Knowledge Center
Book Recommendations
The Kite Runner by
Amir, haunted by his betrayal of Hassan, the son of his father's servant and a childhood friend, returns to Kabul as an adult after he learns Hassan has been killed, in an attempt to redeem himself by rescuing Hassan's son from a life of slavery to a Taliban official.
Call Number: FIC HOS
The Help by
Skeeter returns home to Mississippi from college in 1962 and begins to write stories about the African-American women that are found working in white households, which includes Aibileen, who grieves for the loss of her son while caring for her seventeenth white child, and Minny, Aibileen's sassy friend, the hired cook for a secretive woman who is new to town.
Call Number: FIC STO
The Road by
A nameless man and his young son wander through a decimated landscape, searching for means of survival and a reason for hope as barbaric hordes of people roam the streets and ash falls from the sky.
Call Number: FIC MCC
Frankenstein by
Mary Shelley's classic nineteenth-century horror classic about a crazed doctor who creates a monster from dead body parts.
Call Number: SF SHE
The Bluest Eye by
An eleven-year-old African-American girl in Ohio, in the early 1940s, prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be beautiful.
Call Number: FIC MOR
A Thousand Splendid Suns by
A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.
Call Number: FIC HOSISBN: 9781594489501
The Handmaid's Tale by
Set in the near future, America has become a puritanical theocracy and Offred tells her story as a Handmaid under the new social order whose function is to breed.
Call Number: FIC ATW
The Awakening by
First published in 1899, this novel shocked readers with its open sensuality and uninhibited treatment of marital infidelity. The poignant, lyrical story of a New Orleans wife who attempts to find love outside a stifling marriage, critics have praised it as a forerunner of the modern novel. New introductory Note.
Call Number: FIC CHO
Beloved by
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding New York Times bestseller transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
Call Number: FIC MOR
The Catcher in the Rye by
The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.
The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
There are many voices in this novel: children¿s voices, adult voices, underground voices¿but Holden¿s voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
Call Number: FIC SAL
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Call Number: FIC CHB
Song of Solomon by Call Number: FIC MOR
The Namesake by
A young man born of Indian parents in America struggles with issues of identity from his teens to his thirties.
Invisible Man by
In the course of his wanderings from a Southern college to New York's Harlem, an African-American man becomes involved in a series of adventures.
Call Number: FIC ELL
Native Son by
Trapped in the poverty-stricken ghetto of Chicago's South Side, a young African-American man finds release only in acts of violence.
Call Number: FIC WRI
Firekeeper's Daughter by
Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.
Call Number: FIC BOU
We Are Not from Here by
Teens from Guatelama escape through Mexico and attempt to reach the U.S. border
Call Number: FIC SAN
The Time Traveler's Wife by
Clare and Henry, deeply in love, try desperately to maintain normal lives even though he has been diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition in which his genetic clock periodically resets, pulling him through time to the past or future.
Call Number: FIC NIF
Room by
Five-year-old Jack has spent his life living in an eleven-by-eleven foot space his mother calls Room and while Jack uses his imagination to create wondrous fantasies to entertain himself, his mother dreads the day her son begins to question why they must remain in Room and tries to find a way to escape.
Call Number: FIC DON
Forgotten Fire by
The story of how Vahan Kenderian survived the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in 1915.
Call Number: FIC BAG
Life of Pi by
Pi Patel, having spent an idyllic childhood in Pondicherry, India, as the son of a zookeeper, sets off with his family at the age of sixteen to start anew in Canada, but his life takes a marvelous turn when their ship sinks in the Pacific, leaving him adrift on a raft with a 450-pound Bengal tiger for company.
Call Number: FIC MAR
Dreamland Burning by
When Rowan finds a skeleton on her family's property, investigating the brutal, century-old murder leads to painful discoveries about the past. Alternating chapters tell the story of William, another teen grappling with the racial firestorm leading up to the 1921 Tulsa race riot, providing some clues to the mystery.
Call Number: FIC LAT
Darius the Great Is Not Okay by
Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.
Call Number: FIC KHO
Patron Saints of Nothing by Call Number: FIC RIB
Boy21 by
You can lose yourself in repetition--quiet your thoughts; I learned the value of this at a very young age. Basketball has always been an escape for Finley. He lives in broken-down Bellmont, a town ruled by the Irish mob, drugs, violence, and racially charged rivalries. At home, his dad works nights, and Finley is left to take care of his disabled grandfather alone. He's always dreamed of getting out someday, but until he can, putting on that number 21 jersey makes everything seem okay. Russ has just moved to the neighborhood, and the life of this teen basketball phenom has been turned upside down by tragedy. Cut off from everyone he knows, he won't pick up a basketball, but answers only to the name Boy21--taken from his former jersey number. As their final year of high school brings these two boys together, a unique friendship may turn out to be the answer they both need.
