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Book Club Kits February 2016 |
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Book club kits can be checked out for a 6 week period. Each kit includes 8 copies of a title, 1 discussion guide, and some also include an audio book. New titles are added frequently.
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The Absolutist
by John Boyne
It's September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver some letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian's brother Will during the Great War, but in 1917 Will laid down his guns on the battlefield, declared himself a conscientious objector and was shot as a traitor, an act which has brought shame and dishonour on the Bancroft family. But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He holds a secret deep in his soul. One that he is desperate to unburden himself of to Marian, if he can only find the courage. As he recalls his friendship with Will, from the training ground at Aldershot to the trenches of Northern France, he speaks of how the intensity of their friendship brought him both happiness and self-discovery as well as despair and pain. "The Absolutist" is a novel that examines the events of the Great War from the perspective of two young soldiers, both struggling with the complexity of their emotions and the confusion of their friendship.
may be available in e-audio
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Angle of Repose
by Wallace Stegner
The classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the lives and fortunes of four generations of one family as they attempt to build a life for themselves in the American West.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Blossoms and Bayonets
by Jana McBurney-Lin
Fifteen-year-old He-Seung is full of fire, ready to take on these Japanese...if only he could convince his father, a Christian minister more concerned about saving his flock in a time when Emperor-worship has become mandatory. Since occupation, the Japanese have eradicated the Korean language, names, even the country's flower. Now they are seeking Korean boys as volunteers for their army. When his father is arrested by the Japanese, however, He-Seung must swallow his hatred of the enemy and volunteer for the military. Even harder, he must leave his mother and baby brother He-Dong to fend for themselves.
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The borrower
by Rebecca Makkai
Placed in an impossible situation when her favorite patron, a book-loving 10-year old, runs away from overbearing parents who force him to attend anti-gay classes with a celebrity pastor, children's librarian Lucy Hull flees with the boy only to discover that they are being pursued by an anonymous adversary. 40,000 first printing.
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City of the Beasts
by Isabel Allende
When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid beast in the Amazon, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians.
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Cutting for Stone by A. VergheseTwin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in Ethiopia, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.
may be available in audiobook/mp3 |
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Desert
by J.M.G. Le Clézio
After being driven from their land by French colonial soldiers in 1909, Nour and his people, "the blue men" must search for a haven out of the desert that will shelter them. Interspersed with the story of Nour is the contemporary story of Lalla, a descendent of the blue men, who lives in Morocco and tries to stay true to the blood of her ancestors while experiencing life as a modern immigrant.
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Every Day by David LevithanWaking up in the body of a different person every day and struggling to pass through each experience without raising alarm, "A" endures a lonely existence before falling in love with a girl named Rhiannon, with whom he endeavors to reunite. |
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Finding Nouf
by Zo Ferraris
Stumbling upon the drowned body of Nouf, the teenage daughter of a prominent, wealthy Saudi Arabian family, Nayir, a desert guide hired by her family to search for her, feels compelled to discover what really happened to her.
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Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen
The idyllic lives of civic-minded environmentalists Patty and Walter Berglund come into question when their son moves in with aggressive Republican neighbors, green lawyer Walter takes a job in the coal industry, and go-getter Patty becomes increasingly unstable and enraged.
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The Housekeeper and the Professor
by Yōko Ogawa
A relationship blossoms between a brilliant math professor suffering from short-term memory problems following a traumatic head injury and the young housekeeper, the mother of a ten-year-old son, hired to care for him.
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In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
Contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories, "Indian Camp," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," and "The Battler."
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The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk KiddTraces more than three decades in the lives of a wealthy Charleston debutante who longs to break free from the strictures of her household and pursue a meaningful life; and the urban slave, Handful, who is placed in her charge as a child before finding courage and a sense of self. By the best-selling author of The Secret Life of Bees. |
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The Invisible Bridge
by Julie Orringer
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter's recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his--and his family's--history. From the small Hungarian town of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, TheInvisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history's darkest hour.
may be available in e-book
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Lark and Termite
by Jayne Anne Phillips
Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a multilayered novel about family, the power of loss and love, the repercussions of war, old secrets and the bonds that unite and sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family--Lark, her brother Termite, their mother Lola, their aunt Nonie and Termite's soldier father, Robert Leavitt.
may be available in e-book
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The Leisure Seeker
by Michael Zadoorian
Recognizing that the final stage of their lives is upon them, John and Ella Robina--the former an Alzheimer's patient, the latter succumbing to cancer--sneak away from their over-protective children and doctors to embark on an RV vacation along Route 66.
