilliant color and light, and languid, luxurious interiors. As author Hilary Spurling points out, an open window is one of Matisse's frequent motifs. |
| Through the flower By : Chicago, Judy Summary : The creator of The Holocaust Project and The Dinner Party explores her evolution as an artist in a story that will inspire and exhilarate anyone who has tried to find "a room of his/her own" in a world which ignores women's contributions. Photos and full-color art throughout. |
| Vermeer: a view of Delft By : Bailey, Anthony Summary : This book is a collection of writings on aspects of painting in Delft during the period 1650–1675. Walter Liedtke, highly respected curator and scholar of Dutch and Flemish art, discusses at length the work of four artists: Carel Fabritius, Gerard Houckgeest, Pieter de Hooch, and Johannes Vermeer. Liedtke considers recent interpretations and research on these artists' works, exploring in particular the relationship between style and observation in their paintings. |
| Vincent Van Gogh: A Portrait of an Artist By : Greenberg, Jan Summary : This compelling book begins with van Gogh's boyhood and traces the various career paths (art dealer, missionary) he pursued before dedicating himself to painting. The authors draw on the artist's voluminous correspondence with his brother Theo to elicit his thoughts and feelings, providing glimpses inside the head of this most unusual person. |
| Working space By : Stella, Frank Summary : Stella has produced a critique of abstract painting that starts in the Renaissance and ends with Abstract Expressionism. |
| General Fiction |
| A face first By : Cummings, Priscilla Summary : When she wakes up in a hospital burn unit, Kelley has no memory of the car accident that badly burned her face and hands. She bravely endures skin grafts and painful treatments, but when she finally looks in the mirror and sees what the third- degree burns have done to her face, she falls into a deep and angry depression. At the same time, her memory begins to resurface, and she realizes her mother's careless driving was the cause of the accident. |
| A lesson before dying By : Gaines, Ernest Summary : In a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place, there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty. |
| A Life Without Consequences By : Elliott, Stephen Summary : Based on the author's harrowing experiences, this first novel is a journey into homelessness, youthful angst, drugs and hopelessness in Chicago. Paul, 14, runs away from home and is quickly picked up by the police after slashing his wrists. Placed in the adolescent unit of a mental institution and deeply depressed, he reviews his life, seeking solace from the motley crew of his fellow inmates. |
| A Small-Town Marriage By : Colombi, Marchesa Summary : Denza Dellara becomes smitten with a wealthy, obese young man; though the years slip by without a proposal, she still clings to the hope that one is forthcoming. |
| A step from heaven By : Na, An Summary : Young Ju's parents don't want her to become too American, and Young Ju is ashamed of them. It's the classic immigrant child conflict, told here in the present tense with the immediacy of the girl's voice, from the time she's a toddler in a small Korean village wondering why the adults talk about America as "heaven." Then there's her bewilderment as a first-grader in the U.S. trying to learn the rules and understand the words and the accents. |
| A walk to remember By : Sparks, Nicholas Summary : In the prologue to his latest novel, Nicholas Sparks makes the rather presumptuous pledge "first you will smile, and then you will cry," but sure enough, he delivers the goods. With his calculated ability to throw your heart around like a yo-yo (try out his earlier Message in the Bottle or The Notebook if you really want to stick it to yourself), Sparks pulls us back to the perfect innocence of a first love. |
| A year down yonder By : Peck, Richard Summary : Grandma Dowdel's back! She's just as feisty and terrifying and goodhearted as she was in Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago, and every bit as funny. In the first book, a Newbery Honor winner, Grandma's rampages were seen through the eyes of her grandson Joey, who, with his sister, Mary Alice, was sent down from Chicago for a week every summer to visit. But now it's 1937 and Joey has gone off to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, while 15-year-old Mary Alice has to go stay with Grandma alone--for a whole year, maybe longer. |
