New Discussion Books

Barbery, Muriel. THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG. In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renée’s observations and Paloma’s journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. (NEO 2010)

Benioff, David. CITY OF THIEVES. During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. (NEO 2010)

Bolano, Roberto. THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES. This highly stylized novel is ostensibly about two poets, leaders of the Mexican visceral realist literary movement, and their search for an obscure icon of the movement and its repercussions. The book spans a decade and follows the poets from Mexico City to the Sonoran Desert, Guatemala, Barcelona, Paris, Israel, Congo, Liberia, and the U.S. The narrative becomes secondary to the voices of the people who meet these poets as this long novel told through the personal stories--some humorous, some inscrutable, some tragic--of the eclectic assortment of characters they encounter on the way becomes less about the search and more about literature and language. (NEO 2010)

Brittain, Vera. TESTAMENT OF YOUTH. In 1914, just as war was declared, 20 year-old Vera Brittain was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later, her life—and that of her whole generation—had been irrevocably changed in a way that no one could have imagined in the tranquil pre-war era. Testament of Youth is Brittain’s account of how she lost the man she loved, nursed the wounded, survived those agonizing years, and emerged into an altered world. A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time. It still retains the power to shock, move, and enthrall readers today. (NEO 2010)

Butler, Ruth. HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER. In this remarkable book of discovery, art historian Ruth Butler coaxes three shadowy women out of obscurity and introduces them for the first time as individuals. Through unprecedented research, Butler has been able to create portraits of Hortense Fiquet, Camille Doncieux, and Rose Beuret—the models, and later the wives, respectively, of Cézanne, Monet, and Rodin, three of the most famous French artists of their generation. The book tells the stories of three ordinary women who faced issues of a dramatically changing society as well as the challenges of life with a striving genius. Butler illuminates the ways in which these model-wives figured in their husbands’ achievements and provides new analyses of familiar works of art. (NEO 2010)

Child, Julia. MY LIFE IN FRANCES. From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre in the fall of 1948 and Julia watched the well-muscled stevedores unloading the cargo to the first perfectly soigné meal that she and her husband, Paul, savored in Rouen en route to Paris, where he was to work for the USIS, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn’t speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu. (NEO 2010)

Deaver, Jeffery. GARDEN OF BEASTS. Paul Schumann, a German American living in New York City in 1936, is a mobster hitman known as much for his brilliant tactics as for taking only "righteous" assignments. But then Paul gets caught. And the arresting officer offers him a stark choice: prison or covert government service. Paul is asked to pose as a journalist covering the summer Olympics taking place in Berlin. He's to hunt down and kill Reinhard Ernst -- the ruthless architect of Hitler's clandestine rearmament. If successful, Paul will be pardoned and given the financial means to go legit; if he refuses the job, his fate will be Sing Sing and the electric chair.

DeRosnay, Tatiana. SARAH'S KEY. De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. (NEO 2010)

Ford, Jamie. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET. Ford's strained debut concerns Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. After Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel, the narrative shuttles between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth. Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father's anti-Japanese sentiment. (NEO 2010)

Hunt, Linda. BOLD SPIRIT. In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America. Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. (NEO 2010)

Idliby, Ranya; Oliver, Suzanne; Warner, Priscilla. THE FAITH CLUB. A groundbreaking book about Americans searching for faith and mutual respect, The Faith Club weaves the story of three women, their three religions, and their urgent quest to understand one another. After September 11, Ranya Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent,faced constant questions about Islam, God, and death from her children, the only Muslims in their classrooms. Inspired by a story about Muhammad, Ranya reached out to two other mothers to write an interfaith children's book that would highlight the connections between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. After just a few meetings, however, the women realized that they themselves needed an honest and open environment where they could admit -- and discuss -- their concerns, stereotypes, and misunderstandings. After hours of soul-searching about the issues that divided them, Ranya, Suzanne, and Priscilla grew close enough to discover and explore what united them. (NEO 2010)

Janzen, Rhonda. MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS. Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her injured. Needing a place to rest and pick up the pieces of her life, Rhoda packed her bags, crossed the country, and returned to her quirky Mennonite family's home, where she was welcomed back with open arms and offbeat advice. (Rhoda's good-natured mother suggested she get over her heartbreak by dating her first cousin—he owned a tractor, see.) (NEO 2010)

Jarvis, Cheryl. THE NECKLACE. One day in Ventura, California, Jonell McLain saw a beautiful diamond necklace in a jewelry store window and wondered: Why are personal luxuries so plentiful yet accessible to so few? What if we shared what we desired? Several weeks, dozens of phone calls, and one great leap of faith later, Jonell and twelve other women bought the necklace together–to be passed along among them all. (NEO 2010)

Kluge, P. F.. GONE TOMORROW. George Canaris, an aged professor and formerly famed author, turns up dead from a hit-and-run accident in the midwestern college town where he taught and lived for more than 30 years. Mark May, a fledging academic, is named as his literary executor and is sent to uncover the novel Canaris has supposedly been writing for the past three decades. What he discovers, instead, is the professor’s account of his final year at the college and a remembrance of a lifetime that crossed paths with students and town locals and that spanned the globe to a small spa town in Eastern Europe. (NEO 2010)

Levy, Andrea. SMALL ISLAND. In the shabby remnants of post-blitz London, three near-strangers find themselves in a single house. Queenie Bligh is a spirited Yorkshirewoman waiting for her husband to return from the war and taking in tenants to make ends meet. Gilbert Joseph, a Jamaican R.A.F. veteran, is struggling to establish himself in England, a country that he'd been taught was his motherland but which regards him as an interloper; his bride, Hortense, has just arrived in London and is bewildered that her education and class can't transcend the color of her skin. (NEO 2010)

McCullers, Carson. THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING. Twelve-year-old Frankie Adams, longing at once for escape and belonging, takes her role as "member of the wedding" to mean that when her older brother marries she will join the happy couple in their new life together. But Frankie is unlucky in love; her mother is dead, and Frankie narrowly escapes being raped by a drunken soldier during a farewell tour of the town. Worst of all, "member of the wedding" doesn't mean what she thinks. A gorgeous, brief coming-of-age novel. (NEO 2009)

Moran, Johanna. THE WIVES OF HENRY OADES. An English accountant and his two wives are the subject of this intriguing and evocative debut novel based on a real-life 19th-century California bigamy case. A loving husband and attentive father, Henry Oades assures his wife, Margaret, that his posting to New Zealand will be temporary and the family makes the difficult journey. But during a Maori uprising, Margaret and her four children are kidnapped and the Oades's house is torched. Convinced his family is dead, Henry relocates to California and marries Nancy, a sad 20-year-old pregnant widow. When Margaret and the children escape, eventually making their way to California and Henry's doorstep, he does the decent thing by being a husband to both wives and father to all their offspring, a situation deemed indecent by the Berkeley Daughters of Decency. (NEO 2010)

Ogawa, Yoko. THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE PROFESSOR. Narrated by the Housekeeper, the characters are known only as the Professor and Root, the Housekeepers 10-year-old son, nicknamed by the Professor because the shape of his hair and head remind the Professor of the square root symbol. A brilliant mathematician, the Professor was seriously injured in a car accident and his short-term memory only lasts for 80 minutes. He can remember his theorems and favorite baseball players, but the Housekeeper must reintroduce herself every morning, sometimes several times a day. The Professor, who adores Root, is able to connect with the child through baseball, and the Housekeeper learns how to work with him through the memory lapses until they can come together on common ground, at least for 80 minutes. In this gorgeous tale, Ogawa lifts the window shade to allow readers to observe the characters for a short while, then closes the shade. (NEO 2010)

Olsson, Linda. ASTRID & VERONIKA. Veronika, a 30-year-old Swedish writer, rents a home in a remote village to finish work on her second novel. Her only neighbor for miles is Astrid, a reclusive octogenarian who has earned a reputation (perhaps undeserved) as the village witch. Veronika and Astrid gradually become friends, taking long walks and sipping wine made from the wild strawberries in Astrid's garden. Each shares painful secrets along the way. Veronika abandoned a devoted boyfriend to take up with a bartender from New Zealand. They fell passionately in love, then tragedy befell him, leaving Veronika incapacitated by grief. Astrid endured sexual abuse from her father and a long loveless marriage to a man chosen by him. Until now, she has never told anyone the truth about her infant daughter's death. (NEO 2010)

O'Neill, Joseph. NETHERLAND. In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. (NEO 2010)

See, Lisa. SHANGHAI GIRLS. In 1937 Shanghai—the Paris of Asia—twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree—until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth. To repay his debts, he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from Los Angeles to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, from the Chinese countryside to the shores of America. Though inseparable best friends, the sisters also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. Along the way they make terrible sacrifices, face impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they are—Shanghai girls. (NEO2010)

Sparks, Nicholas and Micah. THREE WEEKS WITH MY BROTHER. Who wouldn't want to go on a trip around the world? When best-selling novelist Sparks receives a travel brochure from his alma mater, Notre Dame, he thinks, "If not now, then when?" and asks his brother to join him. They both have family obligations, but this sounds like the trip of a lifetime, and as the reader soon finds out, they both need to relax. As they journey to faraway places, the brothers reminisce about their unusual childhood. (NEO 2010)

Steinbeck, John. CANNERY ROW. Novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1945. Like most of Steinbeck's postwar work, Cannery Row is sentimental in tone while retaining the author's characteristic social criticism. Peopled by stereotypical good-natured bums and warm-hearted prostitutes living on the fringes of Monterey, Calif., the picaresque novel celebrates lowlifes who are poor but happy. (NEO 2010)

Umrigar, Thrity. THE SPACE BETWEEN US. Thrity Umrigar's poignant novel about a wealthy woman and her downtrodden servant, offers a revealing look at class and gender roles in modern day Bombay. Alternatively told through the eyes of Sera, a Parsi widow whose pregnant daughter and son-in-law share her elegant home, and Bhima, the elderly housekeeper who must support her orphaned granddaughter, Umrigar does an admirable job of creating two sympathetic characters whose bond goes far deeper than that of employer and employee. (NEO 2010)

Zaslow, Jeffrey. THE GIRLS FROM AMES. Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child's illness and the mysterious death of one member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges -- and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy. The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. (NEO 2010)

Previous Discussion Books

Ackerman, Diane. ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE: A WAR STORY. This is the little know but remarkable story of Jan and Antoinette Zablinski, Polish Catholic zoo keepers who rescued more than 300 Jews during WWII by hiding them in the ruined Warsaw Zoo. It reads like a thriller, but sticks to the facts while reminding people about the best part of human nature. (NEO 2009)

Addison Allen, Sarah. GARDEN SPELLS. Take a pinch of marigold to stimulate affection, add a dash of snapdragon to repel evil influences, finish with a generous helping of rose petals to encourage love, then stand back and let nature take its course. It may be the recipe for Claire Waverley's successful catering business, but when it comes to working its magic on her own love life, she seems to be immune to the charms found only in the plants that have always grown behind the Waverley mansion. Like generations of Waverley women before her, Claire has accepted her family's mysterious gifts, while her estranged sister, Sydney, could not run away from them fast enough. Knowing it's just a matter of time before her abusive boyfriend finally kills her, however, Sydney escapes with her young daughter back home to the only place she knows she'll be safe. (NEO 2008)

Anderson, Walter. MEANT TO BE. Anderson, longtime editor of Parade Magazine, grew up on the "wrong side of the tracks" in Mount Vernon, New York, the youngest child of an alcoholic, abusive father. He escaped his situation by quitting high school at sixteen to join the Marines. Four years later, while on leave to attend his father's funeral, he stuns his mother with a question that has inexplicably haunted him since he was a small boy: Was the man who had so tormented him in his childhood his real father? Her answer: Walter was born of a wartime love affair between his Protestant mother and the Jewish man she loved. His mother swears him to secrecy, and he honors their pact for nearly thirty-five years, and then one day he meets an unknown brother -- another son of his real father -- who has lived a similar, nearly parallel life. Their secret, in ways large and small, defines the course of his life. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Arana, Marie. CELLOPHANE. At the height of the Great Depression, paper engineer Don Victor Sobrevilla pitches his small empire where the trees are—in the heart of the rain forest—constructing a highly successful paper factory and a vast hacienda, Floralinda, far from the political centers of Trujillo and Lima, linked only to the outside world by the dangerous and unpredictable Amazon. When, in 1952, Don Victor discovers the formula for cellophane, his household is afflicted with a "plague of truth," a compulsion to confess their most shameful histories and most hidden yearnings, to make their stories as transparent as the paper itself. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Armstrong Kalish, Mildred. LITTLE HEATHENS. Kalish's memoir of her Iowa childhood, set against the backdrop of the Depression, captures a vanished way of traditional living and a specific moment in American history in a story both illuminating and memorable. Kalish lived with her siblings, mother and grandparents-seven in all-both in a town home and, in warmer weather, out on a farm. (NEO 2008)

Ashenburg, Katherine. THE DIRT ON CLEAN: AN UNSANITIZED HISTORY. This work follows the history of the constantly changing western concept of cleanliness from Homer’s well-washed Odysseus to the present-day. It is smartly paced and brimming with lively anecdotes. (NEO 2009)

Asimov, Isaac. I, ROBOT. In this collection, one of the great classics of science fiction, Asimov set out the principles of robot behavior that we know as the Three Laws of Robotics. Here are stories of robots gone mad, mind-reading robots, robots with a sense of humor, robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world, all told with Asimov's trademark dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Austen, Jane. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. The title refers to the two eldest Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, one of whom (Elinor) embraces practicality and restraint while the other (Marianne) gives her whole heart to every endeavor. When the Dashwoods - mother Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and youngest sister Margaret - are sent, almost impoverished, to a small cottage in Devonshire after the death of their father and the machinations of their brother's wife, they accept their new circumstances with as much cheer as they can muster even though their brother and his wife have taken over the family estate and fortune. (NEO 2008)

Austin, Jane. EMMA. Emma, when first published in 1816, was written when Jane Austen was at the height of her powers. In it, we have her two greatest comic creations -- the eccentric Mr. Woodhouse and that quintissential bore, Miss Bates. In it, too, we have her most profound characterization: the witty, imaginative, self-deluded Emma, a heroine the author declared "no one but myself will much like," but who has been much loved by generations of readers. Delightfull funny, full of rich irony, Emma is regarded as one of Jane Austen's finest achievements. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Avery, Ellis. TEAHOUSE FIRE. When nine-year-old Aurelia Bernard takes shelter in Kyoto's beautiful and mysterious Baishian teahouse after a fire one night in 1866, she is unaware of the building's purpose. She has just fled the only family she's ever known: after her French immigrant mother died of cholera in New York, her abusive missionary uncle brought her along on his assignment to Christianize Japan. She finds in Baishian a place that will open up entirely new worlds to her- and bring her a new family. (NEO 2008)

Bahr, Howard. BLACK FLOWER. The Black Flower is the gripping story of a young Confederate rifleman from Mississippi named Bushrod Carter, who serves in General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee during the Civil War battle that takes place in Franklin, Tennessee, in November 1864. Written with reverent attention to historical accuracy, the book vividly documents the fear, suffering, and intense friendships that are all present on the eve of the battle and during its aftermath. (NEO 2008)

Bajwa, Rupa. THE SARI SHOP: A NOVEL. Bajwa dramatically illustrates the class gap in contemporary India in her debut novel, focusing on the fortunes of Ramchand, a lowly, disaffected clerk in a popular sari shop. The novel opens with Ramchand happily going about his duties serving the shop's mostly upper-class clients. Opportunity for advancement comes from an unlikely source when he attracts the attention of the beautiful, literate Rina Kapoor, whose family hires the shop to provide saris for her upcoming wedding. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Baldachi, David. WINNER. Fiction. A cut above your average mystery or thriller. A series of weekly lotteries are being fixed. The mysterious mastermind of the plot personally chooses his dubious winner. The consequence of being chosen makes for a gripping page-turner. (NEO-RLS 2002)

Beauclerk Maurice, Edward. THE LAST GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER. At 16, the author impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company and ended up at an isolated trading post in the Canadian Artic, where there was no communication with the outside world and only one ship a year. The Inuit people who traded there taught him their language and how to survive. (NEO 2008)

Bitton-Jackson, Livia. I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS: GROWING UP IN THE HOLOCAUST. This holocaust memoir has a unique story line. It focuses on a small family who has been chosen for transport to a factory in Augsburg, and their struggles to stay together. (NEO 2009)

Bohjalian, Chris. DOUBLE BIND. After being given a portfolio of photographs taken by a recently deceased resident of the shelter, Bobbie Crocker, she becomes obsessed with questions surrounding what appears to be a picture of herself shot on the day of her attack. Laurel's already fragile mental state begins to unravel as she follows Bobbie's life from his rich-kid childhood on Long Island to homelessness in Vermont. The Gatsby references form the basis of the mystery, compelling readers to try to imagine how this fictional backdrop relates to the novel's "reality." (NEO 2008)