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The Madonnas of Leningrad
by Debra Dean
In a novel that moves back and forth between the Soviet Union during World War II and modern-day America, Marina, an elderly Russian woman, recalls vivid images of her youth during the height of the siege of Leningrad when, as a tour guide at the Hermitage, she and other staff members removed the museum's priceless artworks for safekeeping.
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March : a novel
by Geraldine Brooks
In a story inspired by the father character in Little Women and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his marriage and beliefs profoundly challenged by his experiences. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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Perfume : the Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Süskind
Follows an odorless baby found orphaned in Paris in 1738 as he grows into a monster obsessed with his perfect sense of smell and a desire to capture, by any means, the ultimate scent that will make him human.
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The Piano Tuner
by Daniel Mason
In 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake leaves his quiet life in London for the jungles of Burma, where he has been asked to repair a rare Erard grand piano belonging to a British army surgeon-major who uses the piano and music to help keep the peace among warring local Burmese princes.
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The Postmistress
by Sarah Blake
The stories of a small Cape Cod postmistress and an American radio reporter stationed in London collide on the eve of the United States's entrance into World War II, a meeting that is shaped by a broken promise to deliver a letter.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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The Rosie Project by Graeme C SimsionA socially awkward genetics professor who has never been on a second date sets out to find the perfect wife, but instead finds Rosie Jarman, a fiercely independent barmaid who is on a quest to find her biological father.
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Rules of Civility
by Amor Towles
A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults witty Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well and a single-minded widow.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
On the anniversary of the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris, Julia is asked to write an article on this dark episode and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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So Long, See You Tomorrow
by William Maxwell
Haunted by a memory of human failure, an aging man recalls his friendship, as a boy, with a tenant farmer's son and forces himself and others to recall the causes of a bloody murder and its consequences.
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The Sparrow
by Mary Doria Russell
The sole survivor of a crew sent to discover a new planet, Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz discovers an alien civilization that raises questions about the very essence of humanity, an encounter that leads Sandoz to a public inquisition and the destruction of his faith.
may be available in e-book
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State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh must step out of her comfort zone when she is sent into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years--a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
may be available in e-book
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A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth L. OzekiIn Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home. |
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The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield
Having spent six decades creating a series of alternate lives designed to bring her fame and fortune while hiding the truth about her tragic past, reclusive and enigmatic Vida Winter finds herself torn by young Margaret Lea's simple request for the truth about her own birth.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet
by David Mitchell
Dispatched to the influential Japanese port of Dejima in 1799, ambitious clerk Jacob de Zoet resolves to earn enough money to deserve his wealthy fiancée, an effort that is challenged by his relationship with the midwife daughter of a samurai.
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The Tiger's Wife
by Téa Obreht
Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, young physician Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man, would go on such a farfetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the tiger's wife.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Tinkers
by Paul Harding
On his deathbed, surrounded by his family, George Washington Crosby's thoughts drift back to his childhood and the father who abandoned him when he was twelve.
may be available in e-book
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What is the What
by Dave Eggers
A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award traces the story of two child Sudanese civil war refugees and their witness to the devastation that has torn their homeland, a time during which one struggles to understand what is happening and the other joins the rebel army.
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The Whistling Season
by Ivan Doig
Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent and perpetually whistling Rose and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris, endeavor to educate the widower's reluctant sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project.
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The Martian : a novel includes mp3 audiobookby Andy WeirStranded on Mars by a dust storm that compromised his space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, astronaut Watney struggles to survive in spite of minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that test his ingenuity in unique ways. A first novel.
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The Museum of Extraordinary Things : a novel by Alice HoffmanThe daughter of a curiosities museum's front man pursues an impassioned love affair with a Russian immigrant photographer who after fleeing his Lower East Side Orthodox community has captured poignant images of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. By the best-selling author of Here on Earth.
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Orphan Train by Christina Baker KlineClose to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past |
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Still Alice : a novel by Lisa GenovaFeeling at the top of her game when she is suddenly diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease, Harvard psychologist Alice Howland struggles to find meaning and purpose in her life as her concept of self gradually slips away |
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The storied life of A.J. Fikry : a novel by Gabrielle Zevin includes audiobookWhen his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A. J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life.