Call Number: FIC QUI
Firekeeper's Daughter by Call Number: FIC BOU
Book Recommendations
A Separate Peace by
ene Forrester looks back fifteen years to a World War II year in which he and his best friend Phineas were roommates in a New Hampshire boarding school. Their friendship is marred by Finny's crippling fall, an event for which Gene is responsible and one that eventually leads to tragedy.
Call Number: FIC KNO
Bridge of Clay by
Upon their father's return, the five Dunbar boys, who have raised themselves since their mother's death, begin to learn family secrets, including that of fourth brother Clay, who will build a bridge for complex reasons, including his own redemption.
Call Number: FIC ZUS
Felix Ever After by
Felix Love, a transgender seventeen-year-old, attempts to get revenge by catfishing his anonymous bully, but lands in a quasi-love triangle with his former enemy and his best friend.
Call Number: FIC CAL
Catch-22 by
Presents a classic edition of the 1961 satire of military bureaucracy, focusing on the story of John Yossarian, a bombadier in World War II who is trying to avoid getting killed while at the same time dealing with a colonel who keeps upping the number of missions he must fly.
Call Number: FIC HEL
A Very Large Expanse of Sea by
It's 2002, a year after 9/11. It's an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who's tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She's tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments--even the physical violence--she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she's built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother. But then she meets Ocean James. He's the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her--they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds--and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she's not sure she'll ever be able to let it down.
Call Number: FIC MAF
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
Call Number: FIC SAE
Where the Crawdads Sing by
Kya Clark is the 'Marsh Girl' of Barkley Cove on the North Carolina coast. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist, she took life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. Drawn to two young men from town who were intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opened herself to a new and startling world--until the unthinkable happens. When Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya.
Call Number: CALL OWE
The Book Thief by
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.
Call Number: FIC ZUS
The Girl on the Train by
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning ... past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them . Their life-as she sees it-is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Call Number: FIC HAW
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by
Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person that understood her, fourteen-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom she forges a poignant relationship.
Call Number: FIC BRU
Internment by
A terrifying, futuristic United States where Muslim-Americans are forced into internment camps, and seventeen-year-old Layla Amin must lead a revolution against complicit silence.
Call Number: FIC AHM
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by
It's August in Paris, but 17-year-old Khayyam--American, Desi, Muslim, the only child of Chicago-based academics with a summer apartment on the Ile de la Cite--is at a crossroads. Uncertain of her relationship with Zaid, the boy back home, she can't hold on to the past. Stung by her dream college's rejection of the essay she wrote to apply early, she doesn't see a clear future. Khayyam is alone in her belief that the mysterious 'raven-tressed lady' in the poems of Alexandre Dumas not only inspired the paintings of Eugene Delacroix, they were based on a real person named Leila. A chance encounter with a descendant of Alexandre Dumas plunges Khayyam back into her research and the hunt for the truth. Interstitials offer a tantalizing glimpse of Leila's life as it could have been-defined by a high-wire balance of privileged status, servitude, and survival as a Muslim woman subject to European patriarchy and colonialism. As the stakes rise for both, Khayyam and Leila must ultimately wrestle with desires and expectations outside of their control to determine their own fates.
Call Number: FIC AHM
Speak by
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.
Call Number: FIC AND
A Long Petal of the Sea by
Roser, a pregnant widow, and Victor, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love, flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in seach of a place to call home.
Call Number: FIC ALL
To Kill a Mockingbird by
Presents a fortieth anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in which Scout Finch, the young daughter of a local attorney in the Deep South during the 1930s, tells of her father's defense of an African-American man charged with the rape of a white girl.
Call Number: FIC HAR
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by
Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga's role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed.
Call Number: FIC SAN
The Fountains of Silence by
At the Castellana Hilton in 1957 Madrid, eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson connects with Ana Moreno through photography and fate as Daniel discovers the incredibly dark side of the city under Generalissimo Franco's rule
Call Number: FIC SEP
Cold Mountain by
Cold Mountain is an extraordinary novel about a soldier's perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War. At once a magnificent love story and a harrowing account of one man's long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a stunning new talent in American literature. Based on local history and family stories passed down by the author's great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered. Charles Frazier reveals marked insight into man's relationship to the land and the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great nineteenth century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain re-creates a world gone by that speaks eloquently to our time.
