Book Club Sets
TNRD Libraries
100 – 465 Victoria Street
Kamloops, B.C. V2C 2A9
Book Club Sets
Fiction
BK STE
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Stein, Garth
Enzo, a dog who knows he is different from other dogs, has educated himself by watching TV and listening
very closely to the words of his master, a race car driver. Now, on the eve of his death, he recalls all that he
and his family have been through, and can hardly wait for his next life, when he is sure he will return as a
man.
BK MCE
Atonement
McEwan, Ian
An upper-middle-class girl in interwar England makes a serious mistake that has life changing effects for
many. Consequently through the remaining years of the century she seeks atonement - which leads to an
exploration on the nature of writing itself.
BK SHA
The Art Forger
Shapiro, Barbara
On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art today worth over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling
young artist, is about to discover that there's more to this crime than meets the eye.
BK MAR
Beatrice and Virgil
Martel, Yann
Like "Life of Pi, Beatrice and Virgil" uses animals to discuss the human condition, in this case, to address the
atrocities of the Holocaust. At the center of the novel is the relationship between two Henrys, a novelist and
a taxidermist, who collaborate on a play about a donkey and a howler monkey who have survived genocide.
Heartbreaking and utterly original, the novel asks enduring questions about life and art, truth and deception,
responsibility and complicity.
BK GIB
The Beauty of Humanity Movement
Gibb, Camilla
Searching for answers about her dissident father's disappearance, a Vietnamese-American art curator
returns to her ancestral country, where she meets a venerable pho stall soup maker and a dynamic young
tour guide whose historical and cultural insights irrevocably shape her life.
BK PAT
Bel Canto
Patchett, Ann
Somewhere in South America, a lavish birthday party is being held. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of
gun wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening
scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds
and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
BK HIL
The Book of Negroes
Hill, Lawrence
Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa, Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in
South Carolina. Aminata’s eventual return to Sierra Leone—passing ships carrying thousands of slaves
bound for America—is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200
former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.
BK ZUS
The Book Thief
Zusak, Markus
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesal, 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 neighbours.
BK GRA
The Box: Tales from the Darkroom
Grass, Gunter
A literary experiment follows the author's senior-years effort to imagine the childhoods of his eight offspring,
upbringings spent with an absent writer father and intimate friend Marie, a photographer who took family
snapshots throughout many years.
2 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
BK KAL
Broken For You
Kallos, Stephanie
Margaret Hughes, a lonely septuagenarian living in her stately old mansion in Seattle, takes in a series of
boarders who help her cope with her illness. This is only the beginning of what grows to be an ad hoc
family.
BK STO
The Coral Thief
Stott, Rebecca
In 1815 France, a young medical student discovers that the beauty who shared his carriage has stolen the
rare coral specimens he carried and soon he encounters a ring of philosopher thieves determined to
sabotage pre-Darwinian theories of evolution.
BK DUM
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexandre
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel written by Alexendre Dumas in 1844. The story is set
during the first half of the 19th century and it is a tale of intrigue, jealousy, betrayal, romance and revenge.
The intricate plot centers around a young and ambitious sailor, Edmond Dantes, his wrongful imprisonment,
and eventual escape and revenge against his enemies.
BK VER
Cutting for Stone
Verghese, Abraham
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between an Indian nun and a British
surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their
father's disappearance, they are bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with
medicine. Marion flees his homeland fresh out of medical school when he and his brother fall in love with the
same woman. He goes to work in an underfunded New York hospital until his past catches up with him,
nearly destroying him, and he must trust his life to his father and brother.
BK KOC
The Dinner: A Novel
Koch, Herman
Two brothers and their wives meet for dinner at a fashionable restaurant in Amsterdam. Behind their polite
conversation, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives
are being sharpened. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their
children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to
protect those they love.
BK BAR
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Barbery, Muriel
The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma
Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.
BK BAI
Eucalyptus, a Novel
Bail, Murray
In order to marry Ellen Holland, a suitor must identify every species of the five hundred trees on her family's
property in Australia, a test set by her possessive father. To Ellen's alarm--she is attracted to a young man-an aging suitor has nearly succeeded.
BK JAC
The Friday Night Knitting Club
Jacobs, Kate
The story of a group of women who meet weekly in a little yarn shop in Manhattan to knit. Although they are
very different in age, background and personality, they discover that they have formed an unbreakable bond
of friendship.
BK GHO
The Glass Palace
Ghosh, Amitav
"In the upheaval that follows the British arrival in Mandalay and the shattering of the kingdom of the Glass
Palace, Rajkumar, a stateless orphan in a tattered lunghi, is lifted on the tides of chaos deep into the teak
forests of upper Burma. There, with the help of an itinerant merchant from Malacca, he will make his fortune.
