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Book Group Title List

Books marked with *** are recent additions

Updated November 2021

84, Charing Cross Road  Helene Hanff  |  BG 921 Hanff  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Addie  |  Mary Lee Settle  |  BG 921 Settle  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  |  Mark Twain  |  BG Twain  |  [Reserve Now]

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

After the Dancing Days  |  Margaret Rostkowski  |  BG Rostkowski  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Age of Innocence  |  Edith Wharton  |  BG Wharton  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion  |  Fannie Flagg  |  BG Flagg  |  [Reserve Now]

She might be facing an empty nest and her demanding mother’s continuous needs, but southerner Sookie Simmons Poole is doing just fine—until she receives a letter that sets her life in an entirely new direction. Her research leads her to the Jurdabralinski family, four sisters who helped keep their family’s Phillip’s 66 gas station afloat during World War II, as well as serving the United States as members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Sookie’s process of discovering who she really is (not who her overbearing mother wants her to be) is fueled by her growing knowledge of those four courageous sisters. Full of Flagg’s trademark southern charm mixed with a little-known part of American history, The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion is a quirky novel, warm and funny and the smallest bit bittersweet.

All the Light We Cannot See  |  Anthony Doerr  |  BG Doerr  |  [Reserve Now]

This haunting, almost gentle novel tells the story of Marie, a blind girl growing up in France as World War II begins, and Werner, an orphan growing up in Germany during the same time. Marie’s father is the locksmith at the Museum of Natural History; he creates keys and locks, and distributes them, to protect the museum’s acquisitions. Werner lives in an orphanage in Essen, the mining district of Germany; his father was killed in a coal mine. Each character has a transition: Werner’s natural instinct for science, math, and radio technology is discovered by a Nazi official, who arranges for him to be sent to the school at Schulpforta, where Nazis were created out of ordinary boys, while Marie moves to St. Malo, an ancient city on the coast of France, after the invasion of Paris. The dual stories intertwine with that of von Rumpel, a German diamond expert tasked by the Nazis with the responsibility of finding the Sea of Flames jewel, which may or may not be cursed—and might possibly be in the possession of Marie’s father. An elegant study of the way technology, time, and war influence the personal behaviors of individuals, All the Light We Cannot See illustrates that there are still stories to be told about this harrowing time in history.

Almost Famous Women  |  Megan Mayhew Bergman  |  BG Bergman  |  [Reserve Now]

The women in this collection of short stories are almost famous either because of their proximity to fame—Lord Byron’s abandoned daughter, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s outgoing sister Norma, Oscar Wilde’s vivacious niece—or because their grand ambitions were only barely noticed by most of the world—dancing in Paris, driving a motorcycle at daring speeds and angles, forming America’s first integrated all-girl swing band. They are risk takers, daredevils, quiet renegades, women trying to find their way on unusual paths. The author was inspired to write these stories out of “a fascination with real women whose remarkable lives were reduced to footnotes”; reading them is a process of discovering forgotten but important historical moments in women’s lives.

Angle of Repose  |  Wallace Stegner  |  BG Stegner  |  [Reserve Now]

The novel opens when wheelchair bound historian Lyman Ward decides to chronicle the lives of his extraordinary grandparents and their struggles in the Western frontier. Their story takes them from boom towns in Colorado, to near starvation on the banks of an Idaho river, to near-peace in California. However, Lyman’s study of his grandparents leads him to discover that he is connected to his family in more ways that he ever imagined. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. It was written when Stegner was presented with a brief biographical history and series of letters that would inspire the creation of one of American fiction’s most memorable couples: Susan and Oliver Ward. 

*** As Bright as Heaven  |  Susan Meissner  |  BG Meissner  |  [Reserve Now]

“Home isn’t a safe place where everything stays the same; it’s a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same.” After the death of their son Henry, the Bright family moves to Philadelphia. Sisters Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa adjust to life in the city, but then the Spanish flu sweeps through, changing their lives in ways they never imagined. This moving historical novel explores how times of crises challenge the morality of our decisions.

Atonement  |  Ian McEwan  |  BG McEwan  |  [Reserve Now]

Ian McEwan’s haunting novel details the devastating impact of one child’s decision on a summer day in 1935. After observing her older sister Cecilia and the housekeeper’s son Robbie in a compromising situation she doesn’t understand, young Briony makes an accusation that changes lives. As the years pass, each character remains tied to that accusation and while being immersed in a world at war. Part crime story, part romance, part history, this heartbreaking novel deserves its designation as a modern classic.

The Awakening  |  Kate Chopin  |  BG Chopin  |  [Reserve Now]

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

***The Ballad of Frankie Silver |  Sharyn McCrumb  |  BG McCrumb  |  [Reserve Now]

The Appalachian wilderness comes to life in this novel that explores the mystery of what happened to Frankie Silver, hanged for murder in a small North Carolina town in 1833. In contemporary Tennessee, Sherriff Spencer Arrowood investigates a different murder, perhaps committed by a young woman who grew up poor in the mountains, Fate Harkryder. The two murders—and the two young women moving through a legal system that fails them—begin to weave together as Spencer works to uncover the truth.

The Bean Trees  |  Barbara Kingsolver  |  BG Kingsolver  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Bellfield Hall, or, the Observations of Miss Dido Kent  Anna Dean  |  BG Dean  |  [Reserve Now]

Set in the 1805 England that’s familiar from Jane Austen’s novels, this is the first in a mystery series. Dido Kent, at 35 years old, is considered to be a hopeless spinster—but solving mysteries gives her life a sense of purpose. Dido’s niece Catherine is heartbroken, as her fiancé has abruptly called off the engagement. He vanishes, and then a murdered woman is found on the grounds of Bellfield Hall, and Dido must figure out if the two are connected.

*** Between the World and Me  |  Ta-Nehisi Coates  |  BG 305.8009 C6326  |  [Reserve Now]

Written as a series of letters to his teenage son, Ta-Nahesi Coats’s collection of essays describes and explores what it means to live in a Black body in contemporary America. As it examines the history of the United States from its founding to its current issues, the author’s personal experiences, and his concerns and hopes for his son, the book makes clear the concept that race itself is a fabrication. This profound, movingly-written book is essential reading for those wishing to understand more about the lived experiences of African Americans.

The Blue Castle  L. M. Montgomery  |  BG Montgomery  |  [Reserve Now]

When 29-year-old Valancy Stirling (the plain, quite spinster of her family) receives the surprising news that she has a fatal heart condition, she decides to entirely change whatever life she has left to live. Rather than quietly obeying the conscriptions and directions of her family, she starts making her own choices, including making friends with the town drunk and a vagabond. Told with Mongtomery’s vivid descriptions of the Canadian landscape, this gentle, sweet romance will make your heart flutter.

Bog Child  |  Siobhan Dowd  |  BG Dowd  |  [Reserve Now]

In the 1980’s, Ireland was a country mangled by The Troubles, and all that 18-year-old Fergus McCann wants is to finish high school and escape to university in Scotland. But it is difficult for him to avoid the conflicts in his world: his older brother Joe, arrested for involvement in the IRA, begins a hunger strike in prison, and a local criminal is blackmailing Fergus into smuggling mysterious packages across the Irish border. When he discovers a body in a peat bog, Fergus begins dreaming of a murder victim, whose story intertwines with his own, helping him to understand the choices he needs to make. A coming-of-age story set in a turbulent era, Bog Child mixes modern history with bronze-age Ireland in a haunting novel with plenty of topics to discuss.

The Bonesetter’s Daughter  |  Amy Tan  |  BG Tan  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Book Thief  |  Markus Zusak  |  BG Zusak  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind  |  William Kamkwamba  |  BG 921 Kamkwamba  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Bruiser   |  Neal Shusterman  |  BG Shusterman  |  [Reserve Now]

Brewster Rawlins: the high school kid voted “most likely to get the death penalty,” the tall, ambling quiet boy built like a tank but almost always covered in bruises and cuts and even casts for broken arms. What’s his story? Tennyson Sternberger doesn’t know, and doesn’t care to find out, until his twin sister Bronte announces she’s going on a date with Brewster. What starts as a reluctant compromise becomes a friendship as Tennyson discovers Brewster isn’t a future potential criminal but just another kid. Except, he’s not really; cuts and bruises heal faster when Brewster’s around, and the stress of the siblings’ parents’ marriage feels less painful. As Brewster and his brother Cody grow closer to Tennyson and Bronte, the twins begin to understand the implications of pain, both physical and emotional, as well as the nature of sacrifice and the depths of relationships. This Beehive Award nominee novel will challenge readers to consider their interactions with the people they love.

Burial Rites  |  Hannah Kent  |  BG Kent  |  [Reserve Now]

Intricately researched, Hannah Kent’s first novel brings Iceland in the early nineteenth century to vivid, shivering, sparkling life. Agnes Magnusdottir, a young working woman, has been charged with the murder of her employer. While she awaits the time of her execution, she is sent to live at a farm owned by a family in northern Iceland. She chooses a young priest there, Father Tovi, to tell her story to. Based on the true story of the last person executed in Iceland, this historical novel uses beautiful writing to tell a devastating story.

The Buried Giant  |  Kazuo Ishiguro  |  BG Ishiguro  |  [Reserve Now]

Ishiguro’s novel sparked discussion and even argument within the reading community over what makes a piece “literary.” Can a genre work also be literature? The Buried Giant proves that yes, indeed, it can. It tells the story of Axl and Beatrice, an older couple living in a small village in post-Arthurian England. They, as well as most of the population of this version of Britain, are influenced by a mysterious memory problem. Memories come and go, shifting in strange patterns, and often they forget that they’ve actually forgotten most of their lives. Through this memory fog come a very few memories of Axl and Beatrice’s son and some faint impressions of their younger years, just enough to send them on a quest to find him. Their drive to remember their lives directs the story of their adventures with ogres, knights, pixies, sinister monks and menacing soldiers until they finally reach a sleeping dragon. Along the way, they (and readers) discover some important truths about family, marriage, history, and memory.

The Butterfly and the Violin  |  Kristy  Cambron  |  BG Ishiguro  |  [Reserve Now]

A painting of a young woman playing the violin is the connection between two stories in this debut novel which was nominated for Library Journal’s Best Books of 2014. Jilted by her fiancé, Manhattan art dealer Sera James retreats into her work until the memory of a painting pushes her out of her comfort zone. In German-controlled Poland, violinist Adele von Bron is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau after she is caught trying to rescue Jews. There she is forced to play her violin during the death marches of the Jewish prisoners. The two stories intertwine into a moving tale of faith, loss, art, and courage.

Call the Midwife  |  Jennifer Worth  |  BG 921 Worth  |  [Reserve Now]

In the 1950’s, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable, middle-class life to work in London’s East End as a midwife. She gathers the stories of her experiences in this remarkable memoir. The chapters alternate between telling the intimate stories of the laboring mothers in this poor part of post-war London and describing the often-humorous accounts of living at Nonnatus House, the convent where Worth was based. The stories here vary widely, some grim, some joyful, just as the lives of the families did in that time; the sometimes-gritty medical details are fascinating, but the real drama comes in the experiences of mothers determined (mostly) to make a good life for their babies.