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To kill a mockingbird : 50th Anniversary Edition by Harper LeeA deluxe edition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the beloved classic novel about racial justice in the Deep South, a story that inspired an equally beloved movie and inspired the generations that followed. (Classics). Simultaneous.
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An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver W. SacksThe author of Awakenings profiles seven neurologically impaired patients, including a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome and an artist whose color sense has been destroyed in an accident but who finds new creative power in black and white.
may be available in e-book
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Blink by Malcolm GladwellDraws on a range of case studies to explore the process by which people make decisions, explaining how the difference between good and bad decision making is directly related to the details on which people focus, and counsels readers on how to become better decision makers in every aspect of life.
may be available in e-book
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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The Boys in the Boat
by Daniel Brown
Traces the story of an American rowing team from the University of Washington that defeated elite rivals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, sharing the experiences of such contributors as their enigmatic coach, a visionary boat builder and a homeless teen rower. By the author of Under a Flaming Sky.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Dancing In My Nightgown
by Betty Auchard
Married when she was barely 19, Betty Auchard went straight from her parent's home to her husband's bed. She raised four children, returned to college, taught art in public school, and became a grandmother, published artist, a retiree and then a widow.
When she loses her husband of 49 years, widowhood forces Betty to find out what she can do on her own.
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The Girl in the Italian Bakery
by Kenneth Tingle
Life didn't do Kenny Tingle any favors. In The Girl in the Italian Bakery, follow his journey from childhood in a tough housing project north of Boston, the abduction and disappearance of a childhood friend, to the complete destruction of a family. His introduction to crime and the years he spent in foster homes. The poor choices he made in high school and the startling climax on prom night. Although he never has trouble meeting girls, the one girl he longs for always seems out of reach. The Girl in the Italian Bakery is the remarkably true story of always keeping hope, even when there is little left to hope for. This is a story of surviving through extreme adversity, and, ultimately, redemption.
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca SklootDocuments the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization and gene mapping.
may be available in audiobook/mp3 |
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Infidel
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The author of The Caged Virgin recounts the story of her life, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia and escape from a forced marriage to her efforts to promote women's rights while surviving numerous threats to her safety.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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The Milagro Beanfield War
by John Treadwell Nichols
Violence erupts in the poor town of Milagro when one poor dirt farmer impulsively taps the main irrigation channel.
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My Beloved World
by Sonia Sotomayor
The first Hispanic American on the U.S. Supreme Court shares the story of her life before becoming a judge, describing her youth in a Bronx housing project, the ambition that fueled her ivy league education, and the individuals who helped shape her career.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Provenance
by Laney Salisbury
Recounts the activities of John Drewe, who manipulated struggling artist John Myatt and other unwitting accomplices to become prolific art forgers whose works Drewe successfully passed off as legitimate pieces.
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The Shallows : what the Internet is doing to our brainsby Nicholas G. CarrExpanding on an article that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the best-selling author of The Big Switch discusses the intellectual and cultural consequences of the Internet, and how it may be transforming our neural pathways for the worse. Reprint. |
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Wild
by Cheryl Strayed
Traces the personal crisis the author endured after the death of her mother and a painful divorce, which prompted her ambition to undertake a dangerous thousand-mile solo hike that both drove her to rock bottom and helped her to heal.
may be available in audiobook/mp3
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Fire Seasonby Philip ConnorsThe author discusses his time spent 10,000 feet above ground as a fire lookout in a remote part of New Mexico, a job where he witnessed some of the most amazing phenomena nature has to offer.
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Half Broke Horses
by Jeannette Walls
The author offers a novel based on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed 500 miles on a pony as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children, including Rosemary Smith Walls, portrayed in the author's acclaimed The Glass Castle.
may be available in additional audiobook/mp3
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Astrid & Veronika by Linda OlssonA lyrical study of friendship, love, and loss chronicles the evolving relationship between Veronika, a young New Zealand writer struggling with a recent tragedy and trying to finish her novel, and Astrid, an older, reclusive neighbor who offers comfort in the form of companionship and home-cooked meals, in a debut novel set against the backdrop of small-town Sweden.
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Me Before You by Jojo Moyes includes audiobookTaking a job as an assistant to extreme sports enthusiast Will, who is wheelchair bound after a motorcycle accident, Louisa struggles with her employer's acerbic moods and learns of his shocking plans before demonstrating to him that life is still worth living.
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