| 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 then filed a false police report, claiming that she fought off a rapist. Now the police are reassuring and sympathetic, and hardly anyone questions Jennifer's story. Friends and family express their concern, and the press is interested. But Jennifer can't hide from the only person who knows what really happened-herself. |
| Seducing Mr. Heywood By : Manning, Jo Summary : Lady Sophia Rowley is a thrice-widowed wild beauty whose latest scandalous escapade has sent her home to north Yorkshire. There, she is stunned to learn that her late husband has made the local vicar legal guardian to her two young sons. |
| Seek By : Fleischman, Paul Summary : High school senior Robert Radkovitz records his memories of the sounds, voices, television shows, and songs of his childhood. Most importantly, he weaves in segments of the one tape he owns of a radio broadcast that contains his long-absent father's voice. The title's multiple meanings become clear as Robert seeks clarity about his life through his nearly lifelong search to locate his father, a radio announcer who left before he was born. |
| Shackling Water By : Mansbach, Adam Summary : A talented African-American saxophonist moves from Boston to Harlem to study with the jazz master he idolizes in Mansbach's first novel, a passionate debut that succeeds despite an abundance of plot cliches. Latif Pearson, the young protagonist, gets hooked on the sounds of Albert Van Horn. 19-year-old Latif gets up the nerve to make the move to New York, where he spends his nights watching Van Horn play from the sidelines. The dark side of Latif's debut comes when he takes a job running drugs for the local dealer. |
| Shadow people By : McDonald, Joyce Summary : When four angry, isolated teens living in rural northwestern New Jersey coincidentally gather in an abandoned camp building, they form a strange bond and begin to commit crimes together. PW said, "The chilling premise and credible depiction of the gang dynamic propelled by fear will keep the pages turning." |
| Shizuko's daughter By : Mori, Kyoko Summary : Mori returns to her native Japan for a lyrical first novel with the intensity of remembered grief. Yuki's gentle mother commits suicide after assuring the anxious 12-year-old that she is all right. Like her mother Shizuko, to whom she was exceptionally close, Yuki is talented and resilient; but she too is thwarted by a restrictive society and a miserable family situation. For Shizuko, there was no hope--though she loved her daughter, her husband was cold, dictatorial, and usually absent; and though she was once attracted to a more congenial man, she would have lost Yuki in a divorce. Life becomes nearly as bleak for Yuki: her father marries his mistress, who is obsessively antagonistic to Yuki, and he prevents Yuki from communicating with her mother's loving relatives. |
| Shutdown By : Pineiro, R. J. Summary : Erika Conklin can hack her way into any computer--a talent that has turned her into an indentured servant for the FBI. The agency caught her making an illegal entry into classified government files and offered her a Hobson's choice: go to prison for a long time or go to work for them. She's sleepwalking through her long, boring days, fantasizing about the lucrative jobs that might have been hers in Redmond or Silicon Valley. Suddenly a series of high-tech failures, ranging from a bloody railway accident in Florida to an industrial disaster in Texas, kills hundreds of people. |
| Sick puppy By : Hiaasen, Carl Summary : Florida muckraker Hiaasen once again produces a devilishly funny caper revolving around the environmental exploitation of his home state by greedy developers. When budding young ecoterrorist Twilly Spree begins a campaign of sabotage against a grotesque litterbug named Palmer Stoat, he gets much more than he bargained for. |
| Silence is Golden By : Dams, Jeanne M. Summary : The time is 1903; the circus is in town (South Bend, Indiana); and Fritz, a friend of Hilda's younger brother, decides he wants to join up and become a trapeze artist. Then the real trapeze artists, the Stupendous Shaws, disappear. So does Fritz, who eventually turns up hiding in a barn, brutally beaten and claiming that he was abused. |
| Slap Your Sides: a novel By : Kerr, M. E. Summary : As a religious Quaker, Jubal Shoemaker's older brother Bud has registered as a conscientious objector during World War II, and suddenly things change for his family. |
| Snow mountain passage By : Houston, James Summary : Houston follows the events of 1847 through the eyes of James Reed and his daughter Patty. Exiled from the party after he accidentally killed one of its members, Reed made it over the Sierras before snow locked what is now called Donner Pass. His family, however, did not. Along with more than 80 other stranded emigrants, they erected crude cabins below the summit and settled in for a long winter of hunger, cold, madness, and cannibalism, chronicled by Patty Reed in prose of uncommon urgency and even beauty. |
| Soldier's heart By : Paulsen, Gary Summary : In spare, almost biblical prose, Gary Paulsen writes of the horrors of combat in a Civil War novella that puts a powerful, more contemporary spin on Stephen Crane's classic The Red Badge of Courage. Based on the life of a real boy, it tells the story of Charley Goddard, who lies his way into the Union Army at the age of 15. |
| Spellbound By : McDonald, Janet Summary : From the outside, Raven appears to be just another "housing project girl," whose prospects are as bleak as those of her best friend, Aisha. Both teens are high school dropouts, unwed mothers and virtually unemployable but, unlike Aisha, Raven is not content to rely on "the system" for support. |
| St. Patrick's gargoyle By : Kurtz, Katherine Summary : It's bad enough that, with Christmas just around the corner, some "lager louts" have trashed the vaults under St. Michan's church in Dublin. It's worse when Paddy the gargoyle, returning from the Dublin gargoyles' monthly conclave to his own St. Patrick's Cathedral, finds an ambulance and police cars parked outside. Thieves have stolen two silver alms basins and beaten Paddy's favorite verger. Paddy, who like his fellows is an avenging angel reassigned to guard duty, sets off to investigate. |
| Sunday you learn how to box By : Wright, Bil Summary : Wright's first novel is a poignant coming-of-age story about a black youth discovering his homosexual longings. Fourteen-year-old Louis Bowman lives in a housing project in Connecticut, coping with neighborhood ruffians, budding homosexuality, and an ambitious mother, Jeanette Stamps, who places herself above the other project dwellers--and is resented for it. Stamps longs for a middle-class life with a home of her own and a son who is like other boys his age. |
| Taf By : Callan, Annie Summary : In her first novel, Callan's experience as a poet shines throughout a narrative that is both mythical and realistic. In the second decade of the 20th century, barely adolescent Taf leaves her mother and abusive stepfather's home, spurred by the fear that she has brought harm to her infant half brother. |
| Tender By : Hobbs, Valerie Summary : Fifteen-year-old Liv's life undergoes seismic upheaval when her grandmother, the strong, urbane woman who raised her, dies and leaves her to reconnect with her estranged father. Understandably bitter as well as grieving, the teen must leave New York City, her best friends, and her usual haunts and habits to meet the man who deserted her when his wife died in childbirth. |
| The body of Christopher Creed By : Plum-Ucci, Carol Summary : Plum-Ucci makes a memorable fiction debut with this soapy tale of a teenager's disappearance from a small New Jersey town asimmer with dirty secrets. Rumors fly when despised, perennial outcast Chris Creed vanishes, leaving an ambiguous e-mail note behind. Did he run? Commit suicide? Was he kidnapped? Murdered? Suspicion quickly centers on 17-year-old Bo Richardson, a hard case with a long juvenile record--but as Bo's naïve schoolmate Alex discovers, finger-pointing is not evidence. |
| The boxer By : Karr, Katherine Summary : Fifteen year old Johnny Woods has struggled to support his family since his father ran off two years before, and sacrifices his schoolingin the process. As a natural-born fighter with street smarts and determination, he discovers boxing. Although boxing is illegal in 1885 New York, Johnny powers his way through every obstacle. |
| The Broken Places: a novel By : Perabo, Susan Summary : Growing up in Casey, Pa., Paul Tucker worships his firefighter dad, Sonny. Then one day, Sonny is called to a collapsed house to rescue 16-year-old Ian Finch, a swastika-tattooed rebel who was experimenting with explosives. While Ian's foot is trapped under the wreckage, another wall falls, and Sonny is caught, too. |
| The cobra event By : Preston, Richard Summary : The Cobra Event is itself a paranoia-fest, a provocative thriller that makes you wonder exactly how much bioterrorism is taking place in the real world. |
| The contract surgeon By : O'Brien, Dan Summary : The latest from Black Hills-based O'Brien (Brendan Prairie, 1996, etc.)about the final hours of legendary Sioux warrior Crazy Horse and of the life of the Irish-American doctor tending to him gamely attempts to give an important moment in western American history the full-blooded treatment it deserves. |
| The Death of Sweet Mister By : Woodrell, Daniel Summary : Set in Missouri hill country, this novel presents one eventful summer in the life of Shug, a friendless, overweight 13-year-old living with his mother in the caretaker's cottage at the local cemetery. Glenda flirts incessantly, even with her son, who is becoming increasingly aware of her charms. Glenda's husband, Red (who may or may not be Shug's father), comes and goes, bringing money occasionally and strife a lot more often. This summer Red is training Shug in the family business, using the juvenile without a record to perform the burglaries that are getting too risky for Red himself. |
| The God File: a novel By : Hollon, Frank Turner Summary : The first thing readers learn is that Gabriel Black is in prison, and has been for 22 years. He tries to find proof of God in jail, a place with "no real freedoms, surrounded everyday by fear, hopelessness, and people who live like rats”. |
| The Gospel According to Larry By : Tashjian, Janet Summary : Josh is bright, articulate, idealistic, and in love with Beth, the girl next door and his best friend since sixth grade. Afraid to declare himself-especially in light of Beth's flirtations with a socially connected but intellectually suspect football player, he pours his energy into a clever Web site, through which his alter ego, Larry, advocates introspection, tolerance, and anti-consumerism. |
| The human stain By : Roth, Phillip Summary : Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk--formerly "Silky Silk," undefeated welterweight pro boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and angered so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. |
| The king of torts By : Grisham, John Summary : The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week. |
| The lucky gourd shop By : Scott, Joanna Summary : When the adoptive mother of three Korean children writes away to discover their past, she has no way of knowing that the real truth of how they became orphans is too complex and too full of hardship to ever come to light. Only we are told the whole story. It is the birth mother whose story is told in this moving novel. Mi Sook herself starts life as an orphan. She is abandoned once by her parents outside the gourd shop and then several more times by a succession of the owners. |
| The Merlin of the Oak Wood By : Chamberlin, Ann Summary : The Merlin of the Oak Wood is the sequel to The Merlin of St. Gilles' Well and book two of the Joan of Arc Tapestries, a series that seeks to be to the Maid of Orleans what Mary Stewart's classic Merlin novels are to King Arthur. Ann Chamberlin's entertaining Joan of Arc novels may be read with equal validity as high fantasy, historical fantasy, or secret history. |
