Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires--spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes--the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain--create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic."

Call number: SAC - PS3623 .R63 S76 2008

Call number: PAL - PS3623 .R63 S76 2008

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle - Publisher's Marketing: "Humanity now, perhaps more than in any previous time, has an opportunity to create a new, saner, more loving world. In very practical terms, Tolle leads readers into this new consciousness to learn to live and breathe freely."

Call number: SAC - BL624 .T635 2006

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - Publisher's Marketing: "In 12th-century England, the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral signals the dawn of a new age. This majestic creation will bond clergy and kings, knights and peasants together in a story of toil, faith, ambition and rivalry. A sweeping tale of the turbulent middle ages, "The Pillars of the Earth" is a masterpiece from one of the world's most popular authors.
"A novel of majesty and power...Will hold you, fascinate you, surround you." -- "Chicago Sun-Times"
"A towering tale...There's murder, arson, treachery, torture, love, and lust...A good time can be had by all." -- "New York Daily News"
"Touches all human emotions...truly a novel to get lost in." -- "Cosmopolitan""

Call number: SAC - Paperback rack

Call number: PAL - PR6056.O45 P55 2007

Call number: OPC - Paperback

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez - Publisher's Marketing: "In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again."

Call number: PAL - PQ8180.17.A73 A813 2003

Call number: OPC - PQ8180.17.A73 A813 2003

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - Publisher's Marketing: ""I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license...records my first name simply as Cal.""
So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, "Middlesex "is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic."

Call number: SAC - PS3555.U4 M53 2002

Call number: OPC - PS3555.U4 M53 2003

The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Publisher's Marketing: "At once brutal and tender, despairing and rashly hopeful, spare of language and profoundly moving, this work is a fierce and haunting meditation on the tenuous divide between civilization and savagery, and the essential, sometimes terrifying power of filial love."

Call number: SAC - PS3563 .C337 R63 2006

Call number: PAL - PS3563.C337 R632 2006

Call number: OPC - PS3563.C337 R63 2006

The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography by Sidney Poitier - Publisher's Marketing: ""I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the answers to all life's questions. Quite that contrary, I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I've done at measuring up to the values I myself have set." --Sidney Poitier In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of tman behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure -- as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor. Poitier credits his parents and his childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that he has never surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. "In the kind of place where I grew up", recalls Poitier, "what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and momma's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters... and that's it." Without television, radio, and material distractions to obscure what matters most, he could enjoy the simple things, endure the long commitments,and find true meaning in his life. Poitier was uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life that would honor his unbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Poitier broke racial barrier after racial barrier to launch a pioneering acting career. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living articulates to who one is, Poitier played only forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition. Here is Poitier's own introspective look at what has informed his performances and his life. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifices and committment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man in the face of limits - his own and the world's. A triumph of the spirit, "The Measure Of A Man" captures the essential Poitier."

Call number: PAL - PN2287.P57 A3 2007x

Night by Elie Wiesel - Publisher's Marketing: ""Night" is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
"""Night" offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be."

Call number: SAC - D810.J4 W514 2006 and D804.3 .W531 1982

Call number: PAL - D810.J4 W514 2006

Call number: OPC - D804.3 .W531 1982

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey - Publisher's Marketing: "Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, this is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects self-pity, it brings readers face-to-face with a provocative understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery."

Call number: PAL - HV5831.M6 F74 2004

Light in August by William Faulkner - Publisher's Marketing: "One of Faulkner's most admired and accessible novels, "Light in August" reveals the great American author at the height of his powers. Lena Grove's resolute search for the father of her unborn child begets a rich, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story of perseverance in the face of mortality. It also acquaints us with several of Faulkner's most unforgettable characters, including the Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and Joe Christmas, a ragged, itinerant soul obsessed with his mixed-race ancestry.
Powerfully entwining these characters' stories, "Light in August" vividly brings to life Faulkner's imaginary South, one of literature's great invented landscapes, in all of its impoverished, violent, unerringly fascinating glory."

Call number: PAL - PS3511.A86 L5 1990 and PS3511.A86 L5 1950

Call number: OPC - PS3511.A86 L5 1959

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner - Publisher's Marketing: "First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason."