Bohjalian, Chris. BEFORE YOU KNOW KINDNESS. On a balmy July night in New Hampshire a shot rings out in a garden, and a man falls to the ground, terribly wounded. The wounded man is Spencer McCullough, the shot that hit him was fired–accidentally?–by his adolescent daughter Charlotte. With this shattering moment of violence, Chris Bohjalian launches the best kind of literate page-turner: suspenseful, wryly funny, and humane. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Brenner, Joel. EMPERORS OF CHOCOLATE. Non-Fiction. Brenner, a former Washington Post financial reporter, tells the stories of how Forrest Mars, Sr. and Milton S. Hershey turned their two companies from small mom-and-pop operations into international forces over the last century. (NEO-RLS 2000)

Brooks, Geraldine. THE YEAR OF WONDER. 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? (NEO-RLS 2007)

Brooks, Geraldine. PEOPLE OF THE BOOK. Narrated by a conservator who is brought in to repair it, this impelling work follows the story of the Sarejevo Haggadah in ways both real and imagined from its creation in the 15th century to its protection during the Bosnian problems of the 1980’s. Riveting, sad, and beautiful. (NEO 2009)

Brooks, Geraldine. MARCH: A NOVEL. From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks’s place as a renowned author of historical fiction. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Brown, Dan. ANGELS AND DEMONS. Pitting scientific terrorists against the cardinals of Vatican City, this well-plotted if over-the-top thriller is crammed with Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama. Robert Langdon, a Harvard specialist on religious symbolism, is called in by a Swiss research lab when Dr. Vetra, the scientist who discovered antimatter, is found murdered with the cryptic word "Illuminati" branded on his chest. These Iluminati were a group of Renaissance scientists, including Galileo, who met secretly in Rome to discuss new ideas in safety from papal threat; what the long-defunct association has to do with Dr. Vetra's death is far from clear. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Brown, Louise. DANCING GIRLS OF LAHORE. The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Bryson, Bill. A WALK IN THE WOODS: REDISCOVERING AMERICA. Non Fiction. 1998. "Accompanied only by his old college buddy, Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. The reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through." (NEO-RLS 1999)

Bryson, Bill. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID. Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. (NEO 2008)

Burns, Cherie. THE GREAT HURRICANE: 1938. On September 20, 2008, the Great Hurricane hit communities from Long Island to Providence, RI destroying entire fishing fleets from Montauk to Narragansett Bay and leaving 700 people dead, changing New England forever. ‘Lost’ in history due to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia at the same time, this book recounts the tales of this harrowing day of heroism, survival, and loss. (NEO 2009)

Butler, Robert Olen. HAD A GOOD TIME: STORIES FROM AMERICAN POSTCARDS. In Robert Olen Butler's dazzling new book of stories, Had a Good Time, he explores America by finding artistic inspiration in an unlikely and fascinating place-the backs of postcards from a bygone era. For many years Butler has collected picture postcards from the early twentieth century-not so much for the pictures on the front but for the messages written on the backs, little bits of the captured souls of people long since passed away. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Capella, Anthony. THE WEDDING OFFICER. Livia Pertini's misfortunes cascade on one another like lava flowing down the flanks of Vesuvius, but she defiantly guards her dignity and self-respect even as other girls in war-torn Naples resort to selling themselves to survive. Even losing a beauty competition to her cow leaves her unshaken. When she finally does fall for a persistent, handsome soldier, he is shipped off only to die on the Russian front. (NEO 2008)

Chesterton, G.K.. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY: A NIGHTMARE. Considered to be Chesterton’s best work, this 1908 novel is an outrageous satire about a club of gentlemen in London who have vowed to destroy their turn-of-the-century world. Bursting with Chesterton’s trademark wit and abundant in surprising metaphors about religion, nature and human civilization itself, this work is a delight to read and even greater delight to ponder. (NEO 2009)

Colette. CLAUDINE'S HOUSE. In an idyllic setting of countryside and woods, Colette spent her childhood surrounded by a warm and loving family. Years later, her memories and experiences inspired her to create a series of snapshots of the innocence of provincial life. At once poignant and vividly alive, her recollections portray a magical world, filled with the beauty and the warmth of human relationships—and, above all, the lasting impressions made by her wonderful mother. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Conant, Jennet. 109 EAST PLACE: ROBERT OPPENHEIMER AND THE SECRET CITY OF LOS ALAMOS. Chronicles the life experienced by those gathered together and sequestered in order to create secret weapons during World War II. (NEO 2009)

Dallas, Sandra. TALLGRASS. Dallas has made a major contribution to a growing body of literature about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Based on the one camp in Colorado (named Amache, and renamed Tallgrass by the author), the story focuses on the impact it had on the local farmers and townspeople. It is told from the viewpoint of Rennie Stroud, 13, and poignantly portrays the emotional turmoil of both the internees and local residents. (NEO 2008)

Day, Cathy. THE CIRCUS IN WINTER. The secret lives and loves of circus people and their descendants are revealed in these 11 linked short stories. From 1884 to 1939, the small town of Lima, Indiana, hosts the Great Porter Circus during the winter months. Wallace Porter buys the circus on the eve of his beloved wife's death, claiming he has "seen the elephant." (NEO-RLS 2005)

Dean, Debra. THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD. Russian emigré Marina Buriakov, 82, is preparing for her granddaughter's wedding near Seattle while fighting a losing battle against Alzheimer's. Stuggling to remember whom Katie is marrying (and indeed that there is to be a marriage at all), Marina does remember her youth as a Hermitage Museum docent as the siege of Leningrad began; it is into these memories that she disappears. After frantic packing, the Hermitage's collection is transported to a safe hiding place until the end of the war. The museum staff and their families remain, wintering (all 2,000 of them) in the Hermitage basement to avoid bombs and marauding soldiers. Marina, using the technique of a fellow docent, memorizes favorite Hermitage works; these memories, beautifully interspersed, are especially vibrant. (NEO 2008)

Diaz, Junot. THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. Dominican-American writer Diaz has spun the heartbreak and loneliness of the immigrant experience into literary gold with memorable stories of marginalized outsiders caught between two culture as he tells the story of a sci-fi fan seeking love and acceptance while trying to escape what he believes is a family curse. (NEO 2009)

Dickens, Charles. THE PICKWICK PAPERS. The Pickwick Papers explores the perils, travels, and adventures of the Pickwick Club's members: the founding chairman, former businessman and amateur scientist Mr. Pickwick; his trusted companion Sam Weller; the sportsman Winkle; the poet Snodgrass; and the lover Tracy Tupman. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Donati, Sara. INTO THE WILDERNESS. It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered--a white man dressed like a Native American, Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, she soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as her own family. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. What's the truth behind the legend of the hound of the Baskervilles? Is it really a devil-beast that's haunting the lonely moors? Enter Sherlock Holmes to find the answer, in this, the only full-length novel ever written by the creator of one of the most popular and enduring detective series ever written. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Dunn, Mark. ELLA MINNOW PEA: A NOVEL IN LETTERS. Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Edgerton, Clyde. WALKING ACROSS EGYPT. A quietly humorous story set in a small town in North Carolina. Seventy-eight year old Mattie Riggsbee, spunky and determined, has one regret: she has no grandchildren, as her son and daughter inconveniently remain unmarried. The story gathers momentum after a slightly sluggish start, when Wesley Benfield, wayward teenager and orphan, comes into Mattie's life. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Edwards, Kim. MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER. Edwards's debut novel hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father's disavowal of his newborn daughter. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and the events following his split second decision to deceive his wife as to their child's survival colors everything in their life to come. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Ellroy, James. THE BLACK DAHLIA. Using the basic facts concerning the 1940s' notorious and yet unsolved Black Dahlia case, Ellroy creates a kaleidoscope of human passion and dark obsession. A young woman's mutilated body is found in a Los Angeles vacant lot. The story is seen through the eyes of Bucky Bleichert, ex-prize fighter and something of a boy wonder on the police force. There is no relief or humor as Bleichert arrives at a grisly discovery. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Ephron, Amy. A CUP OF TEA. Fiction. Rosemary Fell's life of privilege changes forever when she invites a penniless young woman home for a cup of tea. Ephron spins a delightful tale of a triangular romance set against the back drop of New York society during World War I. Based on a short story by Katherine Mansfield. (NEO-RLS 1998)