 Caroline: Little House Revisited  |  Sarah Miller  |  BG Miller  |  [Reserve Now]

Charles, Caroline, Mary, and Laura Ingalls pack their wagon and set out on a cold day in February, leaving their home in the Big Woods of Wisconsin to settle a farmstead in Indian Territory. It’s a story familiar to anyone who read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, but here we read it through a different perspective, that of Caroline. The character who seemed stern but loving in the children’s novels becomes fully alive in Sarah Miller’s novel: terrified, brave, sensual, creative, determined yet unsure of her strength. She experiences many of the same trials that Wilder wrote about, but seen through adult eyes they become both more terrifying and more relatable. A novel that will resonate with readers who loved Little House as well as those who just love a well-told historical fiction that brings to vivid life a historical time and place.

The Chosen  |  Chaim Potok  |  BG Potok  |  [Reserve Now]

Potok’s magnificent story of two friends and two fathers is an unforgettable American classic. Two Brooklyn boys meet through a softball game and become fast friends, despite very different background. Reuven comes from a Jewish family with modern, American leanings. Danny is heir-apparent to his father, a conservative Hassidic Rabbi. The novel is an exploration of fatherhood, faith, Judaism, and a friendship that defies the odds.

A Christmas Carol  |  Charles Dickens  |  BG Dickens  |  [Reserve Now]

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

A Christmas Memory  |  Truman Capote  |  BG Capote  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Clock Dance  |  Anne Tyler  |  BG Tyler  |  [Reserve Now]

Clock Dance begins in 1967, when 11-year-old Willa Drake is trying to figure out her mother’s absence; picks up in 1977 as she starts college, jumps to 1997 when she is a young widow and then to 2017, when her sons are off living their own lives and all she wants is to become a grandmother. Then a phone call from a near-stranger changes the trajectory of her life again, sending her to Baltimore to care for the daughter of a person she barely knows. Anne Tyler is a master at exploring ordinary family dynamics, finding the bits of magic hidden in the mundane, and this novel is no exception. You will come to love Willa as she works through the issues her life has created for her on the way to finding her own voice.

The Color of Water  |  James McBride  |  BG 921 McBride  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Confessions of a Molly Mormon  |  Elona K. Shelley  |  BG M242.643 Sh441  |  [Reserve Now]

“There is the ideal, and then there is reality.” Elona Shelley was discussing the observation of the Sabbath when she wrote that, but it is a tidy summary of her book. The LDS gospel presents many ideals: commandments and obligations and requirements, ways of being and examples to uphold. Trying to fulfill those ideals perfectly sometimes leads members to feel as if they are failing. Starting with a mighty change of heart she experienced, Elona explores how living the gospel within the reality of the world might not fulfill the ideal, but still brings us closer to God.

Crossing to Safety  |  Wallace Stegner  |  BG Stegner  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Cry, the Beloved Country  |  Alan Paton  |  BG Paton  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Dancing at the Rascal Fair  |  Ivan Doig  |  BG Doig  |  [Reserve Now]

“The Atlantic was a child’s teacup compared to the ocean that life could be,” Angus McCaskill thinks, a tidy summary of a sprawling, funny, tender book that tells the story of immigration and expansion. With his friend Rob Barclay, Angus leaves Scotland for Montana, where the two friends become sheep ranchers, as well as fathers, husbands, and men along the way. Dancing at the Rascal Fair shares thirty years of their lives with readers, in stories rich with humor, suffering, love and friendship.

Dandelion Wine  |  Ray Bradbury  |  BG Bradbury  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat  |  Vicky Myron  |  BG 636.8009 M997  |  [Reserve Now]

One cold morning in Iowa, librarian Vicki Myron came into work and found a tiny kitten had been stuffed through the book-return drop. Rescued by the librarians of the Spencer Public Library, Dewey became the library cat. This memoir details his twenty years at the library, including his influence on both the librarians and the library patrons. If you love books, libraries, and cats (and who doesn’t?), you will love this sweet memoir.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve  |  Mark Twain  |  BG Twain  |  [Reserve Now]

Mark Twain retells the story of Adam and Eve in a diary format, alternating between Adam’s experiences and Eve’s. By turns hilarious, moving, and heartbreaking, their tale in Twain’s hands becomes something different than its telling in Genesis. Here, Adam and Eve are not only a story about humanity’s beginnings but about the first love story, and the first story of loss, and the enduringly human story of how we piece together both joy and sorrow to create the narrative of our lives.

The Distant Hours  |  Kate Morton  |  BG Morton  |  [Reserve Now]

Kate Morton is the master of intricately plotted historical novels that move back and forth between current times and the past; seeing how narratives unravel and stories connect is part of the pleasure of reading her books. The Distant Hours is no exception. In contemporary London, Edie receives a letter that was mailed to her mother nearly fifty years ago and only just arrived. Her normally mellow mother reacts so strongly to the letter—which came from one of the three sisters she lived with in Middlehurst castle in Kent during the Blitz—that Edie decides to investigate. Mystery lovers, as well as history fans, will be fascinated by this story as it unwinds to its bittersweet end.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood  |  Alexandra Fuller  |  BG 968.91 F9581  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Drenched in Light  |  Lisa Wingate  |  BG Wingate  |  [Reserve Now]

After her dream of becoming a prima ballerina with the Kansas City ballet crumbles because of her struggles with anorexia, Julia moves back home to work as a guidance counselor at a prestigious school for performing arts. Her life begins to intertwine with Dell, a scholarship student who is a music virtuoso but struggling to fit in with her wealthy, snooty peers. As she works to overcome the tensions both within the school and her family, Julia begins to realize the impact of her decisions and where her life’s truth path lies.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe  |  Gayle Tzmech Lemmon  |  BG 958.1047 T996  |  [Reserve Now]

In 1995, Kamili Sidiqi’s dreams of becoming a teacher were disrupted by the Taliban’s descent upon Kabul. A loophole in the new law, however, allowed for women to work out of their home, and so she started a business designing and sewing dresses. Her story of quiet, productive rebellion illustrates how women can be resilient survivors of war, rather than its victims.

Educated: A Memoir  |  Tara Westover  |  BG 921 Westover  |  [Reserve Now]

Tara Westover grew up in a family with seven children in rural Idaho. Her father, a fundamentalist with ideas based in Mormonism, believed that they needed to be planning for the End of Days, so they lived off the grid, without education or access to medical care. As she grew, Tara worked with her mother, an unregistered midwife, when she didn’t have to scavenge for scrap metal with her father. Encouraged by an older brother who left the family, she taught herself enough English, math, and science to pass the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University—and thus introduced to a world she knew almost nothing about. This compelling memoir will both anger and frustrate you, but also remind you of the life-changing power of education.

Ella Minnow Pea  |  Mark Dunn  |  BG Dunn  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Ellie and the Harpmaker  |  Hazel Prior  |  BG Prior  |  [Reserve Now]

Whenever she can get away, Ellie Jacobs takes long walks through the English countryside near the home she shares with her husband Clive. On one walk, she discovers the barn/workshop of Dan Hollis, who is a harp maker. When he discovers that she has wanted to learn to play the harp, Dan gives her one, but because Clive objects to the gift, she keeps it in Dan’s barn, where she secretly learns to play. This romance novel invites readers to consider how the risks we take can sometimes bring us to new experiences we couldn’t have predicted otherwise.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James  |  Emma Hooper  |  BG Hooper  |  [Reserve Now]

Etta and Otto and Russell and James tells the story of Otto Vogel, just one of a 15-kid family growing up on a dusty farm in Saskatchewan with his best friend Russell, who becomes a sort-of Vogel, pitching in with the chores and eating at their table. When they are teenagers, their teacher, ill from the area’s constant dust, is replaced with a new one, Etta Kinnick. The James of the title is a complicated, mysterious character best discovered in the book itself. This is a novel that moves seamlessly between the past and the present; part of the story is Otto’s perspective and part is Etta’s. We go to war with Otto, we stay home with Etta and then—when she is near the end of her life—we go on a walk with her. Etta, who has never seen the sea, decides (at age 83!) to walk there. Russell’s role in Etta’s life, and James’s, as well as Otto’s experiences pining for Etta at home on his own, create a compelling and devastating read. This lovely, sweet, and sad novel, part history, part travel adventure, is entirely charming.

*** Far from the Tree  |  Robin Benway  |  BG Benway  |  [Reserve Now]

After placing her baby for adoption, high-school senior Grace wants desperately to connect with her own birthmother. Her search reveals her two siblings: Maya, who was also adopted as a baby, and Joaquin, who grew up in the foster care system. As they begin to know each other and understand the impact of their birthmother’s decisions, they might begin to create a new family between them, but only if they are able to move through their individual traumas. This young adult novel explores the many ways that family bonds are formed, looking at the adoption triad in ways that are equally moving and realistic

Father Brown: The Essential Tales  |  G. K. Chesterton  |  BG Chesterton  |  [Reserve Now]

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

A Fine and Pleasant Misery  |  Patrick F. McManus  |  BG 796.502 M4599  |  [Reserve Now]

“The more you talked about the miseries of life in the woods,” writes Patrick McManus, “the more you wanted to get back out there and start suffering again. Camping was a fine and pleasant misery.” But it’s not just camping that McManus expounds upon in this collection of wilderness stories written for Field & Stream magazine; hiking, fishing, hunting, and other nature-based adventures also appear, as well as the unique pleasures of bring a kid or two along with you. If you’ve ever pitched a tent or hit the trail, McManus’s writing will make you laugh in recognition of the miserable joys of the great outdoors.

Fire of the Word  |  Carol Pratt Bradley  |  BG Bradley  |  [Reserve Now]

England in the first half of the 1500s was a violent time, as the ideas of the Protestant reformation battled against the traditions of Catholicism. Anne Ayscough was a young English noblewoman during these years of the reign of King Henry VIII. Raised in a Protestant home where she learned to read, studied the New Testament, and was encouraged to express her ideas, Anne was an unusual woman. But when her sister died just before her wedding, Anne’s father declared that Anne would marry in her sister’s stead—marry a staunch Catholic. The resulting personal battles mirror the social, religious, and political battles of the time. Fire of the Word brings Anne’s story out of the darkness of history, creating the narrative of a woman who fought to shape her own life as the will of her husband tried to break her.

*** The Fountains of Silence  |  Ruta Sepetys |  BG Sepetys  |  [Reserve Now]

Daniel, an 18-year-old American who is in Madrid with his parents, trying to capture the city through his camera lens. Ana, a young woman working at the Castellana Hilton, whose parents were executed for their anti-Fascist politics. Her brother Rafa, who promotes the bullfights. Their cousin Puri, who works in an orphanage. In 1957, the lives of these four young adults intertwine in the Spanish city, ruled by Franco’s politics and made dark by secrets. As with her other young adult novels Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Grey, author Ruta Septys doesn’t flinch from the troubling details of the collusion between church and state, the murders of political adversaries, and the theft of babies. The lesser-known stories of Spain during the fascist regime are brought to life in illuminating, captivating prose in this thoughtful and mesmerizing work of historical fiction.