| All Loves Excelling By : Bunting, Josiah Summary : Amanda Bahringer is spending a year at an expensive prep school that prides itself on placing "underachieving" students in prestigious colleges. While the school's headmaster encourages her interest in poetry, she never allows herself to progress in a creative direction; instead, she throws herself ever deeper into her studies and exercise. She develops an eating disorder, coupled with addiction to a dizzying array of mood-altering prescription drugs. |
| Among the hidden By : Haddix, Margaret Summary : In a society where family size is strictly limited to two children, Luke is a third child. Living in an attic bedroom to avoid being seen by authorities, Luke peers through an outside vent and observes another shadow child hiding in a nearby home, thereby beginning a secret friendship with Jen, who plans to rebel against the government system. The conclusion is abrupt, but the novel plot is thought provoking and readable. |
| Anything Goes By : Bell, Madison Smartt Summary : In Anything Goes, Madison Smartt Bell's 13th work of fiction, the author follows a Tennessee country/rock cover band as it plays dives up and down the Eastern seaboard. The main character, Jesse Melungeon, capitalizes on a new lead singer's abilities and the shuffling of band personnel by slipping in his original numbers (and those of the former lead guitarist), much to the crowds' delight. |
| Aria of the Sea By : Calhoun, Dia Summary : On the island of Normost, in the kingdom of Windward, Cerinthe Gale is a folk healer who dreams of being a dancer. When her mother falls ill, Cerinthe fights to save her — but fails. She blames herself for her mother’s death, gives up healing, and decides to pursue dance. Cerinthe travels across Windward to audition at the School of the Royal Dancers, which accepts her even though she is a commoner. It should be the beginning of a brilliant future, but Cerinthe feels an emptiness she can’t identify. |
| Bad Girl Creek: a novel By : Mapson, Jo-Ann Summary : When her aunt dies, Phoebe DeThomas finds herself the owner of a 40-acre flower farm, complete with debts and only one farmhand. She takes in three boarders who form strong bonds that help them all through the joys and heartbreaks of their lives. |
| Being with Henry By : Brooks, Martha Summary : When a confrontation with his latest stepfather turns violent, 16-year-old Laker is kicked out of the house, boards the first bus bound for anywhere else, and ends up panhandling on the street. There he meets Henry, an 83-year-old widower who can't adjust to life alone. The two strike up an uneasy relationship when Henry offers the young man a place to stay in exchange for yard work. |
| Billy By : French, Albert Summary : This first novel starkly depicts Billy Lee Turner, a black, ten-year-old boy convicted and executed for the stabbing of a young white girl in 1930s Mississippi. |
| Billy Boy: a novel By : Shrake, Edwin Summary : Billy learns about life and love through the Zen of golf. Having just lost his mother to cancer, the 16-year-old and his irresponsible father leave Albuquerque, NM, and settle in Texas. Within a short period of time, Billy is on his own. |
| Black Mirror: a novel By : Werlin, Nancy Summary : Frances refuses to look in the mirror; she can't bear to face her reflection. She has hidden from herself and everyone around her for such a long time, and now that her brother Daniel has committed suicide, she can't help thinking that it's somehow her fault. |
| Born Blue By : Nolan, Han Summary : Despite her natural talent for singing, 6-year-old Janie knows deep in her heart that if you really want to sing and feel the blues, you gotta be black. Aren't the tapes of the "ladies"--Aretha, Etta, and Billie--that she listens to every night in the stinking basement of her first foster home proof enough of that? So the scrawny, blond-haired, blue-eyed child of a heroin addict changes her name to Leshaya, decides that her unknown father was African American, and shuts down all feeling. |
| Borrowed light By : Fienberg, Anna Summary : In lyrical prose Fienberg documents the inner contemplations of a shy Australian girl, Callisto, during her turbulent 16th year. Her grandmother, Ruth, is a well-known astrophysicist, and Callisto follows her fascination with astronomy. Callisto, named after one of Jupiter's moons, sees herself as one who borrows light from people who, as stars, make their own. However, not many around her emit much light. |
| Both sides now By : Pennebaker, Ruth Summary : Witnessing her mother's battle with breast cancer, a teenage daughter finds her own strength. |
| Breakfast of champions By : Vonnegut, Kurt Summary : Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. |