Erdrich, Louise. THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB: A NOVEL. Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America. In Argus, North Dakota, he builds a business, a home for his family -- which includes Eva and four sons -- and a singing club consisting of the best voices in town. When the Old World meets the New -- in the person of Delphine Watzka -- the great adventure of Fidelis's life begins. Delphine meets Eva and is enchanted. She meets Fidelis, and the ground trembles. These momentous encounters will determine the course of Delphine's life, and the trajectory of this brilliant novel. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Fergus, Jim. ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN: THE JOURNEY OF MARY DODD. This is a western with a twist: a fictional account of the participation of Mary Dowd and others in the ‘Brides for Indians’ program, a clandestine governmental program to instruct Cheyenne Warriors in the ways of civilization. Written with insight and sensitivity. (NEO 2009)

Flagg, Fannie. CAN'T WAIT TO GET TO HEAVEN. Octogenarian Elner Shimfissle falls off a ladder after accidentally disturbing a hornets' nest while picking figs. After she dies at the hospital, the novel's bite-size chapters alternate between funny and touching vignettes showing how Elner's death and life has affected dozens of people in town, interspersed with scenes of Elner's laugh-out-loud assent into the hereafter. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Fleischner, Jennifer. MRS. LINCOLN AND MRS. KECKLY: THE REMARKABLE STORY. This book is an in-depth look at the relationship between two very different women, Mary Todd Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly. The former slave bought her freedom, became a celebrated dressmaker, lost a son in the war, and went on to write a detailed biography about Mrs. Lincoln. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Fowler, Karen Joy. THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. In California’s central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Fraser, Antonia. MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY. A sympathetic piece of popular historical biography, this work portrays Marie Antoinette as a goodhearted girl who was undereducated and woefully unprepared for the political intrigues into which she married. (NEO 2009)

Frizier, Charles. COLD MOUNTAIN. Fiction. 1997. A wounded Confederate soldier, tired of the pointless slaughter of war, leaves his hospital bed and begins the long walk back to the hills of North Carolina and the woman he left behind. This book parallels his walk and her psychological journey as she comes to terms with her existence. As their lives converge once again, a new world is born from the ruins of the old. (NEO-RLS 1999)

Fuller, Alexandra. DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOG'S TONIGHT. Fuller's parents departed England in the early '70s while she was still a toddler. They knew well that their life as white farmers living in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time) would be anything but glamorous. Living a crude, rural life, the author and her older sister contended with "itchy bums and worms and bites up their arms from fleas" and losing three siblings. Mum and Dad were freewheeling, free-drinking, and often careless. Yet they were made of tough stuff and there is little doubt of the affection among family members. On top of attempting to make a living, they faced natives who were trying to free themselves of British rule, and who were understandably not thrilled to see more white bwanas settling in. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Gaskell, Elizabeth and Ingham, Patricia. CRANFORD. In this classic portrait of life in a quiet English village of the early nineteenth century, Elizabeth Gaskell writes with wit and affection of the foibles, follies and endearing eccentricities of its occupants as they struggle to maintain standards in their genteel poverty. This witty and poignant comedy, with its ironic observations on the pretensions of class is told through the eyes of a young woman who befriends the elderly ladies of Cranford. (NEO 2008)

Giardina, Denise. STORMING HEAVEN. Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy -- land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women. Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C.J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely, Sicilian immigrant Rose Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines. They all bear witness to nearly forgotten events of history, culminating in the final, tragic Battle of Blair Mountain -- when the United States Army greeted 10,000 unemployed pro-union miners with airplanes, bombs, and poison gas. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Gilbert, Elizabeth. EAT, PRAY, LOVE. At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." (NEO-RLS 2007)

Glass, Julia. THREE JUNES. This three-part novel draws the reader into the lives of several central characters during three Junes spanning ten years. It explores modern relationships (including a gay one) and the families that people inherit or create for themselves. Well paced and carefully layered. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Goldenbaum, Sally. DEATH BY CASHMERE: A SEASIDE KNITTERS MYSTERY. Izzy Chambers gives up her life as a Boston attorney in order to open the Seaside Knitting Studio in her childhood town. When the woman renting the apartment above it is found dead, Izzy and her knitting group vow to discover who hated her so much to kill her.

Goldman, William. THE PRINCESS BRIDE. In 1941 a young boy lies bedridden from pneumonia. His perpetually disheveled and unattractive father, an immigrant from Florin with terribly broken English, shuffles into his bedroom carrying a book. The boy wants to know if it has any sports. His father says, "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passions. Miracles." And the little boy, though he doesn’t know it, is about to change forever. (NEO 2008)

Goodman, Allegra. KAATERSKILL FALLS. In the summer of '76, the Shulmans and the Melishes migrate to Kaaterskill, the tiny town in upstate New York where Orthodox Jews and Yankee year-rounders live side by side from June through August. Elizabeth Shulman, a devout follower of Rav Elijah Kirshner and the mother of five daughters, is restless. She needs a project of her own, outside her family and her cloistered community. Across the street, Andras Melish is drawn to Kaaterskill by his adoring older sisters, bound to him by their loss and wrenching escape from the Holocaust. Both comforted and crippled by his sisters' love, Andras cannot overcome the ambivalence he feels toward his children and his own beautiful wife. At the top of the hill, Rav Kirshner is coming to the end of his life, and he struggles to decide which of his sons should succeed him: the pious but stolid Isaiah, or the brilliant but worldly Jeremy. Behind the scenes, alarmed as his beloved Kaaterskill is overdeveloped by Michael King, the local real estate broker, Judge Miles Taylor keeps an old secret in check, biding his time.. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Goodwin, Jason. THE JANISSARY TREE. In 1836, though the corrupt elite troops known as the Janissaries were crushed 10 years earlier, there are ominous signs that their influence still persists in the twisted alleys and secret places of Istanbul. A series of crimes, including the barbaric murders of several soldiers and the theft of some precious jewels, leads eunuch Yashim Togalu to delve into the past in an effort to separate legend from truth. With special access to all areas of the sultan's royal court, Yashim uses his network of contacts to try to solve the crimes. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Greenlaw, Linda. LOBSTER CHRONICLES. Non-Fiction 2003. After 17 years at sea, Linda Greenlaw decided it was time to take a break from being a swordboat captain, the career that would earn her a prominent role in Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and a portrayal in the subsequent film. Greenlaw decided to move back home, to a tiny island seven miles off the Maine coast. There, she would pursue a simpler life as a lobsterman, find a husband, and settle down. But all doesn't go as planned. The lobsters refuse to crawl out from under their rocks and into the traps she and her father have painstakingly set. Fellow islanders draw her into bizarre intrigues, and the eligible bachelors prove even more elusive than the lobsters. But just when she thinks things can't get worse, something happens that forces her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about life, luck, and lobsters. (NEO-RLS 2003)

Grenville, Kate. SECRET RIVER. The Secret River is the story of Grenville’s ancestors, who wrested a new life from the alien terrain of Australia and its native people. William Thornhill, a Thames bargeman, is deported to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia in 1806. In this new world of convicts and charlatans, Thornhill tries to pull his family into a position of power and comfort. When he rounds a bend in the Hawkesbury River and sees a gentle slope of land, he becomes determined to make the place his own. But, as uninhabited as the island appears, Australia is full of native people, and they do not take kindly to Thornhill’s theft of their home. (NEO 2008)

Grippando, James. THE PARDON. Jack Swyteck, defense attorney, has for many years rebelled against his father, Harry, currently the governor of their state. The story begins with the denial by Harry of a request for a stay of execution for one of Jack's clients, which sets into play a series of events. First, Jack is arrested for murder, and then Harry is blackmailed and faced with political ruin. These events lead to a reconciliation between father and son, who must now pull together and face a vengeful psychopath. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Groopman, Jerome. HOW DOCTOR'S THINK. How Doctors Think is mostly about how these doctors get it right, and about why they sometimes get it wrong: "[m]ost errors are mistakes in thinking. And part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often don't realize. (NEO 2008)

Gruen, Sara. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. An old man tells of his life with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined when he was a young man during the Great Depression. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Hammett, Dashiell. THE THIN MAN. Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Hammett, Dashiell. MALTESE FALCON. Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed. (NEO 2008)

Harr, Johnathan. THE LOST PAINTING. An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries. (NEO 2008)

Hay, Sheridan. SECRET OF LOST THINGS. Arriving in New York from Tasmania with $300, her mother's ashes and a love of reading, 18-year-old Rosemary Savage finds work in the Arcade Bookshop, a huge, labyrinthine place that features everything from overstock to rare books. In its physicality, the store greatly resembles New York's Strand (where Hay worked), and its requisite assortment of intriguing bookish oddballs includes autocratic owner George Pike and his albino assistant, Walter Geist. Rosemary is suspicious and worried when Walter enlists Rosemary's help to respond to an anonymous request to sell a hand-written version of Herman Melville's lost Isle of the Cross (a novel that in fact existed but disappeared after Melville's publisher rejected it). She confides in Oscar (the attractive, emotionally unavailable nonfiction specialist), which only hastens the deal's momentum toward disaster. (NEO 2008)