*** Frankenstein  |  Mary Shelley  |  BG Shelley  |  [Reserve Now]

This is a beautifully illustrated edition of the classic horror novel. Victor Frankenstein, compelled to find the meaning of life and of death, creates a living being from the body parts of dead people, but his creation is monstrous to him. The story, written when Mary Shelley was challenged by the poet Byron to write a ghost story, is a turning point in literature, one of the first science fiction novels. It asks us to explore the connection between failure and hubris, as well as the moral implications of scientific discovery.

Gilead  |  Marilynne Robinson  |  BG Robinson  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Girl in Translation  |  Jean Kwok  |  BG Kwok  |  [Reserve Now]

With the promise of housing and a job, Ah-Kim and her mother immigrate to San Francisco from Hong Kong after her father dies. The housing her Aunt Paula provides is a squalid, unheated apartment and the factory work is demanding and exhausting. Kimberly, as she’s known in America, barely has enough clothes to keep warm, let alone avoid the taunts of kids at school. It’s not flashy, but her quiet strength, intelligence, and courage as she tries to create an American life for herself and her mother infuse this novel with an uplifting sense of possibility.

Good-Bye, Mr. Chips  |  James Hilton  |  BG Hilton  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Goose Girl  |  Shannon Hale  |  BG Hale  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society  |  Mary Ann Shaffer  |  BG Shaffer  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Guests of the Sheik  |  Elizabeth Warnock Fernea  |  BG 306.956 F394  |  [Reserve Now]

In 1956, Elizabeth Fernea was a newlywed. Her husband’s field research in anthropology took the couple to a small, rural Iraqi village. In a friendly, intimate tone, Fernea tells the story of her two years there, which she begins as an American woman knowing next to nothing about Iraqi culture, language, or mores, resentful of the abaya she is required to wear; and ends as a close friend to the women of El Nahra. An intimate and detailed examination of the real lives women led in Iraq in the 1950s, Guests of the Sheik is an adventure story at heart, illustrating that no matter how different our cultures are, we all share the need to live vibrant lives.

The Handmaid’s Tale  |  Margaret Atwood  |  BG Atwood  |  [Reserve Now]

In the country of Gilead, women have no choices: not what to wear, or who to marry, or what do. They cannot own property, gain education, or have a bank account.  The fertile (who are few), may bear children—but they must be given to the powerful ranking families of the dictatorship. The slightly terrifying thing is that Gilead is America, in the future, when fertility rates have plummeted and women become pawns in a game of power. The narrator, whose real name we never discover, is called Offred, and she is a handmaid: a woman who had a child before the coup and so might conceive again. She is given to a Commander’s family, where once a month she participates in the Ceremony that has become her duty.

The Happiness Project  |  Gretchen Rubin  |  BG 158 R8244  |  [Reserve Now]

One day, while riding a bus in New York City, Gretchen Rubin realized that despite her fabulous life—good, kind husband, two beautiful daughters, a writing career—she wasn’t quite, exactly, thoroughly happy. Deciding that she wanted to “feel grateful for ordinary days,” she embarked on a happiness project, which was a year-long experiment in different approaches to happiness. She read the history and philosophy of the study of happiness; she identified areas to work on and resolutions within them. Then she spent 365 days exploring happiness. In this book, she writes about her experiences exploring happiness. It might just encourage you to consider your happiness, too, and how you can improve it.

The Hazel Wood  |  Melissa Albert  |  BG Wood  |  [Reserve Now]

Tales from the Hinterland is a book of retold fairytales that’s impacted 17-year-old Alice Proserpine’s life, even though she’s never read it. Her grandmother Althea (who she doesn’t know) became famous for the book, but her mother Ella believes it causes the bad luck she and Alice are always running from. When Althea dies, Ella declares them free of the bad luck, and they settle down in New York City—until Ella is kidnapped. Alice and a schoolmate, who happens to be a Hinterland superfan, set off to find Hazel Wood, the mysterious estate where Althea lived and died, and that’s when fantasy and reality start to blur. Alice’s acerbic personality and the dark bits of the Hinterland tales create a spooky, refreshing reworking of fairy tales that explores the relationship between mothers and daughters and the legacy of family stories.

The Help  |  Kathryn Stockett  |  BG Stockett  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The History of Love  |  Nicole Krauss  |  BG Krauss  |  [Reserve Now]

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

I Capture the Castle  |  Dodie Smith  |  BG Smith  |  [Reserve Now]

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

I Heard the Owl Call My Name  |  Margaret Craven  |  BG Craven  |  [Reserve Now]

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

*** I Miss You When I Blink  |  Mary Laura Philpott  |  BG 305.2442 P5499  |  [Reserve Now]

“I miss you when I blink”: A sentence coined by her son when he was six that came to help Mary Laura Philpott start to understand her life. Especially once she had “made it,” once she had a home and a husband and a job and some kids but still found herself just…herself. Less happy than she expected, still annoyed by friends running late, small talk, people’s barking dogs. In this collection of essays, Philpott explores who and what we miss when we blink, the selves we don’t get to be, the moments that pass us by. Irreverent, funny, unafraid to look at topics ranging from taking kids to the pool to the things that keep us from bungee jumping (as well as depression and anxiety), this book will make readers laugh, cry, and everything in between.

If You Come Softly  |  Jacqueline Woodson  |  BG Woodson  |  [Reserve Now]

Two very different teens meet and fall in love at a prep school in New York City. Jeremiah, who is black, comes from a wealthy family undergoing a painful divorce; Ellie, who is white, struggles to trust her mother, who has abandoned her family twice. As these teenagers’ relationship develops, issues of race and social standing impact them in ways they never imagined. Set in a vividly-real New York City, this lyrical novel, with chapters alternating between Jeremiah’s and Ellie’s perspectives, is both a romance and an examination of the pressures bigotry creates.

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky  |  Marissa de los Santos  |  BG de los Santos  |  [Reserve Now]

Clare Hobbes isn’t sure: are her fiancé Zach’s temper flares just a quirk of his personality or something darker? On the weekend of her wedding, a chance encounter with an older woman named Edith helps her to see her troubles clearly, and she decides to call off her wedding. Shortly after, she is surprised to find that Edith had passed away and left her beachfront home in Delaware to Clare. The story alternates between Clare’s contemporary experiences and Edith’s story in the 1950s. It looks at the problem of marital abuse but balances that darkness with healing and hope.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks  |  Rebecca Skloot  |  BG 616.0277 Sk45  |  [Reserve Now]

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

In the Heart of the Sea  |  Nathaniel Philbrick  |  BG 910.9164 P534  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Interpreter of Maladies  |  Jhumpa Lahiri  |  BG Lahiri  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Invention of Wings  |  Sue Monk Kidd  |  BG Kidd  |  [Reserve Now]

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké were two of the earliest abolitionists and suffragettes in America, fighting for equal rights in the 1830’s so vocally that they were eventually exiled from their Charleston, South Carolina home. In this novel, Sue Monk Kidd explores the life of Sarah Grimké along with that of Handful, a black slave who was given to Sarah on her eleventh birthday. This “human gift” was so repulsive to Sarah it started in motion her life-long fight for equality. The chapters alternate between Sarah’s and Handful’s perspectives as the two women’s lives and struggles influence each other over decades. Sarah realizes that “we can do little for the slave as long as we’re under the feet of men,” and it is this understanding of the dual nature of her and Handful’s struggles that informs both of their experiences.

An Irish Country Wedding  |  Patrick Taylor  |  BG Taylor  |  [Reserve Now]

Set in the fictional North Ireland village of Ballybucklebo, Taylor’s Irish Country novels tell the stories of the townspeople, as experienced by the local MDs, Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and the apprentice Dr. Barry Laverty. These gentle, humorous, and sweet stories paint a vivid picture of Ireland in the 1960s. In An Irish Country Wedding, the seventh in the series (the books need not be read in order), Dr. O’Reilly has finally proposed to his childhood sweetheart, but when his housekeeper, Kinky Kincade, comes up ill, a series of dramas—as well as the beginning of the Troubles—might set back the wedding.

Jane Eyre  |  Charlotte Bronte  |  BG Bronte  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Kitchen House  |  Kathleen Grissom  |  BG Grissom  |  [Reserve Now]

During the early decades of American slavery, there were also thousands of Irish indentured servants. While these people had eventual access to freedom because of their skin color, during the time of their servitude they were often treated as poorly as the slaves were. Kathleen Grissom’s historical novel The Kitchen House tells the story of this lesser-known detail from that time period. Young Lavinia’s parents die while the family is crossing the ocean to America, and the ship’s captain takes her as a servant at his plantation to pay for her passage across the Atlantic. She is assigned to the kitchen house, where she is taught to work by Belle, a slave who is also the captain’s daughter. Lavinia forms a close relationship with the slaves she works alongside, but as she grows older her life’s possibilities and the untenable conditions of slavery begin to fracture the bonds. This novel tells a riveting historical tale while illustrating the devastating consequences of human bondage in all its forms.

The Language of Flowers  |  Vanessa Diffenbaugh  |  BG Diffenbaugh  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Last Lecture  |  Randy Pausch  |  BG 921 Pausch  |  [Reserve Now]

The tradition of the “last lecture” is an old one; a retiring professor gives his last remarks, with the idea of transmitting one final bit of lasting wisdom. When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, gave his last lecture, he knew it was vital to express his wisdom, as he was dying from pancreatic cancer. This book reshapes and deepens his original lecture, conveying truths about living our lives to their fullest.

Leaving Home  |  Garrison Keillor  |  BG Keillor  |  [Reserve Now]

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

Leaving Lucy Pear  |  Anna Solomon  |  BG Solomon  |  [Reserve Now]

Unable to bear the thought of placing her newborn daughter in an orphanage, unwed mother Beatrice Cohn instead leaves the baby under a tree in her family orchard, and then watches until one of the Irish migrant families picks her up. Emma Murphy raises the baby, who she names Lucy Pear, along with her eight other children. When Lucy is ten, events both private and public challenge the roles these women have created. Set in 1920s New England, the story examines the roles of women’s traumas, stories, and experiences in a moving and powerful way.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader  |  Elinore Stewart  |  BG 978.703 St493  |  [Reserve Now]

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

*** The Library of Lost and Found  |  Phaedra Patrick  |  BG Patrick  |  [Reserve Now]

When librarian Martha Storm finds a book of fairy tales left on her doorstep, her calm and predictable life (formerly managed with detailed lists of all the things she was doing to help other people) takes an unexpected turn. The book’s dedication was written, surprisingly, by Martha’s grandmother Zelda; other clues suggest that Zelda might not be dead as Martha had believed. Charming and funny, and yet not afraid to examine a troubled history and Martha’s fear of making changes in her life, this novel is both hopeful and encouraging.