Call number: SAC - PS 3511 .A86 A15 1987, PS 3511 .F272 Sou 1956, PS3511.A86 S6 1956, and PS3511.A86 S6b 1956

Call number: PAL - PS3511.A86 S7 1990, PS3511.A86 S6 1957, and PS3511.A86 S83 1956

Call number: OPC - PS3511.A86 S86 2000, PS3511.A86 S7 1994, PS3511.A86 S79 1987, and PS3511.A86 S7 1984

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner - Publisher's Marketing: "As I Lay Dying is the harrowing, darkly comic tale of the Bundren family's trek across Mississippi to bury Addie, their wife and mother, as told by each of the family members--including Addie herself."

Call number: SAC - PS 3511 .A86 A15 1987

Call number: PAL - PS3511.A86 A85 1990, PS3511.A86 S6 1957, and PS3511.A86 A8 1957

Call number: OPC - PS3511.A86 S86 2000 and PS3511.A86 A8 1957

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck - Publisher's Marketing: "A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the country's last emperor."

Call number: SAC - PS 3503 .U198 G65 1949

Call number: PAL - PS3503.U198 G66 1949

Call number: OPC - PS3503.U198 G6 1931

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - Publisher's Marketing: "A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, "Anna Karenina" portrays the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the discreet affair that her cold, ambitious husband (and Russian high society) would condone, she is doomed. Set against the tragic love of Anna and Vronsky, the plight of the melancholy nobleman Konstantine Levin unfolds. In doubt about the meaning of life, haunted by thoughts of suicide, Levin's struggles echo Tolstoy's own spiritual crisis. But Anna's inner turmoil mirrors the own emotional imprisonment and mental disintegration of a woman who dares to transgress the strictures of a patriarchal world. In "Anna Karenina" Leo Tolstoy brought to perfection the novel of social realism and created a masterpiece that bared the Russian soul."

Call number: SAC - PG 3366 .A6 1984 and PG 3366 .A65 1944

Call number: PAL - PG3366.A6 G35 1946

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - Publisher's Marketing: "With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best."

Call number: PAL - PS3525.A177 H4 2000

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendi a family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendi a family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel Garci a Ma rquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master.

Alternately reverential and comical, "One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an accounting of the history of the human race."

Call number: SAC - PQ8180.17.A73 C513 1998

Call number: PAL - PQ8180.17.A73 C513 1998

Call number: OPC - Paperback Rack and PQ8180.17.A73 C513 1995

The most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, "We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country" the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony."

"Cry, the Beloved Country" is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, "Cry, the Beloved Country" is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man."

Call number: SAC - PR6031.A757 C7 1948

Call number: PAL - PR9369.3.P37 C7 1948

Call number: OPC - PR9369.3.P37 C7 1995 and PR9369.3.P37 C7 1948

East of Eden by John Steinbeck - Publisher's Marketing: "This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. "A strange and original work of art".--New York Times Book Review."

Call number: SAC - PS 3537 .T3234 E3 1970

Call number: PAL - PS3537.T3234 E3 1952

Call number: OPC - PS3537.T3234 E3 1986

Sula by Toni Morrison - Publisher's Marketing: "Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal--or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, "Sula" is a work that overflows with life."

Call number: PAL - PS3563.O8749 S8 2002

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald - Publisher's Marketing: "Following the curves of history in the first half of the twentieth century, Fall on Your Knees takes us from haunted Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, through the battlefields of World War I, to the emerging jazz scene in New York City, and into the lives of four unforgettable sisters. The mythically charged family - James, a father of intelligence and immense ambition; Materia, his Lebanese child-bride; and their daughters: Kathleen, the eldest, a beautiful talent preparing for a career as an opera diva; Frances, incorrigible liar and hell-bent bad girl; Mercedes, obsessive Catholic and protector of the flock; and Lily, the adored invalid who takes us on a quest for truth and redemption - is supported by a richly textured cast of characters. Fall on Your Knees is a story of inescapable family bonds, of terrible secrets, of miracles, racial strife, attempted murder, birth and death, and forbidden love."

Call number: PAL - PR9199.3.M2985 F35 1998

As the cahracters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love. "A Fine Balance" creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state."

Call number: PAL - PR9199.3.M494 F56 1997

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen - Publisher's Marketing: "Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction | Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award | An American Library Association Notable Book

Jonathan Franzen's third novel, "The Corrections," is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies and sexual inhibitions, into brilliant collision with the modern absurdities of brain science, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and the anti-gravity New Economy. With "The Corrections," Franzen emerges as one of our premier interpreters of American society and the American soul.Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says. Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a"transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints.Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs."