Herz, Rachel. THE SCENT OF DESIRE: DISCOVERING OUR ENIGMATIC SENSE OF SMELL. Drawing on the latest research, Herz breaks down the powerful connection between our nose and our emotions – one that can influence both our choice in a signature scent and in romantic partners. This eminently readable book will appeal to ‘foodies’, Proustian scholars, and popular psychology buffs alike. (NEO 2009)

Hill, Lawrence. SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME. This stunning novel spans the life of Aminta Diallo, who was kidnapped at the age of eleven from West Africa by British slavers. Depicting a woman who survives history’s most trying conditions through intelligence and personality, Hill’s book is a harrowing, breath-taking tour de force. (NEO 2009)

Hoffman, Alice. BLACKBIRD HOUSE: A NOVEL. Prolific novelist Hoffman (The Probable Future; Blue Diary;etc.) offers 12 lush and lilting interconnected stories, all taking place in the same Cape Cod farmhouse over the course of generations. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Horan, Nancy. LOVING FRANK. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story is--as many early reviews of Loving Frank have noted--little-known and often dismissed as scandal. In Nancy Horan's skillful hands, however, what you get is two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love. Together, Frank and Mamah are a wholly modern portrait, and while you can easily imagine them in the here and now, it's their presence in the world of early 20th century America that shades how authentic and, ultimately, tragic their story is. (NEO 2008)

Horwitz, Tony. CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC. When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart. Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Hosseini, Khaled. THE KITE RUNNER. The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Ishiguro, Kazuo. NEVER LET ME GO. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. (NEO-RLS 2007)

James, Henry. THE ASPERN PAPERS. With a decaying Venetian villa as a backdrop, an anonymous narrator relates his obsessive quest for the personal documents of a deceased Romantic poet, one Jeffrey Aspern. Led by his mission into increasingly unscrupulous behavior, he is ultimately faced with relinquishing his heart's desire or attaining it at an overwhelming price. (NEO 2008)

Johnson, Steven. THE GHOST MAP. On August 28, 1854, working-class Londoner Sarah Lewis tossed a bucket of soiled water into the cesspool of her squalid apartment building and triggered the deadliest outbreak of cholera in the city's history. (NEO 2008)

Jordan, Hillary. MUDBOUND. Laura McAllen, a college educated Memphis schoolteacher, becomes a reluctant farmer’s wife in 1946 when her husband buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta. Wrought with problems of hardship and racism, this beautifully written work has echoes of As I Lay Dying. (NEO 2009)

Kelley, Douglas. THE CAPTAIN'S WIFE: A NOVEL. Based on the true story of Mary Patten, this maritime tale begins in July 1856 during the heyday of the great clipper ships. On a voyage from New York to San Francisco her husband becomes incapacitated due to illness, and 19-year-old Mary must take command of the ship, becoming somewhat of an icon of the early women’s rights movement. Based on historical accounts and little known facts about Mary Patten’s life, the author has created an entertaining, suspenseful and romantic adventure story. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Khadra, Yasmina. SWALLOWS OF KABUL. Set in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban, this extraordinary novel takes readers into the lives of two couples: Mohsen, who comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, who was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology and struggles to keep his faith, and his wife, Musarrat, who once rescued Atiq and is now dying of sickness and despair. Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Kidd, Sue Monk. SECRET LIFE OF BEES. Fiction. 2003. Lily Owens is a 14 year old white girl raised by an emotionally abusive peach farmer in South Carolina. Lily accidentally killed her mother when she was 7 years old. Rosaleen, a black woman, has been caring for Lily since this time. Rosaleen gets into trouble when she goes to town to register to vote. Rosaleen and Lily flee to Tiburon, South Carolina because Lily’s mom owned an image of a Black Madonna with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” on the back. They are taken in by three black sisters who are beekeepers and Lily finds a connection to her mother. (NEO-RLS 2003)

Kidder, Tracy. MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS. At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Kimmel, Haven. THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARY. After being dumped by her professor / boyfriend and walking out on her Ph.D. oral exams, a woman returns to her seemingly simple Midwestern home town. Kimmel has devised a heartwarming story about troubled individuals who struggle with their problems while finding solace and a degree of peace in helping others. (NEO 2009)

King, Laurie. LETTER OF MARY: A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE FEATURING MARY RUSSELL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. Sherlock and his scholarly companion Mary Russell are caught in an exciting mystery when an archeologist gives them a papyrus supposedly written by Mary Magdalene. When the archeologist is killed, they become embroiled in a rollicking story filled with political intrigue and highbrow sleuthing. (NEO2009)

Kingsolver, Barbara. ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE. Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers "putting food by," as the classic kitchen title goes. (NEO 2008)

Knauss, Sibylle. EVA'S COUSIN. Based on interviews with Gertrude Weisker, the cousin of Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun. Gertrude, called Marlene in the novel, tells the story of her days with Eva at the Bergof, Hiter's mansion in the Mavarian mountains, toward the end of World War II. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Krakauer, Jon. UNDER THE BANNER. On July 24, 1984, Dan and Ron Lafferty cut the throats of their brother Allan's wife, Brenda, and baby daughter, Erica, fulfilling part of a revelation Ron received from God. Ron is now on death row. Brother Dan, serving two life sentences for the murders, has never denied killing his sister-in-law and niece but has absolutely no remorse. "I was doing God's will," he says, "which is not a crime." Krakauer… tackles issues of faith in this true-crime/religious expose, which delves deep into the heart of Mormon fundamentalism, where revelations from God are commonplace and polygamy not only still exists but is "a matter of religious duty." Alternating between the bloodier aspects of the origins of the Mormon Church and some of the more extreme aspects of today's Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, Krakauer's account is gripping yet deeply disturbing. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Kurlansky, Mark. SALT: A WORLD HISTORY. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Lahiri, Jhumpa. UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. Master storyteller Lahiri has woven another memorable collection that includes a linked trio of tales that explore the power of love, fate, and the secrets that lie at the heart of family life. (NEO 2009)

Landvik, Lorna. ANGRY HOUSEWIVES EATING BON BONS. The women of Freesia Court are convinced that there is nothing good coffee, delectable desserts, and a strong shoulder can’t fix. Laughter is the glue that holds them together—the foundation of a book group they call AHEB (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons), an unofficial “club” that becomes much more. It becomes a lifeline. Holding on through forty eventful years, there’s Faith, a lonely mother of twins who harbors a terrible secret that has condemned her to living a lie; big, beautiful Audrey, the resident sex queen who knows that with good posture and an attitude you can get away with anything; Merit, the shy doctor’s wife with the face of an angel and the private hell of an abusive husband; Kari, a wise woman with a wonderful laugh who knows the greatest gifts appear after life’s fiercest storms; and finally, Slip, a tiny spitfire of a woman who isn’t afraid to look trouble straight in the eye. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Lansens, Lori. THE GIRLS. Conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen are linked at the side of the head, with separate brains and bodies. Born in a small town outside Toronto in the midst of a tornado and abandoned by their unwed teenage mother two weeks later, the girls are cared for by Aunt Lovey, a nurse who refuses to see them as deformed or even disabled. She raises them in Leaford, Ontario, where, at age 29, Rose, the more verbal and bookish twin, begins writing their story—i.e., this novel, which begins, "I have never looked into my sister's eyes." Showing both linguistic skill and a gift for observation, Lansens's Rose evokes country life, including descriptions of corn and crows, and their neighbors Mrs. Merkel, who lost her only son in the tornado, and Frankie Foyle, who takes the twins' virginity. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Lax, Eric. THE MOLD IN DR. FLOREY'S COAT. The New York Times Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in his London laboratory in 1928 and its eventual development as the first antibiotic by a team at Oxford University headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain in 1942 led to the introduction of the most important family of drugs of the twentieth century. Yet credit for penicillin is largely misplaced. Neither Fleming nor Florey and his associates ever made real money from their achievements; instead it was the American labs that won patents on penicillin's manufacture and drew royalties from its sale. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Lee, Harper. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Fiction. 1960. This novel is set in a small Alabama town in the 1930’s. The narrator is a little girl, Scout Finch, whose father, a lawyer, defends a black man accused of raping a white woman. A compassionate, deeply moving novel and a most persuasive plea for racial justice. 265p. (NEO-RLS 1995)