Light of the Candle  |  Carol Pratt Bradley  |  BG Bradly  |  [Reserve Now]

Most everyone knows the bible story of Daniel in the lion’s den: captured and taken away to Babylon, he remained true to the religion he learned in Jerusalem by praying three times a day. When he refused to stop, he was thrown into a den of lions, but angels sealed their mouths and saved him. What might not be known is the rest of the story. In Light of the Candle, Utah author Carol Pratt Bradley brings ancient Jerusalem and Babylon to life with the stories of Daniel’s experiences.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk  |  Kathleen Rooney  |  BG Rooney  |  [Reserve Now]

Loosely based on the poet Margaret Fishback, who was the highest-paid female advertising copywriter in the 1930s, this novel explores how choice and social forces influence a woman’s life. It is told in alternating chapters: the history of Lillian Boxfish’s career at Macy’s in New York City, her romantic relationships, and her eventual family life; and the story of a walk she takes around the city on New Year’s Eve in 1984. As each story progresses, readers feel the effects of society’s narrow expectations for women and the advances we’ve made—as well as downright falling in love with Lillian, who is spunky, intelligent, fierce, and funny.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  |  C. S. Lewis  |  BG Lewis  |  [Reserve Now]

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

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book  |  Wendy Welch  |  BG 381.45 W446  |  [Reserve Now]

A 2013 Boston Globe article explains that owning a bookstore has become a popular dream of many people—and has moved from number 15 to number eight on the list of  “most-wanted retirement careers.” When Wendy Welch decided to open a used book store in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, she knew that fulfilling this ambition would be difficult given the economy, the proliferation of e-readers, and, of course, Amazon. Rather than just a place to buy books, she created a community resource where readers of all sorts make connections with others in the community and the reading world at large. Her book tells the funny, moving, and unique experiences she and her husband had as they established a small-town space where “people go to define themselves for themselves.”

Little Women  |  Louisa May Alcott  |  BG Alcott  |  [Reserve Now]

A classic and much-loved novel about the four March sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy), Little Women is Alcott’s semi-autobiographical novel. It deals with themes such as transcendental and feminist ideals, the struggle between caring for others and developing your own happiness, the need to be focused on the inner spiritual self, and the resistance of societal expectations.

A Long Way from Chicago  |  Richard Peck  |  BG Peck  |  [Reserve Now]

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

*** The Lost Letter  |  Jillian Cantor  |  BG Cantor  |  [Reserve Now]

Austria, 1938: as the Nazis begin persecuting Jewish people, Kristoff, an 18-year-old German, starts his apprenticeship as an engraver, learning how to create stamps and documents from the Jewish Frederick Faber and forming a relationship with his daughter, Elena. Los Angeles, 1989: Katie Nelson is working through a divorce while simultaneously helping her father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. When she discovers an unopened letter with an unusual stamp mixed in with his stamp collection, she begins a journey that will reveal her history and lead her to a new beginning.

Maisie Dobbs  |  Jacqueline Winspear  |  BG Winspear  |  [Reserve Now]

Maisie Dobbs, the new maid at the London home of the suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, is not an average maid. She’s only thirteen, and she can read, and she sneaks into the manor’s library to study European philosophy. When Lady Compton discovers Maisie’s precocious intellect, she becomes her patron, eventually sending her off to college, but the Great War interrupts Maisie’s education. She volunteers as a nurse and then, when the war ends, decides to become a private detective. Her first promising case begins as an investigation of infidelity and deepens into a story of how the War affected British society. Maisie is spunky, intelligent, and witty; her story is part mystery, part romance, part history and completely entertaining.

A Man Called Ove  |  Fredrik Backman  |  BG Bachman  |  [Reserve Now]

Ove, a widower living in Sweden who’s recently been forced to retire, has had enough: the residents of his neighborhood are constantly breaking the rules and everyone’s annoying. So he decides to end his own life—except his efforts are interrupted by the new neighbors, Parvaneh (who’s fairly pregnant, despite already having two kids) and Patrick (who’s a bumbling idiot who can’t even back up a trailer). The story of how curmudgeonly Ove finds meaning in his life despite how much he misses his wife Sonja (as well as his irritation with his old friend and current nemesis Rune) and is baffled by the choices of contemporary life is simultaneously funny and heartbreaking.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat  |  Oliver Sacks  |  BG 616.8 Sa14  |  [Reserve Now]

An 88-year-old woman, somewhat deaf, awakens one night to the sound of music from her childhood playing loudly. The songs don’t come from any radio but play loudly and repeatedly in her head. Her ENT and psychiatrist can’t find anything wrong, but her neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks, eventually figures out what’s causing the music: a small stroke in the woman’s temporal lobe. That’s just one of the stories Dr. Sacks writes about in this collection of neurological case studies. Published both in medical and literary journals, Sacks’ studies present the intricacies of the human brain and its workings along with the resilience of the human spirit. Interesting, informative, and illuminating, this work will make you think about what it means to be human.

March: A Novel  |  Geraldine Brooks  |  BG Brooks  |  [Reserve Now]

Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women is re-imagined in this novel by Brooks. In the original, the girls wait anxiously for letters from their father, off fighting in the Civil War. In Brooks’ novel, we see the harsh reality of the actual life he leads. Based loosely on Alcott’s real father, March is a minister influenced by Emerson and Thoreau (both family friends) and struggles to maintain his faith and idealism in the face of racism and mercenary behavior from both sides of the conflict. His wife, Marmee, waiting at home with the girls, will uncover uncomfortable truths of her own when her husband ends sick and wounded at Washington Hospital. A unique look at what remains one of the most important periods, and books, in American history.

Medicine River  |  Thomas King  |  BG King  |  [Reserve Now]

Will plans to return to the small town of Medicine River, just outside a reservation in Alberta, Canada, simply for his mother’s funeral. His friend Harlen Bigbear (who is, according to Will, “like the prairie wind. You never knew when he was coming or when he was going to leave”) has other plans. The town needs a photographer, and Will is just the man for the job. He’s got other plans for Will, too, involving a single mother. Harlen and Will are the connecting threads in the novel’s narrative, which moves back and forth through the history of their friendship. A simple, gentle read, Medicine River will make you laugh as you consider your ideas about Native Americans.

Meet Me at the Museum  |  Anne Youngson  |  BG Youngson  |  [Reserve Now]

At the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark lies the Tollund Man: a body pulled from a peat bog, placed there roughly 2300 years ago. Tina Hopgood, who lives on an isolated farm in England, has been fascinated with this mummified corpse since she was a young adult, away from home at University, but has never gone to see it. Professor Anders Larsen works at the museum, and one day receives a letter from Tina. They start up a correspondence which, as they move from discussing the Tollund Man to their personal lives, blooms into a friendship. This hopeful epistolary novel examines the passage of time, the effects of individual choices on the entirety of a life, love, grief, loneliness, the nature of happiness, and the ways we might be able to shape the lives we really want to live. 

Midwives  |  Christopher Bohjalion  |  BG Bohjalian  |  [Reserve Now]

Connie Danforth narrates the story of her mother, Sibyl—a rural Vermont midwife, who was tried for murder for performing an emergency Caesarean section on a woman who may have still been alive. Sibyl must not only face the charges laid against her but the hostility of traditional doctors and the community. In time the truth of what really happened comes to light.

Moon Over Manifest  |  Clare Vanderpool  |  BG Vanderpool  |  [Reserve Now]

Vanderpool’s Newbery-winning novel is set in the town of Manifest Kansas, “a place too far away to ever get back to, a place too good to be real. A place one was proud to call home” during the 1930’s. It tells the story of Abilene Tucker, whose father Gideon has sent her back to live in Manifest for the summer, thinking she’ll be safer there than living a drifter lifestyle with him. Abilene discovers the decades-old mystery of The Rattler along with new friends and a boxful of old objects that lead her to Gideon’s history. Weaving the history of prohibition, orphan trains, Spanish influenza, coal mining and World War One with the lifestyle of a small Midwestern town, the story reads like an instant classic. It manages to combine what is endearing about childhood—mystery, adventure, the power in an object, the pull of story and that deep-seated need for affection and a place to call your own—into a sweet and satisfying experience.

Mountains Beyond Mountains  |  Tracy Kidder  |  BG 921 Farmer  |  [Reserve Now]

The book is the true story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a renowned infectious-disease specialist. In his quest to diagnose and cure diseases, Farmer traveled to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Farmer dedicated his life to combating disease and poverty. Many of his ideas are considered innovative solutions to worldwide cycles of suffering.

Mr. Dickens and His Carol  |  Samantha Silva  |  BG Silva  |  [Reserve Now]

Immerse yourself in Victorian England in this atmospheric imagining of Charles Dickens’s experience writing A Christmas Carol. In November 1943, Dickens finds himself in a bit of a financial crisis. His wife has just had their sixth child, the holidays are almost upon him, and his serialized novel, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, is not selling well. To keep his publishing contract, he must write a Christmas story, even though the idea is not especially appealing. Wandering through London, he discovers an unusual source of inspiration. 

Mrs. Mike  |  Benedict Freedman  |  BG Freedman  |  [Reserve Now]

Mrs. Mike is the true story of Katherine Mary O’Fallon, a young Irish girl from Boston, who marries Canadian Mountie Sergeant Mike Flannigan, who is priest, doctor and magistrate to all in the wilderness of the North Woods of Canada. Extremely popular, the novel has won the hearts of millions for its depiction of young love’s journey to maturity.

The Music Shop  |  Rachel Joyce  |  BG Joyce  |  [Reserve Now]

In the late 1980s in an English suburb, Frank owns a music shop, where he uses his special skill—knowing what song or album a particular customer needs to hear—to keep the shop open. But only barely, as a developer is attempting to overtake Unity Street and most customers want CDs now, not vinyl. Then a young woman named Ilse comes into the shop, wanting to learn about music. Will either one be able to overcome their pasts to create a new song together?

My Antonia  |  Willa Cather  |  BG Cather  |  [Reserve Now]

Willa Cather published her masterpiece My Antonia in 1918 to critical acclaim. Narrator Jim Burden tells the story beginning when, as a small boy, he left his life in civilized Virginia and traveled to the edge of the Nebraska frontier. Jim remembers his childhood friend, the vivacious and spirited Antonia, an immigrant child from Bohemia, and how their own lives, families, and friends were shaped by the beauty and cruelty of the Great Plains. Universal themes of death, youth, and friendship have enthralled readers for the near century this novel has now been in print. My Antonia captures the settling of the American frontier as no other work of fiction ever has.

My Dream of Stars: From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer  |  Anousheh Ansari  |  BG 921 Ansari  |  [Reserve Now]

Ansari was the first Muslim woman to travel into space. In her memoir, she tells the story of her early years in Tehran, her immigration to American, and the financial successes that allowed her to enter the Russian space program. She also writes about her time in space, which was spent not as a professional astronaut, but as an observer, so her experiences are more personal than scientific. A fast and touching read that might inspire you to follow your own dreams.

My Grandfather’s Blessings  |  Rachel Remen  |  BG 296.72 R282  |  [Reserve Now]

In My Grandfather’s Blessings, author Rachel Remen proves that it is possible to embrace spirituality even as a doctor continually facing the realities of life and death. Having grown up emotionally divided between the religious devoutness of her rabbi grandfather and the academic world of her parents, Remen shares with her readers the lessons she learned as she consolidated these two views and embraced healing.

