|
Author
Biographies
• • •
• • • •
Award Winners
• • •
• • • •
Choosing a Great Book
• • •
• • • •
Critical Analysis
• • •
• • • •
Discussion Questions
• • •
• • • •
For
Bookclubs
• • •
• • • •
Rare, Used & Out of
Print Books
• • •
• • • •
Reviews
• • •
• • • •
Staff Picks
• • •
• • • •
Subscription
Databases
• • •
• • • •
Back to Great Reads
• • •
• • • •
|
 |
Updated February 2008
 |
MARY'S PICKS |
Request This |
Infidel
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali |
|
Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished—and sometimes reviled—political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots.
In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat—demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan—she refuses to be silenced.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
The Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
|
Request This |
Stones for Ibarra
by Harriet Doerr |
|
Richard and Sara Everton mortgage, sell and borrow, leave friends and country to settle in the Mexican village of Ibarra. They intend to spend the rest of their lives here, in a place neither of them has seen, to speak a language neither of them know. Their dream is to reopen Richard's grandfather's abandoned copper mine.
In a few short months work is advancing in the mine and their home is ready—then Richard learns he has six years to live.
Richard's determination to make the mine and village prosper matches Sara's effort to deny the diagnosis. While Richard measures time, she rejects its passage.
This novel, Harriet Doerr's first, was written when she was in her seventies. It won the American Book Award. If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Suite Française by Sandra Smith & Irene Nemirovsky
|
Request This |
A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
|
|
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
Body Surfing by Anita Shreve
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
|
Request This |
On Agate Hill
by Lee Smith |
|
A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in Nnorth Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree.
Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back.
Spanning half a century, On Agate Hill follows Molly’s passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial—and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
|
Request This |
The Orchid Thief
by Susan Orlean |
|
John Laroche is a sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his teeth, has the posture of al dente spaghetti and the nervous intensity of someone who wins a lot of video games. He is also an orchid thief, who, along with three Seminole Indians, was arrested with rare orchids they had stolen out of a place called the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, a wild swamp in South Florida filled with extraordinary plants and trees, including some that don't grow anywhere else in the world.
One of those rare plants is called the ghost orchid, which John Laroche planned on cloning and then selling to impassioned collectors for a small fortune. New Yorker writer Susan Orlean was so fascinated by Laroche—“the most moral, amoral man I've ever met,” she writes—that she followed him through the swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida's most obsessed plant collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, enthusiasts, and smugglers whose passion for plants is all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean learns the history of orchid collecting, discovers an unusual pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spends time with Laroche’s partners in crime, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Blackwater Sound by James W. Hall
Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee
|
Request This |
America's Dream
by Esmeralda Santiago |
|
América Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don’t look her In the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with América. So when América is offered the chance to work as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester County, New York, she takes it as a sign that a door to escape has been opened. Yet even as América revels in the comparative luxury of her new life, daring to care about a man other than Correa, she is faced with dramatic proof that no matter what she does, she can’t get away from her past.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
Peel My Love Like an Onion by Ana Castillo
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
|
Request This |
Good Night Mr. Tom
by Michelle Magorian
*Children's
Fiction |
|
London is poised on the brink of World War 11. Timid, scrawny Willie Beech—the abused child of a single mother—is evacuated to the English countryside. At first, he is terrified of everything, of the country sounds and sights, even of Mr. Tom, the gruff, kindly old man who has taken him in. But gradually Willie forgets the hate and despair of his past. He learns to love a world he never knew existed, a world of friendship and affection in which harsh words and daily beatings have no place. Then a telegram comes. Willie must return to his mother in London. When weeks pass by with no word from Willie, Mr. Tom sets out for London to look for the young boy he has come to love as a son.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
In My Father’s House by Ann Rinaldi
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Locked in Time by Lois Duncan
|
Request This |
They Cage the Animals at Night
by Jennings Michael Burch |
|
One rainy day in Brooklyn, Jennings Michael Burch's mother, too sick to care for him, left him at an orphanage, saying only, "I'll be right back." She never returned. Shuttled through a series of bleak foster homes and institutions, he never remained in any of them long enough to make a friend. Instead, Jennings clung to a tattered stuffed animal, his sole source of warmth in a frightening world. This is the poignant story of his lost childhood. But it is also the triumphant tale of a little boy who finally gained the courage to reach out for love-and found it waiting for him.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
The Boy from the Basement by Susan Shaw
You Don't Know Me by David Klass
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
|
Request This |
Hummingbird House
by Patricia Henley |
|
When Kate Banner, an American midwife in Nicaragua, loses another
patient - a young woman who had given birth only the night before
in the bottom of a swamped boat - she knows it's time to go home.
But traveling home leads her to a stopover in Guatemala, where
even children sometimes disappear. In Hummingbird House a woman
struggles to face new territories of love and war in the middle
of her life. This is a moving and emotionally trustworthy tale
of a human heart unbinding itself in the most unjust of worlds.
*National Book Award Finalist.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc by Loraine Despres
Love Monkey by Kyle Smith
Liberating Paris by Linda Bloodworth Thomason
|
Request This |
The Lighthouse
by P.D. James |
|
Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are called in to solve a
sensitive high profile case on Combe island off the Cornish coast
of England at a time when Dalgliesh is dealing with his uncertain
future with Emma Lavenham, Kate Miskin struggles with her own
personal turmoil, and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith must cope
with resentment over a female superior.
If you enjoyed this book by P.D.
James, you might like to try one of her other many novels. |
Request This |
Partners in Power :the Clintons and Their America
By Roger Morris |
|
An investigative reporter and author of the acclaimed Richard
Milhous Nixon provides a provocative dual biography of Bill and
Hillary Clinton, their political careers in Arkansas, and the
inner workings of Washington politics and the pervasive and corrupting
influence of special interests.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are viewed as emblematic of a rotten political system that has sold out the interests of its citizens for the financial support of corrupt monied interests. Arkansas was a fertile training ground in no small part because of its few wealthy corporations, including Tyson Foods, Stephens, Inc., and Wal-Mart. The image of Bill Clinton as a moderate, public-oriented leader rings hollow to Morris. Hundreds of understandably confidential interviews present a sordid tale of a governor who allegedly sold his political soul to the Arkansas power structure. The Clintons, according to Morris, handsomely profited from Whitewater at the expense of the people the governor swore to protect. The harrowing tales of cocaine-sniffing toga parties pale in comparison with Clinton’s alleged ties to organized crime, the Iran-Contra debacle, and drug smuggling from Mena, Arkansas. No one should come away from this book happy; complicity in the government’s breakdown includes and transcends both parties. Clinton supporters will be despondent.
If
you enjoyed this book, you might enjoy:
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Faith of My Fathers by John McCain
River of Doubt by Candice Millard
|
|