| The Other Ones By : Thesman, Jean Summary : Although it is not immediately obvious, the main character of this odd novel is a witch. On the surface, Bridget is nothing more than an awkward misfit at her high school, an outsider with few friends. She is also one of the Other Ones, a circle of gentle, loving folk who possess great magical powers. The plot revolves around her struggle about whether to accept her true nature or be normal. |
| The perks of being a wallflower By : Chbosky, Stephen Summary : Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angstthe right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. |
| The Reader By : Schlink, Bernhard Summary : The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. |
| The School of Beauty and Charm: a novel By : Sumner, Melanie Summary : The wry comic narrator of this novel will immediately capture teens' attention with her vivid, figurative language. Louise Peppers is the only daughter of a loving, middle-class family in Counterpoint, GA. However, her grief and guilt over the death of her older brother eventually lead her to abuse alcohol, engage in loveless sex, and drop out of college to join the circus. |
| The Way to Somewhere By : Day, Angie Summary : Taylor Jessup is the engaging narrator, a self-effacing, attractive loner from a down-and-out family that gets torn apart when her father leaves her mother to take to the road as a truck driver. |
| The White Horse By : Grant, Cynthia Summary : Heroin has been a constant presence in 16-year-old Raina's life since her childhood. But what Raina refers to as a "pet," or White Horse, has turned her life into an edgy, bleak, hand-to-mouth existence with little stability; first with her abusive addict mother, and later with her boyfriend. |
| The Yokota Officers Club By : Bird, Sarah Summary : Readers travel with 18-year-old Bernie Root as she returns from her freshman year of college in the States to visit her military family, currently stationed on Okinawa. |
| Three Clams and an Oyster By : Powell, Randy Summary : High school juniors Flint McCallister, Dwight Deshutis, and Rick Beaterson's four-man flag football team, Three Clams and an Oyster, is short one shellfish. Cade Savage, their fourth, would rather party than practice. The guys know they have to get serious if they really want to go to Nationals. |
| Thursday’s Child By : Hartnett, Sonya Summary : Set in the harsh mining outback of Australia during the Depression, Hartnett's (Sleeping Dogs) startling coming-of-age story combines narrator Harper Flute's grindingly realistic account of a family mired in poverty with a more surreal tale of her younger brother, Tin. Gifted with an uncanny ability to dig through the earth, Tin creates his own subterranean world that provides him both escape and a link to his struggling family. |
| To ride God's own stallion By : Wilson, Diane Summary : Sold into slavery in ancient Ninevah, Soulai focuses his hopes and affections on Ti, a stallion he cares for in his job as a stable boy. Soulai's owner, Prince Habasle, sees signs of his own favor with the gods in Ti's markings--and then nearly ruins Ti in a disastrous lion hunt. Wilson's plot wanders dilatorily, but her characters are sympathetic and her setting well rendered. |
| Touching spirit bear By : Mikaelsen, Ben Summary : Cole Matthews is angry. Angry, defiant, smug--in short, a bully. His anger has taken him too far this time, though. After beating up a ninth-grade classmate to the point of brain damage, Cole is facing a prison sentence. But then a Tlingit Indian parole officer named Garvey enters his life, offering an alternative called Circle Justice, based on Native American traditions, in which victim, offender, and community all work together to find a healing solution. Privately, Cole sneers at the concept, but he's no fool--if it gets him out of prison, he'll do anything. |
| Treasure at the Heart of Tanglewood By : Pierece, Meredith Ann Summary : Hannah lives in the heart of a forest, the Tanglewood, with a magpie, a badger, and three fox pups as her only companions. The nearby villagers seek her help as a healer but also fear her. |
| Tribute to Another Dead Rock Star By : Powell, Randy Summary : Grady Grennan is finding out that it's pretty hard to get over your mother's death when you hear her voice every time you switch on the radio. Besides being Grady's mom, Debbie Grennan was also a famous heavy-metal rock star. Since her drug overdose, Grady has tried to fill the hole she left in his life with everything from skateboarding to spending more time with his mentally disabled brother, Louie. |
| Trouble Don’t Last By : Pearsall, Shelley Summary : Samuel, the 11-year-old slave who narrates the story, is awakened by 70-year-old Harrison, who has decided to flee their tyrannical Kentucky master. The questions that immediately flood the boy's mind provide the tension that propels the novel: What has precipitated the old man's sudden desire for freedom? |
| Tuck Everlasting By : Babbitt, Natalie Summary : The Tuck family discovers a spring which grants eternal life, decides to protect it for the sake of humanity, and finally meets challenges to their goals in the form of a ten-year-old's inquisitive mind and a greedy stranger who suspects their secret. |
| Up Molasses Mountain By : Baker, Julie Summary : Elizabeth, 15, has always been thoughtfully inclusive toward shunned, cleft-palated Clarence, finding him to be much more intelligent than his hampered speech suggests. Then she becomes distracted by a romance with Johnny, a popular football player. It is 1953, and tension builds in the small West Virginia coal town as the UMW attempts to unionize the mine. |
| Waiting for Christopher By : Hawes, Louise Summary : Feena Harvey's life changes dramatically when her baby brother, Christy, falls victim to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. |
| What About Anna? By : Simeon, Jan Summary : Anna, a 16-year-old girl on the verge of graduating from school in Louvain (Belgium), holds everyone at a distance since the death of her two brothers. Her mother cannot quite extinguish her hope of finding Michael, and her architect father has moved out to his own apartment in Ostend, by the North Sea. Then one of Michael's friends sends Anna a letter with evidence that suggests her brother is alive but he wants her to tell no one, not even her parents. |
| What Janie found By : Cooney, Caroline Summary : The fourth book in Cooney's series about Janie Johnson/Jennie Springer, which began with The Face on the Milk Carton (1990), allows readers to "catch up" by reprising events in Janie's life--the kidnapping, betrayal by Reeve, etc. --in a newspaper article before allowing Janie to finally resolve things. While her Connecticut father is in the hospital, Janie discovers that for years he has supported his daughter Hannah, Janie's kidnapper, all the while claiming to have no idea of her whereabouts. |
| Witness By : Hesse, Karen Summary : It is 1924, and a small Vermont town finds itself under siege--by the Ku Klux Klan. Using free verse, Newbery Medal-winning author Karen Hesse allows 11 unique and memorable voices to relate the story of the Klan's steady infiltration into the conscience of a small, Prohibition-era community. |
| Yokota officer's club By : Bird, Sarah Summary : In this funny and moving novel, Bernie Root is returning to her family for the summer after her first year at college. Her father is stationed in Okinawa, and the rest of her large family is living at Kadena Air Base. Bernie is happy to be back, but it's more obvious to her than ever that her oddball family is the only place she feels she fits in. With the exception of her beautiful, outgoing sister, Kit, Bernie's brothers and sister are as friendless as she is. |
| History and Historical Fiction |
| A WASP among eagles By : Carl, Ann Summary : This book tells about the world of a woman military test pilot during World War II. |
| Alice's tulips By : Dallas, Sandra Summary : After her husband enlists in the Union army, newly married Alice Bullock and her cantankerous mother-in-law are left to tend the family farm. No stranger to hard work and responsibility, Alice undertakes her arduous tasks under the ever-watchful eye of the critical Mother Bullock. To temporarily relieve both her boredom and her fears, she indulges in two equally delightful hobbies: quilting and writing a series of diary-letters to her sister. Although her quilting provides her with a much-needed creative outlet, her matter-of-fact missives offer an often humorous glimpse at the uncertainty and daily hardships endured by women on the home front. |
| An Uncommon Friendship: From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust By : Rosner, Bernat Summary : Rosner, a Jew, was born and raised in the Hungarian village of Tab. In July 1944, when he was 12, Rosner was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Tubach was the son of a German army officer and a member of the Jungvolk, the boy's division of the Nazi Youth Movement. While Rosner endured the degradation and inhumanity of the camps, Tubach suffered only a scarcity of food and air raids that disturbed the family's sleep. Rosner and Tubach recount their early lives in the U.S., including their struggle to get an education. What began as a pleasant, if superficial, friendship between the two men, became in time one of respect and understanding. |
| Andrew Jackson and his Indian wars By : Remini, Robert Summary : Like many of his Scots-Irish contemporaries on the western frontier of the early United States, Andrew Jackson grew up despising and fearing his Indian neighbors. Robert Remini, the National Book Award-winning biographer of Jackson, here turns his attention to Jackson's relations with the Indian nations of the American South. Those relations, he writes, were tempered by the racism of the day, but, as both general and president, Jackson was also unusual in enforcing rights guaranteed to those nations by treaty, even in instances when he disagreed with the terms. Despite his sense of justice, Jackson kept to his conviction that "Indians had to be shunted to one side or removed to make the land safe for white people to cultivate and settle," and during his tenure as president he pursued a policy of forced removal through which the Indian nations were relocated to the so-called Indian territories west of the Mississippi River, which in turn would be overrun only a few years later. |
| April 1865: the month that saved America By : Winik, Jay Summary : This is one of those rare, shining books that takes a new look at an old subject and changes the way we think about it. Winik shows that there was nothing inevitable about the end of the Civil War, from the fall of Richmond to the surrender at Appomattox to the murder of Lincoln. It all happened so quickly, in what "proved to be perhaps the most moving and decisive month not simply of the Civil War, but indeed, quite likely, in the life of the United States." |
| Ashes of Roses By : Auch, Mary Jane Summary : The narrator, 16-year-old Rose Nolan, arrives at Ellis Island with her family, but right away they are beset by obstacles. Her baby brother is diagnosed with trachoma, and her father must take him back to Ireland; her uncle's family, while taking them in, makes it clear they are unwelcome. |
| Bombingham By : Grooms, Anthony Summary : As a group of black soldiers trek across a rice field in an unnamed year during the Vietnam War, banter about home triggers for one soldier, Walter Burke, a Proustlike recollection of his not-so-distant past growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, at the dawn of the civil rights movement. Birmingham, Walter points out to his friends, was dubbed "Bombingham" by the city's black residents for the infamous Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing and other acts of terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan. |
| Bury me not in a land of slaves By : Hansen, Joyce Summary : A complete and involving historical account of the troubled Reconstruction period following the American Civil War, told from the perspective of the freed slaves. |