Yet he is haunted by the vision of Dolly, a child attendant of the royal entourage being escorted under armed
guard into exile in India. So, now adult and wealthy, he leaves Burma to find her.”
BK ROY
The God of Small Things
Roy, Arundhati
Set mainly in Kerala, India, in 1969, The God of Small Things is the story of Rahel and her twin brother
Estha, who learn that their whole world can change in a single day, that love and life can be lost in a
moment. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they seek to craft a childhood for themselves.
3 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
BK OLA
The Greenhouse
Olafsdottir, Adur
Lobbi, a young man just leaving for a new job, experiences a chain of life changing events including the
death of his mother and unexpected fatherhood for himself, but as he focuses on the cultivation of a rare
eight-petaled rose he learns how to adjust to his new life and to cultivate love as well.
BK SHA
The Guernsey Literary and
Shaffer, Mary Ann
Potato Peel Pie Society
The book is written as a series of letters between Juliet Ashton (a writer) and the residents of Guernsey, a
war - ravaged island in 1946. She is amazed to discover that the islanders spent the war under German
occupation and had no contact with the outside world. During this time the Guernsey Literary Society was
accidentally formed, and Juliet seeks out their stories through a series of letters. Eventually she visits the
island, and the story continues there.
BK NOE
Halfway House
Noel, Katharine
One day, Angie Voorster — diligent student, all-star swimmer, and Ivy League-bound high school senior —
dives to the bottom of a pool and stays there. In that moment, everything the Voorster family believes they
know about one another changes.
BK FRA
Headlong
Frayn, Michael
Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his
scrupulous art-historian wife find themselves enlisted to assess the value of three dusty paintings moldering
in the freezer breakfast room. But blocking the soot from the chimney is nothing less - Martin believes - than
one of the world's lost treasures, camouflaged by misattribution and the grime of centuries.
Martin embarks on an obsessive quest to prove his hunch, win over his wife, separate the painting from its
owner, and resolve one of the great mysteries of European art.
BK STO
The Help
Stockett, Kathryn
Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an AfricanAmerican maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team
up for a clandestine project.
BK BIN
HHhH
Binet, Laurent
Imagines the story of two Czechoslovakian partisans responsible for assassinating the "Butcher of Prague"
Reinhard Heydrich, tracing their escape from the Nazis to their recruitment by the British secret service, and
to their own brutal deaths in Prague.
BK AMM
I’m Not Scared
Ammaniti, Niccolo
Winner of the prestigious 2001 Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction. 1978, the hottest summer of the twentieth
century. In a tiny Italian rural community, the adults shelter indoors while six children venture out on their
bikes across the scorched, deserted countryside. In the midst of a sea of golden wheat, nine-year-old
Michele Amitrano discovers a secret so momentous, so terrible, that he dare not tell anyone about
BK CAR
Interred with Their Bones
Carrell, Jennifer Lee
Kate Stanley, a Shakespeare scholar directing Hamlet at the rebuilt Globe Theater in London, gets a
surprise visit from her mentor, a Harvard Shakespeare professor. When the professor is suddenly killed, she
finds herself traveling all over the world, chasing down clues and trying to stay ahead of a murderer--who’s
busy reenacting Shakespeare’s famous death scenes and is trying to make Kate his next victim.
BK ORR
The Invisible Bridge
Orringer, Julie
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a
scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver. But when he falls into a
complicated relationship with the letter's recipent, 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 the Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps. The
Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history's darkest hour.
4 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
BK DER
The Invisible Mountain
De Roberts, Carolina
Follows the story of the fiercely independent women of the Firielli family as their lives, relationships, and the
pursuit of their dreams take them from Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and the United States.
BK ALL
Island Beneath the Sea
Allende, Isabel
"The story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny in a
society where that would seem impossible.”
BK ONA
Last Night at the Lobster
O’Nan, Stewart
Managing a failed seafood restaurant in a run-down New England mall just before Christmas, Manny
DeLeon coordinates a challenging final shift of mutinous staff members, an effort that is complicated by his
love for a waitress, a pregnant girlfriend, and an elusive holiday gift.
BK STJ
Last Night in Montreal
St. John Mandel, Emily
Lilia Albert has been leaving people behind for her entire life. She spends her childhood and adolescence
traveling constantly and changing identities. In adulthood, she finds it impossible to stop. Haunted by an
inability to remember her early childhood, she moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers along the
way, possibly still followed by a private detective who has pursued her for years. Then her latest lover
follows her from New York to Montreal, determined to learn her secrets and make sure she's safe.