Call number: SAC - PS3556.R352 C67 2001

Cane River by Lalita Tademy - Publisher's Marketing: "Lalita Tademy was a corporate vice president at a Fortune "RM" 500 company when she decided to give notice and embark upon an odyssey to uncover her family's past. Through her exhaustive research, she would find herself transported back to the early 1800s, to an isolated, close-knit rural community on Louisiana's Cane River. Here, Tademy takes historical fact and mingles it with fiction to weave a vivid account of what life was like for the four remarkable women who came before her. The result is a family saga that sweeps from the early days of slavery into a pre-Civil Rights South -- a unique and moving slice of America's past that will resonate with readers for generations to come."

Call number: PAL - PS3570.A248 C36 2002

Call number: OPC - PS3570.A248 C36 2001

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir - Publisher's Marketing: "Born into a proud Berber family in 1953, the eldest daughter of the King of Morocco's closest aide, Malika Oufkir was adopted at the age of five by King Muhammad V to be brought up as the companion of his daughter, Princes Amina. When he died, his son Hassan II became King and took charge of rearing the two girls as well as his own children. Malika spent eleven years living at the court, in the seclusion of the harem, until she left the palace, at the age of 16, as one of the most eligible heiresses in the kingdom and tasted a couple of years of a heady jet-set lifestyle. On August 16th, 1972, her father, General Muhammad Oufkir, was arrested and executed after an attempt to assassinate the king. Malika, her mother, and four siblings were imprisoned in a penal colony."

Call number: SAC - HV9841 .O8413 2001

Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio - Publisher's Marketing: "Set in Appalachia during the late 1950s, this acclaimed first novel chronicles a young girl's heartbreaking battle with Tourette's syndrome.
Ten-year-old Icy Sparks already has one strike against her: She's an orphan. Life becomes even more difficult when Icy develops strange symptoms: violent tics, inexplicable convulsions, sudden outbursts, and uncontrollable cursing that accompany her rare neurological disorder. Her affliction goes undiagnosed until adulthood, but the all-too-visible signs are the source of endless mystery and hilarity as everyone around offers an opinion about what's troubling the girl. Eventually Icy finds solace in the company of Miss Emily, who knows what it's like to be an outcast in this tightly knit community.
Narrated by a now-grown Icy, this novel shimmers with warmth and humor as it recounts a young girl's painful journey to womanhood. A funny, sad, and transcendent story, "Icy Sparks" introduces a fresh new Southern voice."

Call number: PAL - PS3568.U295 I25 1998

Call number: OPC - PS3568.U295 I25 1998

We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates - Publisher's Marketing: "The Mulvaneys are blessed by all that makes life sweet-a hardworking father, a loving mother, three fine sons, and a bright, pretty daughter. They are confident in their love for each other and their position in the rural community of Mt. Ephraim, New York. But something happens on Valentine's Day, 1976-an incident that is hushed up in the town and never spoken of in the Mulvaney home-that rends the fabric of their family life. As the years pass the secrets they keep from each other threaten to destroy them, but ultimately they bridge the chasms between them, and reunite in the spirit of love and healing. Rarely has such an acclaimed writer made such a startling and inspiring statement about the value of hope and compassion."

Call number: SAC - PS3565.A8 W4 1997

Call number: PAL - PS3565.A8 W4 1997

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III - Publisher's Marketing: "In this riveting novel of almost unbearable suspense, three fragile yet determined people become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Colonel Behrani, once a wealthy man in Iran, is now a struggling immigrant willing to bet everything he has to resotre his family's dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a troubled young woman whose house is all she has left, and who refuses to let her hard-won stability slip away from her. Sheriff Lester Burdon, a married man who finds himself falling in love with Kathy, becomes obsessed with helping her fight for justice.
Drawn by their competing desires to the same small house in the California hills and doomed by their tragic inability to understand one another, the three converge in an explosive collision course. Combining unadorned realism with profound empathy, House of Sand and Fog marks the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction."