My Name is Resolute  |  Nancy Turner  |  BG Turner  |  [Reserve Now]

A historical novel by the author of These is My WordsMy Name is Resolute narrates the story of the daughter of a Jamaican plantation owner. Resolute is kidnapped, along with most of her family save her mother, by pirates and sold as an indentured slave in America. She is driven by the desire to return home to her mother, but her life takes her to many other places: Montreal, a stint with the Native Americans, Massachusetts. It is in Lexington that she is caught up in the political and social upheaval that will lead to the Revolutionary War. This is a long, satisfying novel, built on thorough historical research and solid character development; it brings to life America’s struggle for independence through the perspective of a determined and brave literary character.

My Real Children  |  Joe Walton  |  BG Walton  |  [Reserve Now]

Jo Walton’s novel My Real Children is hard to pin down: part alternate-universe, part family saga, part love story, part travelogue, what it really does is explore the consequences of choice. It tells the story of Patricia, an old woman living in a care center whose chart regularly reads “VC” for “very confused.” She is confused because of dementia, but also because she isn’t sure which of her memories are correct: Did she marry Mark and have four children? Or did she say no to Mark, fall in love with Bee, and have three children? Is her life as a traditional wife and mother the real one? Or the one where she was a travel writer in love with Italy? The novel tells the story of both possible lives, leaving Patricia (and the reader) to decide: which was the real one? This intriguing and unusual novel will push you to look at your own choices and consider how your life was changed by them. 

No Ordinary Life : An Autobiography of Helen Mar Carter Monson  |  Helen Mar Carter Monson  |  BG 921 Monson  | [Reserve Now]

Helen Mar Carter Monson survives the aftermath of WWI, the deadly flu epidemic of 1918, sliding down a haystack into a convict’s lap, the dissolution of her parents’ marriage, skinny-dipping in the penitentiary pond, and two broken noses, among many other adventures. These true stories, originally told to entertain bored children, are written in vivid, first-person description. This book offers honest and often humorous insight into the life of a little girl grappling with questions about right and wrong, God, social norms, and her role as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, while early twentieth century Salt Lake City grows up with her.

North and South  |  Elizabeth Gaskell  |  BG Gaskell  |  [Reserve Now]

Written as a serialized novel in Charles Dickens’ Household Words in 1855, Gaskell’s classic novel North and South explores issues of industrialization, social injustice, and poverty in northern England. When Margaret Hale’s father gives up his role as a priest in the Church of England after doubting its leadership, the family leaves the pastoral, southern town of Helstone for the industrialized, northern town of Milton. Here Margaret discovers a sharp contrast to her previous experiences, caused by the poverty and difficult working conditions of the factory laborers. She also meets John Thornton, the powerful owner of a cotton mill. Thorton’s mill is facing a striking labor force, while Margaret’s family is also in upheaval caused by her mother’s illness and her brother Fredrick’s legal troubles brought on by a mutiny. The developing romance between Margaret and John, full of antagonism and misunderstanding, binds the story’s varying topics into a cohesive whole.

Once Upon a Town  |  Bob Greene  |  BG 978.282 G8303  |  [Reserve Now]

They began almost immediately, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor: the people of a tiny town in Nebraska started feeding the soldiers who came through North Platte by the trainful. A small canteen sprang up at the train depot where the soldiers briefly stopped – for ten or fifteen minutes, they were treated to food, hot coffee, cake, fruit, and hospitality. The community around North Platte joined in the project, and volunteers made sure that the soldiers on every train, from 5:00 a.m. until midnight, were greeted, fed, and encouraged. “I would say that the majority of men on the battlefields knew exactly what North Platte was,” one soldier explains. “They would talk about it like it was a dream.” Chicago Times columnist Bob Greene explores this little-known story from World War II, showing how the kindness of strangers changed lives. This touching read will remind you of the goodness that’s inherent in people and the comfort in good food and a smile. 

The Orphan Keeper  |  Camron Wright  |  BG Wright  |  [Reserve Now]

Growing up in India, Chellamuthu experiences hunger, poverty, abuse, and quite a bit of theft, but everything changes when he is kidnapped and sold to an orphanage. An American family meets him at the orphanage and decides to adopt him, but it is many months before he can speak enough English to tell them that he actually already has a family. A semester abroad in London, spent living with an Indian family, sparks his need to find his birth family. This novel, based on a true story, explores the concept of what creates and defines a family.

The Outsiders  |  S. E. Hinton  |  BG Hinton  |  [Reserve Now]

A classic of young adult literature that helped form the genre, The Outsiders is the story of Ponyboy, Soda, Johnny; Cherry, Bob, Marcia—the Greasers and the Socs and their rumbles against each other. Capturing the violence in the contrast of social structures, S.E. Hinton’s novel, written when she was still in high school, explores the way that both groups must come to terms with adult experiences such as fear, loss, and love. 

Peace Like a River  |  Leif Enger  |  BG Enger  |  [Reserve Now]

After years of work with Minnesota Public Radio, storyteller Leif Enger weaves together a beautiful expression of love. The novel follows a young family in a heroic trek to find their fugitive brother. Although none of the family finds what they expected, Enger blends faith and hope in a story of family, sacrifice, and religion. The writing is delightful and the story meaningful.

The Persian Pickle Club  |  Sandra Dallas  |  BG Dallas  |  [Reserve Now]

In Depression-era Harveyville, Kansas, a group of women form the Persian Pickle Club, erstwhile quilting group turned sisterhood. The newest “Pickle,” Rita, has just moved to Kansas from Denver, and she’s a little bit different from the rest of the group. She’s a big-city girl who doesn’t know the details of living a farm life, let alone quilting, but Queenie Bean, the group’s youngest member and the novel’s narrator, strikes up a friendship with her anyway. When Rita—an aspiring writer—tries to solve the murder of group member Ella’s husband, she discovers that the women aren’t as small-town as they might seem.

Persuasion  |  Jane Austen  |  BG Austen  |  [Reserve Now]

The last novel that Jane Austen wrote is the story of Anne Elliot. At 19, Anne fell in love with a young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth. When she accepted his proposal, however, her wealthy family thought he was beneath her and convinced her to break the engagement. Seven years later, the Elliot family has developed some financial troubles. The ending of the Napoleonic wars brings now-Captain Wentworth back into Anne’s life. Austen’s most mature work looks at the effects that social pressures and expectations have upon the women of the time.

A Piece of the World  |  Christina Baker Kline  |  BG Kline  |  [Reserve Now]

Andrew Wyeth’s iconic American painting, “Christina’s World,” catches a simple scene in oil paint: a looming house, a field of waving, golden grain, and a woman in a pink dress, a scene that evokes an uncertain emotion as it creates a strong sense of place. Christina Baker Kline’s novel A Piece of the World imagines the story behind and beyond the painting, also creating an evocative sense of a place in a time within the life of Christina Olsen, the woman in the pink dress. Born in the small town of Cushing, Maine, Christina seemed destined to live a remote and lonely life, especially as a disease twisted her body. But in an unexpected twist, she becomes a host to the painter Andrew Wyeth, eventually modeling for his paintings. Refusing to let her disabilities control her entire life, Christina is a character full of courage and stubbornness, and the novel details her life as intricately as the painting’s brush strokes.

Plainsong  |  Kent Haruff  |  BG Haruff  |  [Reserve Now]

Life in the small town of Holt, Colorado, rings true in this rich, unsentimental novel that explores both the complexities of the natural world and human interaction. The novel’s characters struggle with realistic problems in a compassionate ode to the beauty of imperfect humanity. A high school teacher struggles to raise his two boys and deal with his disintegrating marriage. His wife struggles with depression and the guilt she feels as she faces a future that might not include her husband and children. The boys try to understand the pain and violence that accompanies their coming of age in the world. Two brothers live a solitary existence on their ranch, feeling more comfortable with cattle than people. Eventually, the struggles of a young pregnant teenager bring their stories together and testify of the power of community and human decency.

The Professor and the Madman  |  Simon Winchester  |  BG 423 W7217  |  [Reserve Now]

Who would have thought that a madman in an insane asylum would have been one of the greatest contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary?  Although it sounds like fiction, the book it is a true story of the collaboration between the OED scholar James Murray and the incarcerated Dr. Minor (an American Civil War surgeon). This amazing story is both tragic and inspirational—a tribute to the human spirit. 

Quartered Safe out Here  |  George MacDonald Frazer  |  BG 940.5425 F8629  |  [Reserve Now]

Near the beginning of his memoir, novelist George MacDonald Fraser prepares readers that this is not a historical record of the Burma campaign of World War II; instead, it is the story of his experiences as he recalls them forty years later. Fraser was just 18 when he was sent to Burma, and that difference—an older, experienced author looking back and his young-adult experiences—creates a somehow familiar and comfortable story, even as Fraser discusses the atrocities of war. Humor mixes with death; a vivid new landscape contrasts with Fraser’s sense of England as home. Fraser uses his narrative skills to create the story of his war, bringing to life Calcutta, India, the Burmese jungle as clearly as his fellow soldiers. “There was something else, too,” he writes of Calcutta, “which if it did not transform the second city of Empire, lifted it at least a little from the depths. Everybody smiled.” This war memoir does something similar: It doesn’t transform much of the horror of war experiences, but it still manages to make readers smile.

Range of Motion  |  Elizabeth Berg  |  BG Berg  |  [Reserve Now]

The scent of morning toast and jam, sunlight on trees in the afternoon, the way a summer evening cools with an unexpected breeze: all of the everyday sensory experience of living a human life are all around us, every day, and yet how often do we really take notice of them? This is the question  Elizabeth Berg’s novel, Range of Motion, puts forth as it examines how Lainey’s live changes as she tries to cope with caring for her husband, who is in a coma after being struck by a chunk of ice falling from a roof. Lainey never stops believing that her husband, Jay, will wake up, and to encourage him, every day she brings some small item to call him back to his life. Berg has a way of using story to examine the way difficult moments propel us to change, and she does so beautifully in this novel.

The Reading Promise  |  Alice Ozma  |  BG 028.9 Oz6  |  [Reserve Now]

When Alice Ozma was in fourth grade—the year her mother left—she and her father started a reading streak: every day, 100 days in a row, he would read to her. When the 100 days were up, they decided to continue, and they kept the reading streak alive until she left for college. As they worked their way through a huge variety of books, from Harry Potter to Shakespeare, their relationship grew and changed, but it stayed steady because of their tradition. Alice and her father’s experiences with their reading streak prove that reading isn’t just about books or stories; it can also be about creating safe spaces, making connections, and forming strong relationships.

Rebecca  |  Daphne Du Maurier  |  BG Du Maurier  |  [Reserve Now]

When she arrives at Manderley, the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter discovers not all is as expected. Her husband’s first wife, the seemingly-brilliant, talented, and beautiful Rebecca, haunts both the house itself and its occupants. Attempting to establish her marriage and her place within the house, Mrs. de Winter is challenged at every turn by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. Only when Maxim is able to tell his second wife the truths about his first can this gothic story come to its chilling fruition.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place  |  Terry Tempest Williams  |  BG Williams  |  [Reserve Now]

During two decades — 1940-1960—the U.S. government conducted secret nuclear experiments in the Nevada deserts that caused a series of cancer clusters in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah in the 1980’s. Williams’ family was all affected, leaving her “the family matriarch at age 34.” In Refuge she draws connections between her mother’s death and the flooding of the Great Salt Lake. Her writing is moving, powerful, and lyrical; it will leave you both heart-sore and hopeful.