BK GEN
Left Neglected
Genova, Lisa
Sarah Nickerson, a career-driven young mother, suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that leaves
her unable to perceive left-side information, a disability that causes her to struggle through an uncertain
recovery as she adapts to her new life.
BK CLE
Little Bee
Cleave, Chris
The story of Little Bee, orphaned when her village was burned, and the English woman who tries to help her.
BK HOR
Loving Frank
Horan, Nancy
The renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright has received much historical attention, but author Nancy Horan
turns her gaze on Wright’s lover and their long-term scandalous affair. Loving Frank tells the story of
Cheney’s affair with Wright and her struggles to mesh her own independence and intelligence with the
traditional roles of wife and mother.
BK VRE
Luncheon of the Boating Party
Vreeland, Susan
This novel depicts fourteen people having a luncheon on a summer Sunday on the Seine. Narrated by
Auguste Renoir and several of his models, the novel centers on the joys and hardships that such a massive
undertaking entails. Whenever possible real events and the names of real people have been used.
BK EDW
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Edwards, Kim
When young Norah goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their
babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline ,to
take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at
birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception
becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives.
BK PUL
The Mistress of Nothing
Pullinger, Kate
Lady Duff Gordon is the toast of Victorian London society. But when her debilitating tuberculosis means
exile, she and her devoted lady's maid, Sally, set sail for Egypt. It is Sally who describes, with a mixture of
wonder and trepidation, the odd menage (marshalled by the resourceful Omar) that travels down the Nile to
a new life in Luxor. When Lady Duff Gordon undoes her stays and takes to native dress, throwing herself
into weekly salons, language lessons and excursions to the tombs, Sally too adapts to a new world, which
affords her heady and heartfelt freedoms never known before. But freedom is a luxury that a maid can illafford, and when Sally grasps more than her status entitles her to, she is brutally reminded that she is
mistress of nothing.
5 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
BK PAM
The Museum of Innocence
Pamuk, Orhan
Ending his engagement to pursue a married cousin, Kemal unsuccessfully woos the woman over the course
of nine years, during which he amasses personal effects that reflect his obsession and render him a
laughingstock among his peers.
BK MOR
Night Circus
Morgenstern, Erin
Celia and Marco are young magicians, trained from childhood to use their powers of illusion in a game that
pits them against each other. The circus is the stage for their battle of imagination and will, but unbeknownst
to them, the game is a duel to the death.
BK MER
Night Train to Lisbon
Mercier, Pascal
Former Latin teacher Raimund Gegorius boards the night train to Lisbon, carrying with him a book by
Amadeu de Prado, with whose work he becomes obsessed, and journeys all over the city in search of the
truth about the author.
BK SET
Of Bees and Mist
Setiwann, Erick
In a community out of time and peopled by supernatural beings, sixteen-year-old Meridia attempts to escape
by eloping, a pair of sisters are groomed to hate each other, and a matriarch forges grievances that swarm
in the air.
BK STR
Olive Kitteridge
Strout, Elizabeth
The world of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher in a small coastal town in Maine, is revealed in stories
that explore her diverse roles in many lives, including a lounge singer haunted by a past love, her stoic
husband, and her own resentful son.
BK DIV
One Amazing Thing
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee
Late afternoon in a passport and visa office in California, nine people are in the office when an earthquake
rips through the building trapping these nine together struggling to survive.
BK JON
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window
Jonasson, Jonas
Confined to a nursing home and about to turn 100, Allan Karlsson, who has a larger-than-life back story as
an explosives expert, climbs out of the window in his slippers and embarks on an unforgettable adventure
involving thugs, a murderous elephant and a very friendly hot dog stand operator.
BK COP
The Orchardist
Amanda Coplin
When two feral girls--one of them very pregnant--appear on his homestead, solitary orchardist Talmadge,
who carefully tends the grove of fruit trees he has cultivated for nearly half a century, vows to save and
protect them.
BK BRO
People of the Book
Brooks, Geraldine
An intricate, ambitious novel that traces the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from
convivencia Spain to the ruins of Sarajevo, from the silver age of Venice to the sunburned rock faces of
Australia. Inspired by a true story, sweeping five centuries of history.
BK SCH
The Reader
Schlink, Bernhard
This is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. 15 year old Michael has a long,
obsessive sexual relationship with an older woman. When it ends, he expects never to see her again.
However, to his horror, he does - as a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past. It soon becomes
clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime.
BK NAF
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Nafisi, Azar
In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran, Azar Nafisi invited her 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. The great works encouraged
6 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways.
