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Two Lives   by Vikram Seth
5/22/2013: Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great uncle Shanti Behari Seth (Shanti Uncle), born in Biswan, and his German Jewish great aunt, Hennerle Caro (Aunty Henny), born in Berlin, describing them as two exiles who found their home in each other. Using interviews with his uncle as well as letters, photographs and official documents, Seth builds up a comprehensive image of the lives of two...
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Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald   by Therese Fowler
5/17/2013: Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight in Paris." It was very interesting, having a degree in literature, and learning more about this couple. I'm not one that puts Fitzgerald in the best writers of all time column. He might have been if he applied himself a bit differently. And Zelda might have been had she been allowed. But it does give a view into that time: The Lost...
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Flight Behavior   by Barbara Kingsolver
5/14/2013: Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on science classes), Barbara Kingsolver gives her readers much to think about seriously: How we tend to settle for what seems good in our lives at the loss of the best; how we let preconceived notions affect our understanding of people and facts; how some of us may know a lot about something but if we are unable to communicate that knowledge with...
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The House at the End of Hope Street   by Menna van Praag
5/13/2013: Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read a book that is fun, with some great characters and an important message, all couched in the most wonderful way. Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, many of literature greats as well as feminist icons are all present, speaking and helping the woman who are called to this house. Even the cups and saucers change pictures daily, the walls laugh and messages...
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Ordinary Grace   by William Kent Krueger
5/13/2013: Can an wiser, older narrator view the past with more wisdom than he might have possessed forty years earlier in the summer he was thirteen? Ordinary Grace visits long ago events in childhood from an adult perspective. Frank, the narrator of Ordinary Grace takes us back to the Minnesota summer of '61 where the story begins with the death of a boy. Frank's father is a minister, a man with strong beliefs and a foundation based on faith Frank and his family, his brother Jake, his sister,...
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Major Pettigrew's Last Stand   by Helen Simonson
5/11/2013: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is the first novel of British-born American author, Helen Simonson. Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) lives in the charming English village of Edgecombe St Mary. Some six years after the death of his wife Nancy, it takes the events surrounding the sudden death of his younger brother, Bertie, to bring Mrs Jasmina Ali, the owner of the village shop, to his notice. As unlikely as it may seem, he finds he has a lot in common with this gentle woman of Pakistani descent....
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Harvest   by Jim Crace
5/3/2013: Had a very hard time rating this book. The writing is outstanding, time and place one can imagine what living here is like. and an unreliable narrator. The tone is foreboding, a little like children of the corn, but much better prose. My problem is partly the pacing, which moves so slowly, also one can only read so much about grain harvest, chaff and pigs also I am not sure I liked the ending. Anyway very atmospheric, story is good once it gets going and I loved the prose. Will appeal to those...
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Amity & Sorrow   by Peggy Riley
5/3/2013: Cults, members of cults, a mother and her two daughters, a farmer in Oklahoma and his somewhat adopted son, Rust,and an old man, these are the characters that make up this debut novel. I found the writing addictive, this novel taught me more than any other book about the reasons people join cults and the effect that being the member of a polygamous cult has on its people. Amity, who is twelve, is the main narrator and we see the world through her eyes. When her mother takes her and her sister...
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The Cove   by Ron Rash
5/2/2013: This is the first I have read by Ron Rash. His descriptions of the Appalachian countryside and his handling of his characters and their circumstances is so nearly exquisite that even the small details sing, and I became involved in the story from the first page. Romance, mystery, and the good and bad of humanity are all here. Great for a book club.
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The Secrets of Mary Bowser   by Lois Leveen
4/29/2013: This novel drew me in from the start, and kept my interest right through to the end. It deals with real people that I am sure most readers have never heard of; in fact, I was never really aware of the spy ring in the South that assisted the North and ultimately freed the slaves. Mary's courage and strength make her a character to remember. This is definitely one for the book clubs.
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Stiff   by Mary Roach