Call Number: FIC FRA
The Marriage Plot by
English major Madeleine Hanna must choose between two suitors while working on her senior thesis on the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.
Call Number: FIC EUG
These Shallow Graves by
A young woman in nineteenth-century New York City must struggle against gender and class boundaries when her father is found dead of a supposed suicide, and she believes there is more than meets the eye, so in order to uncover the truth she will have to decide how much she is willing to risk and lose"--Provided by publisher.
Call Number: FIC DON
Memoirs of a Geisha by
Nitta Sayuri, a young Japanese woman who was taken from her home at the age of nine and sold into slavery as a geisha, discovers a rare opportunity for freedom when the outbreak of World War II forces an end to the only life she has ever known.
Call Number: FIC GOL
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by
When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.
Call Number: FIC GRE
Tortuga by
A sixteen-year-old boy, nicknamed after the mountain Tortuga because he is encased in a full-body cast, embarks on a journey of spiritual and physical recovery in a hospital for crippled children after being paralyzed in a swimming accident.
Call Number: FIC ANA
Emma by
EA novel of Regency England which centers upon a self-assured young lady who is determined to arrange her life and the lives of those around her into a pattern dictated by her romantic fancy.
Call Number: FIC AUS
The Bell Jar by
A realistic and emotional novel about a woman battling mental illness and societal pressures written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath. "It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." -- USA Today The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: young, brilliant, beautiful, and enormously talented, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's neurosis becomes completely understandable and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such thorough exploration of the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche - and the profound collective loneliness that modern society has yet to find a solution for - is an extraordinary accomplishment, and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic. This P.S. edition features extra insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Call Number: FIC PLA
Jane Eyre by
Jane, a plain and penniless orphan in nineteenth-century England, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself in love with her melancholy employer, Mr. Edward Rochester, a man with a terrible secret.
Call Number: FIC BRO
Book Recommendations
Looking for Alaska by
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.
Call Number: FIC GRE
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by
Overweight and nerdy Oscar lives with his Dominican American mother and sister in New Jersey and dreams of becoming a renowned author and finding true love, but unfortunately, a family curse stands in the way of his wishes.
Call Number: FIC DIA
Ready Player One by
In the year 2044, Wade Watts, like the rest of humanity, chooses to escape reality and spends his waking hours in the limitless, utopian virtual world of the OASIS, but when Wade stumbles upon the first of the fiendish puzzles set up by OASIS creator James Halliday he finds he must compete with thousands of others--including those willing to commit murder--in order to claim a prize of massive fortune.
Call Number: SF CLI
Between Shades of Gray by
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note.
Call Number: FIC SEP
Eleanor and Park by
Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
Call Number: FIC ROW
More Happy Than Not by
After enduring his father's suicide, his own suicide attempt, broken friendships, and more in the Bronx projects, Aaron Soto, sixteen, is already considering the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure when his new friendship with Thomas turns to unrequited love.
Call Number: FIC SIL
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by
The "Hollywood" where Sammy Santos and Juliana Ríos live is not the West Coast one, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edge of a small town in southern New Mexico. Sammy and this friends--members of the 1969 high school graduating class--face a world of racism, dress codes, war in Vietnam and barrio violence. In the summer before his senior year begins, Sammy falls in love with Juliana, a girl whose tough veneer disguisesa world of hurt. By summer's end, Juliana is dead. Sammy grieves, and in his grief, the memory of Juliana becomes his guide through this difficult year. Sammy is a smart kid, but he's angry. He's angry about Juliana's death, he's angry about the poverty his father and his sister must endure, he's angry at his high school and its thinly disguised gringo racism, and he's angry he might not be able to go to college. Benjamin Alire Sáenz, evoking the bittersweet ambience found in such novels as McMurtry'sThe Last Picture Show, captures the essence of what it meant to grow up Chicano in small-town America in the late 1960s. Benjamin Alire Sáenz--novelist, poet, essayist and writer of children's books--is at the forefront of the emerging Latino literatures. He has received both the Wallace Stegner Fellowship and the Lannan Fellowship, and is a recipient of the American Book Award. Born Mexican-American Catholic in the rural community of Picacho, New Mexico, he now teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso, and considers himself a "fronterizo," a person of the border.
