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Available Titles for Discussion Groups
To reserve a Book Club set, please contact Brice Bush at 932-8516 or bbush@tadl.org.
| Author | Title | Genres | Description (courtesy of Novelist Plus) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Julia Alvarez | In the Time of Butterfiies | Fiction | A fictional account of the young lives of Mirabal sisters Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa, otherwise known in the Dominican Republic as Las Mariposas, describes their suffering and martyrdom in the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship. (2 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Muriel Barbery | The Elegance of the Hedgehog | Fiction Literary Fiction | The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu. (8 copies) |
Melanie Benjamin | Alice I Have Been | Fiction | Octogenarian Alice, who as a child inspired Lewis Carroll's famous Wonderland character, looks back on a life marked by an implacable mother, her halcyon days in Oxford, and the sons who went off to war. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Elizabeth Berg | The Last Time I Saw You | Fiction | Attending a fortieth high school reunion at the sides of former classmates, Dorothy reconnects with old friends with whom she reevaluates her life, choices, and relationships. (12 copies) |
| Harry Bernstein | The Invisible Wall | Non-Fiction | The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up, in a small English mill town, was identical to countless other streets in countless other working-class neighborhoods of the early 1900s, except for the "invisible wall" that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. On the eve of World War I, Harry's family struggles to make ends meet. His father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry's mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams: new shoes that might secure Harry's admission to a fancy school; that her daughter might marry the local rabbi; that the entire family might one day go to America. Then Harry's older sister does the unthinkable: she falls in love with a Christian boy from across the street.--From publisher description. (2 kits, 5 copies each)
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| Kevin Boyle | Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age | Non-Fiction Michigan | Follows the 1925 murder trial of African-American doctor Ossian Sweet, who was accused of murdering a white person during a mob attack on his home, and includes a history of the Sweet family and a portrait of his attorney, Clarence Darrow. 2011-2012 Michigan Humanities Council "Great Michigan Read." |
| Bill Bryson | The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid | Non-Fiction | The author describes his all-American childhood growing up as a member of the baby boom generation in the heart of Iowa, detailing his rich fantasy life as a superhero known as the Thunderbolt Kid and his remarkably normal 1950s family life. (10 copies) |
| Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli | Dead Dancing Women | Fiction Mysteries | First in the Emily Kincaid mysteries set in Northern Michigan. (2 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Tracy Chevalier | Remarkable Creatures | Fiction Historical Fiction | When Mary Anning uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home on the English coast, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight. Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, and in the struggle to be recognized in the wider world, Mary and Elizabeth discover that friendship is their greatest ally. (10 copies) |
| J.M. Coetzee | Disgrace |
Fiction Literary Fiction South African Fiction
| In a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, a fifty-two-year-old college professor who has lost his job for sleeping with a student tries to relate to his daughter, Lucy, who works with an ambitious African farmer. Winner of the Man Book Prize. (10 copies) |
| Jill Ker Conway | The Road from Coorain | Non-Fiction Autobiography | A woman of intellect and ambition describes growing up on an Australian ranch, coping with her father's death and her mother's depression, her intellectual awakening at the university, and her path to becoming the first woman president of Smith College. (4 copies) |
| Peter Ho Davies | The Welsh Girl | Fiction Historical Romance | At the height of World War II, a forbidden romance blossoms between seventeen-year-old Esther Evans, the daughter of a Welsh shepherd, and Karsten Simmering, a troubled young German POW, who questions what he has been fighting for.. (6 copies) |
| Joan Didion | The Year of Magical Thinking | Non-Fiction Autobiography | An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief. (8 copies) |
| Firoozeh Dumas | Funny in Farsi | Autobiography | An autobiography of growing up as an Iranian-American describes the author's family's 1971 move from Iran to Southern California, the members of her diverse family, and their struggle with culture shock. (8 copies) |
| G.B. Edwards | The Book of Ebenezer LePage | Fiction Literary Fiction | Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. (from the backcover) (2 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Amy Greene | Bloodroot | Fiction | Myra Lamb of Bloodroot Mountain has troubling "haint" blue eyes and a grandma whose touch charms people and animals alike. When their neighbor John Odom tries to tame Myra, he meets a with shocking, violent disaster. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Sara Gruen | Water for Elephants | Fiction Literary Fiction
| Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. (2 kits, 6 copies and 5 copies) |
| Bryan Gruley | Starvation Lake | Fiction Mystery Michigan | In the dead of a Michigan winter, pieces of a snowmobile wash up near the crumbling, small town of Starvation Lake -- the same snowmobile that went down with Starvation's legendary hockey coach years earlier. But everybody knows Coach Blackburn's accident happened five miles away on a different lake. (2 kits, 4 copies each) |
| Mark Haddon | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Fiction | Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. (10 copies) |
| Steve Hamilton | Misery Bay | Fiction Mystery Michigan | Two months after an apparent suicide in a place known as Misery Bay, PI Alex McKnight is asked for help from his professional nemesis Sault Ste. Marie police chief Roy Maven. What seems like a simple quest to find a few answers will turn into a nightmare of sudden violence and bloody revenge, and a race against time to catch a ruthless and methodical killer. (1 kit, 5 copies) |