4/27/2013: For anyone interested in the “messy” part of human science, this is the book for you. Mary Roach has a unique sense of humor that makes her off beat topics fun to read. You will learn many facts while being amused and bemused. STIFF tells what happens to the human body after death whether that death is natural or not. You will discover how long decomposition takes and exactly what happens. You will find out who did the first autopsy and the first anatomical dissection and why those...
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Thunderstruck   by Erik Larson
4/22/2013: Eric Larson has a great gift for taking historical facts--well documented--and, by focusing on individual persons, presents his readers with an engrossing tale. I recommend his books to anyone with even a little bit of interest in history.
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Ordinary Grace   by William Kent Krueger
4/16/2013: Frank, a thirteen year old on the cusp of manhood, is the main character in William K Krueger’s book “Ordinary Grace.” On its surface it is a tale of death - a murder, an accident, in war, stupidly or deliberately done, of age or illness. On a much deeper level it is the story of a family, the love that binds them together and the faith that sustains them. This is not an explicitly “Christian” book and yet you will finish the book and know why faith is and what it is. Krueger uses words in...
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry   by Rachel Joyce
4/11/2013: I loved this book the first time through -- the language was often eloquent, with subtle humor intertwined with profound observations on the human condition. I recommended it for my book group, so I read it again, and loved it even more. I was therefore surprised and disappointed to find that no one -- not one -- in my book group liked it; in fact, there seemed to be an element of active hostility toward it. The main problem seemed to be getting past the unlikely premise of Harold...
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All Woman and Springtime   by Brandon W. Jones
4/10/2013: A mesmerizing book that many will find hard to read. Gi, the main character, changes from a brutalized, terrified 10 year old to a near catatonic teen to a woman of untapped strength in this tale of a North Korean girl condemned and then rescued from a concentration camp. She finds a friend in the orphanage but when it is their time to leave the orphanage and strike out on their own, they are betrayed by Il-Sun’s lover and sold into trafficking in South Korea. When they try to escape they are...
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Eighty Days   by Matthew Goodman
4/6/2013: Impressed doesn't cover the half of it. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History- Making Race Around the World is one romp of an adventure. A fan of vicarious thrills, this book gave me more than my money's worth. Who could not love the intrepid spirit of both these women and what they accomplished? Of course I had heard the name Nellie Bly but truly knew little about her. Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran I was surprised to read what lengths she would go to for a good news story...
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Savvy   by Ingrid Law
4/6/2013: I found this book completely amazing! Especially the similes and metaphors. It's a really good story too; exciting,fun, and just the right size. I read this the first time in 4th Grade, by now I've read it about five, maybe six, times... it gets better each time. Plus it can be read by many ages, both girls and boys. Thank you so-o-o much, Ingrid Law!
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A Land More Kind Than Home   by Wiley Cash
4/4/2013: Wiley Cash has a way with words. He can make you see a rain storm or love with equal clarity. In A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME he has written a beautiful elegy for love and death, faith and fear, condemnation and redemption. Told in three very different voices, the tale unfolds in starts and pauses and then backtracks on to itself. Occasionally Cash loses his way and the story loses momentum. But stick with him because in the pulsing end, you will know you have found a wonderful new voice. A...
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Maggot Moon   by Sally Gardner
4/4/2013: I have to admit I have never read anything like this book before. A Nazi regime type society in the fifties, in Great Britain where the country is divided into zones but where an amazing young man, who also happens to be dyslexic and not overly bright, lives. Standish Treadwell, a character I will not soon forget, loves metaphors and tries to do the right thing in a place where knowing how to do that is not easy or often rewarded. This novel is brutal and though YA, definitely not for the...
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And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini

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Khaled Hosseini has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations
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Helga Weiss

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The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust—appearing in English for the first time.
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Mary Beth Keane

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A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
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Two Lives by Vikram Seth
Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great... read more
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight... read more
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on... read more
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