The Remains of the Day  |  Kazuo Ishiguro  |  BG Ishiguro  |  [Reserve Now]

This quietly magnificent novel tells the story of Stevens, a Victorian butler born into the wrong era. The perfect gentleman, Stevens is an ideal butler to his employer Lord Darlington just prior to and during World War II. But politics and people stand between Stevens and his ideals of keeping the perfect home: the Nazis are gaining power, domestic staff is harder to find, and the new housekeeper, Miss Kenton, is a strong woman who threatens Stevens’ tidy world and reined-in emotions. As Salman Rushdie comments, The Remains of the Day is “a story both beautiful and cruel.” A modern masterpiece of love and regret. 

The River Between Us  |  Richard Peck  |  BG Peck  |  [Reserve Now]

Winner of the 2004 Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction, A River Between Us is a masterful tale of mystery and war. 1861 brings changes for young Tilly Pruitt. The nation stands at the brink of war and the only boy in the family, Tilly’s brother Noah, wants to join the fight. That leaves Tilly with her mother and sister struggling to make ends meet. That is, until the elegant Delphine and her dark traveling companion arrive on a steamboat. Rumors fly throughout the town about the odd couple, wondering if the companion is a slave and if the beautiful Delphine could be a Southern spy. The Pruits become entangled in the suspicion when they take the pair into their home. The result is a marvelous novel about the lasting influence one person can have on another. 

Rose Daughter  |  Robin Mckinley  |  BG McKinley  |  [Reserve Now]

“Not silly sweethearts’ love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole”—that is the sort of love that roses need to grow healthy blossoms and, in Robin McKinley’s retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, it’s the sort Beauty is able to give. When her merchant father’s ships are lost at sea, the family moves to a tiny cottage far away from anything they know. Rose Cottage, it’s called, but the roses are bedraggled and weak until Beauty starts to nurture them. Then she is called on for an entirely different sort of nurturing. While it follows the usual Beauty-and-the-Beast plot line, Rose Daughter arrives at a very different thematic place, taking a thorny, magical, and slightly-edgy route to the resolution.

The Rules of Magic  |  Alice Hoffman  |  BG Hoffman  |  [Reserve Now]

The curse on the Owens family began in Massachusetts in the1620s, when Maria Owens was accused of witchcraft. It lingers still in Susanna Owens, living in New York City in the 1960s with her three children, Franny, Jet, and Vincent. She teaches them the rules for living in order to avoid the curse: no cats, no candles, no black clothes. Definitely no books about magic, or walking in moonlight, and absolutely no falling in love. A trip to visit their aunt Isabella in that same small Massachusetts town, however, is a doorway that opens to the family secrets and the truths about who the Owens family is. Escaping a centuries-old curse might just be impossible, and so the beautiful sisters and their brother must come to understand their own identities and embrace the messiness of life lived around and between the rules of magic.

The Running Dream  |  Wendelin Van Draanen  |  BG Van Draanen  |  [Reserve Now]

“I am a runner. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. Running is all I know, or want, or care about.” The runner in question, 16-year-old Jessica Carlisle, is her high school track team’s star 400-meter racer. But when she loses her leg in an accident, her identity seems to be amputated as well. What is life worth to a person who lives to run but only has one leg? She discovers that finding the worth in life is a little bit like running: the spark has to come from her, but there’s support if she can reach out and accept it.

Same Kind of Different as Me  |  Ron Hall  |  BG 976.4571 H1469  |  [Reserve Now]

Ron Hall and Denver Moore couldn’t have lived much different lives: Ron, an international art dealer, is wealthy, with a supportive wife and a beautiful home, whereas Denver grew up a modern-day slave in Louisiana before escaping to a life on the streets. They are united, however, by Ron’s wife Debbie. Dying of cancer, Debbie asks Denver to maintain the ministry she began for homeless people in Fort Worth, Texas, and through this work the two men’s disparate lives weave together to form a friendship that redeems them both. This moving true story will remind you of the power friendship has to overcome social boundaries and make both people stronger.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt  Beth Hoffman  BG Hoffmann  |  [Reserve Now]

When her mother Camille—former Onion Queen of 1951, with a habit of standing in the street to blow kisses at passing cars—is killed, CeeCee Honeycutt is just about on her own. After all, her father isn’t about to step in and take care of her. Luckily, CeeCee’s long-lost great-aunt Tootie shows up in Ohio just hours after the funeral. She whisks her great-niece off to live with her and her maid Oletta in Savannah. Under the care and laughter of her new-found family of southern women, CeeCee discovers that mothers can come in many forms.

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place  |  Julie Berry  |  BG Berry  |  [Reserve Now]

The seven students at St. Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies—Dear Roberta, Disgraceful Mary Jane, Dull Martha, Stout Alice, Smooth Kitty, Pocked Louise, and Dour Elinor—have formed a pleasant little sisterhood away from their horrible families. But when the school’s headmistress and her brother die during their Sunday meal (poisoned, Pocked Louise denounces, by the veal), their situation is threated. So they do what any clever girls would do: hide the bodies and carry on. This Victorian farce, a junior novel full of dark comedy, mystery, and cleverness, is a fun and fast-paced read. 

The Secret Garden  |  Frances Hodgson Burnett  |  BG Burnett  |  [Reserve Now]

Burnett’s classic is about a young girl who is anything but sweet. When the reader meets Mary, we can be forgiven for describing her as a brat. Tragedy followed by banishment to a neglected English estate does nothing to improve her character. It will take an equally unpleasant cousin, a young laborer, and a hidden garden to bring happiness the many unhappy characters in this novel. A childhood classic that deserves a re-reading by any adult.

The Secret Keeper  |  Kate Morton  |  BG Morton  |  [Reserve Now]

Kate Morton is the queen of atmospheric, compelling novels that revolve around secrets, and The Secret Keeper is no exception. Avoiding her siblings by hiding in a tree house during a family party, 16-year-old Laurel witnesses her mother kill a man who appears to be an intruder. But fifty years later, when she is an accomplished actress and her mother is near death, Laurel rediscovers questions she has about what she witnessed. Moving through England during World War II, the Blitz, the 60’s and beyond, the story flashes between Laurel’s perspective, her mother’s, and the murdered man’s. A mystery set within a history within an epic family saga, The Secret Keeper explores how ambitions and hopes shape a myriad of lives. 

The Secret Life of Bees  |  Sue Monk Kidd  |  BG Kidd  |  [Reserve Now]

Ten years after the death of her mother, all14 year-old Lily Owens has left of her is a mysterious picture of a Black Madonna, with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” written on the back. After a run-in with the law, Lily and her Black nanny Rosaleen must flee the police and Lily’s abusive father to find the answers Lily has been seeking. With the backdrop of Civil Rights transition occurring around them, the greatest change takes place in Lily and Rosaleen as they discover much more than they expected about love, friendship, and family. 

A Separate Peace  |  John Knowles  |  BG Knowles  |  [Reserve Now]

During the summer session at Devon, a private school in New England, two teenage boys begin a friendship that will illuminate and influence the rest of their lives. World War II is looming; roommates Finny and Gene, however, experience it only as a background shadow to their summer term. They develop a ritual of jumping off a tree into the river below, but when Finny is hurt, the repercussions spread deeply into the rest of the school year. As they navigate their friendship, the boys begin to learn adult truths about rivalry, envy, individuality, and the depths (and limitations) of human kindness.

The Shadow behind the Stars  |  Rebecca Hahn  |  BG Hahn  |  [Reserve Now]

The Greek Fates—three goddess sisters who spin, measure, and cut the thread that determines a person’s life—are often cast as cruel, cold beings who control the outcomes of lives without caring about human pain or sorrow. In The Shadow Behind the Stars, however, the three Fates are shown in a different light. It’s not that they don’t care about devastation, sadness, and death; it is simply that they cannot change a person’s outcome without destroying the world. Chloe, Serena, and Xinot live on a rocky island, spinning the lives of humanity without fanfare or drama, until a beautiful girl finds her way to their home. Aglia’s village was destroyed and all her community murdered; only she escaped, and she has come to the house of the Fates to demand that they tell her what there is to live for. As this beautiful, lyrical and heartbreaking story moves towards its conclusion, the Fates themselves will be forced to learn the burden of—and the meaning behind—human suffering.

Sister  |  Rosamund Lupton  |  BG Lupton  |  [Reserve Now]

When she receives the news that her sister, Tess, has committed suicide, Beatrice Hemming flies home to London. She is certain that artistic, mercurial Tess would never kill herself, so—despite a reluctant detective—Beatrice begins searching for her sister’s murderer. This is a mystery novel that reads like a gothic thriller; creepy, intriguing, and puzzling, it raises hackles and inspires chills. But at its heart it is much more than a whodunit. It is, ultimately, a novel about families and sisterhood that happens to include a murder. Written as a letter from Beatrice to Tess, the novel’s structure allows Beatrice to tell the story of trying to uncovering the murderer while simultaneously writing about Tess’s death and its effect on her. And the ending? Well, the ending comes as a thing both unanticipated and perfectly foreshadowed in the story.

The Snow Child  |  Eowyn Ivey  |  BG Ivey  |  [Reserve Now]

This retelling of the Russian fairy tale “The Snow Maiden” is also a historical novel. It is the story of Jack and Mabel, who’ve left their fairly safe but exceedingly sad life in 1920’s Pennsylvania for the Alaskan frontier. Sad because, except for one stillborn, they never were able to have children, and all of the family reminders around them (the nieces and nephews, the new babies, the excited couples marrying) were just too much. Of course, life in Alaska is hardly easy either, with the short growing season, fierce winters, and isolation. But then, one night of clean snow and happiness, Jack and Mabel build a snow girl, dress her with mittens, a hat, and a scarf. In the morning, they wake to find the knitted clothing gone and a dead rabbit next to the decimated snow girl. Then they find a girl, Faini, wandering in the forest, and their sadness starts to melt away.

Someone  |  Alice McDermott  |  BG McDermott  |  [Reserve Now]

The subject of Someone is life itself, ordinary life with its difficulties and joys. The life in question belongs to Marie Commeford, who grows up in (and eventually away from) Brooklyn. Moving forward and backward through time, the story takes us through Marie’s life, from her pre-depression childhood in New York City through her adult years. Family happiness and strife; the promise and disappointment of romance; motherhood and work and friendship: the intimate, quiet details of a human being living an unremarkable life show just how remarkable humanity really is.

The Soul of An Octopus  |  Sy Montomery  |  BG 594.56 M7674  |  [Reserve Now]

Octopuses might seem like a strange subject for a book, but Sy Montgomery—who’s also written about pigs, monkeys, and parrots—is so skilled at bringing the natural world into clear focus, the subject almost doesn’t matter. Except: octopuses are fascinating! (Who knew?)  Montgomery’s interest in them was sparked one day at the New England Aquarium, where an octopus named Athena reached her tentacles towards her. These intelligent creatures play games, solve puzzles, change colors to show their moods, and interact surprisingly well with their human handlers. Montgomery explores both the octopuses’ world and the people who take care of them, creating a book that will both surprise and delight as it reveals this fascinating animal.