| Breaking Point By : Flinn, Alex Summary : Tripped in class, mooned in the hall, cola poured through the slats in his locker, spitballs stuck in his hair--how much more can Paul Richmond take at his super-snobby private school? Paul is there free because his mom works in the guidance office, but that fact makes him an instant outcast, his only friend a funny-looking, independent girl named Binky. |
| Breathing Underwater By : Flinn, Alex Summary : It was only a slap. Well, maybe more than one. And maybe Nick used his fist at the end when the anger got out of control. But his girlfriend Caitlin deserved it. Out of his desperate need for her came all the mean words and the hitting. But now Caitlin's family has procured a restraining order to keep Nick away. |
| Brian's return By : Paulson, Gary Summary : A deer in his canoe, a bear attack, a leg stabbed with an arrowhead--it's just another week in the life of 16-year-old Brian Robeson. In his opinion, this beats a date at Mackey's Pizza Den, a fight with a bully, and a video game at the mall any day. After having survived a plane crash and 54 days in the Canadian wilderness several years earlier, Brian can't seem to fit into "civilization." The world of high school and family life makes no sense anymore. So Brian begins to plan. It's time to return to the woods. This time, though, he makes no plans to come back home. |
| Bud, not buddy By : Curtin, Christopher Summary : An orphaned runaway, Bud copes with the adult world with his numbered "Rules and Things." His few treasures from his former life with "Momma," are kept in a battered suitcase. One, a flyer advertising a musical group, leads him on a fantasy journey to an amazing reality. |
| Burning Up: a Novel By : Cooney, Caroline B. Summary : Arson in the inner-city church where Macey volunteers leaves her asking why life should be so hard for some people--a question that becomes more urgent when her new friend Venita is killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout. |
| Coldwater By : McConnochie, Mardi Summary : In this intriguing work of fiction inspired by the Bront' family, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Wolf are the only female inhabitants of Coldwater, a desolate Australian island where their father runs a notorious penal colony from which, he brags, no one escapes. The same can be said of his family. Scarred by the tragic death of his son Branwell, Captain Wolf has withdrawn from his three daughters even while he keeps them virtual prisoners. |
| Comfort By : Dean, Carolee Summary : Set in Comfort, TX, this tightly written coming-of-age story begins with Kenny Roy Willson applying for a hardship driver's license. He's only 14, but his mother has doctored his birth certificate to make him 15, the legal age. She needs Kenny to drive his daddy, soon to be home from the penitentiary, to AA meetings since he had 23 DWIs before he robbed the liquor store. |
| Crazy as Chocolate: a novel By : Hyde, Elizabeth Summary : Izzy's world is about to turn upside down. Tomorrow is her 41st birthday, a particularly momentous occasion because the day her mother turned 41, she committed suicide. As Izzy puts it, "I was about to enter virgin time, the second half of a life unlived, a life my mother never knew." Her unpredictable sister, Ellie, and their quietly suffering father are flying to Colorado to help her cross this critical threshold. |
| Crazy: a novel By : Lebert, Benjamin Summary : Written by a 16-year-old, this first novel, a sensation in Germany, chronicles the adventures of a boy (the same age as the author) at boarding school. The narrator is also named Benjamin Lebert, which muddies the distance between fiction and embellished fact. Either way, it is a fun, introspective coming-of-age tale. |
| Dark: a Novel By : Jasper, Kenji Summary : Jasper tells the poignant story of 19-year-old Thai Williams, whose life is turned upside down when he kills a rival for his girl's affections. |
| Daughter of Venice By : Napoli, Donna Jo Summary : The year is 1592, and 14-year-old Donata is a pampered member of the noble Mocenigo family. But Donata is restless. Always confined to the palazzo, she is tired of learning everything second-hand from her brothers. |
| Deliver us from Evie By : Kerr, M. E. Summary : Teens will be swept up in the emotion and immediacy of Parr's fast-paced narrative, his voice perfectly pitched between wit and melancholy. It's a story that challenges stereotypes, not only about love, but also about farmers and families and religion and responsibility--about all our definitions of "normal." |
| Downsiders By : Shusterman Neal Summary : History and urban folklore are wittily combined in this well-wrought fantasy, centering on an alternative society that thrives undisturbed in the subterranean recesses of New York City. |
| Dreamcatcher By : King, Stephen Summary : Stephen King fans, rejoice! The bodysnatching-aliens tale Dreamcatcher is his first book in years that slakes our hunger for horror the way he used to. |