Call number: SAC - PS3554.U265 H68 2000 and Paperback rack

Call number: PAL - PS3554.U265 H68 2000

Call number: OPC - PS3554.U265 H68 1999

Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz - Publisher's Marketing: "An Oprah Book Club selection and bestseller in hardcover, "Drowning Ruth"--now in paperback--is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart. Schwarz's first novel explores themes of family love, sibling rivalry, duty, loyalty, and a possible murder."

Call number: PAL - PS3569.C56783 D76 2001

Call number: OPC - PS3569.C56783 D76 2000

Open House by Elizabeth Berg - Publisher's Marketing: "In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart.
Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember--and reclaim--the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself."

Call number: PAL - PS3552.E6996 O64 2001

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Publisher's Marketing: "The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes King-solver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers."

Call number: SAC - PS3561.I496 P65 1999b

Call number: OPC - PS3561.I496 P65 1998

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller - Publisher's Marketing: "Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the person she once was. As she is pulled farther from her present life, her husband, and her world, Jo struggles against becoming enveloped by her past and its dark secret."

Call number: SAC - PS3563.I42 W47 2000

Call number: PAL - PS3563.I4214 W47 1999

Call number: OPC - PS3563.I421444 W47 1999

Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell - Publisher's Marketing: "An intense, vibrant debut novel set in Pennsylvania's mining country, "Back Roads" tells the story of Harley--an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult--capturing the prickly nature of family with irony and unerring honesty."

Call number: OPC - PS3565.D428 B33 2000

So begins Isabel Allende's enchanting new novel, "Daughter of Fortune," her most ambitious work of fiction yet. As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. A society of single men and prostitutes among whom Eliza moves--with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chien--California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive JoaquI n gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom. By the time she finally hears news of him, Eliza must decide who her true love really is.

"Daughter of Fortune" is a sweeping portrait of an era, a story rich in character, history, violence, and compassion. In Eliza, Allende has created one of her most appealing heroines, an adventurous, independent-minded, and highly unconventional young woman who has thecourage to reinvent herself and to create her own destiny in a new country. A marvel of storytelling, "Daughter of Fortune" confirms once again Isabel Allende's extraordinary gift for fiction and her place as one of the world's leading writers."

Call number: SAC - PQ8098.1.L54 H5513 1999

Call number: PAL - PQ8098.1.L54 H5513 2000

She is just a teenager when her brother dies in her arms. The following year, she marries Hank and moves down into the valley. Julie and Hank discover that the modern world is complex, grinding ever on without pause or concern for their hard work. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay.

With Julie, Robert Morgan has brought to life one of the most memorable women in modern American literature with the skill that led Fred Chappell to say ""Gap Creek" is the work of a master.""

Call number: OPC - PS3563.O87147 G36 1999

A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton - Publisher's Marketing: "From the author of the widely acclaimed The Book of Ruth comes a harrowing, heartbreaking drama about a rural American family and a disastrous event that forever changes their lives.
The Goodwins, Howard, Alice, and their little girls, Emma and Claire, live on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Although suspiciously regarded by their neighbors as "that hippie couple" because of their well-educated, urban background, Howard and Alice believe they have found a source of emotional strength in the farm, he tending the barn while Alice works as a nurse in the local elementary school.
But their peaceful life is shattered one day when a neighbor's two-year-old daughter drowns in the Goodwins' pond while under Alice's care. Tormented by the accident, Alice descends even further into darkness when she is accused of sexually abusing of a student at the elementary school. Soon, Alice is arrested, incarcerated, and as good as convicted in the eyes of a suspicious community. As a child, Alice designed her own map of the world to find her bearings. Now, as an adult, she must find her way again, through a maze of lies, doubt and ill will.
A vivid human drama of guilt and betrayal, A Map of the World chronicles the intricate geographies of the human heart and all its mysterious, uncharted terrain. The result is a piercing drama about family bonds and a disappearing rural American life."

Call number: SAC - PS 3588 .A4427 M36 1994

Call number: PAL - PS3558.A4428 M36 1995b

Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay - Publisher's Marketing: "Dutifully accompanying her unemployed husband back to her in-law's cold and loveless house, Ellen Grier finds that she must struggle to keep her passionate spirit alive as she searches for the inner strength to endure an all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves."

Call number: PAL - PS3551.N645 V56 1998x

River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke - Publisher's Marketing: "Five-year-old Clara Bynum is dead, drowned in the Potomac River in the shadow of a seemingly haunted rock outcropping known locally as the Three Sisters. This debut novel by a wonderfully gifted storyteller tells what effect Clara's absence has on the people she has left behind."