Lee, Jennifer. THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES. Lee traces the history of the Chinese-American experience through food in a compelling blend of sociology and history that speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole. (NEO 2009)

Leonard, Mike. THE RIDE OF OUR LIVES. "Today" correspondent Mike Leonard decided to take a month off to accompany his aging parents on a journey to the places of their youth, along with a number of American landmarks. He tells the story of their RV trek with good humor, recalling their fascination with the roadside landscape, as he reveals how his parents, always blunt and unique, deal with the indignities of age and memories of the past. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Ligocki, Roma. THE GIRL IN THE RED COAT. As a young child, in the Krakow ghetto, Ligocka was known to everyone by the strawberry-red coat she always wore-an image that Steven Spielberg would use in Schindler's List, without knowing anything about Ligocka herself. Determined to tell her own story, Ligocka gives a harrowing, impressionistic account of her early memories of the ghetto: the men in shiny black boots with snarling dogs, the endless waiting in lines, people shot indiscriminately and her grandmother's seizure by SS officers while Ligocka hides under a table. Ligocka and her mother sneak out of the ghetto and are taken in by a Polish family; her father, taken to Auschwitz, escapes several years later. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Lippman, Laura. WHAT THE DEAD KNOW. After fleeing a car accident, a middle-aged woman with no ID is questioned by both the police and hospital administration. Refusing to reveal her identity (and proof of health insurance), she instead hints that she is the younger of two sisters, Heather and Sunny Bethany, who disappeared the day before Easter in 1975. This gets everyone's attention. She knows both too much and not enough about the case, leading Baltimore police on wild goose chases to Pennsylvania and Georgia, saying just enough to stay out of jail and keep them interested, albeit suspicious. (NEO 2008)

Lopez, Steve. THE SOLOIST. The Soloist begins as "the tale of a man, stunned by a blow thirty years earlier, who carries on with courage and dignity, spirit intact." But it delivers far more as we follow Lopez's attempts to help Ayers bring a modicum of discipline to his life and music. Several readers of Lopez's column send musical instruments for Ayers, but Lopez becomes haunted by the idea that he may be doing the musician more harm than good, that the new bounty will increase the chances of his getting mugged or beaten to death. Lopez struggles with questions of how much autonomy should be accorded the mentally ill. To be sure, Ayers doesn't handle his life the way Lopez would (or wants him to), but the issue keeps coming up: To what extent does one individual have the right to try to influence another? When we try to help someone "for their own good," do we really know better than they what will ultimately make them happy? (NEO 2009)

Maguire, Gregory. WICKED. In Maguire's Oz, Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West, is not wicked; nor is she a formally schooled witch. Instead, she's an insecure, unfortunately green Munchkinlander who's willing to take radical steps to unseat the tyrannical Wizard of Oz. Using an appropriately brusque voice for the always blunt Elphaba, McDonough relates her tumultuous childhood (spent with an alcoholic mother and a minister father) and eye-opening school years (when she befriends her roommate, Glinda). (NEO 2008)

Maguire, Nancy Klein. AN INFINITY OF LITTLE HOURS. Carthusians are contemplative monastics who live in community but spend most of their days alone in their private dwellings. With a lifestyle similar to that of their 11th-century French founder, they wear hair shirts, practice self-flagellation and eat just one meal a day from mid-September to Easter (though some monasteries reluctantly have begun allowing such luxuries as electricity, hot water and flush toilets). Maguire, a Renaissance scholar married to an ex-Carthusian, examines this living museum of a bygone age by following the lives of five young men who entered St. Hugh's Charterhouse in England between July 1960 and March 1961. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Malamud, Bernard and Baker, Kevin. THE NATURAL. Roy Hobbs, the protagonist of The Natural, makes the mistake of pronouncing aloud his dream: to be the best there ever was. Such hubris, of course, invites divine intervention, but the brilliance of Bernard Malamud's novel is the second chance it offers its hero, elevating him--and his story--into the realm of myth. (NEO 2008)

Martin, Ann M.. A DOG'S LIFE. Novels for children rarely follow characters from birth to the threshold of the grave, but then again, most protagonists do not measure their life spans in dog years. In this "autobiography" of a dog named Squirrel, Newbery Honor Book author Martin imagines how a stray separated from its family in puppyhood finds its way in the world. (NEO 2008)

Marton, Kati. HIDDEN POWER: PRESIDENTIAL MARRIAGES THAT SHAPED OUR HISTORY. Marton uncovers the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the ultimate power couples, showing how first ladies have used their privileged access to the president to influence staffing, promote causes, and engage directly in policy-making. Edith Wilson secretly ran the country after Woodrow’s debilitating stroke. Eleanor Roosevelt was FDR’s moral compass. And Laura Bush, initially shy of any public role, has proven to be the emotional ballast for her husband. Through extensive research and interviews, Marton reveals the substantial–yet often overlooked–legacy of presidential wives, providing insight into the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century and vividly depicting the synergy of these unique political partnerships. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Maugham, Somerset. OF HUMAN BONDAGE. Philip Carey grows from an orphan with a club foot into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. He falls in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever. (NEO 2009)

Mccormick, Patricia. SOLD. As this heartbreaking story opens, 13-year-old Lakshmi lives an ordinary life in Nepal, going to school and thinking of the boy she is to marry. Then her gambling-addicted stepfather sells her into prostitution in India. Refusing to be with men, she is beaten and starved until she gives in. (NEO 2008)

Mccracken, Elizabeth. GIANT'S HOUSE. The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt--the "over tall" eleven-year-old boy who's the talk of the town--walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless they soon find their lives entwined in ways that neither one could have predicted. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows--six foot five at age twelve, then seven feet, then eight--so does her heart and their most singular romance. (NEO 2008)

McCrumb, Sharon. THE ROSEWOOD CASKET. Another lyrical mystery in her "Ballad Series" by this Edgar award winning author. A dying man's sons return to say goodbye and decide the fate of the family farm. Woven into the story is the history and mystical aura of the Appalachian Mountain area. (NEO-RLS 1998)

McLaughlin, Emma & Nicola Kraus. THE NANNY DIARIES: A NOVEL. A sarcastic, witty and sad story of how the over-privileged raise their children. As a New York City college student looking for a job, Nanny takes a 9-month job with an upper crust New York Society family. The story centers on a typical hardworking father, snobby socialite mother, and a single, lonely child. (NEO-RLS 2004)

McMurtry, Larry. THE LATE CHILD: A NOVEL. Harmony is the optimistic, resilient Las Vegas ex-showgirl who returns home one day to the news that her beloved daughter has died, in New York, of AIDS. She manages to stay afloat, buoyed by her precocious five-year-old son, Eddie, and her two outspoken sisters as they set forth on a journey across the country, seeking answers about her daughter's death. From Nevada to New York to Oklahoma, the eccentrics Harmony and her entourage meet nudge them closer to an inner peace with life, and a way to find hope in the future. Alive with inventive storytelling and honest emotion, The Late Child is a warm, enriching experience that celebrates the unique relationship between mother and child. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Mda, Zular. CION: A NOVEL. Toloki, a professional mourner, makes his was across the United States on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, meeting an impoverished Southern family though whom he learns the links between a beloved quilt and the slave trade. This novel is both lyrical and witty.

Millard, Candice. THE RIVER OF DOUBT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S DARKEST JOURNEY. After loosing his 3rd bid for the White House in 1912, Roosevelt accepts an invitation for a journey down an Amazon tributary know as the River of Doubt. This suspenseful book follows as participants deal with poor preparations and injuries even as the author, a former National Geographic writer, reveals the flora and fauna in marvelous detail. (NEO 2009)

Mills, Mark. AMAGANSETT. In 1947, two fishermen find the body of a beautiful woman tangled in their net off Amagansett, Long Island. Both deny recognizing her, but Conrad Labarde is lying. The murder reveals the discord between the privileged who summer at beachfront houses and the men who live and work at the shore. Both Deputy Police Chief Tom Hollis and Conrad are determined to find the killer - Tom to salvage his reputation after a scandal drove him from the New York police force, and Conrad because he and Lillian had been having an affair. But since her family was one of the wealthiest of the "summer people," she could never marry him. Each man conducts his own investigation, but it is Conrad who links Lillian's death and the earlier death of a town girl by a hit-and-run driver. This is a gripping story, with characters powerfully drawn against a tapestry of time and place. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Moore, Brian. CATHOLICS. Catholics converge to celebrate the old Latin mass at a remote place in Ireland. It is seen by participants as either a religious revival or the proof of the endurance of Catholicism of times past, but seen by the Pope as rebellious trouble and flagrant disobedience. A young American priest is sent to deal with the situation. With excellent character portrayals, it comes down to belief in miracles versus the mundane needs of the common good. (NEO 2009)

Moore, Tim. TRAVELS WITH MY DONKEY. A man, a donkey, and a very long walk: Moore's latest European adventure (after French Revolutions and others) finds him embarking on an ages-old physical and spiritual pilgrimage across Spain to the famed cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Moore entertains with his snappy one-liners and skewed views of the locals, his fellow pilgrims and his own reasons for undertaking the camino. Against advice to the contrary, he pursues his search for a donkey to accompany him, which "upgraded his camino from big walk to revelatory voyage of self-examination." (NEO-RLS 2006)

Mortenson, Greg and Relin, David Oliver. THREE CUPS OF TEA. Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse's unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world's second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town's first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. (NEO 2008)

Murphy, Louise. THE TRUE STORY OF HANSEL AND GRETEL. A provocative transformation of the classic fairy tale into a haunting survival story set in Poland during WWII, Murphy's second novel (after The Sea Within) is darkly enchanting. Two Jewish children, a girl of 11 and her seven-year-old brother, are left to wander the woods after their father and stepmother are forced to abandon them, frantically begging them never to say their Jewish names, but to identify themselves as Hansel and Gretel. In an imaginative reversal of the original tale, they encounter a small woman named Magda, known as a "witch" by villagers, who risks her life in harboring them. The story alternates between the children's nightmarish adventures, and their parents' struggle for survival and hope for a safe reunion. (NEO 2008)

Nemirovsky, Irene. SUITE FRANCAISE. Celebrated in pre-WWII France for her bestselling fiction, the Jewish Russian-born Nemirovsky was shipped to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, months after this long-lost masterwork was composed. Nemirovsky, a convert to Catholicism, began a planned five-novel cycle as Nazi forces overran northern France in 1940. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Niffenegger, Audrey. THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.(NEO-RLS 2006)

Niven, Jennifer. ADA BLACKJACK: A TRUE STORY OF SURVIVAL IN THE ARCTIC. In 1921, four men and one woman ventured deep into the Arctic. Two years later, only one returned. When 23-year-old Inuit Ada Blackjack signed on as a seamstress for a top-secret Arctic expedition, her goal was simple: earn money and find a husband. But her terrifying experiences -- both in the wild and back in civilization -- comprise one of the most amazing untold adventures of the 20th century. Based on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Ada's never-before-seen diaries, bestselling author Jennifer Niven narrates this true story of an unheralded woman who became an unlikely hero. (NEO-RLS 2005)

O'Farrell, Maggie. THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX. Iris Lockhart, a young Scottish woman, is informed that she has the power of attorney for her great Aunt Esme, whom she didn’t even know existed. Esme has been locked up in a mental hospital for 60 years, and the hospital is about to close. This is a gripping novel with superbly crafted scenes.

Otsuka, Julie. WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination—both physical and emotional—of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view—the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family’s return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity—she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Paterniti, Michael. DRIVING MR. ALBERT: A TRIP ACROSS AMERICA…... Non-fiction. 2001. Albert Einstein's brain floats in a Tupperware bowl in a gray duffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling across America. Driving the car is journalist Michael Paterniti. Sitting next to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named Thomas Harvey, who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955 -- then simply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for over forty years. On a cold February day, the two men and the brain leave New Jersey and light out on I-70 for sunny California, where Einstein's perplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. And riding along as the imaginary fourth passenger is Einstein himself, an id-driven genius, the original galactic slacker with his head in the stars. Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, and part meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique road trips in modern literature. (NEO-RLS 2003)

Perl, Lila and Blumenthal Lazan, Marion. FOUR PERFECT PEBBLES. Marion Blumenthal was not quite five years old in 1939 when her family fled Germany for Holland, ending up in the relative safety of Westerbork, then a refugee camp run by the Dutch government. They had visas for the U.S. and tickets for an ocean crossing, but during a fatal three-month postponement of their sailing, the Germans invaded Holland. (NEO 2008)

Philbrick, Nathaniel. IN THE HEART OF THE SEA. The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Phillips, Gin. WELL AND THE MINE. A tight-knit miner’s family struggles against poverty and racism in Depression-era Alabama. This memorable book has a wisp of suspense and characters that will be missed once the book is closed. (NEO 2009)

Picoult, Jodi. NINETEEN MINUTES. This spellbound novel deals with the truth and consequences of a small town high-school shooting. As with any Picoult novel, the answers to the obvious questions are never black and white, and it is her exceptional ability to blur the lines in the moral landscape that make the author such a captive storyteller. (NEO 2009)

Picoult, Jodi. MY SISTER'S KEEPER. Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Riccio, Dolores Stewart. CIRCLE OF FIVE. Initially an ordinary study group meeting at the local branch library, this group of women quickly evolves into a full-blown coven. The narrator, Cassandra, owner of Earthlore Herbal Preparations and Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, has visions, the most disturbing of which takes place in a grocery story when she "sees" a fellow shopper as a serial killer of young boys. Knowing that the police put little stock in psychic phenomena, the circle decides to take matters into their own hands. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Rinaldi, Ann. COFFIN QUILT: THE FEUD BETWEEN THE HATFIELDS…... Fiction. 2001. Feuds among the mountain folks of West Virginia and Kentucky, particularly the bloody skirmishes between the Hatfield and McCoy families, are often celebrated in American legend and folksongs. In The Coffin Quilt, Ann Rinaldi mines this rich vein of Americana for a fascinating tale that closely follows the real events of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, but which also has implications for our own violent times. (NEO-RLS 2003)

Roberts, Cokie. FOUNDING MOTHERS: THE WOMEN WHO RAISED OUR NATION. Cokie Roberts brings to light the stories of the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, sometimes even defending their very doorsteps from British occupation. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their husbands' businesses, ran the farms, and raised their children. These women who sacrificed for the fledgling nation spent months or even years apart from their husbands, at a time when letters were their only form of contact. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Royte, Elizabeth. GARBAGE LAND. The v-p of a New York City waste transfer station recommends, "You want to solve the garbage problem? Stop eating. Stop living." Indeed, to ponder waste disposal is to confront the very limits of our society. Where does it all go? Most of us are content to shrug off the details—as long as it's out of sight (and smell). Not so journalist Royte, whose book in some ways (including its title) echoes Fast Food Nation. That McDonald's is more immediately engaging a subject doesn't make, say, the massive, defunct Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, N.Y., any less compelling. (NEO 2008)

Ruhlman, Michael. HOUSE: A MEMOIR. With the always-tedious home-buying process and expensive repairs soaring into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the American Dream can seem like the American Nightmare. Detailing the purchase and renovation of a single family home, House explores the importance of the place we live in, our yearning to establish it, and the importance of the actual structure, its impact on our intellectual and spiritual lives, and on the struggles of a family. Packed with useful information and stories written with a storyteller’s flair, House is a dramatic narrative by a gifted writer who eloquently concludes that be it ever so humble, a castle or a row house downtown, there’s truly no place like home. (NEO-RLS 2006)

See, Lisa. SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN. In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. (NEO-RLS 2006)

See, Lisa. ON GOLD MOUNTAIN. Born into a predominately Cantonese family, Lisa See is surprised when as a young girl, her chinese uncles point at her and describe "white ghosts, like you". Surprised, she realized she appeared white, but felt chinese. Surrounded by her older relatives, she listened to their stories and became determined to capture their memories. Approached by her elder female aunties, they expressed a desire to document the family history. As the primary family members became aged, Lisa took up the rewarding challenge to pen the history of the incredible See family. (NEO 2007)

Setterfield, Diane. THE THIRTEENTH TALE. There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. (NEO 2008)

Shaffer, Mary Anne and Annie Barrows. THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY. A post WW II London author enters into a correspondence with readers from an unusual book discussion group on Guernsey that was founded during the war. We become familiar with the highs and lows of the Islanders’ lives as lasting friendships are formed. Readers who enjoyed 84 Charing Cross Road will love this book. (NEO 2009)