| Jonathan Harr | The Lost Painting | Non-Fiction | Recounts the search for a long-lost masterpiece by Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Caravaggio, following a young graduate student across hundreds of years and four countries to uncover the mystery of "The Taking of Christ." (10 copies) |
| Pam Houston | Cowboys Are My Weakness: Stories | Fiction Short Stories | A collection of short stories about smart, heroic, philosophical women in search of a few good men features a tale of a Jersey girl looking out for a cowboy. (10 copies) |
| Linda Lawrence Hunt | Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's forgotten walk across victorian America | Non-Fiction Biography History | Describes the exploits and adventures of Helga Estby, who, in 1896, walked across America, from Washington to New York, with her teenage daughter Clara in an effort to save her family's farm. (10 copies) |
| William Jamerson | Big Shoulders | Fiction Michigan | During the 1930s, a Detroit teen is sent to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps in the Upper Peninsula. (6 copies) |
| Jhumpa Lahiri | The Namesake | Fiction Literary Fiction | A portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life. (7 copies) |
| Erik Larson | The Devil in the White City | Non-Fiction History Crime | An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.) (2 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Mardi Link | Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town | Non-Fiction Crime Michigan | True story of a nun's murder in Leelanau County. (2 kits, 5 copies) |
| Elizabeth McCraken | The Giant's House: A Romance | Fiction | Befriending an adolescent boy who is ostracized for his unusual height, bereft Cape Cod librarian Peggy Cort finds a soulmate in James and comes to love him as he grows into a man of eight feet. (10 copies) |
| Paula McLain | The Paris Wife | Fiction Biographical Novels | Follows the life of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, as she navigates 1920s Paris. (2 kits, 4 copies each) |
| Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall | Fiction Historical Fiction
| Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price. (2 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Ann Patchett | Bel Canto | Fiction Literary Fiction | When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Marge Piercy | Sex Wars | Fiction Historical Fiction | Coming of age in a post-Civil War New York City tenement flat, Jewish-Russian Freydeh juggles multiple jobs to earn passage for her family, until she learns that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city. (5 copies) |
| Chaim Potok | My Name is Asher Lev | Fiction Literary Fiction | Records the anguish and triumphs of a young painter as he emerges into the great world of art and rejects all else. (7 copies) |
| Ruth Reichl | Tender at the Bone | Memoir | A restaurant critic for "The New York Times" offers a memoir--with recipes--of a life spent as a restaurant owner, chef, and food critic, from California to New York City. 2011 TC Reads Selection (6 copies) |
| Marilynne Robinson | Gilead | Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction
| As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets. (10 copies) |
| Julian Rubenstein | Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: the True story of bank heists, ice hockey, Transyl-vanian pelt smuggling, moonlighting, detectives, and broken hearts | Non-Fiction Crime | Follows the misadventures of Budapest bank robber Attila Ambrus, who struggled in his pursuit of women and a career as an untalented hockey goaltender before taking up crime, and profiles the investigators assigned to his case. (5 copies) |
| Mary Doria Russell | Dreamers of the Day | Fiction
| A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic comes into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel, site of the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, she meets Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell. With her plainspoken American opinions, she becomes a sounding board for these historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. While neither a pawn or a participant at the conference, she is drawn into the geopolitical intrigue surrounding the conference. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Mary Ann Shaffer | The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society | Fiction Historical Fiction | In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton finds inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey, who tells her about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Helen Simonson | Major Pettigrew's Last Stand | Fiction | Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Rebecca Skloot | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Non-Fiction Biography | Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
| Aaron Stander | Summer People | Fiction Mysteries Michigan | First in the Sheriff Ray Elkins series. (6 copies) |
| Doug Stanton | Horse Soldiers | Non-Fiction War | Describes the secret mission of a small band of U.S. soldiers who battled against Taliban forces on horseback and captured the Afghan city of Mazar-i Sharif, a critical location for further campaigns. (6 copies) |
| Kathryn Stockett | The Help | Fiction Historical Fiction | Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project. (3 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Elizabeth Strout | Olive Kitteridge | Fiction | At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her. (10 copies) |
| Adriana Trigiani | Big Stone Gap | Fiction Humor | The 35-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of a small Virginia village discovers a skeleton in her family's formerly tidy closet that completely unravels her quiet, conventional life. (10 copies) |
| Gail Tsukiyama | The Street of a Thousand Blossoms | Fiction Historical Fiction | Raised by loving and traditionally minded grandparents, Japanese youths Hiroshi and Kenji are forced to put their dreams on hold in the wake of World War II and find their destinies intertwining with those of a famous sumo master's daughters. (2 kits, 5 copies each) |
| Larry Wakefield | The Way it Was: Stories from the Grand Traverse Area | Non-Fiction Michigan History | This collection of stories offers a short excursion into the history of the Grand Traverse Region. (10 copies) |
| Edith Wharton | The Age of Innocence | Fiction Literary Fiction | An elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in old New York. (5 copies) |
| Jacqueline Yallop | Obedience | Fiction Literary Fiction | After a convent closes in the South of France, an elderly nun returns to the community she betrayed and relives the affair she had with a Nazi soldier during the German occupation of World War II. (2 kits, 6 copies each) |
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