Call number: OPC - PS3553.L298 R58 1999

Tara Road by Maeve Binchy - Publisher's Marketing: "Ria, who lives on Tara Road in Dublin, thinks her marriage is fine right up until her husband leaves with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now estranged from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed."

Call number: PAL - PR6052.I7728 T37 1998

Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes - Publisher's Marketing: "Set in a small Mississippi town in 1956, this debut novel weaves the story of the friendship between a black man and a white teenage girl, each surrounded by a myriad of other characters, and how their friendship reaches across racial barriers and encompasses their entire community."

Call number: SAC - Paperback rack

Call number: PAL - PS3558.A862 M67 2000

White Oleander by Janet Fitch - Publisher's Marketing: "A bestselling first novel about a young woman growing up the hard way, this is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, and the search for love and identity. When a woman murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life, her daughter must navigate a new reality--that of a series of foster homes, each its own universe, each with its own limits and dangers. "A ferocious, risk-loving novel."--"Los Angeles Times Book Review.""

Call number: SAC - PS3556.I8155 W47 1999

Call number: PAL - PS3556.I8155 W47 2000b

The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve - Publisher's Marketing: "Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening of time. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to expect both intense exhilaration and long periods alone — but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died in a crash. As Kathryn struggles with her grief, she descends into a maelstrom of publicity stirred up by the modern hunger for the details of tragedy. Even before the plane is located in waters off the Irish coast, the relentless scrutiny of her husband's life begins to bring a bizarre personal mystery into focus. Could there be any truth to the increasingly disturbing rumors that he had a secret life?"

Call number: SAC - PS3569.H7385 P55 1998

Call number: PAL - PS3569.H7385 P55 1999

Call number: OPC - PS3569.H7385 P55 1999

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink - Publisher's Marketing: "Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel--and soon-to-be motion picture--tells a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany."

Call number: SAC - Paperback rack

Jewel by Bret Lott - Publisher's Marketing: "In this masterful portrayal of a mother's heartbreak and her devotion to a child who is both a blessing and a burden, Bret Lott takes a quantum leap forward. He transports readers to the backwoods of Mississippi, to 1943 and to the subject of truly great novels--love's redemptive power."

Call number: SAC - PS3562.O784 J49 1991

Call number: PAL - PS3562.O784 J49 1992

Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts - Publisher's Marketing: "On her way from Tennessee to a new life in California, pregnant, 17-year-old Novalee Nation's no-good boyfriend strands her at a Wal-Mart in a small Oklahoma town. But Novalee is about to discover hidden treasures in this small town."

Call number: PAL - PS3562.E856 W48 2000 and PS3562.E856 W48 1998

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian - Publisher's Marketing: ""Superbly crafted and astonishingly powerful. . . . It will thrill readers who cherish their worn copies of "To Kill A Mockingbird." --People
With a suspense, lyricism, and moral complexity that recall To Kill a Mockingbird and Presumed Innocent, this compulsively readable novel explores what happens when a woman who has devoted herself to ushering life into the world finds herself charged with responsibility in a patient's tragic death.
The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if--as Sibyl's assistant later charges--the patient wasn't already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?
As recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except for the fact that all its participants are acting from the highest motives--and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do."

Call number: SAC - PS3552 .O495 M52

Call number: PAL - PS3552.O495 M52 1998

Call number: OPC - PS3552.O495 M5 1997

In no time, she was moving with the brothers and sisters who had beautiful clothes, big cars, bigger dreams, and money in the bank. Now, after more than a decade of elegant pleasures and luxe living, Ava has come home, her fabulous career and power plans smashed to bits on one dark truth. Ava Johnson has tested positive for HIV. And she's back in little Idlewild to spend a quiet summer with her widowed sister, Joyce, before moving on to finish her life in San Francisco, the most HIV-friendly place she can imagine. But what she thinks is the end is only the beginning because there's too much going down in her hometown for Ava to ignore. There's the Sewing Circus -- sister Joyce's determined effort to educate Idlewild's young black women about sex, drugs, pregnancy, whatever...despite the interference of the good Reverend Anderson and his most virtuous, "just say no" wife. Plus Joyce needs a helping hand to make a loving home for Imani, an abandoned crack baby whom she's taken into her heart. And then there's Wild Eddie, whose legendary background in violence combined with his Eastern gentility has stirred Ava's interest...and something more."

