Book Club Kit Titles Title Author Alligator Lisa Moore

Book Club Kit Titles Title/Author Alligator / Lisa Moore Edition date 2005 Like the gator, this book seems quietly brooding at first—right before it snaps at you, baring its fearsome teeth, and brings you face to face with your own mortality. Set in St. John’s, the author’s hometown, Alligator is a multi-thread narrative that follows several desperate Newfoundlanders. Amsterdam / Ian McEwan 1999 In this contemporary morality play, a woman's death has major consequences for three men, all former lovers of the woman. The Assassin’s Song / M. G. Vassanji 2007 A shining study of the conflict between ancient loyalties and modern desires, a conflict that creates turmoil the world over, and an intimate portrait of one man’s painful struggle to hold the earthly and the spiritual in balance. Asylum / Patrick McGrath 1998 When her staid husband, a forensic psychiatrist, takes a position at a high-security mental hospital in England, Stella Raphael becomes involved with a sculptor convicted of murdering his wife, with tragic results. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress / Dai Sijie 2002 During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, two boys are sent to the country for reeducation, where their lives take an unexpected turn when they meet the beautiful daughter of a local tailor and stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western literature. Barney's Version / Mordecai Richler 1997 The urban sensibility of immigrant Jewish Montreal is chronicled in this darkly satirical portrait of 67year-old Barney Panofsky, who decides to set the record straight about his Bohemian days in Paris and London in the 1950s, his circle of famous and infamous friends, his career as a television producer, and his wildly unsuccessful relationships with women. Bel Canto / Ann Patchett 2005 When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan. Beloved / Toni Morrison 2004 Proud and beautiful, Sethe escaped from slavery but is haunted by its heritage—and by the ghost of her two-year-old daughter. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest work. Birds without Wings / Louis De Bernières 2005 During the finals days of the Ottoman Empire, the young men of the village are instructed to battle the invading forces during the Great War and destroy the peace. The Birth House / Ami Mckay 2007 The first daughter in five generations of her Nova Scotia family, Dora Rare becomes an apprentice to a gifted midwife and storyteller before their home is threatened by the arrival of a brash medical doctor who promises sterile and painless births. The Blind Assassin / Margaret Atwood 2000 A multi-layered story of the death of a woman's sister and husband in the 1940s, with a novel-withina-novel as a background. January 2009 1 Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures / Vincent Lam 2006 This offers an intriguing look at naive doctors' lives and aspirations while showcasing the humanity and daily dilemmas they face. In both humorous and worst-case scenarios, Lam depicts how students plot their way into med school, develop strange ties to cadavers, break terrible news to patients' families, second-guess all their actions, collaborate against their consciences, and deal with lifethreatening illnesses of their own. The Book of Negroes (aka Someone Knows My Name) / Lawrence Hill 2007 Stunning, wrenching and inspiring, the novel spans the life of Aminata Diallo, born in Bayo, West Africa, in 1745. During her long life of struggle, she does what she can to free herself and others from slavery, including learning to read and teaching others to, and befriending anyone who can help her, black or white. The Boys in the Trees / Mary Swan 2008 Swan explores how late 19th-century small town Canada deals with a horrific crime. William Heath leaves his native England with his young family, eventually landing in Canada. But just as the family is feeling settled, William is accused in the local paper of embezzlement, and as the scandal peaks, William kills his family. He's sentenced to death, and the novel is taken over by a cross-section of locals—a teacher, a doctor, a boy curious about the facts of the crime—who share their thoughts about the Heaths. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao / Junot Díaz 2007 Leaping back and forth between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, pouring across pages in a combustible mix of slang and lyricism, Oscar Wao bridges several generations and distinct cultures with exhilarating doses of Caribbean history and old-fashioned pulse-pounding drama. Politics, corruption, romance, fantasy, faith, despair — the novel contains multitudes. The Broken Shore / Peter Temple ` 2005 Recuperating from the terrible accident that claimed the life of a young rookie, Melbourne homicide detective Joe Cashin returns to his sleepy childhood hometown in South Australia and takes over the small police unit there. As he digs deeper into the case of a brutally murdered wealthy philanthropist, he unearths racism, corruption, and a conspiracy to conceal crimes of the past. The Case of Lena S / David Bergen 2003 The Case of Lena S. follows the life, loves, and coming-of-age of sixteen-year-old Mason Crowe during a year in which he will learn what it truly means to be in the world. At the centre of the novel is Lena, a troubled girl who has “chosen” Mason and will teach him something of desire and despair. The Cellist of Sarajevo / Steven Galloway 2008 This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. Chronicler of the Winds / Henning Mankell 2006 Slowly dying on a theater rooftop in an African port, ten-year-old Nelio, a street-kid leader and rumored healer and prophet remembers how he joined a legion of abandoned youths after his village was razed by bandits, and how he endeavored to prove to his companions that life is more than mere survival. Clara Callan / Richard B Wright 2001 A novel of World War II follows the adventures of two Canadian sisters who struggle against social convention--one in a small town in Ontario, the other in New York City. January 2009 2 Cloud of Bone / Bernice Morgan 2007 A masterful, engrossing story of the last surviving Beothuk, a World War II deserter, and a recently widowed English woman at the end of the twentieth century. Three stories come together to make both an intriguing mystery and a meditation on lost innocence, brutality and the power of memory. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams / Wayne Johnston 1999 Joe Smallwood, an impoverished boy intent on making a name for himself, and Sheilagh Fielding, a journalist who pens his rise to power, confront their own frailties, secrets, and mutual love, in a novel of twentieth-century Newfoundland The Communist's Daughter / Dennis Bock 2006 Rebelling against the religion of his father, physician Norman Bethune finds his calling saving lives on the battlefield, from Republican Spain to China, where in the service of Mao Zedong, he struggles with Nationalist and Japanese enemies. A Complicated Kindness / Miriam Toews 2004 Doomed to work at the Happy Family Farm, a chicken slaughterhouse in a town run by a Mennonite community, sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel nevertheless manages to bear witness to the dissolution of her family with a dark, sly wit. Crow Lake / Mary Lawson 2003 In the rural farm country of northern Ontario, the lives of two families--the farming Pye family, and zoologist Kate Morrison and her three brothers--are brought together and torn apart by misunderstanding, resentment, family love, and tragedy. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time / Mark Haddon 2004 Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. De Niro's Game / Rawi Hage 2007 Growing up in war-torn Beirut, Bassam and George, best friends since childhood, each confront a choice between staying in the city and consolidating power through crime, or seeking safety in exile abroad, alienated from everything they know. Divisadero / Michael Ondaatje 2007 In the 1970s in Northern California, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence - of both hand and heart - that sets fire to the rest of their lives. Echo Park / Michael Connelly 2006 In 1993 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn't crack it, and the twenty-two-year-old was never found. Taking the confession of the man he has sought—and hated—for thirteen years is bad enough. Discovering that he missed a clue back in 1993 that could have stopped nine other murders may just be the straw that breaks Harry Bosch. The Exception / Christian Jungerson 2008 The slow burn of office politics can be just as riveting as international intrigue in this sometimes cruel but always intense page-turner. Iben, Malene, and Camilla work in Copenhagen for the Danish Center for Information on Genocide. Can people fighting genocide display the same traits as war criminals? What does it mean to be evil? Jungersen explores these questions and others on a very personal level. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close / Jonathan Safran 2006 Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. January 2009 3 Family Matters / Rohinton Mistry 2002 In mid-1990s Bombay, Nariman Vakeel lives in a crumbling apartment with his two middle-aged stepchildren—the mild-mannered Jal and his domineering sister, Coomy, who plots to turn over the care of her stepfather to her younger sister, Roxana. Fifth Business / Robertson Davies 2005 A retiring Canadian history professor reveals the true nature of his eerie, mystical influence on those around him. Friend of the Devil / Peter Robinson 2007 Annie Cabbot finds herself saddled with a difficult case. Two women are found violently murdered. DCI Banks is dealing with another case. Banks is faced with a multiplicity of suspects, while Annie Cabbot makes absolutely no progress in her case. Those familiar with detective fiction won't be surprised to learn that the various cases turn out to be interrelated, and when the duo begin to make considerable inroads into the mysteries, they find that aspects of their own pasts are coming back to haunt them. Fugitive Pieces / Anne Michaels 1996 This is the story of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jew, translator, and poet who, as a child, witnessed his family's slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. Jakob's story is told through diaries discovered by Ben, a young man whose parents are Holocaust survivors and who is a vessel for their memories just as Jakob is the bearer of his own. The Garneau Block / Todd Babiak 2006 In what can only be described as a storytelling tour-de-force, we meet the warm, endearing, and delightfully flawed residents of a fictional cul-de-sac in the city’s Garneau neighbourhood just after the scandalous death of a neighbour and the sudden news that their land is about to be repossessed by the university. The Girls / Lori Lansens 2006 One of the world's oldest living conjoined twins, at the approach of her thirtieth birthday bookish Rose Darlen attempts to pen her autobiography while remembering the joys and challenges of her life with sister Ruby, with whom she shares friendships in their small hometown. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray 2003 After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England after many years in India to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world. Half of a Yellow Sun / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2007 Re-creates the 1960s struggle of Biafra to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, following the intertwined lives of the characters through a military coup, the Biafran secession, and the resulting civil war. The In-Between World of Vikram Lall / M. G. Vassanji 2003 In 1953 Kenya the lives of a group of friends—two children of Indian descent, an African boy, and two young British siblings—are transformed by the violence of the Mau Mau uprising against British rule and a guerrilla raid. In The Lake of the Woods / Tim O'Brien 1995 John and Kathy Wade, whose marriage has been built on mutual deception, visit a Minnesota lake to try to sort things out, a difficult process made more so by Kathy's sudden disappearance. January 2009 4 In The Skin of A Lion / Michael Ondaatje 1996 In 1923, Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto and becomes one of the many individuals searching for Ambrose Small, a millionaire who has disappeared. The Jade Peony / Wayson Choy 1995 Now adults, members of a tight-knit Canadian Chinese family recall their childhood days in Vancouver, B.C. during the 1930s and 1940s. A candid, yet affectionate portrait is drawn of family life and the collective Chinese community. Themes of tenderness and brutality, racism and loyalty, humour and heartbreak are woven into their experiences of that time and place. The Kite Runner / Khaled Hosseini 2004 Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. Late Nights on Air / Elizabeth Hay 2007 The story is set in 1970s Yellowknife and centres around the loves, rivalries, and entanglements of a small and unlikely group who work at the local radio station. One summer they embark on a canoe trip that takes them into the arctic wilderness. Weaving stories from the past into the present, Hay builds a fresh, erotic, darkly witty and moving tale about the power of a voice and of a place to generate love and haunt the memory. The Law of Dreams / Peter Behrens 2006 After witnessing the deaths of his family during the mid-nineteenth-century Irish Potato Famine, Fergus O'Brien leaves Ireland in search of a new life, making his way to Liverpool, Wales, and finally across the Atlantic to Canada and the United States, in a historical novel based on the author's own family history. Life of Pi / Yann Martel 2001 Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America. When the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain. The Lovely Bones / Alice Sebold 2002 Looking down from heaven, 14-year-old Susie Salmon recounts her rape and murder and watches her family as they cope with their grief and "the lovely bones" growing around her absence. The Master / Colm Toíbín 2004 Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity. Mercy Among the Children / David Adams Richards 2001 Blaming himself for the death of another child, twelve-year-old Sidney Henderson takes a vow of nonviolence that lasts into adulthood, when an act of violence forces him to turn his back on his promise never to harm another human being. Middlesex / Jeffrey Eugenides 2003 Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s. Midnight’s Children / Salman Rushdie 1981 An allegory of modern India and a family saga set against the volatile events in the thirty years following the country's independence—the partitioning of India and Pakistan, the rule of Indira Gandhi, the onset of violence and war, and the imposition of martial law. It is a magical and haunting tale of both fragmentation and the struggle for identity that links personal life with national history. January 2009 5 Mister Pip / Lloyd Jones 2007 After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda’s island, only one white person stays behind. Mr. Watts, whom the kids call Pop Eye, wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley, and he steps in to teach the children when there is no one else. His only lessons consist of reading from his battered copy of Great Expectations by his friend Mr. Dickens. The Moonlit Cage / Linda Holeman 2005 Set against the backdrop of 1850s Afghanistan, India, and London, this historical novel follows Darya, a young Muslim woman, as she flees an abusive and cruel husband to seek a better life, first in India and then amidst the social perils of British polite society. My Sister's Keeper / Jodi Picoult 2004 Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Anna begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body. No Great Mischief / Alistair Macleod 2001 Alexander MacDonald, an orphaned youth in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, spends a summer in the mines with his wild older brothers during a season that ends in murder. The Origin of Species / Nino Ricci 2008 Set in Montreal in the 1980s, this is the story of thirty-something Alex Fratarcangeli, plagued by a familiar sense of being a fraud in all aspects of his life, from his professional ambitions to his romantic involvements. Alex is by all accounts an unexceptional man, save for the fact that he is haunted by an extraordinary experience in the Galapagos Islands, the consequences of which threaten to upend the precarious balance of his ordinary life. Orpheus Lost / Janette Turner Hospital 2008 Having escaped her southern hometown to study in Boston, mathematician Leela embarks on a consuming love affair with an Australian musician who is subsequently accused of participating in a terrorist attack on a subway, a situation that thrusts Leela into a dangerous underground world of kidnapping, torture, and despair. The Outlander / Gil Adamson 2007 Set in 1903, Adamson's compelling debut tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton (widowed by her own hand) and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton's sad past—an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression—slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothersin-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Out Stealing Horses / Per Petterson 2006 As a 67-year-old, Trond moves to an isolated part of Norway to live out the rest of his life quietly. After meeting his closest neighbor, he is forced to confront things from his youth that he'd spent years avoiding. Petterson writes beautifully of inner and outer struggles, of confusion, pain, and paths we can choose to go down or not. Palace Walk / Naguib Mahfouz 1991 At the end of World War I, al-Sayyid Ahmad explores Cairo at night while his family stays at home living according to the Qur'an. The Poisonwood Bible / Barbara Kingsolver 2005 The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary—Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters— begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives transformed over the course of three decades January 2009 6 A Prayer for Owen Meany / John Irving 2001 While playing baseball in the summer of 1953, Owen Meany hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother and becomes convinced that he is an instrument of God The Progress of Love / Alice Munro 2006 This collection of eleven stories includes "Miles City, Montana," "White Dump," "Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux," and "Fame." Reading by Lightning / Joan Thomas 2008 Joan Thomas's first novel is set in England and in a God-fearing Canadian prairie town during the years leading up to World War II. Reading by Lightning observes the emergence of a personality in the face of intruding ideologies. The Riders / Tim Winton 2003 Fred Scully searches for his pregnant wife, who disappears without an explanation, leaving him with Billy, his seven-year-old daughter The Road / Cormac McCarthy 2006 A post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. Run / Ann Patchett 2007 Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. But when an argument inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children safe. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, it shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. The Savage Garden / Mark Mills 2008 From the author of the acclaimed national bestseller Amagansett comes an even more remarkable novel set in the Tuscan hills: the story of two murders, four hundred years apart—and the ties that bind them together. The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene / Michelle Roberts 2007 In the parched soil of Provence, a fifth gospel has been discovered, Mary Magdalene's account of Jesus' teaching and her relationship with him. It is a book of revelation, for it unveils a new Christianity, one which embraces the female equally with the male and acknowledges and celebrates women's spirituality. The Secret Life of Bees / Sue Monk Kidd 2002 Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the story of Lily Owens, whose life is shaped by her blurred memory of the afternoon of her mother's accidental death. When Lily's black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three racists in town, they escape to Tiburon, South Carolina. The Stone Carvers / Jane Urquhart 2001 An intricate, passionately crafted novel chronicles the involvement of a stonecarver from Canada named Klara Becker as she participates in creating a monument in Paris to the eleven thousand Canadians who died in World War I. Stones from the River / Ursula Hegi 1994 Trudi, a dwarf librarian, tells about the lives of people in the small German town of Burgdorf from World War I and into the 1950s. January 2009 7 The Sweet Hereafter / Russell Banks 1997 Four narrators—bus driver Dolores, upright Bill, shrewd Mitchell, and teenaged Nichole—address agonizing questions as they describe an accident that killed fourteen children and the effects of the tragedy on themselves and their town Ten Thousand Lovers / Edeet Ravel 2003 Israel, 1970s: Lily, a young emigrant student exploring the wonders and terrors of her new land, finds the man of her dreams. Ami, a former actor, is handsome, intelligent, and exciting, but like his beautiful, disintegrating country, Ami has a terrible flaw. As Ami and Lily's unexpected passion grows, so too does the shadow that hangs over them. Three Day Road / Joseph Boyden 2005 The nephew of an Oji-Cree who is the last of a line of healers and diviners, Cree reserve student Xavier enlists in the military during World War I, a conflict throughout which he and his friend, Elijah, are marginalized for their appearances, their culturally enhanced marksmanship, and their disparate views of the war. Tiger Claw / Shauna Singh Baldwin 2005 Set in the 1940s in occupied Paris with haunting similarities to the world today, this is the story of one woman’s courage in the face of racism, betrayal and hypocrisy on one hand and the veils of war on the other. It is also a love story between a Muslim and a Jew told in a language that resonates with mysticism and romance—yet it is brutally honest in its assessment of motives and ambiguities. The Time Traveler's Wife / Audrey Niffenegger 2004 Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel. Unless / Carol Shields 2002 A mother's grief over a daughter's break with the family revises her feminist outlook and pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction. Water for Elephants / Sara Gruen 2006 An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers set in the circus world circa 1932. Beautifully written and illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place, it tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford. When Alice Lay Down With Peter / Margaret Sweatman 2001 A sweeping, magical novel that follows four generations of the McCormack family through more than a century of Canadian history, as it unfolds on the flood plains of southern Manitoba. The White Tiger / Aravind Adiga 2008 Balram Halwai is from the Darkness, born where India's downtrodden and unlucky are destined to rot. Balram manages to escape his village and move to Delhi after being hired as a driver for a rich landlord. Telling his story in retrospect, the novel is a piecemeal correspondence from Balram to the premier of China, who is expected to visit India and whom Balram believes could learn a lesson or two about India's entrepreneurial underbelly. January 2009 8 Non-Fiction Book Club Kits Beautiful Boy / David Sheff 2009 David Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view—a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope. Brother, I’m Dying / Edwidge Danticat 2008 In a single day in 2004, Danticat learns that she's pregnant and that her father, André, is dying—a stirring constellation of events that frames