Speak  |  Laurie Halse Anderson  |  BG Anderson  |  [Reserve Now]

“It’s easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.” What Melinda’s friends think happened at that summer party: She freaked out because people were drinking so she ratted and called the cops, and everyone got in trouble. What really happened: Well, Melinda can’t say. Not because she doesn’t remember what Andy did to her under the tree in the field behind the party, but because if she speaks it out loud, it will have to be true. So she starts ninth grade as the girl who ratted, the silent girl who never talks to anyone. But as the year passes, she discovers art, she discovers gardening, she discovers she has a voice and that only by speaking her truth can she help others—and herself.

The Speckled Monster  |  Jennifer Lee Carrell  |  BG  614.521 C232  |  [Reserve Now]

Smallpox was a dreaded disease in the early Eighteenth century. For example, an epidemic in Boston from 1721 to 1722 infected 6,000 of the city’s 11,000 inhabitants (about 800 died). Choosing to give oneself a form of the disease seemed tantamount to murder. However, Jennifer Carrell, a writer for Smithsonian, tells the story of two proponents of vaccination. One, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu takes her cause all the way to King George I. The other, Dr. Zabdiel Bylston, faced public opposition in Boston for his early vaccination work, learned from local slaves. Some outraged citizens even tried to kill him when he continued to work on the disease. However, their work revolutionized medical practices and its effect continues to this day. Read about their courageous efforts in this accessible book.

***Spinning Silver  |  Naomi Novik  |  BG Novik  |  [Reserve Now]

Told through the voices of three women, Spinning Silver is a reworking of the “Rumplestiltskin” fairy tale blended with aspects of Russian mythology. Miryem, the daughter of an unsuccessful moneylender, changes her family’s fortune by turning his business around with her cunning way with numbers. Wanda, the daughter of one of Miryem’s customers, is offered to her in forgiveness for her father’s debt. And Irina, the daughter of a duke, risks her engagement to the Tsar when a Staryk silver ring sparks her fey blood. These three women’s lives and choices weave within each other as the fey who live in the woods around their village draw a seemingly-endless winter around them.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down  |  Anne Fadiman  |  BG 306.461 F126  |  [Reserve Now]

In the small community of Merced, California, reside thousands of Hmong refugees from the highlands of Laos; among them is the Lee family, whose youngest daughter Lia suffers from severe epilepsy. Anne Fadiman attempts to shed light on Hmong culture and understand the seemingly irreconcilable differences between western medicine and the Hmong in this poignant narrative.

A Star for Mrs. Blake  |  April Smith  |  BG Smith  |  [Reserve Now]

Established in 1928, The Gold Star Mothers Organization helps mothers whose children have been killed in war. During the 1930s, some of these mothers traveled to France to see the graves of their sons, killed in World War I. Smith’s novel explores this little-known historical tidbit. In 1931, Cora Blake receives an invitation to lead a group of five mothers in their travels to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France. Friendships form during the journey, as well as tensions based on race and class. A warm and hopeful novel, A Star for Mrs. Blake illustrates the lingering consequences of war on survivors. 

State of Wonder  |  Ann Patchett  |  BG Patchett  |  [Reserve Now]

Ann Patchett’s novel State of Wonder begins with a probable death, that of Dr. Marina Singh’s pharmaceutical co-worker, Anders Eckman, who has disappeared while working in the Amazon jungle. Marina is sent to Brazil herself, tasked with the responsibility of discovering the fate of Anders. If the book starts with death, it burgeons with other things: fertility, the beauty and terror of tropical landscapes, unimaginable snakes, science, drugs, tree bark, lost cell phones, medical ethics, cannibals, redemption. Ostensibly a story about women exploring the rainforest, it is a novel that explores the way characters can be remade by experience if they are brave enough to allow change to happen.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers  |  Mary Roach  |  BG 611 R53  |  [Reserve Now]

A crash-test dummy. (What happens to a body when it’s in a car crash?) A subject in an Army Ordnance Department experiment. (Just how, exactly, do bomb shells affect human flesh?) An anthropological assistant. (What happens to a body as it decomposes in, say, a block of cement?) Those are just a few examples of how a body can be useful after dying, the main thread in Mary Roach’s book. Sounds a little creepy, but Roach manages to write about all of the post-mortem possibilities with a dry sense of humor that will leave you grinning, not grossed out.

Summer of My German Soldier  |  Bette Greene  |  BG Greene  |  [Reserve Now]

Near the end of World War II, a small town in Arkansas opens a prison camp for German prisoners of war. Twelve-year-old Patty Bergen meets one of the soldiers, Anton, when he comes into the store her father owns. Days later, she helps to hide him when he escapes from the prison. As their friendship forms, Anton helps Patty learn that despite her father’s abuse and her mother’s disdain, she is a person of value and intelligence. Winner of the 1973 New York Times Book of the Year award, as well as many others, The Summer of My German Soldier explores the themes of cruelty, abuse, prejudice, racism, and power, as well as the redemptive force of friendship.

Summerlost  |  Ally Condie  |  BG Condie  |  [Reserve Now]

Ally Condie wrote the popular young adult trilogy Matched; here she writes a middle-grade novel about friendship, adventure, and dealing with loss. A year ago, Cedar’s father and brother Ben were killed by a drunk driver, and to help everyone cope her mom has moved what’s left of her family to the small town of Iron Creek, Utah. Cedar finds a friend, the quirky Leo, who helps her get a job at the town’s Shakespeare Festival, Summerlost. When they’re not working, the two friends discuss the mysterious life of an actress who haunts the sets of the festival’s stage. Her experiences with Leo, the theater people, and the mystery help her to begin to learn how to live with her grief. This sad, sweet tale is one you’ll cherish.

Survival Lessons  |  Alice Hoffman  |  BG 616.9944 H6751  |  [Reserve Now]

Novelist Alice Hoffman is a breast cancer survivor, in remission for nearly two decades. Here, she writes the book she wishes she’d had during her diagnosis and treatment. “In many ways I wrote Survival Lessons for myself,” she explains, “to remind myself of the beauty of life, something that’s all too easy to overlook during the crisis of illness or loss.” Not a book about cancer, Survival Lessons is instead about choices and how they affect our perspective. You’ll finish it uplifted and revitalized, ready to see what choices you can make to improve your own life.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane  |  Lisa See  |  BG See  |  [Reserve Now]

In the remote region of China where the Akha people live, villagers’ lives are managed by ancient traditions and rules as much as the seasonal harvesting of Pu’er tea. Li-yan, however, is one of the few educated girls in the area, and when a man from the outside world arrives—in the first automobile the villagers have ever seen—she discovers her way out of her predicament, a pregnancy with a “human reject,” a baby of mixed parentage. She leaves her daughter at an orphanage and begins to try to construct a life in this new, modern world of contemporary China, far from her old rituals. Meanwhile, her daughter Haley is adopted by an American couple. Despite her privileged California lifestyle, Haley grows up wondering about her birthmother; she begins exploring her Chinese heritage while studying biology and global climate change in college. Will the teacake Li-yan left with her baby be a pathway to reunion?

Their Eyes Were Watching God  |  Zora Hurston  |  BG Hurston  |  [Reserve Now]

This beloved work has reemerged as one of the premier books of the Twentieth Century. Hurston, relying on her background recording folk history, tells the story of Janie Crawford, an articulate African-American woman in the 1930s. The spunky and unforgettable Janie, explains her quest for identity, three marriages (one of which resulted in her being accused of murder), and a journey to her roots. 

These is My Words  |  Nancy Turner  |  BG Turner  |  [Reserve Now]

Written as a diary, this novel is Sarah’s story. At 18, in 1881, she leaves her home in New Mexico to begin a new life on the Arizona frontier. Her journal starts out rough—full of misspellings and awkward sentences—but (with the assistance of a pile of books she discovers) becomes smooth, confident, and powerful, illustrating how her experiences change her. Sarah faces down marauding Native Americans, survives a marriage to an abusive husband, experiences flood, heat, drought, and rattlesnakes, and manages to create a strong, good life, nevertheless. Based on the journals of one of the author’s ancestors, the story is continued by Sarah’s Quilt, The Star Garden, and Light Changes Everything.

They Came Like Swallows  |  William Maxwell  |  BG Maxwell  |  [Reserve Now]

Set during the 1918 flu epidemic, Maxwell captures the psychological complexity of family relations in a small Midwestern town. Elizabeth Morison is the center of life for her husband James and their two boys, Benny and Robert. Her importance, brought into focus by a sudden tragedy, is compassionately displayed through the view of each of the male figures. Maxwell’s sensitive and delicate prose is a tribute to all mothers. 

Things Fall Apart  |  Chinua Achebe  |  BG Achebe  |  [Reserve Now]

Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece is considered the first masterpiece written in English by an African author. There are more than eight million copies of the novel in print worldwide. The work explores the cultural collision of Western influences and traditional Nigerian tribal practices. As the story unveils it exposes a shared humanity that transcends national boundaries. 

To Kill a Mockingbird  |  Harper Lee  |  BG Lee  |  [Reserve Now]

A terrible crime splits a Southern community along racial lines. However, Atticus Finch, a courageous white lawyer, refuses to sacrifice his principles to public demand. The consequences of his choice affect both his family and the town. This tale of courage, strength, and love is told through the insightful and charming voice of Atticus’s daughter, Scout. The novel is a worldwide classic with more than 30 million copies in print.

*** Transcription  |  Kate Atkinson |  BG Atkinson  |  [Reserve Now]

In 1940, Juliet Armstrong is 18, naïve but intelligent. She reluctantly begins working for M15, transcribing the exploits of British Fascist sympathizers until the accidental discovery of an important document thrusts her into the world of espionage. A decade later, the choices she made during the war come back, forcing her to reckon with her true identity. This fast-paced, intriguing novel is a combination of espionage, thriller, and historical fiction filled with fully-created characters who grapple with their role in society.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  |  Betty Smith  |  BG Smith  |  [Reserve Now]

Sweet, tender, endearing; realistic, compassionate, heartbreaking. There are many words to describe this novel, but they can all be condensed into just two: so good. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a classic coming-of-age novel, set in New York in the early 1900’s. Francie Nolan is eleven when the novel opens, living in Brooklyn in a tenement house. Her father is an alcoholic but her mother is a strong woman who makes sure her family is provided for. Francie is a quiet, imaginative child, passionate about learning, reading, and writing, but life doesn’t bring her the things she wants. As the story progresses you experience the heartbreaks and triumphs, ambitions and mistakes along with Francie as she, like the Tree of Heaven, flourishes in the world’s stony soil.

True Grit  |  Charles Portis  |  BG Portis  |  [Reserve Now]

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood,” begins the novel True Grit; incredible, perhaps, but fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross did just that. When her father is shot down in Fort Smith, Arkansas—his horse and his $150 bank roll stolen as well—she heads out into Indian Territory in the company of the meanest U.S. Ranger she can find, Rooster Cogburn. Her goal, of course, is to find Tom Chaney, the man who shot her father, and make sure he is punished for his deed. The outcome of her adventures is the very definition of “grit.” Mattie’s story is by turns funny, sad, heart-pounding and satisfying, a read you won’t soon forget.

