As with all books your club selects, we recommend that a member of your group reads the book to see if it is a good fit for your club. To find out more about any selection, click "Check Library Catalog" below to view each CALS online catalog record.
All Over But The Shoutin'
by Rick Bragg
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A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times recounts growing up in the Alabama hills, the son of a violent veteran and a mother who tried to insulate her children from poverty and ignorance.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
by Garth Stein
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Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher's soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe's maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.
Bastard Out Of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
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Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright, an illegitimate young girl, dreams of escaping her Greenville County, South Carolina, home, her notorious, hard-living family, and the unwanted attentions of her abusive stepfather, Daddy Glen.
The Cellist of Sarajevo
by Steven Galloway
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While a cellist plays at the site of a mortar attack to commemorate the deaths of twenty-two friends and neighbors, two other men set out in search of bread and water to keep themselves alive, and a woman sniper secretly protects the life of the cellist as her army becomes increasingly threatening.
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour
by Lynne Olson
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The behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant.
Confederates in the Attic
by Tony Horwitz
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A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist leads readers on a high-spirited, revealing journey through the Old South, tangling with the forces of white rage, rebel grit, and regional pride in places where the Civil War is more than a memory.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
by Tom Franklin
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More than twenty years have passed since a girl disappears and Larry, a mechanic, has never been able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas Jones, town constable, and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.
Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
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win brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in Ethiopia, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Music, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
by Erik Larson
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A compelling account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 brings together the divergent stories of two very different men who played a key role in shaping the history of the event—visionary architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and Dr. Henry H. Holmes, an insatiable and charming serial killer who lured women to their deaths.
Emma
by Jane Austen
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Content with her life and not interested in marriage, Emma Woodhouse, a rich and beautiful heiress, causes complications with her matchmaking schemes.
Garden Spells
by Sarah Addison Allen
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A successful caterer in Bascomb, North Carolina, Claire has always remained tied to the legacy of the Waverly family, until her peaceful life is transformed by Tyler Hughes, an art teacher and new next-door neighbor, and by the return of her prodigal sister, Sydney.
The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence
by Gavin De Becker
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A personal security expert and behavioral consultant discusses the dangerous situations individuals may face, explains how to use the power of intuition to identify and avoid danger, and shares advice on restraining orders, self-defense tactics, and more.
Heaven is For Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
by Todd Burpo
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Presents the story of the 4-year old son of a Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven.
Her Mother's Hope
by Francine Rivers
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Determined to find life on her own terms, Marta leaves Switzerland and lands in the central valley of California with her children and husband in tow, and years later, when Marta's oldest daughter, Hildie, gains her independence by becoming a nurse, marrying and beginning a family of her own, each woman is forced to confront her faulty but well-meaning desire to help her daughter find her God-given place in the world.
The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende
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Traces the lives of the Truebas family, starting with clairvoyant Clara de Valle's summoning of the man she intends to marry, ambitious Esteban Trueba, and following their lives through which they suffer and triumph.
The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
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In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
I Was Told there’d be Cake
by Sloane Crosley
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A debut compilation of literary essays offers a revealing and humorous look at human fallibility and the vagaries of modern urban life as the author details the despoiling of an exhibit at the Natural History Museum, the provocation of her first boss, siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, and other offbeat situations.
The King’s Speech
by Mark Logue
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Presents the life of the Australian speech therapist who helped the English king, George VI, overcome a lifelong speech disorder and become an eloquent leader of his people during the difficult days of World War II.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain
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A New York City chef who is also a novelist recounts his experiences in the restaurant business, and exposes abuses of power, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and other secrets of life behind kitchen doors.
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
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The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds—Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s—and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the twentieth century's most tumultuous events.
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
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The tragic story of the friendship between two migrant workers, George and mentally retarded Lenny, and their dream of owning a farm.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
by Aimee Bender
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Being able to taste people's emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia
by Jean P. Sasson
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A Saudi woman discusses what life is like for women in her country, describing how women are sold into marriage to men five times their age, are treated as their husbands' slaves, and are often murdered for the slightest transgression.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi
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Describes growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the group of young women who came together at her home in secret every Thursday to read and discuss great books of Western literature, explaining the influence of Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and other works on their lives and goals.
A Reliable Wife
by Robert Goolrick
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Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman with a troubled past who lives in a remote nineteenth-century Wisconsin town, has advertised for a reliable wife; and his ad is answered by Catherine Land, a woman who makes every effort to hide her own dark secrets.
Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier
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When Mary Anning uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home on the English coast, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight. Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, and in the struggle to be recognized in the wider world, Mary and Elizabeth discover that friendship is their greatest ally.
Room
by Emma Donoghue
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Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful—and attempts a nail-biting escape.
Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
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Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Still Life
by Louise Penny
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Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
Stumbling on Happiness
by Daniel Gilbert
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Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? Why do patients remember long medical procedures as less painful than short ones? Why do home sellers demand prices they wouldn't dream of paying if they were home buyers? Why does the line at the grocery store always slow down when we join it? In this book, Harvard psychologist Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Using the latest research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what we have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there, and why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.
The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno
by Ellen Bryson
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Restless after 10 years with P. T. Barnum's American Museum, Bartholomew Fortuno, the World's Thinnest Man, is asked by the humbug king to discern the activities of a mysterious veiled woman who has captured the obsessions of those she meets.
True Grit
by Charles Portis
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U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn is hired by a 14-year-old girl to kill the man who murdered her father and stole the family nest egg. She accepts the help of the Texas Ranger, who is intent on the reward, and accompanies them on the quest.
Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
by Melba Beals
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Presents an account of Melba Beals's junior year at Central High in 1957, during which her family suffered threats, personal attacks, and even a murder attempt, and explains how they endured with faith, courage, strength, and love.
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
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Generally considered the first English sensation novel, The Woman in White features the remarkable heroine Marian Halcombe and her sleuthing partner, drawing master Walter Hartright, pitted against the diabolical team of Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. A gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness, and mistaken identity, Collins’s psychological thriller has never been out of print in the 140 years since its publication.
Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
by Geneen Roth
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The author of the best-selling When Food Is Love likens overeating to an addiction intended to numb painful emotions and counsels readers to eat in accordance with seven key guidelines and with a greater awareness of actual needs.
As with all books your club selects, we recommend that a member of your group reads the book to see if it is a good fit for your club. To find out more about any selection, click "Check Library Catalog" below to view each CALS online catalog record.
Anywhere But Here
by Mona Simpson
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Resourceful twelve-year-old Ann and her mother, Adele, travel across America in search of fulfillment, freedom, and their dreams.
The Blind Side
by Michael Lewis
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The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football.
What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.
Climbing the Mango Trees: a Memoir of a Childhood in India
by Madhur Jaffrey
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The best-selling author of An Invitation to Indian Cooking offers a charming memoir of growing up in Delhi, India, detailing life in a large family marked by dinners in which forty or more members of her extended family would enjoy the savory dishes of the region, recalling her childhood through the window of the food she experienced.
The Crying Tree
by Naseem Rakha
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Irene and Nate Stanley are living a quiet and contented life with their two children, Bliss and Shep, on their family farm in southern Illinois when Nate suddenly announces he's been offered a job as a deputy sheriff in Oregon. Irene does not want to uproot her family and has deep misgivings. They are just settling into their life in Oregon's high desert when 15-year-old Shep is shot and killed during an apparent robbery in their home. The murderer is caught and sentenced to death. Irene copes by waiting, week by week, for Daniel Robbin's execution and the justice she feels she and her family deserve. Ultimately, faced with a growing sense that Robbin's death will not stop her pain, Irene takes the extraordinary and clandestine step of reaching out to her son's killer, and the two forge an unlikely connection.
The Die is Cast: Arkansas Goes to War, 1861
edited by Mark Christ
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Essays from five contributors examine the political and social forces in Arkansas that led to secession and transformed farmers, clerks, and shopkeepers into soldiers. Collectively, these essays provide an overview of the diverse passions that brought the people of Arkansas to war.
Dreams of my Father
by Barack Obama
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In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.
The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Morton
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A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family.
But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.
The Ginger Tree
by Oswald Wynd
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In 1903, a young Scotswoman named Mary Mackenzie sets sail for China to marry her betrothed, a military attachÉ in Peking. But soon after her arrival, Mary falls into an adulterous affair with a young Japanese nobleman, scandalizing the British community. Casting her out of the European community, her compatriots tear her away from her small daughter. A woman abandoned and alone, Mary learns to survive over forty tumultuous years in Asia, including two world wars and the cataclysmic Tokyo earthquake of 1923.
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift
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Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself in Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose six-inch height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters—with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and brutish Yahoos—give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour.
Half Broke Horses
by Jeannette Walls
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A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy—but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit.
