Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: local book club read

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  Moloka'i

  by Alan Brennert

  This richly imagined novel, set in Hawaii more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place -- and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen... (more)
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  Shadow Divers

  The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II

  by Robert Kurson

  In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced... (more)
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  The Myth of You and Me

  A Novel

  by Leah Stewart

  When Cameron was fifteen, she and Sonia were best friends—so close it seemed nothing would ever come between them. Now Cameron is a twenty-nine-year-old research assistant with no meaningful ties to anyone except her aging boss, noted historian Oliver Doucet. Nearly a decade after the incident that ended their friendship, Cameron receives an unexpected letter from her old friend. Despite Oliver’s urging, she... (more)
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  A Long Way Down

  by Nick Hornby

  The story is written in the first-person narrative from the points of view of the four main characters, Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ. These four strangers happen to meet on the roof of a high building called Topper's House in London on New Year's Eve, each with the intent of committing suicide. Their plans for death in solitude, however, are ruined when they meet. The novel recounts their misadventures as they... (more)
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  Little Earthquakes

  by Jennifer Weiner

  Jennifer Weiner's rich, witty, true-to-life New York Times bestselling novel tells the story of four very different women as they navigate one of life's most wonderful and perilous transitions: the journey of new motherhood. Becky is a plump, sexy chef who has a wonderful husband and baby girl, a restaurant that's received citywide acclaim -- and the mother-in-law from hell. Kelly is an event planner who's... (more)
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  The Secret Life of Bees

  by Sue Monk Kidd

  Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past.... (more)
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  When the Emperor Was Divine

  by Julie Otsuka

  Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination—both physical and emotional—of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view—the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on... (more)
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  Peace Like a River

  by Leif Enger

  Leif Enger's rhapsodic novel about a father raising his three children in 1960s Minnesota is a breathtaking celebration of family, faith, and America's pioneering spirit. Through the voice of eleven-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic boy, Peace Like a River tells of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's outlaw older brother, who has been controversially charged with murder. Sprinkled with playful and... (more)
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  The Tender Bar

  A Memoir

  by J. R. Moehringer

  The bestselling memoir that captured the hearts of readers and critics nationwide is now available in paperback In the tradition of This Boy’s Life and The Liar’s Club , J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar is a raucous, poignant, luminously written memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar. A national bestseller that was named one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2005 by the ... (more)
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  Crescent

  by Diana Abu-Jaber

  "Abu-Jaber's voluptuous prose features insights into the Arab American community that are wisely, warmly depicted."— San Francisco Chronicle Thirty-nine-year-old Sirine, never married, lives with a devoted Iraqi-immigrant uncle and an adoring dog named King Babar. She works as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, her passions aroused only by the preparation of food—until an unbearably handsome Arabic literature... (more)
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  Postville

  A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

  by Stephen G. Bloom

  In 1987, a group of Lubavitchers, one of the most orthodox and zealous of the Jewish sects, opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside tiny Postville, Iowa (pop. 1,465). When the business became a worldwide success, Postville found itself both revived and divided. The town's initial welcome of the Jews turned into confusion, dismay, and even disgust. By 1997, the town had engineered a vote on what everyone... (more)
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  The Dive From Clausen's Pier

  by Ann Packer

  How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or weakness to walk away from someone in need? These questions lie at the heart of Packer's intimate and emotionally thrilling first novel, which won its author comparisons with Jane Hamilton and Sue Miller. At the age of twenty-three Carrie Bell has spent her entire life in Wisconsin, with the same best friend and the same dependable, easygoing,... (more)
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  Back When We Were Grownups

  by Anne Tyler

  "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s? On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural... (more)
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  Plain Truth

  by Jodi Picoult

  A shocking murder shatters the picturesque calm of Pennsylvania's Amish country -- and tests the heart and soul of the lawyer who steps in to defend the young woman at the center of the storm... Plain Truth The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial evidence suggests that... (more)
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  Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

  by Lisa See

  Lily is haunted by memories–of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu... (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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  The Devil in the White City

  Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

  by Erik Larson

  Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative... (more)
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  A Thread of Grace

  by Mary Doria Russell

  Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II - it is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last, now that the Italians have broken with Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon... (more)
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  Robert Langdon: Book 2

  The Da Vinci Code

  by Dan Brown

  Robert Langdon, Harvard Professor of symbology, receives an urgent late-night call while in Paris: the curator of the Louvre has been murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci - and further. The curator, part of a secret society named the Priory of Sion, may have sacrificed... (more)
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  The Secret History

  by Donna Tartt

  Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond... (more)