Call Number: FIC SAE
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by
A story set on the American border with Mexico, about family and friendship, life and death, and one teen struggling to understand what his adoption does and doesn't mean about who he is"--Provided by publisher.
Call Number: FIC SAE
This Time Will Be Different by
Seventeen-year-old CJ . . . [has] never lived up to her mom's type A ambition, and she's perfectly happy just helping her aunt, Hannah, at their family's flower shop. She doesn't buy into Hannah's romantic ideas about flowers and their hidden meanings, but when it comes to arranging the perfect bouquet, CJ discovers a knack she never knew she had. A skill she might even be proud of. Then her mom decides to sell the shop--to the family who swindled CJ's grandparents when thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during WWII. Soon a rift threatens to splinter CJ's family, friends, and their entire Northern California community; and for the first time, CJ has found something she wants to fight for.
Call Number: FIC SUG
The Joy Luck Club by
In 1949 four Chinese women began meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong. They called their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Forty years later they look back and remember.
Call Number: FIC TAN
Sophie's Choice by
Three friends, Stingo, a twenty-two-year-old writer; Sophie, a survivor of the Nazi camps; and Nathan, her mercurial lover, share magical, heart-warming times until doom overtakes them as Sophie's and Nathan's darkest secrets are revealed.
Call Number: FIC STY
Golden Boy by
The Walker family seems to be the perfect family, but they are hiding a secret about their son Max Walker.
Call Number: FIC TAR
Marcelo in the Real World by
Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mailroom of a corporate law firm.
Call Number: FIC STO
The Scarlet Letter by
Hester Prynne, condemned by Puritan law to wear the scarlet letter "A" for adultress, endures her ostracism with dignity, while her lover is tormented by the burden of an unexposed sin.
Call Number: FIC HAW
Hatchet by
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the Canadian wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce. Includes an introduction and sidebar commentary by the author.
Call Number: FIC PAU
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by
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.
Call Number: FIC HAD
Fangirl by
Feeling cast off when her twin sister outgrows their shared love for a favorite fictional character, Cath, a dedicated fan-fiction writer, struggles to survive on her own in her first year of college while avoiding a surly roommate, bonding with a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and worrying about her fragile father.
Call Number: FIC ROW
Harlem Summer by
In 1920s Harlem, sixteen-year-old saxophonist Mark Purvis struggles to advance his jazz career while working as a gopher for the new Africa-American magazine, "The Crisis," and becoming involved with mobster Dutch Schultz.
Call Number: FIC MYE
Dear Evan Hansen by
Evan goes from being a nobody to everyone's hero and a social media superstar after a chance encounter with Connor just before his suicide leads others to believe Evan was his only friend.
Call Number: FIC EMM
On the Road by
Presents a thinly fictionalized autobiography of Jack Kerouac's cross-country adventure across North America on a quest for self-knowledge as experienced by his alter-ego, Sal Paradise and Sal's friend Dean Moriarty (Kerouac's real life friend Neal Cassady).
Call Number: FIC KER
If Beale Street Could Talk by
In 1970s Harlem, when Fonny, a young African-American sculptor, is falsely accused of rape and imprisoned, Tish, his nineteen-year-old, pregnant girlfriend; her parents; and his father rally together to try to clear his name.
Call Number: FIC BAL
The Glass Castle by
The author recalls her life growing up in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and distant mother and describes how she and her siblings had to fend for themselves until they finally found the resources and will to leave home.
Call Number: 921 WAL
This Boy's Life by
Wolff's account of his boyhood in the 1950s and the process of growing up includes paper routes, whiskey, scouting, fistfights, friendship, betrayal, and America in the fifties.
Call Number: 921 WOL
We Need to Talk about Kevin by
Eva Khatchadourian has been living a life plagued by guilt and denial since her son opened fire and killed seven of his classmates two years earlier, and as she tries to come to terms with her son's actions, she examines the parenting choices she made when raising him and wonders where she went wrong.
Call Number: FIC SHR
Bless Me, Ultima by Call Number: FIC ANA
Alburquerque by
Focuses on an ex-Golden Glove champion who meets up with a writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico while searching for his father.
Call Number: FIC ANA
Book Recommendations
Pride and Prejudice by
Presents Jane Austen's 1813 novel about the fervent attempts of a gentlewoman to find husbands for her five daughters, which lead to the questionable pairing of the prejudiced Elizabeth with the proud Mr. Darcy. Includes a scholarly introduction, chronology, further reading list, and explanatory notes..