| Crossing Border Street: a Civil Rights Memoir By : Honingsberg, Peter Jan Summary : Now a law professor at the University of San Francisco, Honigsberg went to New Orleans as a student to provide legal representation for civil rights workers battling Jim Crow laws. At the time, he admits, he was a bit "naive and perhaps even self-righteous," but he was forced to deepen his thinking when confronted with the "complex and multilayered" nature of black-white relations. Still, his fervor for social justice was never doused. |
| Desertion: in the time of Vietnam By : Todd, Jack Summary : Jack Todd made a fateful decision in 1969. A farm boy from a time and place where the obligation to serve in the military was taken for granted, Todd had just completed basic training at an army post near Seattle when he opted to take a Vietnam-veteran friend's advice and slip across the border into British Columbia rather than risk his life fighting in an unpopular war. His life in Canada was by no means easy; he spent time on Skid Row among fellow deserters and draft evaders, many of them parasitical criminals, and, although he was a veteran journalist, he had to start from scratch at a Vancouver paper, slowly winning the acceptance of his colleagues. |
| Fever, 1793 By : Anderson, Laurie Summary : Fever 1793 is based on an actual epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia that wiped out 5,000 people--or 10 percent of the city's population--in three months. At the close of the 18th century, Philadelphia was the bustling capital of the United States, with Washington and Jefferson in residence. During the hot mosquito-infested summer of 1793, the dreaded yellow fever spread like wildfire, killing people overnight. Like specters from the Middle Ages, gravediggers drew carts through the streets crying "Bring out your dead!" |
| Gabriel's story By : Durham, David Summary : In 1871, 15-year-old Gabriel Lynch, his younger brother, Ben, and their mother, Eliza, arrive in Crownsville, Kansas. Gabriel is angry with his lot in life, particularly with his mother, who has taken him from his home in the East and his dream of becoming a doctor to a homestead on the plains and a stepfather, Solomon, whom he has barely met. Soon Gabriel befriends another dissatisfied youth, James, and the two innocent African American boys run away from their troubles in search of adventure. |
| Girl in blue By : Rinaldi, Ann Summary : Determined to leave her unhappy home in rural Michigan, Sarah disguises herself as a boy and joins the Union army. She serves in a hospital, then in combat, where she shoots a man and watches as his heart stop beating. Later, after her identity is revealed, she is invited to join the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Instructed to spy upon a spy, Rose Greenhow, Sarah joins the household as a maid and learns everything she can about the wily woman and her subterfuges. |
| Girl of Kosovo By : Mead, Alice Summary : Zana Dugolli doesn't understand how the rest of the world can send reporters to record the violence that is inflicted daily on Kosovo-born Albanians by the brutal Serbian military, yet do nothing to stop it. In the late 1990s, Zana's rural village is targeted when the Serbian ruling class steps up its efforts to completely wipe out ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. |
| Hornet flight By : Follett, Ken Summary : An old-fashioned tale of ordinary people thrown into the drama and danger of war, Hornet Flight is a rippingly good read. The time is 1941, and British bombers attacking Germany are being blown out of the sky in horrific numbers. How do the Nazis know they're coming? |
| Last seen in Massilia By : Saylor, Steven Summary : Brilliant evocations of ancient Rome, deft plotting, and wry characterization mark Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa historical mysteries. In each, narrator/detective Gordianus the Finder, by virtue of his ability to solve puzzles plaguing the intrigue-filled reign of Julius Caesar, occupies a front-row seat at Roman battles and bacchanals. Gordianus is in but not of Caesar's world, giving him a keen eye for hypocrisy and an acerbic wit much like Inspector Morse at Oxford. |
| Lovely green eyes By : Lustig, Arnost Summary : A Feldhure, or army prostitute, working in Feldbordell No. 232 Ost somewhere near the eastern front during World War II, Skinny is known to the German soldiers who frequent the camp brothel as Lovely Green Eyes. Managing to pass as a gentile and lying about her age the 15-year-old comes by her position after her entire family perishes at Auschwitz-Birkenau. |
| Mississippi Trial, 1955 By : Crowe, Chris Summary : This book tells the story of the lynching of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who reputedly made "ugly remarks" to a white woman, and the nationally publicized trial, in which the murderers were acquitted. |
| Murdered by his wife By : Navas, Deborah Summary : Award winner Navas's nonfiction debut unearths the once-notorious Spooner murder of 1778, an event resonant with the concealed passions and darkness of Colonial Massachusetts. Repulsed by her husband, Bathsheba Spooner became sexually involved with an adolescent soldier from Washingtons army recuperating in her care. The resulting pregnancy induced a desperate situation familiar from our own century: She convinced him and two rogue British soldiers to do in her husband. |
| My Canary Yellow Star By : Wiseman, Eva Summary : In 1944, in Budapest, Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands of Jews from deportation to concentration camps by supplying them with Swedish passports. This novel is told from the perspective of Marta, a Jewish girl whose life is saved on several occasions by his intervention. Unfortunately, what could be a fascinating story about resistance to the Nazis becomes bogged down by too many subplots and underrealized supporting characters. |
| North by night: a story of the underground railroad By : Ayres, Katherine Summary : Through sixteen year old Lucinda's journal entries and letters to and from her family and friends, readers learn about her work with the Underground Railroad in a small Ohio town. The fastpaced, wellresearched narrative provides insight into the social and political mores of the time and the dangers faced by those working to help slaves to freedom. |
| Postcards from No Man's Land By : Chambers, Aidan Summary : Seventeen-year-old backpacker Jacob Todd has come to Amsterdam to honor his grandfather, a soldier who died in a nearby town in World War II. He isn't ready for the seductive assault the city launches on his senses. A stranger flirts with him in a café leaving him with this prophetic scribbled message: Nothing in Amsterdam is what it appears to be. |
| Reaching for the Stars By : Connelly, Mark Summary : Mark Connelly examines the beleaguered reputation of the Command, and delves into its construction and bases. He places the Command's actions in the context of the bombings of London and Coventry, and speculates that without the use of the force, Churchill would not have survived as Prime Minister. |
| Send one angel down By : Schwartz, Virginia Summary : The slave Eliza was born with fair skin and blue eyes. For a reason which she doesn't understand, she is not used as a field hand as others are. Not, that is, until she is older and the master's daughters begin to seriously hate her. |
| Shakespeare's scribe By : Blackwood, Gary Summary : In this sequel to The Shakespeare Stealer (1998), apprentices Widge and Sander arrive at the door of the Globe Theatre and discover a notice announcing the banning of public performances. With the plague on the rise in London, the Lord Chamberlain's Men take their company on the road to look for towns where they can perform. On the way, the troupe finds uses for Widge's skills in medicine and writing, along with the acting and physical labor required for the theater. |
| Shylock’s Daughter By : Pressler, Mirjam Summary : Pressler attempts to answer questions that have plagued Shakespeare scholars for a long time: what were the motivations of Shylock and his daughter Jessica, 16, in The Merchant of Venice? This novel gives an excruciatingly detailed look at life in the Jewish ghettos of Venice in 1594. |
| Sin Killer: a novel By : McMurtry, Larry Summary : Part western, part satire of the English class system contrasted with rugged frontier society, McMurtry introduces the randy, bumbling Berrybender clan, a rich but inept aristocratic British family that journeys up the Missouri River to try to capitalize on the land boom of the 1830s. |
| Soldier Boys By : Hughes, Dean Summary : Parallel stories follow teenagers Spence Morgan, a farm boy from Utah, and Dieter Hedrick, a farm boy from Bavaria. Stirred by complex feelings of patriotism and adolescent insecurities, both young men find themselves fighting for their respective countries in World War II. |
| Terror on the Chesapeake By : George, Christopher Summary : This title traces the abuses of the inhabitants of the Chesapeake Bay by Royal Navy raiding parties under arrogant Rear Admiral George Cockburn during the War of 1812. |
| The Attack on Pearl Harbor By : McNeese, Tim Summary : McNeese begins his discussion of the attack on Pearl Harbor with a helpful explanation of how economic, social, and political conditions in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s led to the country's increasingly aggressive military actions. This opening offers a solid base for the main story: the planning, execution, and effects of the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941. |
| The Balkans: a short history By : Mazower, Mark Summary : The Balkans region is so well known for its ethnic conflicts that it has lent its name to generic definition of divisiveness. Mazower offers a primer on understanding the long and complicated conflict in the region where East meets West. Mazower traces the Asian cultural overtones that persist to this day to fourteenth century Ottoman influence. He explores the forces of World War II and its aftermath that led to the temporary suppression of nationalist sentiment by creating two camps--the Communists versus the free world. But the end of cold war has reinvigorated the divisions for which the region is now famous. |
| The Brigade: an Epic Story of Vengence By : Blum, Howard Summary : Although the official history of the Jewish Brigade Group (a unit of some 5,000 Jews who fought with the British Eighth Army in Italy in the waning months of the conflict) has been written, Blum breaks new ground by looking into the clandestine operations that occurred after the shooting had stopped. Once they learned the true extent of the Holocaust, soldiers of the brigade began using intelligence reports to pinpoint the location of former SS officers and camp guards. |
| The Confessor By : Silva, Daniel Summary : Gabriel Allon, Daniel Silva's protagonist in an interesting series about a Mossad spy who doubles as an art restorer, returns in a fascinating tale of Vatican complicity in the Holocaust. |
| The edge of the sword By : Tingle, Rebecca Summary : In her exciting, poignant first novel set in the late 800s, Tingle imagines one year in the early life of the oldest daughter of King Alfred of West Saxony, Aethelflaed, who became known in Welsh and Irish records as the "most renowned queen of the Saxons." This is Flaed's fifteenth year, the year in which she reluctantly becomes betrothed to her father's friend and ally, Ethelred of Mercia, a man she doesn't know. |
| The English Assassin By : Silva, Daniel Summary : Switzerland's shameful behavior in WWII provides the backdrop for this superbly crafted thriller that puts Silva at the forefront of his generation of foreign intrigue specialists. |
| The gates of the Alamo By : Harrigan, Stephen Summary : The lives of three people intertwine during the siege and fall of the Alamo in 1836, an event that formed the heart and soul of Texas. |
| The Gladiator By : Baker, Alan Summary : While there were a few famous gladiators, such as Spartacus, the majority of these warriors were unnamed slaves, criminals or prisoners of war whose lives were nasty, brutish and short. The games themselves were sponsored by the emperor, whose popularity was often secured by the magnitude of the contests he hosted. |