| Eden close By : Shreve, Anita Summary : For Andrew and Eden, it's a modern adaptation of paradise lost and then regained. As next-door neighbors, "best buddies," and then awkward adolescents, Eden and Andy find solace in each other's company until a tragic event occurs as Andy prepares to leave their small home town and heads off to college. |
| Eight Seconds By : Ferris, Jean Summary : Between his junior and senior years in high school, John Ritchie and his best friend spend a week at rodeo school. One of the young men there, Kit, strikes John as intensely interesting, both in his graceful, confident demeanor and in his calm attitude toward both bulls and the town bully. |
| Falling Angels By : Chevalier, Tracy Summary : Set among the sweeping skirts and social upheavals of Edwardian London, Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels is a meditation on change, loss, and recovery. |
| Filthy Rich: a novel By : Samuels, Dorothy Summary : Marcy Mallowitz, a personal life coach who developed her unique consulting job after making a living as a closet reorganizer specialist, becomes the latest victim of media madness when her stint as her orthodontist boyfriend's lifeline on the So You Want to Be Filthy Rich! show ends up costing her their relationship. |
| Finn By : Olshan, Matthew Summary : Chloe Wilder lives with her grandparents in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. Some say she is angry, others think of her as quiet, but in reality, she is finally learning to replace some of the demons in her nightmares with a sense of normalcy. She has loving guardians; an eccentric but true friend, Marian; safety; and the friendship of her grandparents' maid, Silvia, an illegal immigrant from Mexico. She almost believes everything is going to be OK when her mother's husband kidnaps her. |
| For All Time By : Cooney, Caroline B. Summary : The time-travel series that began with Both Sides of Time adds another breathlessly romantic whirl through the centuries. Annie ventures into New York City to see an exhibit of Egyptian art in which she hopes to find a photograph of Strat, her lost 19th-century love. With any luck, seeing Strat's image will magically jolt Annie back through time. |
| Free Radical By : Murphy, Claire Rudolf Summary : A 15-year-old boy in contemporary Alaska discovers that his mom is a fugitive, hiding out from the FBI because of her part in an anti-Vietnam War protest at Berkeley that accidentally killed a college student. |
| Genesis By : Thompson, Stephen Summary : While in an ICU, in rehab and in recovery at his parents' home after an accident left him partially paralyzed with a spinal cord injury, Stephen Thompson often asked himself, "Why did this have to happen to me?" |
| Girl in hycinth blue By : Vreeland, Susan Summary : There are only 35 known Vermeers in the world today. In this story the author posits the existence of a 36th. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where, in the wake of a faculty member's unexpected death, math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a surprising revelation to one of this colleagues. |
| Girl with a pearl earring By : Chevalier, Tracy Summary : With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play oflight and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries. |
| Gold dust By : Lynch, Chris Summary : 'Don't make things more complicated than they should be' would be my philosophy if I had one. The year is 1975 and that's single-minded Richard Riley Moncrief talking, too focused on his one true love--baseball, especially the Red Sox--to even contemplate that anything else in the universe might have significance. |
| Gossip Girl: a novel By : Von Ziegesar, Cecily Summary : College interviews, romantic troubles and a fancy wedding photographed for Vogue dominate this second installment of von Ziegesar's frothy but fun series about rich Manhattan prep school kids and the gossip Web site tracking their lives. |
| Habibi, Nye By : Nye, Naomi Summary : Liyana Abboud, 14, and her family make a tremendous adjustment when they move to Jerusalem from St. Louis. All she and her younger brother, Rafik, know of their Palestinian father's culture come from his reminiscences of growing up and the fighting they see on television. In Jerusalem, she is the only outsider at an Armenian school; her easygoing father, Poppy, finds himself having to remind her--often against his own common sense--of rules for appropriate behavior. |
| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix By : Rowling, J.K. Summary : As Harry enters his fifth year at wizard school, it seems he has never been more sorely tested. Lord Voldemort's rise has opened a rift in the wizrding world between those who believe the truth about his return, and those who prefer to believe it's all madness and lies--just more trouble for Harry Potter. This fifth book in the series goes on sale June 21. |
| Heroes By : Cormier, Robert Summary : The irony of the title will haunt readers of this novel as they delve into the mind of a WWII veteran whose face has been blown off by a grenade. After winning a Silver Star for bravery, 18-year-old Francis Cassavant could return home a hero, but he keeps his identity secret in anticipation of murdering a personal enemy and wanders the streets of his hometown as a lone, grotesque figure. |
| Holes By : Sachar, Louis Summary : Louis Sachar's closely interwoven book follows the internment of a boy in a juvenile detention camp. Forced to dig holes by the warden to uncover a Wild West outlaw's hidden treasure, the boy ends up discovering his future and past as he unravels a generations-old family curse. |
| Holly By : French, Albert Summary : Set in the final year of World War II, in a small southern town called Supply, this story tells of a 20-year-old white woman, Holly. Holly is struggling to come to a decision about her engagement to Billy, a local boy serving in the Pacific. She and her friend Elsie continue to play the local field, and eventually Holly decides to break off with Billy. |
| Hope Was Here By : Bauer, Joan Summary : Ever since the boss promoted her from bus girl two and a half years ago when she was 14, Hope has been a waitress--and a darn good one, too. She takes pride in making people happy with good food, as does her aunt Addie, a diner cook extraordinaire. The two of them have been a pair ever since Hope's waitress mother abandoned her as a baby, and now they have come to rural Wisconsin to run the Welcome Stairways café for G.T. Stoop, who is dying of leukemia. But he's not dead yet, as the kindly and greathearted restaurant owner demonstrates when he decides to run for mayor against the wicked and corrupt Eli Millstone. |
| Horse Thief: a novel By : Peck, Robert Newton Summary : Western fans are in for a treat with this fast-paced, satisfying Depression tale of a teenage orphan who rescues 13 horses from the slaughterhouse and finds a family in the process. |
| How it all started By : Fromm, Pete Summary : Surrounded by the desolate Texas landscape and with little to do, Austin and his college dropout sister, Abeline, sneak out to the abandoned airstrip every chance they get to practice pitching and to play their own version of baseball, using a ball, glove, and a tire swing. In an effort to make Austin the greatest pitcher of all time, Abeline pushes him to the point of exhaustion. In total submission and admiration, Austin obeys Abeline's every command, unwilling to admit that her crazy obsession with Nolan Ryan, wild mood swings, and periodic disappearances are an indication that she is not well. |
| If only it were true By : Levy, Marc Summary : First-time French author Levy has managed to make the improbable seem possible. Lauren, a medical student at a San Francisco hospital, ends up in a coma after a car crash. Several months later Arthur, an architect, finds Lauren in the closet of his new apartment. She explains that this is her apartment and that she is sort of a ghost: her body is in the hospital and she has become separated from it. |
| In Spite of Killer Bees By : Johnston, Julie Summary : Fourteen-year-old Aggie and her older sisters have been on their own since their father died and their mother left. So when they inherit a house from a grandfather they never knew, they imagine new possibilities. Unfortunately, it seems all they have inherited is a derelict property, their father's bad reputation, and eccentric great-aunt Lily, who isn't too thrilled when the unconventional sisters move in. |
| In the Shadow of the Pali By : Cindrich, Lisa Summary : In 1866, the legislature of the Hawaiian Islands established a colony to isolate the burgeoning number of island people inflicted with leprosy. Because of the horrible mutilation and the incurable nature of the disease, those afflicted were hunted down and taken to Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. |
| Innocence By : Mendelsohn, Jane Summary : When Beckett is transplanted to an upscale school in Manhattan after the death of her mother, she is not surprised to be snubbed by the in-crowd. What does surprise her, and her loving father, is that when she looks out her apartment window one night, the three most popular girls in school are dead on the asphalt below, their blue jeans seeping blood. |