Call Number: FIC AUS
Mama Day by
Mama Day uses her ancient knowledge of herbal medicine and puts herself in mortal combat with dark forces that threaten the body and soul of her niece, Cocoa.
Call Number: FIC NAY
Always Running by
Rodriguez's memoir explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants.
Call Number: 921 ROD
Little Bee by
A confrontation between a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan, called Little Bee, and a wealthy British couple on vacation, has life-changing consequences for everyone involved.
Call Number: FIC CLE
Bastard Out of Carolina by
Ruth Ann Boatwright, a South Carolina bastard, tells her life with her family and the emotional and physical violence she experiences.
MORE INFO
Call Number: FIC ALL
A Heart in a Body in the World by
ollowed by Grandpa Ed in his RV and backed by her brother and friends, Annabelle, eighteen, runs from Seattle to Washington, D.C., becoming a reluctant activist as people connect her journey to her recent trauma.
Heroine by
When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run. Behind the plate is the only place she's ever felt comfortable, and the painkillers she's been prescribed can help her get there. The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good. With a new circle of friends--fellow injured athletes, others with just time to kill--Mickey finds peaceful acceptance, and people with whom words come easily, even if it is just the pills loosening her tongue. But as the pressure to be Mickey Catalan heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, something that could send her spiraling out of control.
Call Number: FIC MCG
The Fault in Our Stars by
Sixteen year old Hazel, who has cancer, meets Augustus at a kids-with-cancer support group and as they fall in love they both wonder how they will be remembered.
Call Number: FIC GRE
An Abundance of Katherines by
Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships.
Call Number: FIC GRE
Paper Towns by
One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears.
Call Number: FIC GRE
Turtles All the Way Down by
Aza Holmes is a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
Call Number: FIC GRE
Cat's Eye by
Painter Elaine Risley, pushing fifty, returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her celebrated work. While there she takes time to confront her past.
Call Number: FIC ATW
The Blind Assassin by Call Number: SF ATWISBN: 9780385720953Publication Date: 2001-08-28
The Burn Journals by
Presents the true story of Brent Runyon who at fourteen set himself on fire and sustained burns over eighty percent of his body, and describes the months of physical and mental rehabilitation that followed as he attempted to pull his life together.
Call Number: 921 RUNISBN: 9781400096428
My Sister's Keeper by
Thirteen-year-old Anna, conceived specifically to provide blood and bone marrow for her sister Kate who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at the age of two, decides to sue her parents for control of her body when her mother wants her to donate a kidney to Kate.
Call Number: FIC PIC
House Rules by
Emma Hunt's son Jacob, who has Asperger's syndrome and occasionally tries helping the police with his unique forensic analysis abilities, falls under suspicion when a murder occurs in town, reminding Emma of society's--and the legal system's--misunderstanding with regard to the behavioral cues associated with Asperger's.
Call Number: FIC PIC
Handle with Care by
When Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe learn about their daughter's illness, they wonder if they should have known about it sooner and begin to question what constitutes the value of even the most fragile life.
Call Number: FIC PIC
Educated by
A . . . memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.
Call Number: 921 WES
Purple Hibiscus by
A teenaged Nigerian girl and her older brother struggle to cope with life in their tense, stifling household--caused by their fanatically religious father's demands for perfection--after getting a taste of freedom during a visit to their aunt's home.
Call Number: FIC ADI
The Great Gatsby by
Tells the tragic love story of Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, a dashing, enigmatic millionaire obsessed with an elusive, spoiled young woman.
Call Number: FIC FIT
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by
When Bee aces her report card she claims her reward, which is a trip to Antarctica, but her mother, Bernadette, disappears due to her intensifying allergy to Seattle and people in general, which has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands and Bee uses emails, invoices, school memos, private correspondence, and other evidence to try and understand why her mother has left.
Call Number: FIC SEM
The Secret Life of Bees by
Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared for Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June and August.
Call Number: FIC KID
We Were Liars by
Spending the summers on her family's private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer.
Call Number: FIC LOC
Siddhartha by
A moral allegory, set in ancient India, about one soul's quest for the ultimate answer to the enigma of man's role in the world. The hero, Siddhartha, undergoes a series of experiences to emerge in a state of peace and wisdom.
Call Number: FIC HES
Shoeless Joe by
n Iowa farmer builds a baseball stadium in his cornfield, hoping his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, will play in it.
Call Number: FIC KIN
Ordinary People by
After spending eight months in a mental institution following a suicide attempt, seventeen-year-old Conrad returns home and finds that he must rebuild his life.
Call Number: FIC GUE
