December 2008

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

(Carley's Pick)

In 1940 a boy bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have shared the fate of the other Jews in his village, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist, who does not recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. With this electrifying image, Anne Michaels ushers us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption.

November 2008

There is No Death by Sarah Menet

(Kari's Pick)

In 1979, Sarah was pronounced dead. She then had a very special and unique experience, learning many things in the World of Spirits. Sarah's experience is of great interest for several reasons, among which are the extensive detail and unusual scope of her visit to the world beyond and the way it relates to her life's story. Her ability to influence minds and hearts toward a more enlightnened and hopeful outlook has been life-changing to many distressed souls as well as to many who are searching for answers.

October 2008

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

(Joni's Pick)

This enduringly popular tale of love and revenge in the post-Napoleonic era follows Edmond Dantes as he prepares to captain his own ship and marry his beloved Mercedes. But on his wedding day, he is betrayed by spiteful enemies and arrested on trumped-up charges. Condemned to lifelong imprisonment, he befriends Faria, a priest and fellow inmate with an escape plan. When Faria dies, Edmond escapes alone. Free at last, and incredibly wealthy, Edmond enters society posing as the Count of Monte Cristo to reclaim his lost love and enact a terrible vengeance on his accusers. 

September 2008

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

(Melanie's Pick)

Growing up in East Africa, the author describes her life as a pioneer aviator, a horse breeder, pilot of passengers and supplies in a small plane to remote corners of Africa, and became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

July/August 2008

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Sarah D's Pick)

Published in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the abolitionists' message to the public conscience - no woman before or since has so moved America to take action against an injustice. Indeed, Abraham Lincoln greeted Stowe in 1863 as "the little lady who made this big war."

Eliza Harris, a slave whose child is to be sold, escapes her beloved home on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky and heads North, eluding the hired slave catchers. Aided by the underground railroad, Quakers, and others opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act, Eliza, her son, and her husband George run toward Canada.

As the Harrises flee to freedom, another slave, Uncle Tom, is sent "down the river" for sale. Too loyal to abuse his master's trust, too Christian to rebel, Tom wrenches himself from his family. Befriending a white child, Evangeline St. Clare, Tom is purchased by her father and taken to their home in New Orleans. Although Evangeline's father finally resolves to free his slaves, his sudden death places him in the ranks of those who mean well by their slaves but never take action. Tom is sent farther downriver to Simon Legree's plantation, and the whips of Legree's overseers.

June 2008

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

(Michonne's Pick)

In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard's world changed forever—when Caitlin Somers chose her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomed Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha's Vineyard, a magical, wind-blown island where two friends became summer sisters. . . .

Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin has begged Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—for the friend whose casual betrayals she remembers all too well. Because Vix wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart....

May 2008

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

(Ashley's Pick)

Leif Enger's rhapsodic novel about a father raising his three children in 1960s Minnesota is a breathtaking celebration of family, faith, and America's pioneering spirit. Through the voice of eleven-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboy stories, Peace Like a River tells of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's outlaw older brother, who has been controversially charged with murder. Sprinkled with playful and warmhearted nods to biblical tales, classic American novels such as Huckleberry Finn, the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Westerns of Zane Grey, Peace Like a River brilliantly incorporates the best elements of all these genres and ultimately earns its own prominent and enduring place on the shelf among them. Reuben Land was born with no air in his lungs, and it was only when his father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that his lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma thenceforth, but he is a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that his father can overturn the laws of nature. When Reuben's older brother, Davy, kills two marauders who have come to harm the family, the town is divided between those who see him as a hero and those who see him as a cold-blooded murderer. On the morning of the trial, Davy escapes from his cell, and when his family finds out they decide to go forth into the unknown in search of him. With Jeremiah -- whose faith is the stuff of legend -- at the helm, the family covers territory far more glorious than even the Badlands, where they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer. By the time the journey is over, they will have traversedboundaries of a different nature entirely. Marked by a soul-expanding sense of place and a love of storytelling, Peace Like a River is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a romance, and a heartfelt meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.

April 2008

Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl

(Lisa's Pick)

"'I am only eight years old,' I told myself. 'No little boy of eight has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible.'"

So thought Roald Dahl in 1924 when his plan to get revenge on the mean and disgusting candy-store owner Mrs. Pratchett seemed to have worked all too well. Writing about this and other boyhood adventures, the author has recalled only those that stand out as spectacular. "Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true."

We are told of his first automobile ride, in which he nearly lost his nose; of the canings by Headmasters and older schoolboys; and of the grisly methods of Matrons, those guardians against misbehavior who supervised the dormitories. There were glorious times, too, with his big family at home in Wales; on holiday each summer on a remote island in Norway; and in the class of an endearing math teacher who thought numbers the dreariest things in the world.

Roald Dahl's adventures and misadventures during his school years are crowded with people as strange and wonderful as any character he has created and are as exciting and full of the unexpected as his celebrated fiction.

Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

(Lisa's Pick)

Roald Dahl is known for creating stories that are completely unrealistic (and almost immoral) but tremendously funny. This book is no different. Danny is the only son of a car mechanic who lives in a gypsy caravan behind his garage. One evening, Danny wakes up to find his father missing. Hours later he returns and confesses his secret that Danny comes from a long line of pheasant poachers. Poaching is apparently a noble profession practiced by most of the citizens in the community (including the sole police officer), except for the owner of woods where the pheasants live. The owner, Mr. Hazell is a vile, selfish man, thus justifying the illegal activity that takes place in his woods. In this setting the story celebrates the bond between a father and his son. Through all the bizarreness of the story, the poaching methods and revenge tactics, it is the relationship between Danny and his father that remains at the heart of the story. If you are looking for a story with a moral, this is not it. But if you are looking for a sweet and funny fable, this is a wonderful example of storytelling.

March 2008

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

(Jeneil's Pick)

As a founder of UCLA's Affective Disorder Clinic and a co-author of a standard medical text, Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison may be the foremost authority on manic-depressive illness.  She is also one of its survivors.  And it is this dual perspective -- as healer and healed -- that makes Jamison's memoir so lucid, learned, and profoundly affecting.

Even as she was pursuing her psychiatric training, Jamison found herself succumbing to the exhilarating highs and paralyzing lows that afflicted many of her patients. Though the disorder brought her seemingly boundless energy and mercurial creativity, it also propelled her into spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempt at suicide.  

Powerfully candid, exceptionally wise, An Unquiet Mind is one of those rare books that has the power to transform lives -- and even save them.