| The lily theatre: a novel of modern China By : Wang, Lulu Summary : Wang's first novel is a powerful depiction of a girl growing up in Communist China in the '70s during the Cultural Revolution. Lian goes to a reeducation camp with her mother, a history professor. Despite the horrid living conditions in the camp, Lian is given a rare opportunity to study under some of the greatest scholars in China. Most important, Lian learns the truth behind the propaganda she has been taught in school. |
| The marines of autumn By : Brady, James Summary : This novel captures the viciousness of combat, the brutal weather conditions, the forbidding terrain and the Marines' display of extraordinary courage, sacrifice, and valor. |
| The prize game By : Petrie, Donald Summary : Donald Petrie's The Prize Game is readable and exciting, embodies extraordinary research, and has implications that reach far beyond the technical aspects of the law of privateering and naval prize. It reawakens our awareness of facts and rules familiar to our ancestors that influenced their behavior and thus ours. |
| The Santa Fe Trail By : Dary, David Summary : From 1610, when the Spanish founded the city of Santa Fe, to the 1860s, when the railroad brought unprecedented changes: here is the full, fascinating story of the great Santa Fe Trail which ran between Missouri and Kansas and New Mexico--a lifeline to and from the Southwest for more than two centuries. Drawing from letters, journals, expedition reports, business records, and newspaper stories, David Dary--one of our foremost historians of the Old West--brings to life the people of this time. |
| The terrible hours By : Maas, Peter Summary : In The Terrible Hours, Maas reconstructs the harrowing 39 hours between the disappearance of the submarine Squalus during a test dive off the New England coast and the eventual rescue of 33 crew members trapped in the vessel 250 feet beneath the sea. |
| The USS Arizona By : Jasper, Joy Waldron Summary : Coming out in time for the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, this book tells the full story of the battleship Arizona, arguably one of America's most well-known ships. Of the ship's crew that fateful December 7, 1941, 1,177 died when the ship exploded following a fatal bomb hit that detonated the ship's ammunition magazines. |
| The Western front By : Holmes, Richard Summary : Distinguished military historian Holmes' brief introduction to the prime slaughterhouse of World War I is a good thing in a small package. Intended for the intelligent lay reader, the book packs into some 250 pages a summary of the major events on the western front; the various controversies about tactics, technology, generalship, etc.; and a worthy selection of illustrations. |
| Tragic Prelude: Bleeding Kansas By : Zeinert, Karen Summary : A short introduction explains the creation of the Kansas Territory by the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This piece of federal legislation set the stage, or was the prelude, as the author has aptly chosen to call it, for the Civil War. Next comes a map of the area, an annotated listing of the major players, and a chronology. Then the text clearly illustrates how the question of slavery in Kansas, which was to be determined by the people of the state, became a national issue with groups from the North and the South sending money, arms, militia, and settlers to support the various factions in Kansas. |
| Troy By : Geras, Adele Summary : The great battles of the bronze-clad warriors and the clashes between Achilles and Hector and Odysseus are seen at a distance from the walls of the city, where the Trojan townsfolk gather to sit each day and cheer the action like spectators at some archaic football game. |
| Under a war-torn sky By : Elliott, L.M. Summary : This novel celebrates acts of kindness and heroism without glorifying war. American Henry Forester, a young flier with the RAF during World War II, is a complex mix of insecurities, unresolved feelings about his punitive father, and heroic aspiration. |
| Where I’m Bound: a novel By : Ballard, Allen Summary : An engrossing fictional account of the important role of African-American soldiers in the Civil War. Joe Duckett, whose father was African and whose mother was "part colored, part Choctaw," escaped from the Mississippi plantation where he and his family were enslaved. He joins the Union army and the strong and skillful man moves up the ranks of the Third United States Colored Cavalry. |
| Witch Child By : Rees, Celia Summary : During the witch hunts of the mid-1600s, many young Englishwomen died on the gallows, innocent victims of false or hysterical accusations of witchcraft. But what of those women who actually claimed the name "witch" as their own? In the pages of her secret journal, Mary Nuttall reveals what it is like to live in a climate of mistrust and piety in which differences are dangerous and rumors can kill, where she must hide her heritage as a healer and pagan. |
| Year of Wonders: a novel of the Plague By : Brooks, Geraldine Summary : Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? |
| Multicultural |
| A girl named Disaster By : Farmer, Nancy Summary : This 1997 Newbery Honor book, which is set in Africa, is both a survival story and a spiritual voyage. For Nhamo, an 11-year-old Shona girl living in Mozambique in 1981, life is filled with the traditions of her village people. When family circumstances, a ngozi (angry spirit), and a cholera epidemic force her into a horrible marriage, she flees with only her grandmother's blessings, some gold nuggets, and many survival skills. Still, what should have been a two-day boat trip across the border to her father's family in Zimbabwe spans a year. |
| Breaking Through By : Jimenez, Fracisco Summary : Breaking Through chronicles the author's teenage years. At the age of 14, Francisco and his family are caught by la migra (immigration officers) and forced to leave their California home, but soon find their way back. |
| Crossing Jordan By : Fogelin, Adrian Summary : A moving, coming-of-age story of a young white girl who overcomes family prejudice and cultural differences when she befriends a black girl in a small working-class town. |
| Dreaming in Cuban By : Garcia, Cristina Summary : The author's vivid, funny, and endearing first novel moves back and forth between Havana and Brooklyn, and takes us into the heart of the del Pino family, introducing four wonderfully various, strong-willed women who are divided by conflicting political loyalties and bound together by their complicated love for one another. |
| Eva Luna By : Allende, Isabel Summary : EVA LUNA is a lyric tale whose language draws you immediately into the life of the character and her supporting cast. You feel a deep empathy for this woman and you see through her eyes the contradictions that life has to offer. Allende has given us an exceptional work that explores both the spiritual, political and sensual side of a woman caught up in the stream of chaos in her South American country. |
| House of sand and fog By : Dubus, Andre Summary : Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century as a former soldier entraps himself and his family in a scheme to get rich. |
| Like water for chocolate By : Esquivel, Laura Summary : A first novel (the number one bestseller in Mexico in 1990)--liberally sprinkled with recipes and homemade remedies- -from screenwriter Esquivel. Set in turn-of-the-century Mexico, it tells the romantic tale of Tita De La Garza, the youngest of Mama Elena's three daughters, whose fate, dictated by family tradition, is to remain single so that she can take care of her mother in her old age. |
| Lucy By : Kincaid, Jamica Summary : Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple -- handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. |
| Many stones By : Coman, Carolyn Summary : On a two-week pilgrimage to South Africa from Rockville, Maryland, 16-year-old Berry and her estranged father attempt to come to terms with the murder, a year earlier, of Berry's sister Laura when she was volunteering at a Capetown school. Angry, sour, and ferociously cynical, Berry struggles with the concept of "truth and reconciliation," both for South Africa and in her personal life. Her father's efforts to educate his daughter about the country's political climate in the wake of apartheid are met with cold resistance. |
| Mr. Potter By : Kincaid, Jamaica Summary : The novel follows the life of one man, Mr. Potter, from his birth to his death (not necessarily in that order) on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Mr. Potter, a native Antiguan of African descent, works as a chauffeur for a Mideastern immigrant and then for himself. |
| Not without laughter By : Hughes, Langston Summary : A classic of African-American literature, with a new introduction by Maya Angelou, presents a coming-of-age novel filled with lyricism and humor and set in a small Kansas town during the early twentieth century. |
| Pigs in Heaven By : Kingslover, Barbara Summary : When a young Cherokee tribal lawyer comes to the door to claim Taylor's illegally adopted Indian daughter, the white woman must face the fact that her stable life is about to be torn apart. The story follows her and six-year-old Turtle across the West as they flee from the threat of separation and exist on minimum-wage earnings. |
| Princess By : Sasson, Jean Summary : In this consistently gripping work, a Literary Guild alternate selection in cloth, the American-born Sasson recounts the life story of a Saudi princess she met while living in Saudi Arabia, offering a glimpse of the appalling conditions endured by even privileged women in the Middle East. |
| Swift as Desire By : Esquivel, Laura Summary : Laura Esquivel's Swift as Desire, an enchanting and sensuous romance, reflects upon an undying love and the will to overcome an unspeakable tragedy. Swift as Desire is rich with metaphor, coated with magic, and very much about the power of desire. |
| The blood runs like a river through my dreams By : Naadijj Summary : The language and form of this searing book are as powerful as the life experience that inspired them. In a series of essays that cohere into a spiritual autobiography, the author writes prose that's deceptively simple yet rich in metaphor. An wild horse living in the parking lot of a Navajo school becomes a symbol for living creatures' intrinsic wildness, tamed only at a terrible cost. |
| The Feast of the Goat By : Vargas Llosa, Mario Summary : Vargas Llosa's fictional portrait of ruthless Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo focuses on the end of the old "goat's" life. Trujillo, who well understood that his power depended upon the United States, is said to have sought his protection and promotion by paying Congressmen and other U.S. "leeches" the equivalent of the annual military aid his nation received from Washington. Although the United States eventually got fed up with his excesses, its fear of a second Communist regime in the Caribbean kept him in power. |
| The floating girl By : Massey, Sujata Summary : The fourth entry in Massey's series starring Rei Shimura, a Japanese American antiques dealer living in Tokyo, maintains the high standards of its predecessors. Just as The Flower Master provided an in-depth look at the Japanese art of flower arranging, this novel explores the Japanese fascination with animation, or manga. |
| The house of spirits By : Allende, Isabel Summary : Isabel Allende manages beautifly to mingle fiction with reality, and tells the story of a family, and especially the relationship between a girl, who is telling the story, her mother and her grandmother. They are not the only characters in the book, and, as in real life, the story is filled with many different people that come through the door of anyones life, some stay for just a few seconds, some become best friends, some even enemies. |
| The keeper of dreams By : Ford, Peter Summary : The Keeper of Dreams is a juggler's novel: gods, men, kangaroos, tycoons, Japanese soldiers, and Martian robots (to name a few) tumble crazily through the story like a motley assortment of knives and beanbags. When Owen Bird, an amoral Australian billionaire, conspires to steal a tjurunga, or sacred stone, from an Aboriginal tribe, he sets in motion a timeless ritual of revenge. Unless the stone is recovered and the thief punished, the tribe's elders know that their people will die. |