this Haitian immigrant family's story, rife with premature departures and painful silences. Eat Pray Love / Elizabeth Gilbert 2006 Gilbert grafts the structure of romantic fiction upon the inquiries of reporting in this sprawling yet methodical travelogue of soul-searching and self-discovery. Plagued with despair after a nasty divorce, the author, in her early 30s, divides a year equally among three dissimilar countries, exploring her competing urges for earthly delights and divine transcendence. The Film Club / David Gilmour 2007 In this poignant and witty memoir, Gilmour grapples with his decision to allow his teenage son, Jesse, to leave school in the 10th grade provided he promises to watch three movies a week with his father. There are no lectures preceding the films, no quizzes on content or form: just a father and son watching movies together. Gilmour explores not only his choice of films but also Jesse's struggles with his girlfriends and burgeoning music career. The Glass Castle: A Memoir / Jeannette Walls 2005 Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents—Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius / Dave Eggers 2001 Dave Eggers was only twenty-one when his parents died of cancer within weeks of each other. In the aftermath of their deaths, Eggers became the acting parent of his eight-year-old brother, Toph. This is the story of their life together, with Dave's efforts at housekeeping, cooking, and getting Toph to school on time comically at odds with his desire to spend time at bars with friends, to put out a satirical magazine—in short, to live a life suited to a person his own age. Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier / Ishmael Beah 2007 Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story of how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty. Maus: a Survivor’s Tale / Art Spiegelman 1986 The story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) / Carol Tavris 2008 Social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. January 2009 9 The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh / Linda Colley 2008 At a time when women’s lives were confined to the roles of wife and mother, Elizabeth Marsh (1735– 1785) defied conventions: she traveled to Central America, Africa, India, China, and Australia. Adventurous and impulsive, Marsh embraced the tumultuous global changes of her day. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi 2003 Originally published to wide critical acclaim in France, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. ["A] self-portrait of the artist as a young girl, rendered in graceful black-and-white comics that apply a childlike sensibility to the bleak lowlights of recent Iranian history . . . persuasively communicates confusion and horror through the eyes of a precocious preteen."(Village Voice). Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books / Azar Nafisi 2004 An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, this is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to its repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century Thomas Friedman 2007 Thomas Friedman’s book describes 21st century changes as rapid (because of modern communications and technology acceleration), inevitable, and unstoppable. Its essential message is that "flattening" is progress. While this certainly poses a threat to historical U.S. and European prosperity and power, the proper response is not to fight it, but to embrace it and adapt, not only to survive, but thrive in the new environment. The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story / Diane Ackerman 2008 The remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds. Using Antonina's diaries, other contemporary sources and her own research in Poland, Ackerman takes us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising and also describes the Poles' revolt against the Nazi occupiers in 1944. January 2009 10 Young Adult Book Club Kits The Body of Christopher Creed / Carol Plum-Ucci 2001 Torey Adams, a high school junior with a seemingly perfect life, struggles with doubts and questions surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the class outcast. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak 2006 Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel, a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family, and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. Five People You Meet In Heaven / Mitch Albom 2003 Killed in a tragic accident, Eddie, an elderly man who believes that he had an uninspired life, awakens in the afterlife, where he discovers that heaven consists of having five people explain the meaning of one's life. House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer 2004 In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patron, the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States. How I Live Now / Meg Rosoff 2004 To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but war soon breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land. I Am the Messenger / Markus Zusak 2006 After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness. Godless / Pete Hautman 2005 When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own. The Golden Compass / Philip Pullman 1995 Accompanied by her shape-shifting daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. Nineteen Eighty-Four / George Orwell 1989 Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. Shattering Glass / Gail Giles 2003 When Rob, the charismatic leader of the senior class, turns the school nerd into Prince Charming, his actions lead to unexpected violence. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli 2000 In this story about the perils of popularity, the courage of nonconformity, and the thrill of first love, an eccentric student named Stargirl changes Mica High School forever. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld 2005 Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all. January 2009 11