Shapiro, Michael. SENSE OF PLACE: GREAT TRAVEL WRITERS…. Great writers inspire readers to head out in search of foreign sunsets, but in this instance, they inspired travel writer Michael Shapiro to head out for the great writers themselves. A Sense of Place is one writer's journey to visit all the heroes who have motivated him - to pack a pen and toothbrush, to find out where they live, why they chose the place, and how it influences their writing. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Shelley, Mary. FRANKENSTEIN. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a young university student, Victor Frankenstein, obsesses with wanting to know the secret to life. He studies chemistry and natural philosophy with the goal of being able to create a human out of spare body parts. After months of constant work in his laboratory, Frankenstein attains his goal and brings his creation to life. Frankenstein is immediately overwrought by fear and remorse at the sight of his creation, a "monster." The next morning, he decides to destroy his creation but finds that the monster has escaped. (NEO 2008)

Smith, Betty. TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan -- and her erratic, eccentric family -- in the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn. Originally published in 1943, this true American classic has sold millions of copies worldwide, and includes a foreword by Anna Quindlen. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Smith, McCall Alexander. THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY. Mma (Precious) Ramotswe is Botswana’s one and only lady detective. Through her eyes, one is not only entertained by her cases and the people she deals with, the reader learns a great deal about life and conditions in Botswana. (NEO-RLS 2004)

Stegner, Wallace. CROSSING TO SAFETY. Crossing to Safety is about loyalty and survival in its most everyday form--the need to create bonds and the urge to tear them apart. Thirty-four years after their first meeting, when Larry and Sally are called back to the Langs' summer home in Vermont, it's as if for a final showdown. How has this friendship defined them? What is its legacy? (NEO-RLS 2007)

Steinbach, Aline. WITHOUT RESERVATIONS: THE TRAVELS….. In many ways, I was an independent woman,” writes Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Alice Steinbach. “For years I’d made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.” But somehow she had become dependent in quite another way. “I had fallen into the habit . . . of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.” But who was she away from the people and things that defined her? In this exquisite book, Steinbach searches for the answer to this question in some of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate; Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village; Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. Beautifully illustrated with postcards from her journeys, this revealing and witty book transports you into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Swanson, James. MANHUNT. The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Thom, James Alexander. LONG KNIFE: A NOVEL BASED ON THE LIFE OF GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. Two centuries ago, with the support of the young Revolutionary government, Clark led a small but fierce army to conquer all of the territory between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Here is the adventure, romance, struggle, and betrayal that make up his life. Rich in heroic characters and meticulously researched, this book is simply unforgettable. (NEO 2009)

Thurbon, Colin. SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD. Modern day traveler Thurbon follows the ancient network of trade routes that connected Central Asia with the Mediterranean coast. Traveling third class, he experiences the best and the worst as the Silk Road becomes a metaphor for the mingling of experiences and influences that is the essence of travel. (NEO 2009)

Tolan, Sandy. THE LEMON TREE. The title of this moving, well-crafted book refers to a tree in the backyard of a home in Ramla, Israel. The home is currently owned by Dalia, a Jewish woman whose family of Holocaust survivors emigrated from Bulgaria. But before Israel gained its independence in 1948, the house was owned by the Palestinian family of Bashir, who meets Dalia when he returns to see his family home after the Six-Day War of 1967. Journalist Tolan traces the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the parallel personal histories of Dalia and Bashir and their families—all refugees seeking a home. (NEO-RLS 2007)

Turner, Nancy. THESE IS MY WORDS: THE DIARY OF SARAH AGNES. Inspired by the author's original family memoirs, this absorbing story introduces us to the questing, indomitable Sarah Prine, one of the most memorable women ever to survive and prevail in the Arizona Territory of the late 1800s. As a child, a fiery young woman, and finally a caring mother, Sarah forges a life as full and as fascinating as our deepest needs, our most secret hopes and our grandest dreams. She rides Indian-style and shoots with deadly aim, greedily devours a treasure trove of leatherbound books, downs fire, flood, Comanche raids and other mortal perils with the unique courage that forged the character of the American West. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Twain, Mark. LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. At once a romantic history of a mighty river, an autobiographical account of Mark Twain's early steamboat days, and a storehouse of humorous anecdotes and sketches, Life on the Mississippi is the raw material from which Twain wrote his finest novel-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (NEO 2008)

Twain, Mark. THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. A classic in Mark Twain sytle. This is a story of his first of many overseas trips. As he refers to his countrymen as pumpkins among the more civilized European world. The humor and style of writing make this a good book for those who enjoy a good easy read classic. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Vreeland, Susan. GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE. Penguin USA, 2000 Fiction. The author traces the history of a ‘possible’ Vermeer painting from its discovery in present day Pennsylvania with its current location at a boys’ academy through its origination in the Netherlands by a series of interrelated short stories that follow the painting back through other owners, other histories to the very inception of the painting in the Vermeer household. (NEO-RLS 2001)

Vreeland, Susan. THE PASSION OF ARTEMISIA. Susan Vreeland tells Artemisia's captivating story, beginning with her public humiliation in a rape trial at the age of eighteen, and continuing through her father's betrayal, her marriage of convenience, motherhood, and growing fame as an artist. Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Naples, inhabited by historical characters such as Galileo and Cosimo de' Medici II, and filled with rich details about life as a seventeenth-century painter, Vreeland creates an inspiring story about one woman's lifelong struggle to reconcile career and family, passion and genius. (NEO 2008)

Wallace, Benjamin. THE BILLIONAIRE'S VINEGAR: THE MYSTERY OF THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE BOTTLE OF WINE. This vintage tale tells the story of a 1787 bottle of Chateau Laffite Bordeaux that sold for $156,000. Is it an elaborate con or truly a bottle from the cellars of Thomas Jefferson? This is a successful and thrilling story. (NEO 2009)

Walls, Jeannette. GLASS CASTLE. The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Weber, Caroline. QUEEN OF FASHION. At Versailles, where even the daily rouging of the Dauphin's cheeks was a highly ritualized and politicized affair, and where obedience to protocol could brook no infringement, 14-year-old Marie Antoinette's refusal to wear her whalebone corset threatened the Bourbon-Hapsburg alliance. As this prodigiously researched, deliciously detailed study (perfectly timed for the fall release of Sofia Coppola's movie) of the doomed royal's fashion statements demonstrates, her masculine equestrian garb, ostentatious costumes for masked balls, high Parisian hairdos and faux country-girl gear were bold bids for political power and personal freedom in a suffocating realm where a queen was merely a breeder and living symbol of her spouse's glorious reign. (NEO 2008)

Weisman, Alan. THE WORLD WITHOUT US. The author has written the consequences shown by a simple thought experiment – What would happen if the human race was suddenly extinguished? All items of our man-made civilization would fail and, after many years, the earth might eventually revert to a bird-filled Eden. (NEO 2009)

Weller, Sam. THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES. In highly readable prose, Weller surveys Bradbury's ancestors and family, his boyhood move to Hollywood, his introduction to science fiction and fantasy and his early writing attempts, which reflect the themes that pervade his more mature work: "nostalgia, loneliness, lost love, and death." (NEO-RLS 2006)

Winchester, Simon. KRAKATOA: THE DAY THE WORLD EXPLODED: AUGUST 27, 1883. This is a compelling account of the destruction of Krakatoa by the eruption of its volcano in 1883. It examines the lasting and world-changing effects the disaster had. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Winspear, Jacqueline. MAISIE DOBBS. Maisie Dobbs isn’t just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence—and the patronage of her benevolent employers—she works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. It is there that she learns that coincidences are meaningful and the truth elusive. After the War, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind. (NEO 2008)

Wisner, Franz. HONEYMOON WITH MY BROTHER. This is the true story of Franz Wisner, a man who thought he had it all- a high profile career and the fiancée of his dreams- when suddenly, his life turned upside down. Just days before they were to be married, his fiancée called off the wedding. Luckily, his large support network of family and friends wouldn't let him succumb to his misery. They decided Franz should have a wedding and a honeymoon anyway- there just wouldn't be a bride at the ceremony, and Franz' travel companion would be his brother, Kurt.During the "honeymoon," Franz reconnected with his brother and began to look at his life with newfound perspective. The brothers decided to leave their old lives behind them. They quit their jobs, sold all their possessions, and traveled around the world, visiting fifty-three countries for the next two years. (NEO-RLS 2006)

Yellin, Emily. OUR MOTHERS' WAR: AMERICAN WOMEN AT HOME AND…. After years of planting Victory gardens, volunteering at USOs and coping with increased home front responsibilities, in early 1945 Yellin's mother quit her desk job at Reader's Digest and shipped out to the Pacific Front to join the Red Cross. Wartime manpower shortages were bending gender rules, and many women seized the opportunity to try something different. (NEO-RLS 2005)

Zusak, Markus. THE BOOK THIEF. Grade 9 Up–Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. (NEO 2008)