| The Kite Rider: a novel By : McCaughrean, Geraldine Summary : In 13th-century China, a 12-year-old boy prepares to say goodbye to his father, who is about to put to sea as a crew member of the Chabi, and to watch the testing of the wind, which involves strapping a man to a huge kite and seeing if it flies straight up (a good omen for the Chabi's voyage) or at a certain angle (foretelling danger). |
| The Letters By : Yumoto, Kazumi Summary : Chiaki Hoshino returns to the house that she lived in as a small child for the funeral of the landlady and remembers how the already elderly Mrs. Yanagi had helped her come to terms with her father's death. The scary old woman claimed to be a mail carrier who would take letters written to those who had died with her when she passed away. Until then, she would keep them safe in a drawer. |
| The Red of His Shadow: a novel By : Montero, Marya Summary : In her retelling of the true and tragic love story of Simil Bolosse and Zul Montero illuminates the world of Haitian Voudon. At the age of 12, Zul, the wild and willful only surviving daughter of a cursed family, is anointed mambo, or priestess, of a powerful Dominican Voudon community. |
| The spirit catches you and you fall down By : Fadiman, Anne Summary : Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." |
| The sugar island By : Lamazares, Ivonne Summary : A novel of Cuba in the 1960s. A "slippery heart" is how Tanya thinks of her mother, and her love for the woman is shadowed by distrust. When her daughter was five, Mama ran off to join the revolution, leaving Tanya with her grandmother. Mama reappeared a year later, pregnant and disenchanted. From then on, she is determined to leave Cuba for a better life; the stronger her determination, the stronger Tanya's opposition becomes. |
| Walk Across the Sea By : Fletcher, Susan Summary : Eliza Jane McCully's father maintains a lighthouse perched on a picturesque island along the coast of northern California in 1886. Twice a day, the tide withdraws, leaving a rocky isthmus between the island and the mainland. The 13-year-old loves to observe the delicate creatures collected in the tide pools, for just a few hours before the sea covers them again. |
| Zazoo By : Mosher, Richard Summary : One wispy October dawn, a boy on a bike came and went. Little did almost-14-year-old Zazoo know that this inquisitive, bird-watching bicyclist would hold the key to her past and open a window to the future as well. The orphaned Zazoo lives alongside a canal with her loving adoptive grandfather, who brought her from Vietnam to his French village when she was just 2 years old. |
| Mysteries, Crime, Thrillers or Suspense |
| A conventional corpse: a Claire Malloy mystery By : Hess, Joan Summary : When one of the convention attendees dies in a suspicious accident, and Roxanne Small turns up at the bottom of a cistern with a severe case of shattered skull, Claire decides that selling books to rabid fans takes second place to ferreting out the unlovely skeletons in the publishing world's closet. A Conventional Corpse finds Claire in typically acerbic form; Joan Hess is a master at presenting a decidedly cockeyed world in precise and amusing language. |
| A Winter Haunting By : Simmons, Dan Summary : A once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage -- and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where he hopes to find peace in isolation. But private demons are now twisting his reality into horrifying new forms. |
| Bleeders: a Nameless Detective novel By : Pronzini, Bill Summary : Hired to safeguard a blackmailed husband's final payoff, Nameless is almost killed and his client is murdered. In addition, the money, the husband, the husband's mistress and a vicious killer all go missing. Nameless has patrolled the mean streets of San Francisco for a long time, and nobody knows them better or performs the traditional PI role better. |
| Bone House: a Novel By : Tobin, Betsy Summary : A maid in early 17th-century rural England investigates the death of the village prostitute in this elegant, haunting debut novel. |
| Compass in the blood By : Coles, William Summary : College freshman Dee Armstrong has written a prize-winning paper on a 1902 scandal involving Katherine Soffel, wife of a prison warden who purportedly helped the notorious Biddle brothers escape, was sent to jail, and then lived out her life in obscurity. But flamboyant TV journalist Harriet "Harry" Bromfield thinks there may be another side to the story and hires Dee to dig up the facts of the case. |
| Concrete Desert By : Talton, Jan Summary : In order to make ends meet, David Mapstone teaches history and researches an unsolved, 40-year-old murder case for the Phoenix sheriff's office. Serendipitously, the old murder of the then-governor's niece shows unnerving similarities to the recent disappearance and murder of his college lover's younger sister. Could both murders be the work of the same person? Could the governor's family be involved, or could the murders be attributable to serial murderers? |
| Creature comforts: a dog lover's mystery By : Conant, Susan Summary : Canine-crazy sleuth Holly Winter is back to solve another crime--that is, if she can remember who she is. Waking up to find herself hurt and on the edge of a cliff, Holly has no memory of what or who caused her fall. In fact, at first, she can't even remember her two Alaskan Malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi. As her memory comes back bit by bit, Holly realizes that she almost met the same fate as a man who died from a similar fall just before hers. Helping her investigate what happened are her blustery father, Buck, and the ever-charming dogs. |
| Diamond dogs By : Watt, Alan Summary : Driving home from Fred's house in his father's car, Neil hits and kills a boy who is walking home from the party. Drunk and disoriented, Neil stuffs the body in the trunk, drives home, and passes out. When the body disappears from the trunk, Neil knows his father has found the body and hidden it, although not a word about this passes between them. Since Neil's father is the sheriff of the town, he is called in by the dead boy's family to find their missing son. |
| Drowning Ruth By : Schwarz, Chrisina Summary : This beautifully written mystery is set at the end of World War I, when soldiers were returning home shell-shocked and exhibiting all the signs of post traumatic stress syndrome, afflictions for which, in those days, there were no names. |
| Evan can wait: a Constable Evans mystery By : Bowen, Rhys Summary : When a documentary film crew arrives in the Welsh village of Llanfair to try to raise a WWII German bomber sunk in a lake, Constable Evan Evans finds he has more to do than simply keep the curious at bay in this light police procedural. The film's arrogant and conceited director, Grantley Smith, manages to offend just about everyone, including Evan. To complicate matters, Grantley's partner on the project, Edward Ferrers, turns out to be the ex-husband of Evan's sweetheart, Bronwen Price. |
| Firestorm By : Barr, Nevada Summary : A raging fire in a national park seems an unlikely setting for a murder, but that's exactly the circumstances that crime-fighting park ranger and medic Anna Pigeon confronts in this mystery thriller. A suspicious fire breaks loose in Northern California's Lassen Volcanic Park and Pigeon assists in battling the blaze and treating the wounds of other fire fighters. As if that's not enough, Pigeon finds herself without food and water trapped with a group of fire fighters, one of whom is a murderer. She tries to figure out who the culprit is before he, or the weather, strikes again. |
| Five card stud: a Jake Hines mystery By : Gunn, Elizabeth Summary : The balance between personal information and investigatory detail is a delicate one in any detective novel, but it is especially crucial in a police procedural, where we expect more nuts and bolts than usual, but we also need to identify with the characters as human beings, not just as cops. One of the hallmarks of Gunn's excellent series starring Minnesota detective Jake Hines is the way she manages this crucial juggling act. |
| Hard Road: a Cat Marsala Mystery By : D’Amato, Barbara Summary : You're off to see the wizard in this delightful Oz-themed mystery, the ninth in the Cat Marsala series. As freelance journalist Cat is squiring her young nephew, Jeremy, around a mythical Oz festival in Chicago's Grant Park (would that such a festival actually existed!), two people die before her eyes, one a stabbing victim. |
| In the presence of the enemy By : George, Elizabeth Summary : In her previous novels, including the bestselling Playing for the Ashes, George has developed the characters of forensic scientist Simon St. James, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers to a fine degree. In this, her eighth novel, the secret love child of an ambitious politician and a sleazy tabloid publisher is kidnapped. When Scotland Yard gets involved, Lynley and Havers must elude death as they search for the child and her kidnappers. An insightful and haunting novel of ideals corrupted and retribution visited upon the heads of the innocent. |
| Listen to the silence By : Muller, Marcia Summary : Private Investigator Sharon McCone undertakes a personal probe in the continuation of this mystery series. While going through her deceased father's papers, McCone discovers documents describing her adoption. |
| Missing Joseph By : George, Elizabeth Summary : Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead--a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas. |
| Mystic River By : Lehane, Dennis Twenty-five years ago, Dave Boyle got into a car. When he came back four days later, he was different in a way that destroyed his friendship with Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus. Now Sean's a cop, Jimmy's a store owner with a prison record and mob connections, and Dave's trying hard to keep his demons safely submerged. When Jimmy's daughter Katie is found murdered, each of the men must confront a past that none is eager to acknowledge. |
| Open season By : Box, C. J. Summary : When a well-known poacher, with whom he has humiliatingly tangled, suddenly turns up dead in his own backyard, Joe finds himself at the top of a downward path that, first, will lead to more bodies and then will put his entire family into peril. |
| Queen of Ambition By : Buckley, Fiona Summary : Ursula Blanchard, lady-in-waiting and espionage agent to Queen Elizabeth I, shows her usual flare in dealing with murder and intrigue in Buckley's fifth engrossing Elizabethan mystery. |
| Savage Run By : Box, C.J. Summary : Joe is called to the scene when an exploding cow kills a famous ecoterrorist, Stewie Woods, and his bride of three days, who were peacefully spiking trees. A visit to the cow's pugnacious owner leaves Joe defensive, angry, and curious: Why doesn't the rancher ask any questions about the bizarre accident that happened on his land? |
| Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra By : Vanneman, Alam Summary : A cousin of Dr. Watson's late wife travels to Baker Street from Singapore to consult Sherlock Holmes regarding her husband's mysterious suicide. That consultation leads to another death under seemingly impossible circumstances, and to Holmes's decision to journey to Singapore to investigate both crimes. |
| Silent to the bone By : Konigsburg, E L Summary : What happened on Wednesday, November 25, 2:43 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, to cause Branwell Zamborska to become mute? All anyone knows is that he called 911 because his baby sister, Nikki, had stopped breathing, and when he was unable to speak to the operator, Vivian, the English au pair, came on the line to say that Branwell had dropped the baby and shaken her. His best friend, Connor, begins visiting him at the juvenile behavioral center, where he has been sent while Nikki remains in a coma at the hospital. |
| Slayer of Gods By : Robinson, Lynda Suzanne Summary : Meren is commanded by the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding Nefertiti's untimely demise. |