The Happiness Project
by Gretchen Rubin
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Chronicles the author's year spent testing the edicts of conventional wisdom to assess their potential for improving life, describing various activities ranging from getting more sleep and singing to her children to starting a blog and imitating a spiritual master.
Her Fearful Symmetry
by Audrey Niffenegger
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When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat and through a series of developing relationships a crisis develops that could pull the twins apart.
History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
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Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the milk counter of Starbucks. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And although he doesn't know it, that book also survived: it crossed oceans and generations, and changed lives.
Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that book. She has her hands full keeping track of her little brother Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah) and taking copious notes in her book, How to Survive in the Wild Volume Three. But when a mysterious letter arrives in the mail she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by Jamie Ford
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Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Little Bee
by Chris Cleave
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A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers—one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.
Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan
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Mamah and her husband, Edwin, commission the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
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Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.
He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.
Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
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Private detective Maisie Dobbs must investigate the reappearance of a dead man who turns up at a cooperative farm called the Retreat that caters to men who are recovering their health after World War I.
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
by Helen Simonson
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Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?
On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
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Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later he is struggling to revive his love for his African American wife Kiki. Meanwhile, his three teenage children—Jerome, Zora and Levi—are each seeking the passions, ideals and commitments that will guide them through their own lives.
After Howard has a disastrous affair with a colleague, his sensitive older son, Jerome, escapes to England for the holidays. In London he defies everything the Belseys represent when he goes to work for Trinidadian right-wing academic and pundit, Monty Kipps. Taken in by the Kipps family for the summer, Jerome falls for Monty's beautiful, capricious daughter, Victoria.
But this short-lived romance has long-lasting consequences, drawing these very different families into each other's lives. As Kiki develops a friendship with Mrs. Kipps, and Howard and Monty do battle on different sides of the culture war, hot-headed Zora brings a handsome young man from the Boston streets into their midst whom she is determined to draw into the fold of the black middle class—but at what price?
The Piano Tuner
by Daniel Mason
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In 1886 a shy, middle-aged piano tuner named Edgar Drake receives an unusual commission from the British War Office: to travel to the remote jungles of northeast Burma and there repair a rare piano belonging to an eccentric army surgeon who has proven mysteriously indispensable to the imperial design. From this irresistible beginning, The Piano Tuner launches its protagonist into a world of seductive loveliness and nightmarish intrigue. And as he follows Drake’s journey, Mason dazzles readers with his erudition, moves them with his vibrantly rendered characters, and enmeshes them in the unbreakable spell of his storytelling.
Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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Barcelona, 1945—Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes one day to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a book from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the book he selects, a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Before Daniel knows it, his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness, and doomed love, and before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.
Short History of Women
by Kate Walbert
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Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women is a portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters, chronicling five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty-first.
The novel opens in England in 1914 at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself for the cause. Her choice echoes in the stories of her descendants interwoven throughout: a brilliant daughter who tries to escape the burden of her mother's infamy by immigrating to America just after World War I to begin a career in science; a niece who chooses a conventional path - marriage, children, suburban domesticity - only to find herself disillusioned with her husband of fifty years and engaged in heartbreaking and futile antiwar protests; a great-granddaughter who wryly articulates the free-floating anxiety of the times while getting drunk on a children's playdate in post-gin Manhattan. In a kaleidoscope of voices and with a richness of imagery, emotion, and wit, Walbert portrays the ways in which successive generations of women have responded to what the Victorians called "The Woman Question."
This is Where I Leave You
by Jonathan Tropper
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Judd Foxman is oscillating between a sea of self-pity and a "snake pit of fury and resentment" in the aftermath of the explosion of his marriage, which ended "the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake." Foxman is jobless (after finding his wife in bed with his boss) and renting out the basement of a "crappy house" when he is called home to sit shiva for his father—who, incidentally, was an atheist. This of course means seven days in his parent's house with his exquisitely dysfunctional family, including his mom, a sexy, "I've-still-got-it" shrink fond of making horrifying TMI statements; his older sister, Wendy, and her distracted hubby and three kids; his snarky older brother, Paul, and his wife; and his youngest brother, Phillip, the "Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead."
Wicked
by Gregory Maguire
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When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?
Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
Winter’s Bone
by Daniel Mason
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The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.
Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. But the house is all they have, and Ree's father would never forfeit it to the bond company unless something awful happened. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who's entered a kind of second childhood, Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive, or else see her family turned out into the unforgiving cold.
Sixteen-year-old Ree, who has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. She perseveres past obstacles of every kind and finally confronts the top figures in the family's hierarchy.