| Jim the boy By : Earley, Tony Summary : The year is 1934, and like the rest of the country, Aliceville is feeling the pinch of the Great Depression. Yet neither Jim nor his mother nor his three uncles--who have split the paternal role neatly among themselves since the death of Jim's father a decade earlier--are feeling much in the way of economic pain. Indeed, if you stuck a satellite dish on the front lawn, the story might be taking place in the New South rather than the older, bucolic one. |
| Keeping the moon By : Dessen, Sarah Summary : Colie Sparks expects the worst when she's sent to spend the summer with her eccentric Aunt Mira in sleepy Colby, North Carolina, while her mom, Kiki, is touring Europe on an antifat crusade. The formerly fat Kiki has found the salvation of weight loss in aerobics and has made a fortune in producing infomercials. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Colie has lost weight, too, but, unlike her mom, has retained a full complement of self-loathing, which manifests itself in sullen demeanor, bad hair, and self-mutilation. |
| Kissing doorknobs By : Hesser, Terry Summary : Despite recent media attention, obsessive-compulsive disorder remains perplexing to those who haven't experienced the illness firsthand. In her compassionate debut novel, Terry Spencer Hesser skillfully and credibly explains exactly what OCD feels like, as well as the effects it has on surrounding friends and family. |
| Kit's law By : Morrisey, Donna Summary : Set in a remote Newfoundland village in the 1950s, this beautiful first novel balances raunchy folk humor, riveting suspense, and family tragedy with a young girl's profound first love. Fourteen-year-old Kit Pitman lives in a weather-beaten coastal cottage with her mentally disabled mother, Josie, and her fiercely protective grandmother, Nan--a "shadow big enough to blot out all of Haire's Hollow." |
| Kit's wilderness By : Almond, David Summary : Kit's Wilderness conjures a world where the past is alive in the present and creeps into the future--a world where ancestral ghosts and even the slow-changing geology of the landscape are as tangible as lunch. Powerful images of darkness exploding into "lovely lovely light" filter throughout the story, as Almond boldly explores the dark side and unearths a joyful message of redemption. |
| Labyrinth By : Herman, John Summary : As Gregory grapples with his father's recent suicide, he is haunted by nightmares "consistent and continuing, like real life only weirder." In his dreams, he is "Gregor," a boy from some other world, one of the Golden Ten chosen to confront the mythological Minotaur. |
| Leslie's journal By : Stratton, Allan Summary : An appealing protagonist ... her problems are real ... her emotions ring true. |
| Life without water By : Peacock, Nancy Summary : Nancy Peacock's brief first novel manages to cover a lot of geographic and emotional ground. Essentially a coming-of-age novel about a girl named Cedar whose parents have tuned in and dropped out to an abandoned North Carolina farmhouse named Two Moons, Peacock's book presents a deft social history of the 1960s and early 1970s seen through a sly and precocious child's eyes. |
| Local girls By : Hoffman, Alice Summary : More than a collection of short stories, yet not quite a novel, Local Girls occupies an undefined territory between these two forms. The local girls in question are Gretel Samuelson, her best friend, Jill, her mother, Franny, and Franny's cousin Margot--four characters who weave in and out of each of the 15 related stories that chronicle the rocky years of Gretel's adolescence. |
| Making the Run: a novel By : Henson, Heather Summary : Lu McClellan can't wait to leave Rainey: Living in a small town is like living under a microscope. Every little thing magnified and studied. With two months to go before graduation and her 18th birthday, she bides the time by doing drugs, making the run (driving with her best friend, Ginny, around Dead Man curve to the next town, where alcohol is sold) and focusing on her passion for photography. |
| Martyn Pig: a novel By : Brooks, Kevin Summary : Martyn Pig's mother left years ago; his father is an abusive alcoholic. Living in a dreary English seaside town, he thinks that things can't get any worse. But, in the week that readers spend with him, his life takes an even worse turn. He makes the mistake of yelling at his father; as the drunken man comes at his son with his fist raised, he stumbles, falls (with just the merest shove from Martyn), hits his head on the fireplace wall, and dies. |
