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Maisie Dobbs: Book 1
Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
Hailed by NPR’s Fresh Air as part Testament of Youth , part Dorothy Sayers, and part Upstairs, Downstairs , this astonishing debut has already won fans from coast to coast and is poised to add Maisie Dobbs to the ranks of literature’s favorite sleuths. Maisie Dobbs isn’t just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence—and the patronage of her benevolent employers—she works her way ... (more)
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True Notebooks
A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall
by Mark Salzman
In 1997 Mark Salzman, bestselling author Iron and Silk and Lying Awake , paid a reluctant visit to a writing class at L.A.’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage offenders, many of them charged with murder. What he found so moved and astonished him that he began to teach there regularly. In voices of indelible emotional presence, the boys write about what led them to crime and about the lives... (more)
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Upstate
by Kalisha Buckhanon
"Baby, the first thing I need to know from you is do you believe I killed my father?" So begins Upstate, a powerful story told through letters between seventeen-year-old Antonio and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Natasha, set in the 1990's in New York. Antonio and Natasha's world is turned upside down, and their young love is put to the test, when Antonio finds himself in jail, accused of a shocking crime.... (more)
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Leave Myself Behind
by Bart Yates
Noah York is a closeted gay teenager with a foul mouth, a critical disposition, and plenty of material for his tirades. After his father dies, Noah's mother, a temperamental poet, takes a teaching job in a small New Hampshire town, far from Chicago and the only world Noah has known. While Noah gets along reasonably with his mother, the crumbling house they try to renovate quickly reveals dark secrets, via dusty... (more)
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Stiff
The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
An oddly compelling, often hilarious forensic exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.For two thousand years, cadavers some willingly, some unwittingly have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin... (more)
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The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat," and there's perhaps no more apt a nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In THE GLASS CASTLE, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents: Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing... (more)
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Jesus Land
A Memoir
by Julia Scheeres
The memoir the New York Times Book Review called "heart-stopping and enraging" and about which Entertainment Weekly raved " Jesus Land will break your heart and mend it again" Sinners go to: HELL. Rightchuss go to: HEAVEN. The end is neer: REPENT. This here is: JESUS LAND. Julia Scheeres stumbles across these signs along the side of a cornfield while out biking with her adopted brother David.... (more)
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City of Thieves
by David Benioff
As wise and funny as it is thrilling and original — the story of two young men on an impossible adventure.A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won’t talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate... (more)
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The Good Thief
by Hannah Tinti
Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents. Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his... (more)
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Girlchild: A Novel
by Tupelo Hassman
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Rory Hendrix, the least likely of Girl Scouts, hasn’t got a troop or a badge to call her own. But she still borrows the Handbook from the elementary school library to pore over its advice, looking for tips to get off the Calle—the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop. Rory’s been told... (more)
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Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy... (more)
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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, the author accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his... (more)
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
Christopher Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the colours yellow and brown. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and... (more)
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My Sister's Keeper
by Jodi Picoult
New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness. Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her... (more)
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Nickel and Dimed
On (Not) Getting by in America
by Barbara Ehrenreich
The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Nickel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone... (more)
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Girl with a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier
New York Times bestseller where history and fiction merge seamlessly in Tracy Chevalier's luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Through the eyes of sixteen-year-old Griet, the world of 1660s Holland comes dazzlingly alive in this richly imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings.
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Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman
Fat Charlie Nancy's normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn't know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother. Now brother Spider's on his doorstep—about to make Fat Charlie's life more interesting . . . and a lot more dangerous.