Call number: PAL - PS3553.L389 W48 1998

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb - Publisher's Marketing: "Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny". From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness - and ultimately self-protection - in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. Through his grandfather's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin."

Call number: PAL - PS3562.A433 I3 1998

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat - Publisher's Marketing: "An unforgettable novel that shimmers with the wonder and terror of its author's native Haiti. Set in the island's impoverished villages and in New York's Haitian community, this is the story of Sophie Caco, who was conceived in an act of violence, abandoned by her mother and then summoned to America. In New York, Sophie discovers that Haiti imposes harsh rules on its own."

Call number: SAC - PS3554.A581 B74 1998

"Black and Blue" is a beautifully written, heart-stopping story in which Anna Quindlen writes with power, wisdom, and humor about the real lives of men and women, the varieties of people and love, the bonds between mother and child, the solace of family and friendship, the inexplicable feelings between people who are passionately connected in ways they don't understand."

Call number: SAC - PS3567.U336 B58 1998

Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman - Publisher's Marketing: "After nearly twenty years of living in California, March Murray, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up, to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her. Thrust into the world of her past, March slowly realizes the complexity of the choices made by those around her, including Mrs. Dale, who knew more of love than March could have ever suspected; Alan, the brother whose tragic history has left him grief-stricken, with alcohol his only solace; and Hollis, the boy she loved, the man she can't seem to stay away from."

Call number: PAL - PS3558.O3447 H4 1998

In "Paradise" --her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature--Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain, " assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, "Paradise" tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void "Out There . . . where random and organized evil erupted when and where it chose." Richly imagined and elegantly composed, "Paradise" weaves a powerful mystery."

Call number: PAL - PS3563.O8749 P37 1999

Call number: OPC - PS3563.O8749 P37 1997

A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons - Publisher's Marketing: "When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was 20 and he was 40. She was the daughter of Carolina gentry. He was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life."

Call number: SAC - PS 3557 .I13917 V57 1990

Call number: PAL - PS3557.I13917 V57 1990

So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbons's first novel, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Wise, funny, affectionate and true, "Ellen Foster" is, as Walker Percy called it, "The real thing. Which is to say, a lovely, sometimes heart/wrenching novel... "[Ellen Foster]" is as much a part of the backwoods South as a Faulkner character and a good deal more endearing"."

Call number: SAC - PS 3557 .I13917 E4 1988

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines - Publisher's Marketing: "Set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, "A Lesson Before Dying" is an "enormously moving" ("Los Angeles Times") novel of one man condemned to die for a crime he did not commit and a young man who visits him in his cell. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting--and defying--the expected. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction."

Call number: SAC - PS 3557 .A355 L47 1994

Call number: PAL - PS3557.A355 L47 1993

Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris - Publisher's Marketing: ""Songs in Ordinary Time" is set in the summer of 1960 - the last of quiet times and America's innocence. It centers on Marie Fermoyle, a strong but vulnerable divorced woman whose loneliness and ambition for her children make her easy prey for the dangerous con man Omar Duvall. Marie's children are Alice, seventeen - involved with a troubled young priest; Norm, sixteen - hotheaded and idealistic; and Benjy, twelve - isolated and misunderstood, and so desperate for his mother's happiness that he hides the deadly truth only he knows about Duvall. Among a fascinating cast of characters we meet the children's alcoholic father, Sam Fermoyle, now living with his senile mother and embittered sister; Sam's meek brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "love" calls from the bathroom of his failing appliance store; and the Klubock family, who - in complete contrast to the Fermoyles - live an orderly life in the perfect house next door."