| Martyrs’ Crossing: a novel By : Wilentz, Amy Summary : At a checkpoint in Jerusalem, a beautiful young Palestinian woman begs an Israeli soldier for permission to "cross over" in order to get her two-year-old son to the hospital. The soldier, Lt. Ari Doron, frantically telephones headquarters, but is rebuffed by an anonymous commander: the woman is Marina Raad Hajimi, wife of jailed Hamas terrorist Hassan Hajimi, and therefore presumptively barred from Israel during a border "closure." Within minutes, the child dies, devastating family members on both sides of the checkpoint. It turns out the little boy was the grandson of American cardiologist George Raad, a secular Palestinian patriot whose iconoclastic views are courted, but largely ignored, by the Palestinian leadership. |
| Memories of summer By : White, Ruth Summary : When 13-year-old Lyric, her older sister, Summer, and their father move to Flint, Michigan, from rural Virginia, Summer (who has always been a little odd) makes a swift and frightening slide into full-fledged schizophrenia. Her behavior changes from withdrawn to bizarre: she hears voices, speaks with invisible people, and she becomes increasingly more paranoid. Lyric and her father must finally make the painful decision to commit Summer to the state hospital, and Lyric must steel herself to the fact that she has lost the motherly, beautiful sister of her childhood. |
| Money Hungry By : Flake, Sharon Summary : With her brassy voice and saucy attitude, 13-year-old Raspberry Hill emerges as a vivacious heroine. She knows first-hand that living in the housing project is better than being out on the streets, but she and her mother are equally determined to move to a safer neighborhood. |
| Naomi's place By : Wardell, Dee Summary : This story of Naomi, Ruth, and the children's home they ran together rings with authenticity, not surprisingly, since the author drew upon her own experiences in creating the tales she recounts so vividly. In 1935, Naomi's church in upstate New York sent her as a missionary and teacher to a small community in the Appalachian hills. Poverty, untimely death, and sometimes the burden of too many children caused some families to break apart and Naomi found herself caring for abandoned or unwanted youngsters. So she founded a children's home and became both its manager and guiding spirit. |
| Nearer than the sky By : Greenwood, Tammy Summary : A novel that opens with the narrator's childhood memory of being struck by lightning starts the reader off with expectations of something unusual and ominous. A summons from her sister who needs help with their mother brings her physically back to the place where she was formed and, in many ways, that she has never left. Her mother, the sister (who exhibits the same bizarre, dangerous behavior as their mother), the memory of their brother, and the lightning that has left her feeling that she can "smell" the truth are always with her. |
| Of Sound Mind By : Ferris, Jean Summary : Jean Ferris gives the tried-and-true coming-of-age story an unusual and refreshing twist with this young adult novel about a high school senior who is the only "hearie" in his deaf family. Frustrated daily by his family's demands and depressed by the silence that dominates his house, Theo seeks solace with thoughtful, purple-haired Ivy. |
| One Night By : Qualey, Marsha Summary : Kelly Ray, a heroin addict now in recovery, works as a researcher and all-around gofer for her aunt Kit, host of one of America's top-rated radio talk shows. An errand for Kit brings Kelly to a superstar staying at a tightly guarded hotel, where she by chance encounters Prince Tomas, and before long she and the prince (and, for a while, the superstar) escape Lakverian security for a furtive foray into town. |
| Place last seen By : Freeman, Charlotte Summary : "Freeman works methodically...carefully meting out clues...in a fashion that might seem melodramatic were the parents' accompanying anguish not so honest." |
| Plainsong By : Haruf, Kent Summary : Plainsong, according to Kent Haruf's epigraph, is "any simple and unadorned melody or air." It's a perfect description of this lovely, rough-edged book, set on the very edge of the Colorado plains. Tom Guthrie is a high school teacher whose wife can't--or won't--get out of bed; the McPherons are two bachelor brothers who know little about the world beyond their farm gate; Victoria Roubideaux is a pregnant 17-year-old with no place to turn. |
| Preacher’s Boy By : Paterson, Katherine Summary : As the year 1899 draws to a close, the people in Robbie's rural Vermont community anticipate the coming of the 20th century with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Some fear that the end is near. Others, like Robbie's father, a minister with progressive ideas, thinks "the world's at a sort of beginning." Robbie does not know what to believe. |
| Rundown By : Cadnum, Michael Summary : Jennifer Thayer went for a run, threw herself down a hill, and |