KAREN'S PICKS

A young English boy describes his relationship with his father & the special adventure they share together.

When Jason decides to make a mockery of religion by starting his own faith that revolves around the worshipping of a water tower, his friends go along with the gag until "followers" begin to look to them for guidance and Jason's friends get power-hungry in their roles as founders of the new faith.

A single-volume edition of a classic Great Depression graphic novel series documents its role in launching the graphic novel as an art form, in a collection that fictionally depicts its creator's bittersweet struggles with a vengeful God within a tenement district.

Bend in the River
by V.S. Naipaul

In the "brilliant novel" (The New York Times) V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man—an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.

The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.

If you enjoyed Persepolis, you might enjoy the sequel, Persepolis 2.