Until I Say Good-bye: My Year of Living with Joy  |  Susan Spencer-Wendel  |  BG 921 Wendel  |  [Reserve Now]

At 44, Susan Spencer-Wendel was an award-winning journalist writing for the Palm Beach Post, with three kids and a happy marriage. One day, her left hand started shriveling; it was the onset of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, although she wouldn’t be officially diagnosed for more than a year. Once she knew the name of her illness and what it would entail—an irreversible weakening of her body’s muscles—she made a choice to seek happiness and fulfilling experiences in whatever time she had left. She quit her job and planned seven vacations to take with the seven most important people in her life; she made scrapbooks with a lifetime’s worth of photos, created a backyard haven, and wrote. The story she tells is sad, of course; we know she is dying. But it is not an examination of death. Instead, it explores living life with purpose, intent, and presence, surrounded by friends and family and actively seeking out joy. 

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox  |  Maggie O’Farrell  |  BG O’Farrell  |  [Reserve Now]

When she receives a phone call explaining that her great aunt Esme is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—and needs somewhere to live—Iris Lockhart is stunned: she didn’t know she had a great aunt. Esme was placed in a mental hospital at the age of sixteen and has lived there, forgotten and written out of her family’s story, for sixty years. Although Iris enjoys her solitary life, she can’t bear to put Esme in the miserable halfway house, so she takes her home with her for a trial weekend. The only living person who once knew all the secrets is Kitty, Esme’s sister and Iris’s grandmother, but since she is suffering from Alzheimer’s, she is only able to express regrets in fragments. Moving between Esme’s memories in 1930’s India and Iris’s contemporary life in Edinburgh, the story is crafted with tension, rich characterization, and a lyrical writing style. 

A Walk in the Woods  |  Bill Bryson  |  BG 917.404 B848  |  [Reserve Now]

Weaving from Georgia to Maine, the Appalachian Tail (AT) takes hikers through 2,100 miles of mountains and forests, the longest swath of nature in America. Bill Bryson started on the trail at its southern-most point in Georgia with the goal of hiking the entire length. Then he wrote about his adventures on the trail. A travel memoir, a commentary on small-town America, and a detailed observation of nature, man, and how they interact, A Walk in the Woods will also make you laugh. Come along on Bryson’s AT adventures to discover “the amazing complex delicacy of the woods.”

Walking Across Egypt  |  Clyde Edgerton  |  BG Edgerton  |  [Reserve Now]

Mattie Rigsbee is the spunky center of this funny story. At 78, Mattie wishes for grandchildren, but her kids won’t seem to settle down and deliver the goods. Just as she’s beginning to slow down, teenage delinquent Wesley Benfield enters her life, in need of good cooking and grandmotherly affection. Despite the concern of family and friends, Wesley and Mattie forge a bond in this endearing comic novel.

Watership Down  |  Richard Adams  |  BG Adams  |  [Reserve Now]

This classic tale uses the playful, seemingly simple story of a group of Berkshire rabbits as a text to explore human nature. The rabbits are forced to flee when their traditional home is destroyed by development. In the course of their romping adventure, the band skirts danger and becomes acquainted with a world of myth and culture. The book is written using the dialect and folk history of the English countryside. The work has been cherished ever since its 1972 publication.

The Watsons go to Birmingham  |  Christopher Curtis  |  BG Curtis  |  [Reserve Now]

Kenny Watson’s parents are fed up with his older brother Byron, who is running with the wrong crowd and developing a talent for getting in trouble. They pack up Byron, Kenny and little sister Joetta and head to Birmingham, Alabama. Instead of finding the slower pace and quiet lifestyle they had hoped for, the Watsons witness one of the most chilling events of the Civil Rights struggle. Kenny’s narration is both funny and moving as he intertwines his own story of family love and endurance with the tragic 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church.

We Were Liars  |  E. Lockhart  |  BG Lockhart  |  [Reserve Now]

Cadence Sinclair Eastman—third generation of a bigoted, old-money, establishment family in Massachusetts—her cousins Johnny and Miren, and their aunt’s boyfriend’s son Gant are “the Liars,” running wild all summer on the family’s private island off Martha’s Vineyard. The summer the Liars were fifteen, Cady and Gat fell in love, but something devastating also happened, leaving her with constant headaches and a fuzzy memory. Two years later, she tries to piece together details of the experience. Although it looks at complicated and painful family dynamics through the lens of privilege and wealth, the story strives to point out how insular yet unbelievably lucky the Sinclairs are. Cady’s efforts to dig up the truth about Summer 15 build to a shocking reveal, but the real power in the book is Cady’s voice, tremulous and fractured yet beginning to build in power as she discovers how all the wealth in the world can’t protect against unintended consequences.

What Would Cleopatra Do? Life Lessons from Fifty of History’s Most Extraordinary Women  |  Elizabeth Foley and Beth Coates  |  BG 650.1082 F6993  |  [Reserve Now]

This illustrated book is not just a collection of short histories of famous women. It helps us understand both the impact of the decisions and actions of such women as Frida Kahlo, Catherine the Great, Boudica, and Hedy Lamar during their own time period, as well as the influence they can have upon us in our current situations. With themes as wide-ranging as fashion to financial management, politics to loneliness, What Would Cleopatra Do? helps readers find inspiration in the stories of historical women.

When Breath Becomes Air  |  Paul Kalanithi  |  BG 921 Kalanithi  |  [Reserve Now]

When Breath Becomes Air is the memoir of Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who, just as he finishes his training, discovers he has lung cancer. The book explores not just his regiment of cancer treatments and process of dying—these are, in fact, not the book’s focus—but his explorations as a doctor of what death means, of how we die, and, most importantly, what it means to be alive. When does life end and death begin? At critical medical junctures, Kalanithi writes, “the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. . . What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?” In honest, moving, and searing prose, Kalanthi attempts to answer those questions, both in a medical context and within the scope of his own death.

Where the Crawdads Sing  |  Delia Owens  |  BG Owens  |  [Reserve Now]

“Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch was lean.” After Kya’s mother leaves, the rest of her family abandons their small house in the North Carolina marsh, one by one until she’s left to grow up on her own. She learns to live alone, surviving on what she finds in the marsh as she learns its secrets. The people in Barkley Cove call her the “Marsh Girl” and stay away, but when two different boys cross her path, she begins to interact with people again. This moving, beautifully-written bildungsroman is both a love story and a mystery, delving into the beauty and complexity of the marsh and of human nature. 

The Whole Town’s Talking  |  Fannie Flagg  |  BG Flagg  |  [Reserve Now]

This gentle book tells the 130-year history of the small town of Elmwood Springs, Missouri…via its cemetery. When Lordor Nordstrom, an immigrant from Sweden, founded the town, he set aside a large hill as the town’s cemetery, not knowing how it would impact the residents. From sad to thrilling, mysterious to charming, the townspeople are born, live, and die in Elmwood Springs, adding their lives’ tales to the town’s history. 

The Widow’s House  |  Carol Goodman  |  BG Goodman  |  [Reserve Now]

With their writing careers stalled and hoping to repair their struggling marriage and strained finances, married couple Jess and Clare leave Brooklyn to take up a position as caretakers at Riven House. The old Victorian mansion is owned by Alden Montague, their professor and writing mentor from their college days. The house, nestled in a small town in the Hudson River Valley, gives up its ghostly secrets slowly, tales of a murdered baby, a ghostly mother, and dark family histories. Both Clare and her husband find new writing inspiration in their new setting, but Clare begins to feel haunted. A gothic tale that brings unexpected twists to the haunted-house motif and full of clever literary references, The Widow’s House will bring shivers to your spine.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond  |  Elizabeth George Spears  |  BG Spears  |  [Reserve Now]

When her beloved grandfather dies, Kit Tyler is orphaned, and so must sail from Barbados to the village of Wethersfield in the colony of Connecticut. The restrictive rules of Puritan New England do not mix well with Kit’s free spirit, and she gets in trouble often with her uncle Matthew and the villagers. When she strikes up a friendship with an old woman named Hannah—thought to be a witch—she must confront the society’s narrow moral views. Praised for its vivid recreation of colonial America, this book won the 1959 Newbery Medal. 

A Wizard of Earthsea  |  Ursula K. Le Guin  |  BG Le Guin  |  [Reserve Now]

Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic fantasy masterpiece reveals the land of Earthsea, a landscape made of hundreds of islands. Here, dragons roam and magic is used by wizards to keep good and evil in balance. Like Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Earthsea is built with an ancient, detailed history and unique language that creates an entirely new world for readers to explore. In A Wizard of Earthsea, the first book in the series, you will meet the wizard Ged, who starts the story as an overconfident boy wizard and becomes, as he survives his training and daunting experiences, a master.

The World’s Strongest Librarian  |  Josh Hanagarne  |  BG 921 Hanagarne  |  [Reserve Now]

Josh Hanagrarne first developed the tics of Tourette’s Syndrome when he was six, on stage acting the role of a tree in his first-grade play. The syndrome—which he nicknamed Misty—came to influence almost all of his life, from his adolescent experiences to his LDS mission. As he tries to create an adult life around his condition (explained so vividly that readers themselves start to understand a bit of how it feels to live constantly with “an abomination of motor skills gone amok”) he discovers that weight lifting and yogic breathing help him gain some control over his tics. Now a librarian at the downtown Salt Lake City library, Hanagarne mixes his personal narrative with the tales of a metropolitan library, creating a funny, moving memoir that explores faith, books, limitations, family, adaptations, and the lengths we will go to in order to save ourselves. 

The Worst Hard Time  |  Timothy Egan  |  BG 978.032 Eg14  |  [Reserve Now]

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Timothy Egan won the 2006 National Book Award for this harrowing account of the longest and largest environmental disaster in American history: the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression. Egan’s portraits of the families who stayed behind are sobering and far less familiar than those who left for California and the West to escape the devastation. Egan interviews the surviving families to tell of towns depopulated to this day, a mother who watched her baby die of “dust pneumonia,” and farmers who gathered tumbleweed as food for their cattle and, eventually, for their children.

The Wright Brothers  |  David McCullough  |  BG 921 Wright  |  [Reserve Now]

Mankind’s historic first flight, accomplished at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by the Wright brothers, is a well-known tale. Pulitzer-Prize winning writer David McCullough develops the details of the story that are not as widely known, especially the help of Wilber and Orville Wright’s sister, Katharine, whose assistance had a far-larger role that most people know. Known for his historical accuracy and flair for bringing history to life, McCullough illuminates the tenacity, intelligence, and ability that created the early days of flight.

A Wrinkle in Time  |  Madeline L’Engle  |  BG L’Engle  |  [Reserve Now]

Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and her new friend Calvin O’Keefe travel through space, with the help of Mrs. Who, Mrs, Whatsit, and Mrs. Which, to find her father, who has vanished. They find him imprisoned by the powerful IT on the planet of Camazotz, where all people are identical. As much an exploration of good and evil, the consequence of individuality, and the power of loving people as it is an intergalactic adventure, A Wrinkle in Time won the 1963 Newbery Medal and changed the lives of countless readers.
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