| Smoke-Filled Rooms By : Nelscott, Kris Summary : Smokey Dalton is a man on the run, and he's got something to hide. This thriller moves adroitly through the sweltering heat and simmering racial tension of the summer of 1968, when the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago. |
| Summer of pearls By : Blakey, Mike Summary : Ben Crowell remembers the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush of 1874. He was fourteen that year, and his home, the riverboat community of Port Caddo, was dying. By the end of the summer, the pearl boom was over, Port Caddo was doomed, and the mystery over who killed Judd Kelso began. It took Ben forty years to solve the mystery, and once he did, the proof came only for him to witness. He is the only living soul who will know what happened that September night in 1874. |
| The Analyst By : Katzenbach, John Summary : Starks must solve a riddle, he is told. He must find out whose life he ruined within two weeks. If he does not, he must kill himself. If he does not kill himself, then those nearest and dearest to him will be killed. |
| The bottoms By : Lansdale, Joe Summary : This novel is a departure for Joe Lansdale, who is as well known for his suspense, horror, and westerns as he is for his crime fiction. He enters Harper Lee territory in The Bottoms, although if you know Lansdale's work you will know his tale will be as dark as it can get. |
| The Boy in the Burning House By : Wynne-Jones, Tim Summary : Fourteen-year-old Jim Hawkins's father, Hub, has disappeared, and Ruth Rose, the pastor's stepdaughter, tries to convince him that Fisher killed Hub. If that possibility isn't unsavory enough, Jim discovers that his dad and Fisher were both involved in a fire that killed another teenage boy 30 years before. It is the unraveling of this long-hidden mystery that gives The Boy in the Burning House its page-turning edginess. |
| The idealists By : Carlisle, Henry Summary : In The Idealists, Henry Carlisle and his wife, Olga Andreyev Carlisle, take the Russian Revolution as backdrop for their tale of romance, revolutionary derring-do, and twenty-twenty historical hindsight. The main characters here are the Nevsky family: Vasily, the peasant leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party; his wife, Anna, an enlightened former member of the bourgeoisie; and their 9-year-old daughter, Marina. The action begins in 1909 and follows the family's fortunes through the start of the uprising in 1917. |
| The wrong dog By : Benjamin, Carol Summary : Sophie Gordon, a special-education teacher with epilepsy, hires sleuth and dog trainer Rachel Alexander to help her find a doctor who cloned a white bull-terrier puppy from Blanche, Sophie's ailing seizure-alert dog. The puppy cannot detect seizures, and Sophie wants to alert the doctor. But just after Rachel and her pit bull, Dash, take the case, Sophie dies suspiciously, and shadowy criminals pursue Rachel. |
| Winter and Night By : Rozan, S.J. Summary : When Bill receives a call from the New York City police telling him that his teenage nephew, Gary, is in jail and has asked for him, Bill is certainly surprised, especially because he has had no contact with his sister, Gary's mother, in some time. |
| Poetry |
| 100 great poems by women By : Kizer, Carolyn Summary : Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carolyn Kizer has compiled the 100 best poems by women, from the 15th century to the present. Although the book contains many of the obvious choices -- poems by Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, and Adrienne Rich -- it is Kizer's selection of lesser-known but extraordinary poets that makes this collection stand out. |
| Healing Earthquakes By : Baca, Jimmy Santiago Summary : A series of small poems divided among five books, it explores the history of love in the poet's personal relationships: in his childhood community, his mother, and brother, and the first woman with whom he found love. |
| Sailing Alone Around the Room By : Collins, Billy Summary : The surface structure of these poems by the Poet Laureate of the United States appears simplistic, but subtle changes in tone or gesture move the reader from the mundane to the sublime. |
| The road not taken By : Frost, Robert Summary : No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. From The Road Not Taken to Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, he refined and even defined our sense of what poetry is and what it can do. T. S. Eliot judged him the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living, and he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes. |
| Science Fiction or Fantasy |
| 2061: odyssey three By : Clarke, Arthur Summary : In 2061, Heywood Floyd must once again confront Dave Bowman, a newly independent HAL, and the limitless power of an unseen alien race that has decided that Mankind is to play a role in the evolution of the galaxy--whether it wants to or not. Continuing the spellbinding excitement begun in 2001: A Space Odyssey. |
| A Crown of Swords By : Jordan, Robert Summary : The seventh volume of Jordan's bestselling high fantasy series carries on the tradition of colossal, dauntingly complex storytelling established by the previous entries. In a richly woven post-holocaust world where magic is normally a woman's monopoly and a man who can use it is a menace, Rand al'Thor, a sheepherder, discovered that he could "channel"; he and his companions have gone on to set their world aflame. |
| A Matter of Profit By : Bell, Hilari Summary : The Vivitare are warriors-at least, the men are. Women have little power. Ahvren, 18, is a decent fighter, but dreads the thought of heading off to conquer another planet, while his foster sister, Sabri, who would actually make a brilliant warrior, dreads the thought of marrying the emperor's heir, who is weak and abusive. |
| A Paradigm of Earth By : Dorsey, Candas Jane Summary : An emotionally wounded woman finds connection, community, and her own sense of humanity in this powerful and beautifully written novel. Morgan Shelby has lost her parents, her lover, and her joy in life. |
| Abandon in place By : Oltion, Jerry Summary : Rick, a young astronaut in an aging Shuttle program, is mourning the loss of NASA's glory days of manned space exploration when he sees something impossible-a new Saturn V rocket blasting off from a derelict Apollo launch site long designated "abandon in place." Soon ghost rockets are embarking regularly from it. The space agency orders Rick to destroy the next Saturn, but he takes control of the mystery ship instead. |
| Among the Imposters By : Haddix, Margaret Peterson Summary : Continuing the story of Luke Garner, a third child born under a futuristic government that only allows two children per family, this sequel to Among the Hidden picks up with Luke finally out of hiding and going to boarding school under an assumed identity. |
| Bug Park By : Hogan, James Summary : Eric Heber and his wife, Vanessa, are on the cutting edge of technology, using direct connection between the human brain and mecs--tiny insect-scale robots--to explore a whole new world of experience and knowledge. But someone is out to steal this bold new science and pervert it to their own uses. |
| Dancing with an alien By : Logue, Mary Summary : A teenage boy from outer space travels to earth on a mission to help save his planet, and ultimately he falls in love, causing his mission to fail. |
| Daughter of the forest By : Marillier, Juliet Summary : At the heart of this surprisingly accomplished first novel, first book of the Sevenwaters trilogy, is a retelling of an ancient Celtic legend. Marillier's story, however, is much more than a slightly disguised fairy tale. Young Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Irish Lord Colum of Sevenwaters, a domain well protected from invading Saxons and Britons by dense forest where, legend says, fey Deirdre, the Lady of the Forest, walks the woodland paths at night. Colum is first and foremost a warrior, bent on maintaining his lands against all outsiders. |
| Dr. Franklin’s Island By : Halam, Ann Summary : Semirah Garson is certain that nothing could ever be more horrific than what she has just lived through: a plane crash in the middle of the ocean followed by the shocking discovery that she and the other survivors are stranded on an apparently deserted island But she's wrong. |
| Fire bringer By : Clement-Davis, David Summary : The tale is set in old and mystical Scotland where the natural structure of the deer herds is threatened. An anterless, evil Drail (dragon) has taken over as Lord of the Herd. His power increases his control over a close and loyal group of strong males, the Dralia. Into this tyranny, a defenseless fawn, Rannoch is born; the foretold oak leaf blaze is on his brow. |
| Flanders By : Anthony, Patricia Summary : Patricia Anthony's previous novels, from her 1993 debut, Cold Allies, until recently were all SF with a disturbing grasp of alienness and dislocation. Now Flanders brings us close to another kind of alien--Travis Lee Stanhope, farm boy, scholar, and a U.S. volunteer among the strangely accented British soldiers of the Great War. He tells his story in eloquent, pungent letters to a brother at home, moving from the beauty of spring in 1916 France to the dank hell of the trenches: mud, rats, lice, gas, foulness, death. |
| Hammerfall By : Cherryh, C. J. Summary : From childhood, Marak has been steeped in the ways of war and hatred for the Ila, the mysterious woman who rules Marak's world with an iron fist. But when the shameful "madness" that has plagued Marak his entire life is exposed, he is involuntarily drawn into the service of the Ila, for she doesn't believe he is insane. She urges him to surrender to the clamoring voices and visions that incessantly urge him to go east--now! hurry!--toward an envisioned silver tower in the desert. |
| Kingdom of Cages By : Zettel, Sarah Summary : Humanity has spread among the stars, colonizing new worlds. Now the species is in danger of extinction from the interrelated disasters of virulent new diseases and collapsing ecosystems. Only Pandora is unaffected, and the Pandorans are fanatically determined to preserve both their health and the pristine ecosystem. |
| Passage By : Willis, Connie Summary : Most of us would rather not spend a lot of time contemplating death, but the characters in Connie Willis's novel Passage make a living at it. Joanna Lander is a medical researcher specializing in Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and how the brain constructs them. Her partner in this endeavor is Richard Wright, a single-minded scientist who induces NDEs in healthy people by injecting a compound that tricks the brain into thinking it's dying. Joanna and Richard team up and try to find test subjects whose ability to report their experiences objectively hasn't been wrecked by reading the books of pop-psychologist and hospital gadabout Maurice Mandrake. |
| Peace on earth By : Lem, Stanislaw Summary : For die-hard Lem fans, any new work featuring his lovably hapless hero, Ijon Tichy, of Star Diaries fame, is a welcome treat. Here, the legendary polymath and veteran of uncountable universe-spanning misadventures stays closer to home, on a mission to uncover secret information about the reigning superpowers' new breed of intelligent, entirely autonomous weapons. While visiting the moon, where all nations' military arsenals are now located, one high-tech weapon slices through Tichy's corpus callosum, severing the left and right hemispheres of his brain. |
| Prospero's children By : Siegel, Jan Summary : Fern and Will, the children of a feckless art dealer, find themselves sharing the remote farmhouse he has inherited with his current, and sinister, mistress. Something snuffles outside; a stone in the garden, which bears an odd resemblance to a passing tramp, moves in the night; a wolfish dog befriends them. Dreams and sleepwalking and the most remarkable videotape ever watched provide 16-year-old Fern with evidence that the world is not the controllable, rational place she thought it was--and that her own future is to be altogether more remarkable, and full of pain and wisdom, than she has expected. |
| Secret Sacrament By : Jordan, Sherryl Summary : Born in the urban city-state of Navora, Gabriel is also strongly drawn to the tribal society of Shinali that survives on the plain outside the city gates. He is haunted by a secret guilt, a moment from his childhood when out of fear he failed to help a dying Shinali woman. |
| The Longest way Home By : Silverberg, Robert Summary : A coming-of-age story set on a distant planet. Joseph has been trained all his life to be the next Master of his House (a sort of feudal state). The indigenous species and the humans seem to have worked out a stable, amicable system for sharing the planet, but while Joseph is visiting relatives on a faraway continent, "the Folk," a human worker caste, suddenly rebel, killing all the Masters. |
| The pickup artist By : Bisson, Terry Summary : As a pickup artist, Hank Shapiro has the responsibility of confiscating works of art slated for elimination to make room for works by new artists. When he succumbs to the urge to listen one more time to a forbidden Hank Williams song, he becomes a fugitive and discovers a strange underground organization dedicated to saving the past. |
| The Ropemaker By : Dickinson, Peter Summary : The Valley is left alone by barbarian marauders from the north and by the powerful, greedy Empire to the south. Old stories explain why. Although these ancient legends are hardly believed any more, Tilja's mother still goes into the forest to sing to the cedars and Tahl's grandfather talks to the waters that flow along the northern border. |
| The Rover By : Odom, Mel Summary : Edgewick Lamplighter is a third-level librarian in the basement of the Great Library. When the Master sends the halfling to deliver a package/letter to a warder on the Yonderling Docks, his curiosity gets the best of him. Wick follows the man down an alley and saves him when he is attacked by creatures called Boneblights, sent by the evil Lord Kharrion. |
| The Seeing Stone By : Crossley-Holland, Kevin Summary : A 13-year-old growing up in 12th-century England, Arthur soon discovers that his life parallels that of another Arthur, son of Uther centuries past, the legendary boy king "who was and will be." The second son of Sir John de Caldicot, lord of a manor near the Welsh border, Arthur narrates his everyday life in the Marchland in 100 clipped chapters of crisp, melodic prose. But his destiny entwined with that other, ancient Arthur is revealed only in snatches, after he receives (courtesy of our old friend Merlin) a piece of obsidian, a seeing stone, through which a well-woven story within a story unfolds. |
| The Serpent’s Shadow By : Lackey, Mercedes Summary : This story takes place in the London of 1909, and is based on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Lackey creates echoes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pays affectionate homage to Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey (who plays an important role under a thin disguise), and turns the dwarves into seven animal avatars who masquerade as pets of her Eurasian heroine, Maya. |
| The song of the earth By : Nissenson, Hugh Summary : John Firth Baker (2037-2057) was one of three children genetically engineered and experientially guided to be artistic prodigies. Ten years after his murder, an art historian who conducted the only interview with Baker presents this biographical collage of relevant reportage and documents, entries from Baker's and his mother Jeannette's journals, and excerpts from the Baker interview and others with his closest associates. |
| The white plague By : Herbert, Frank Summary : It is tremendously frightening that this might someday soon become a book for our times. A molecular biologist watches from a building window as his wife and two daughters get blown to bits during a terrorist bombing on the street below. This triggers a vengeful madness that culminates in his developing a disease and infecting those he sees as responsible: The countries of Ireland, Libya, and England. |
| The wolves of Calla By : King, Stephen Summary : The Dark Tower series was begun by King when he was a freshman in college. He expects to finish the last book of the series within two years. Begin with Book 1, "The Gunslinger" or select any book from the series. |
| The Xenocide Mission By : Jeapes, Ben Summary : When a supposedly secret orbiting surveillance station is attacked by the Kin, a ferocious species that had nuked civilization on their own neighboring planet into oblivion, junior officer Joel Gilmore and his horselike "Rustie" associate Boon Round flee to that "Dead Planet," where several surprises await. |
| Vitals By : Bear, Greg Summary : You'd think the secret of eternal life would be an eagerly awaited boon to humanity. Yet when cutting-edge researcher Hal Cousins travels deep below the ocean's surface in a two-man submersible, seeking primitive lifeforms that may hold the key to immortality, his pilot attacks him. Barely surviving, Hal maneuvers the sub to the surface--and finds a fellow scientist has shot up his research ship. Then his lab is destroyed, his twin brother leaves a mysterious message saying they're both being pursued by an unknown force, and his sister-in-law calls to tell him his twin, who is also researching life extension, has been murdered. |
| Society, Wellness and Science |
| A Cold Case By : Gourevitch, Philip Summary : Frank Koehler was only 15 when he shot a friend in the back for double-crossing him. That's the sort of guy he was--violent, Mob-connected, and remorse-free. |
| A Dog Year By : Katz, Jon Summary : Katz describes his adoption of Devon, a broken-spirited two-year-old border collie. From Devon's frenzied entrance into Katz's life, this memoir is warm and heartfelt. |
| A Fly for the Prosecution By : Goff, M. Lee Summary : This is a lively and informative firsthand account of forensic entomology in the United States. Goff is a consultant to the Medical Examiner of Honolulu. He is especially well qualified to write this book because of his active involvement in many criminal investigations and his leadership in a profession that has come into its own within the past two decades. |
| Amazing grace By : Kozol, Jonathan Summary : Alicea and Kozol paint a vivid portrait of life in one of America's most impoverished neighborhoods, New York City's South Bronx. While telling similar stories, each narrative has its own unique flavor and characteristics that reveal the crushing nature of poverty in America and recount the lives of those who rise above it. |
| Awakening to nature By : Cook, Charles Summary : Arguing that modern society suffers from emotional and mental deprivation as a result of its alienation from nature, Cook suggests ways to get back in touch with flora, fauna, diverse habitats, and other aspects of the environment. |
| Blue Jean By : Handel, Sherry S. Summary : Handel sought to provid a magazine written and edited by young women from around the world. The result was a magazine whose purpose is to empower girls and young women to define themselves through their own medium. |
| Brown v. Board of Education By : Patterson, James T. Summary : In one of the most explosive legal decisions of the century, Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in America's public schools was unconstitutional. The chief attorney for the African American families who initiated the legal challenge was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black person to serve as a Supreme Court Justice. In this brief, detailed book, historian James Patterson reconstructs the complex history of the watershed 1954 case, from its legal precursors to its troubling legacy. |
| Don't sweat the small stuff for teens By : Carlson, Richard Summary : Richard Carlson has written numerous books encouraging folks not to "sweat the small stuff", and his title for teens is as warm, wise, and witty as his previous works. His tone is one of an older family friend who manages to advise while still maintaining the minimum level of coolness that teens require from those who intend to guide them into adulthood. |
| Famous Crimes Revisited By : Lee, Henry C. Summary : In "Famous Crimes Revisited," renowned forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee, and Jerry Labriola, M.D. re-examine the O.J.Simpson, Vincent Foster, JonBenet Ramsey, Lindbergh baby, Sam Sheppard, JFK, and Sacco-Vanzetti cases. Surprising questions are raised and rare photographs provided. |
| Fingerprints By : Beavan, Colin Summary : Beavan's lively debut explores developments in criminal forensics that culminated in the first prosecution based on fingerprint evidence, in London in 1905. He opens his narrative with the wanton double murder of the elderly Farrows and the crude initial investigation. Beavan, a writer for Esquire and other magazines, examines at length the slow scientific inroads into 19th-century law enforcement. |
| Fish Behavior in the Aquarium By : Reebs, Stephan Summary : Fish look extremely relaxed from our side of the fish bowl, but underlying their observed tranquility is a world of complex behavior that has been the subject of much research. |
| Fueling the teen machine By : Shanley, Ellen Summary : Teenagers’ eating habits keep fast-food restaurants flourishing but do little to keep the kids themselves in shape and healthy. Fueling the Teen Machine addresses this problem by presenting teens with the latest information on a wide range of food topics. Using a nonpreachy approach the authors, both registered dietitians, cover everything from carbohydrates and vitamins to eating disorders and vegetarianism, along with the new frontier for busy teens: cooking it yourself! |
| Genome By : Ridley, Matt Summary : Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. |
| Healing dreams By : Barasch, Marc Summary : A healing dream is not, as the reader may have figured out, the garden-variety nighttime escapade; it is the powerful dream that is a vision the dreamer would do well to heed and follow. Barasch claims to have coined the phrase to characterize the big dreams that "lead us to embrace the contradictions between flesh and spirit, self and other, shadow and light in the name of wholeness." |
| Killer algae By : Meinesz, Alexandre Summary : French scientist Alexandre Meinesz reports firsthand on his work in invasion biology in Killer Algae, a grim and frightening book. In it, Meinesz recounts a seemingly innocent transaction that has had appalling consequences. In 1980, a curator at the city zoo in Stuttgart, Germany, introduced a hybrid, cold-resistant variety of the alga Caulerpa taxifolia into the zoo's aquarium, where it proved to be a productive source of food. Encouraged, the curator sent a sample to the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, then headed by Jacques Cousteau. During a routine cleaning of aquarium tanks, a quantity of Caulerpa was dumped into the Mediterranean Sea. |
| Living at the edge of the world By : S., Tina Summary : Tina S. spent four years as a teenage homeless drug addict, living in the tunnels of Grand Central Station, stealing, panhandling, hustling, and bingeing on crack cocaine. Tina was introduced to life at the station by April, a rootless teenager who helped Tina escape her dysfunctional family. Their friendship bound them in a spiral of escalating drug use, crime, and violence until April committed suicide at the age of 19. Tina struggled with grief and guilt at April's death, as well as her own. |
| Medicine’s Brave New World By : Hyde, Margaret O. Summary : The exciting first chapter neatly dissects Aldous Huxley's vision of a brave new world in which a totalitarian government controls our lives and replaces it with the exhilarating, and frightening, prospect of a virtually uncontrolled world in which scientific discoveries and decisions will shape human physiology, medicine, and culture. |
| Nickel and dimed By : Ehrenreich, Barbara Summary : With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet. |
| Paris to the moon By : Gopnik, Adam Summary : New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik moved with his wife and son to Paris in 1995 to live and write; they stayed almost five years, through the birth of their second child. Gopnik's essays on Parisian culture, design, food, and the experience of raising an American child in an old and beautiful foreign city are sparkling. This selection of essays (these are unabridged excerpts) ranges from the politics of finding an apartment to a battle to defend a cherished brasserie from an Alsatian restaurant chain and includes Gopnik's poignant reflection that to the ear of his 3-year-old, who speaks perfect French, his own French is that of an immigrant. |
| Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners By : Vare, Ethlie Ann Summary : An informal sequel to Mothers of Invention (1988), Patently Female records some improvement in the recognition of women innovators, a development they're determined to encourage, and their conviction infuses their book with energy and pride. |
| Republic.com By : Sunstein, Cass Summary : Everyone agrees the "marketplace of ideas" makes self-government work, right? Not Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who argues that in the Internet age letting people "consume" only the news they want actually imperils the republic. Sunstein proposes some regulation of Web sites, a conclusion following from his two normative tenets of citizenship in a democracy. |
| Rock and Roll By : Egendorf, Laura K. Summary : Scholarly essays are organized around four major issues: the early days, politics and rock, the dangers of the music, and the future. Articles cover such topics as the influence of black music, protest and feminist rock, drug use by musicians, explicit lyrics, and the effect of technology on music. |
| Run Like an Antelope: On the Road with Phish By : Gibbon, Sean Summary : Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll are all here in this look at the "counterculture" world of Phish fans. The rock band from Vermont has never had a hit record, yet fanatical groupies follow its members from concert to concert with a devotion reminiscent of Grateful Dead fans. |
| Seven daughters of Eve By : Sykes, Bryan Summary : From Eve, the earliest known hominid, discovered in Africa, geneticist Sykes traces a genetic linkage to seven prehistoric European women. A gifted writer, he conveys the excitement and drama of his discovery of strands of DNA that passed unbroken through the maternal line. He names the seven women he found in that line and extrapolates probable lives for them, based on anthropological data, thereby bringing them to life. |
| Stuck in neutral By : Trueman, Terry Summary : Stuck in Neutral is a truly unique journey into the mind of a truly unique character. Shawn McDaniel, who is literally trapped in his own body, will serve as a powerful metaphor for teens who feel cornered by circumstances or their own physical shortcomings. Terry Trueman's first-person portrayal of Shawn is made all the more poignant by the fact that Trueman's own son, Henry, also suffers from cerebral palsy. |
| Ten things I wish I'd known By : Shriver, Maria Summary : Maria Shriver's warmth, humor, and wisdom are evident on every page of this little book. Inspired by her commencement speech at the College of the Holy Cross, the book contains stories and insights that will be helpful, entertaining, and encouraging to graduates at every stage of life. The lessons themselves--"be willing to fail," "stand your ethical ground," "marriage is a hell of a lot of hard work"--are nothing new. What makes them interesting are the life stories that accompany them and Shriver's personable, friendly style. |
| The Casebook of Forensic Detection By : Evans, Colin Summary : This well-organized compendium by Evans covers cases from 1751 to 1991, arranged according to the methodology by which they were solved. Fifteen areas are listed alphabetically, ranging from ballistics through DNA typing, fingerprinting, odontology, serology and toxicology to the still-disputed voiceprint analysis. |
| The Chip By : Reid, T.R. Summary : They're everywhere, but where did they come from? Silicon chips drive just about everything that sucks power, from toys to heart monitors, but their inventors aren't nearly as widely known. Journalist T.R. Reid has thoroughly updated The Chip, his 1985 exploration of the life work of inventors Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, to reflect the colossal shift toward smarter gadgets that has taken place since then. |
| The Code Book By : Singh, Simon Summary : Simon Singh breaks down cryptic messages for the teenage set in The Code Book: How to Make It, Break It, Hack It, Crack It, an adaptation of his bestselling adult title The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptology. He covers actual instances of codebreaking, from its role in the plan to execute Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Navajo code talkers of WWII. |
| The frailty myth: women approaching physical equality By : Dowling, Colette Summary : Dowling, the best-selling author of The Cinderella Complex (1981), postulates that female physical development in the first half of the twentieth century was impeded by the Victorian view of women as frail beings who needed to channel all their energies into childbearing and child rearing. That historical precedent set, Dowling then draws on the latest research to challenge the belief that men are the "stronger" sex. |
| The hot zone By : Preston, Richard Summary : The dramatic and chilling story of an Ebola virus outbreak in a surburban Washington, D.C. laboratory, with descriptions of frightening historical epidemics of rare and lethal viruses. More hair-raising than anything Hollywood could think of, because it's all true. |
| The mysteries within By : Nuland, Sherwin Summary : Medicine has always contained elements of mythology and mysticism. Various ancient civilizations believed that the spleen and uterus moved around in the body when so motivated, that the heart was the center of thought and the liver the source of mood, and that internal organs were independent creatures with their own agendas. Dr. Sherwin Nuland, who has been performing surgery on these organs for four decades, here presents the amazing story of how superstition trumped science for most of medical history. |
| The Riddle of the Compass By : Aczel, Amir D. Summary : Prior to the invention of the compass, a merchant or sailor who wished to cross a large body of water was forced to navigate by studying the winds and stars or by never sailing out of the sight of land. Long ocean voyages were impossible and even sailing the Mediterranean could be a lengthy and hazardous voyage. The compass changed all of this. |
| Wall Street wizard By : Liebowitz, Jay Summary : People make millions of dollars investing in stocks. Why shouldn't you? Although the stock market seems like something reserved for your parents, it's easy for teenagers to get involved and to invest on their own. And Wall Street Wizard will show you how to do it. Teen finance guru Jay Liebowitz explains the ins and outs of investing. With refreshing candor, Jay cuts through the mysteries surrounding investing and reveals his secrets of success. |
| Sports |
| Counting coup: a true story of basketball and honor on the Little Big Horn By : Colton, Larry Summary : On many Indian reservations, high-school basketball has become a popular venue for expressing the pride of Native Americans. Yet for all the promise these young Indian athletes exhibit, few are able to overcome the negative forces--poverty, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, poor education--that surround them. Colton, a former professional baseball player and veteran author, spent 15 months on the Crow reservation in Montana observing the Hardin High School girls' basketball team. He focuses on the players--especially talented Sharon LaForge--and their relationships with their teammates and coaches, but he also explores the social conditions that affect the players' lives. |
| Girls Got Game By : Macy, Sue Summary : A collection of 18 original short stories and poems by women about girls and sports. The "games" these sports enthusiasts write about cover the gamut from softball and basketball to horseback riding, track, soccer, and synchronized swimming. |
| Husky Mania By : Shea, Jim Summary : Shea details exactly how the UConn Huskies women's team went from being perennial losers to national champions and the men's team has achieved one of the most elite basketball programs in the country. |
| Night hoops By : Deuker, Carl Summary : Late-night games of one-on-one between a troubled youth and a more grounded counterpart figure prominently in another basketball story-Bruce Brooks's The Moves Make the Man. Similar scenes of teenage male bonding are featured in this novel, which, despite a somewhat dense and unwieldy plot, will draw fans of sports fiction. Narrator Nick Abbott enters high school determined to play varsity basketball, and difficulties in his personal life-including his parents' recent separation-cannot sway him. |
| Run Patty run By : Cragg, Sheila Summary : It was the first preseason cross-country event, and Patty Wilson was the only girl among fifty runners, and at thirteen, she was one of the youngest. When the gun cracked the air, Patty dashed out with the front group of runners. |
| Safe at second By : Johnson, Scott Summary : In a small town near Albany, New York, Paulie and Todd have been best friends forever. Todd is a marvelous high-school pitcher, surrounded by scouts and acclaim; Paulie is his anchor and sidekick, full of baseball stats and lore. When Todd is hit in a game and loses an eye, we see Paulie's desperate attempts to get his friend back to the mound. |
| Splendor on the Diamond By : Westcott, Rich Summary : Readers who know their baseball oral history are consistently amazed at the detail with which old ballplayers can recall their careers. It's a testament to the passion with which the old-timers played the game, and that passion is on vivid display in this collection of 35 interviews with players who experienced most of their glory days in the years between 1945 and 1970. |
| The boxer's heart: how I fell in love with the ring By : Sekules, Kate Summary : Initially, boxing was a way for Sekules to explore the glorious grit of the gym and to show off to her literary friends ("I hang out with real boxers"). But soon the sport had her hooked. She relished the determination, skill, stamina, and artistry the ring demands of its successful inhabitants. |
| The city game By : Axthelm, Pete Summary : Pete Axthelm follows the 1969-70 season of the New York Knicks and provides a parallel focus on basketball as it was then played in the black neighborhoods of New York City. Throughout, he writes clearly, intelligently, and passionately about the game, bringing alive the players' efforts, accomplishments, and failures. |
| The crunch By : Toomay, Pat Summary : Back before the proliferation of true free-agency and multi-million dollar bonuses for rookies, pro football players were still real people. Former NFL defensive lineman Pat Toomay provides a yeoman's perspective on The NFL of the early 70's and debunks any idyllic image of the Dallas Cowboys, which had characteristics of an evil empire, presided over by Tom Landry, Gil Brandt, and Tex Scrhamm. |
| The girls of summer By : Longman, Jere Summary : In The Girls of Summer, Jere Longman tells the story of the women's team, their rise to world dominance, and their struggle with the United States Soccer Federation (U.S.S.F.) for the support, respect, and salary they deserve. |
| The kid who climbed Everest By : Grylls, Bear Summary : "Everest," writes British climber Bear Grylls, "is no place to prove yourself. The likelihood of reaching the summit is so slim that you're inevitably setting yourself up to be disappointed." |
| The Red Rose crew By : Boyne, Daniel Summary : Boyne (Essential Sculling), a former women's varsity rowing coach at Tufts University, has written an exhilarating story about the early days of the U.S. women's national rowing team. Noting that society in the 1970s was radically different from today's, the author details some of the obstacles faced by women attempting to enter the male-dominated sport of rowing, especially in the Ivy League. |
| Whale Talk By : Crutcher, Chris Summary : T. J. Jones is black, Japanese, and white; his given name is The Tao (honest!), and he's the son of a woman who abandoned him when she got heavily into crack and crank. As a child he was full of rage. |