Call number: SAC - PS3563.O874 S66 1996

Call number: PAL - PS3563.O874 S66 1996

The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou - Publisher's Marketing: "In The Heart of a Woman Maya Angelou leaves California with her son, Guy, to go to New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists and writers. Not since her childhood has she lived in an almost black environment, and she is surprised at the obsession her new friends have with the white world around them. She stays for a while with John and Grace Killens and begins to read her writing at the Harlem Writers Guild. She continues to sing, most notably at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, but more and more she begins to take part in the struggle of black Americans for their rightful place in the world. She helps organize a benefit cabaret for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and then is appointed Martin Luther Kings Northern Coordinator.
Shortly after that, through her friend Abbey Lincoln, she takes one of the lead parts in Genet's The Blacks (it was a remarkable cast, including Godfrey Cambridge, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Raymond St. Jacques, and Lou Gossett), and even writes music for the production.
In the meantime her personal life has taken a tempestuous turn. She has left the New York bail bondsman she was intending to marry and has fallen in love with a South African freedom fighter named Vusumzi Make, who sweeps her off her feet and eventually takes her to London and then to Cairo, where, as her marriage begins to break up, she becomes the first female editor of the English-language magazine.
The Heart of a Woman is filled with unforgettable vignettes of famous people, from Billie Holiday to Malcolm X, but perhaps most important is the story of Maya Angelou's relationship with her son. Because this book chronicles, finally, the joys and the burdens of a black mother in America and how the son she had cherished so intensely and worked for so devotedly finally grows to be a man."

Call number: PAL - PS3551.N464 Z465

The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds - Publisher's Marketing: "At the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind, Grandpa Herman makes the rules for everyone, and everyone obeys, or else. Try as she might, Ninah hasn't succeeded in resisting temptation -- her prayer partner, James -- and finds herself pregnant. She fears the wrath of Grandpa Herman, the congregation and of God Himself. But the events that follow show Ninah that God's ways are more mysterious than even Grandpa Herman understands . . ."

Call number: SAC - PS3568.E8975 R36 1997

Call number: OPC - PS3568.E8975 R36 1995

Through Trudi's unblinking eyes, we witness the growing impact of Nazism on the ordinary townsfolk of Burgdorf as they are thrust on to a larger moral stage and forced to make choices that will forever mark their lives. "Stones from the River" is a story of secrets, parceled out masterfully by Trudi -- and by Ursula Hegi -- as they reveal the truth about living through unspeakable times."

Call number: SAC - PR9110.9 .H43 S76

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb - Publisher's Marketing: "In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi that her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she "really" goes under."

Call number: OPC - Paperback Rack

Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it -- to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess.

Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place, Ruth grows up in the shadow of her brilliant brother, trying to hold her own in a world of poverty and hard edges. Matt's brain is his ticket out of Honey Creek. Ruth, without options, cleaves instead to her tough, half-crazy mother, May, and eventually to Ruby, the sweet but slightly deranged young man she loves, marries, and supports. When the precarious household erupts in violence, Ruth is the only one who can piece their story together -- and she gets at the truth in a manner at once ferocious, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

In this powerful, incandescent novel, Jane Hamilton has worked a miracle: she has given voice to a young woman you have passed on the street a thousand times. Perhaps you have never noticed her, hut the next time you see her, you will know who she is.

Passionate in her commitment to life, Ruth is a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion, and love. "The Book of Ruth" is a magnificent audio experience."

Call number: SAC - PS3558.A4428 B66 1990

"Song of Solomon" begins with one of the most arresting scenes in our century's literature: a dreamlike tableau depicting a man poised on a roof, about to fly into the air, while cloth rose petals swirl above the snow-covered ground and, in the astonished crowd below, one woman sings as another enters premature labor. The child born of that labor, Macon (Milkman) Dead, will eventually come to discover, through his complicated progress to maturity, the meaning of the drama that marked his birth. Toni Morrison's novel is at once a romance of self-discovery, a retelling of the black experience in America that uncovers the inalienable poetry of that experience, and a family saga luminous in its depth, imaginative generosity, and universality. It is also a tribute to the ways in which, in the hands of a master, the ancient art of storytelling can be used to make the mysterious and invisible aspects of human life apparent, real, and firm to the touch."

Call number: SAC - Paperback rack

Call number: PAL - PS3563.O874 S6 1995

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard - Publisher's Marketing: "Few first novels receive the kind of attention and acclaim showered on this powerful story -- a nationwide bestseller, a critical success, and the first title chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Both highly suspenseful and deeply moving, The Deep End of the Ocean imagines every mother's worst nightmare -- the disappearance of a child -as it explores a family's struggle to endure, even against extraordinary odds. Filled with compassion, humor, and brilliant observations about the texture of real life, here is a story of rare power, one that will touch readers' hearts and make them celebrate the emotions that make us all one."

Call number: SAC - PS3563.I7358 D4 1999 and Paperback rack

Call number: PAL - PS3563.I7358 D4 1999