Book Club Kit Titles
A
Thread of Grace
by Mary
Doria Russell
Tracing
the lives of a handful of fascinating characters – a charismatic Italian
Resistance leader, a priest, an Italian rabbi’s family, a disillusioned
German doctor – Mary Doria Russell tells the little-known story of the vast
underground effort by Italian citizens who saved the lives of 43,000 Jews
during the final phase of World War II.
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen
and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of
Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching,
Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids,
acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work
of their hands.
Eat,
Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
From
The New
Yorker
At the age
of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and
began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a
child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she
embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for
pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram
outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing."
The Faith Club
by Ranya Idliby
Ranya Idliby is a Palestinian Muslim; Suzanne Oliver, an ex--Catholic now in
the Episcopal Church; and Priscilla Warner, Jewish. Initially, the idea
behind establishing a faith club was simple--the three women would
collaborate on an interfaith children's book emphasizing the connections
among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that would reinforce the common
heritage the three religions share. In post-9/11 America, however, real life
began getting in the way.
Friday Night Knitting Club
by Kate Jacobs
From Publishers Weekly
Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her
12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her
plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a
former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to
unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at
her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own
brewing.
Jesus
Land by Julia
Scheeres
This
riveting memoir is the story of Julia and her adopted brother, David.
Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family
has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer
parks, and an all-encompassing racism. Julia and David are sent to a
religious reform school in the Dominican Republic by their violent father
and distant mother. Together, Julia and David strive to make it
through the ordeal of reform school.
Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan
From Publishers Weekly
Horan's ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah
Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright's
first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of
an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early
20th century.
The Memory
Keeper’s Daughter
by Kim Edwards
This
riveting family drama from the author of the short story collection "The
Secrets of a Fire King" explores every mother's silent fears--losing a child
and that the child grows up without her.
Mockingbird
by Charles J. Shields
“To
Kill a Mockingbird” is the most widely read American novel ever. Yet its
creator, Harper Lee, has become a mysterious figure who routinely turns away
reporters. She has never been the subject of a book - until now.
“Mockingbird” is a portrait of this unconventional, high-spirited, and
sometimes hardheaded woman who loved her Southern home and the craft of
writing and who - from these undying affections - created a book whose power
has never diminished. After years of being asked by his students about Lee,
Charles J. Shields, a former English teacher, set out to trace her life
before the passing of time made it impossible to tell her story.
The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
From Library Journal
A radical departure from Follett's novels of international suspense and
intrigue, this chronicles the vicissitudes of a prior, his master builder,
and their community as they struggle to build a cathedral and protect
themselves during the tumultuous 12th century, when the empress Maud and
Stephen are fighting for the crown of England after the death of Henry I.
The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the
ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack
stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their
destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits
them there.
The
Sea by John
Banville
In this
luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John
Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone
back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to
cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place
where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the
strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.
Suite
Francaise by
Irene Nemirovsky
This stunning book
contains two narratives, one fictional and the other a fragmentary, factual
account of how the fiction came into being. "Suite Française" itself
consists of two novellas portraying life in France from June 4, 1940, as
German forces prepare to invade Paris, through July 1, 1941, when some of
Hitler's
occupying troops leave France to join the assault on the Soviet Union.
Water for
Elephants by
Sara Gruen
Though
he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's
ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed
by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most
Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and
clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own
narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The
world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell.