Upcoming Book Selections

Below are our book selections until July 2012!

April 18: 7pm -- BIBLICAL HISTORICAL FICTION MONTH!
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
The Red Tent illuminates the intriguing biblical story of Dinah that
novelist Anita Diamant brought alive. "An intense, vivid novel... It is
tempting to say that The Red Tent is what the Bible would be like if it had
been written by women, but only Duamant could have given it such sweep and
grace" - The Boston Globe.

May 16: 7pm -SPIRITUAL MEMOIR MONTH
Measure of a Man, by Sidney Poitier
In this unabridged memoir, Sidney Poitier recounts the inspring story of his
rise from childhood poverty in the Bahamas to a life marked by grace,
success, and material and spiritual riches.

June 20: 7pm - HISTORICAL NOVEL
The Killer Angels
A superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is
its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.

July 18: Fiction
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
link
Still Alice is a compelling DEBUT novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

August 15: Fiction
Room by Emma Donoghue
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Emma Donoghue’s remarkable new novel, “Room,” is built on two intense constraints: the limited point of view of the narrator, a 5-year-old boy named Jack; and the confines of Jack’s physical world, an 11-by-11-foot room where he lives with his mother. We enter the book strongly planted within these restrictions.

September 19: Biography
Paris Wife by Paula McLain
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The heroine of “The Paris Wife” is Hadley Richardson, the athletic, sturdily built, admittedly unfashionable homebody who married Ernest Hemingway in 1921. They were divorced in 1927. Hadley was, by all accounts including this one, a very fine and decent person, but she was the starter wife of a man who wound up treating her terribly. Had she not married him, no novelist would be telling her story.

October 17th: Mystery
The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg
link
This is a second in a series. You may want to but don't have to read The Ice Princess first. Kati read it and loved.

November 14th(due to Thanksgiving week): Biography in honor of Veteran's Day
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
link

December 19th
Social Event - no book

January 23rd(due to MLK on 3rd week): Irish Fiction
Winter Bloom by Tara Heavey
link
In the heart of bustling modern Dublin is a littered, overgrown garden of tangled weeds and a stagnant, hidden pond. Belonging to an iron-willed elderly lady named Mrs. Prendergast, who is rumored to have murdered and buried her husband there, the garden draws Eva Madigan, a young mother struggling to move on from the pain of her past. Eva is joined by Emily, a beautiful but withdrawn college dropout; Uri, an old-world immigrant; Seth, his all-too-handsome son; and occasionally even Mrs. Prendergast herself. But what drives Eva to transform the neglected urban wilderness? What makes the others want to help her? Even as Mrs. Prendergast puts the land up for sale, the thorny lives of all the gardeners are revealed and slowly start to untangle. Overgrown secrets are dug up and shared. Choices are made; a little pruning is in order. Now Eva is about to discover that every garden is a story of growth toward a final harvest. . . .

February 20th: WW2 fiction
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
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Orringer’s central character, Andras Levi, is a promising student of architecture who leaves his native Hungary to study in Paris in the late 1930s — until his scholarship is revoked when anti-Jewish laws go into effect. As you might expect, the trials he and his wife and their extended families face will grow exponentially worse in the years to come. Their happiest days and, later, their struggles, are rendered in sweeping, epic fashion.

March 20: Swedish Mystery
Three Seconds by Rosland and Hellstrom
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Piet Hoffman is a paid infiltrator and former criminal who is working for the Swedish police; a man who is willing to put his life on the line in order to eventually earn his freedom and a chance at a life with his wife and two young sons. He has managed to infiltrate the top leadership of the Polish mafia who are running drugs by using human mules; and now he needs to go one step further – after a botched drug deal where a man is murdered he agrees to enter the Swedish prison system and shut down the huge drug ring that represents billions of dollars to the mafia.

April 16: Religious Autobiography
Story of A Soul by Translated by John Beevers by St. Therese of Lisieux
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A spiritual guide for millions the world over, this is the autobiography of a holy woman who "attained to the knowledge of supernatural things in such abundant measure that she was able to point out the sure way of salvation to others." --Pope Pius XI.

May 21st: Medical Biography
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 black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance.

June 18th: WW1 Fiction
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
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On the eve of the first world war, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her -
but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace.

July 16th; Asian Fiction
Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See
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This absorbing novel – with a storyline unlike anything Lisa See has written before – takes place in 19th century China when girls had their feet bound, then spent the rest of their lives in seclusion with only a single window from which to see.