BK CHE
Remarkable Creatures
Chevalier, Tracy
When Mary Anning uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home on the English coast,
she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight.
Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, and in the struggle to be recognized in
the wider world, Mary and Elizabeth discover that friendship is their greatest ally.
BK MCC
The Road
McCarthy, Cormac
Set in the smoking ashes of a post-apocalyptic America, a father and son journey to the sea in search of an
uncertain salvation. Through encounters with other survivors brutal, desperate or pathetic, the father and
son are both hardened and sustained by their will, their hard-won survivalist savvy, and most of all by their
love for each other.
BK DON
Room
Donoghue, Emma
Jack is five...He lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures eleven
feet by eleven feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that
nothing he sees on screen is truly real -- only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that
there's a world outside...
BK CRO
The Saffron Kitchen
Crowther, Yasmin
One day, in London, Maryam Mazar's secrets are suddenly and violently revealed, with tragic
consequences for her pregnant daughter Sara. Burdened by guilt, Maryam leaves her home and goes back
to Iran where she grew up and was disowned by her father. Sara decides to follow her and learns about the
price her mother paid for her freedom and the love she left behind.
BK GRE
The Secret River
Grenville, Kate
A life of petty crime and poverty on the streets of 19th-century London sentences William Thornhill—along
with his wife and children—to exile in the colonial outpost of Australia. But among the convicts of New South
Wales there is a whisper of the possibility of freedom, away from Sydney and up the Hawkesbury River, for
those who dare to stake a claim.
BK RUI
The Shadow of the Wind
Ruiz Zafon, Carlos
Set in Barcelona in 1945, a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary
book called "The Shadow of the Wind," by an author named Julian Carax. Soon the boy realizes that "The
Shadow of the Wind" is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget, for the mystery of its author''s
identity holds the key to an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love that someone will go to any
lengths to keep secret.
BK ROB
Shantaram
Roberts, Gregory David
Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in
Shantaram, a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr.
Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means "man of God's peace," which is what the Indian
people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an
Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence.
BK MAR
Shopgirl
Martin, Steve
Mirabelle works in the glove department at Niemans, L.A.'s finest store. Adrift in the world and lonely, there
are two men in her life - Jeremy, a man who stencils amplifiers for a living, and Mr Ray Porter, an older man
and millionaire. Steve Martin touches on the surface horrors of L.A. without exaggeration or explicitly
playing for laughs. A sensitive story exploring the nature of love.
BK SEE
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
See, Lisa
Set in 19th-century China, the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends Lily and Snow Flower, their
imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. Most impressive is
See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow
7 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province.
BK PAT
State of Wonder
Patchett, Ann
A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh journeys 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.
BK GEN
Still Alice
Genova, Lisa
Alice Howland is an esteemed psychology professor at Harvard, living a comfortable life in Cambridge with
her husband, John, when the first symptoms of Alzheimer's begin to emerge. Alice is shocked to be
diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, after which her life begins steadily to unravel.
BK OSE
A Tale for the Time Being
Ozeki, Ruth
In 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.
BK HOS
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Hosseini, Khaled
Hosseini's riveting story is an in-depth exploration of Afghan society in the three decades of anti-Soviet jihad,
civil war and Taliban cruelty. He impels us to empathize with and admire those most victimized by Afghan
history and culture—women
BK OBR
The Tiger’s Wife, A Novel
Obreht, Tea
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.
BK MUN
Too Much Happiness
Munro, Alice
Brilliantly paced, short stories with sparks of danger and underlying menace, these are dazzling, provocative
stories about Svengali men and the radical women who outmaneuver them, about destructive marriages and
curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments that change or haunt a life.
BK AND
Turtle Valley
Anderson-Dargatz, Gail
Kat has returned with her disabled husband and young son to her family’s homestead in Turtle Valley, in
British Columbia’s Shuswap-Thompson area. Fire is sweeping through the valley in a ruthless progression
toward the farm and they have come to help her frail parents pack up their belongings. But Kat's mother
Beth has a secret she has guarded all her life. Kat is determined to get to its source before fire eats up all
that is left of the family’s memories.
BK JOY
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Joyce, Rachel
"When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea
that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a
compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking to save someone else's
life."
BK DAV
Varieties of Disturbance
Davis, Lydia
This collection of short stories takes many forms, from sociological studies to concise poems. Davis'
subjects include the five senses, fourth-graders, good taste, and tropical storms. She offers a
reinterpretation of insomnia and re-creates the ordeals of Kafka in the kitchen. She questions the lengths to
which one should go to save the life of a caterpillar, proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the
bus, probes the limits of marital fidelity, and unlocks the secret to a long and happy life.
8 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
BK GRU
Water for Elephants
Gruen, Sara
Orphaned and penniless at the height of the Depression, Jacob Jankowski jumps on a passing train and
inadvertently runs away with the circus. Jacob finds a place tending the circus animals, including a
seemingly untrainable elephant. Caught between his love for Marlena, the wife of a cruel animal trainer, and
his need to belong in the crazy family of travelling performers, Jacob is freed only by a murderous secret
that will bring the big top down.
BK SEM
Where’d You Go Bernadette
Semple, Maria
When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled, and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage
Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her.
BK MCG
White Heat
McGrath, M.J.
Investigating the murder of an adventurist under her watch, half-Inuit Arctic guide Edie Kiglatuk teams up
with police sergeant Derek Palliser when she realizes that the victim's tour group was searching for
something specific.
Non-Fiction
BK 796.4209721 MCD
Born to Run
McDougall, Christopher
McDougall reveals the secrets of the world's greatest distance runners--the Tarahumara Indians of Copper
Canyon, Mexico--and how he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of
Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of super-athletic Americans.
BK 809. 93353 DAM
The Buried Book
Damrosch, David
Composed in Middle Babylonia around 1200 BCE, The Epic of Gilgamesh foreshadowed later stories that
would become as fundamental as any in human history: The Odyssey and the Bible. But in 600 BCE, the
clay tablets that bore the story were lost to the world, buried beneath ashes and ruins. David Damrosch
begins with the rediscovery of the epic in 1872 and from there goes backward in time, all the way to
Gilgamesh himself.
BK 915.1046 GIF
China Road
Gifford, Rob
Rob Gifford takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its
end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its
contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the
next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary
Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong?
BK 818.5407 OND
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Ondaatje, Michael
Michael Ondaatje’s ground-breaking book is a highly polished and self-aware lens focused on the era of one
of the most mythologized anti-heroes of the American West. This revolutionary collage of poetry and prose,
layered with photos, illustrations and “clippings,” astounded Canada and the world when it was first
published in 1969. It earned then-little-known Ondaatje his first of several Governor General’s Awards and
brazenly challenged the world’s notions of history and literature.
BK 362. 82092 WAL
The Glass Castle
Walls, Jeannette
Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist
mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would
be putting it mildly. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the
embarrassing to the horrific.
9 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014
BK 616.0277409 SKL
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer,
yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first
"immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than
sixty years.
BK 364.1523097 CAP
In Cold Blood
Capote, Truman
Agent Al Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation has a horrific murder to solve - and precious few
clues. Capote's reconstruction of the slaughter of an entire family shows a gripping mix of journalistic skills
and imaginative power.
BK 813. 54 BER
The Invisible Wall
Bernstein, Harry
Bernstein writes about the figurative divide keeping Jews and Christians apart in the poor Lancashire mill
town in England where he was raised. The nonagenarian gives voice to a childhood version of himself who
witnesses his older sister's love for a Christian boy break down the invisible wall that kept Jewish families
from Christians across the street.
BK 305.8967572 KID
Strength in What Remains
Kidder, Tracy
Presents the story of Burundi civil war survivor Deo, who endures homelessness before pursuing an
education at Columbia and eventually returns to his native land to help people in both countries.
BK 395 TRU
Talk to the Hand
Truss, Lynne
Taking on the boorish behavior that for some has become a point of pride, this is a rallying cry for courtesy
and a colorful call to arms. When did society become so thoughtless? It's a topic that has been simmering
for years, and the author says it's now reached the boiling point.
BK 371. 82209549 MOR Three Cups of Tea
Mortenson, Greg
Greg Mortenson was a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2,
was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a
school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools-especially for girls-that offer a balanced education in
one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth.
BK 364. 15230942 LAR Thunderstruck
Larson, Erik
The amazing, interwoven stories of two men- Hawley Crippen, a doctor and an unlikely murderer, and
Gugliemo Marconi, the obsessive genius who invented the wireless--whose stories converge during the
greatest criminal chase of all time.
BK 799.2775609 VAI
The Tiger
Vaillant, John
It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East.
The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot
through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they
discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving,
and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.
BK 914. 610483 CHR
What the Psychic told the Pilgrim
Christmas, Jane
Jane Christmas joins 14 women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Despite a psychic's
warning of catfights, death, and a sexy, fair-haired man, Christmas soldiers on. After a week of squabbles,
the group splinters and the real adventure begins. Jane recounts her battles with loneliness, hallucinations
of being joined by Steve Martin, as well as picturesque villages and even the fair-haired man.
10 Book Club Sets – Oct 2014