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The
Book of Lost Things by John Connolly |
| "High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old
David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the
books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to
him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds
that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart
around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange
reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled
over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book ... The
Book of Lost Things." |
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The
Whistling Season by Ivan Doig |
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"Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the
newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-I housekeeper, sound morals,
exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver
Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that
deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her
font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a
stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch - a
gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom.
When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed
into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education" - none
of them of the textbook variety - Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his
three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room
schoolhouse." |
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Eagle Blue: A Team, A Tribe, and A High
School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska by Michael D'Orso |
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Follows the Fort Yukon Eagles, winners of six
regional championships in a row, through the course of an entire 28-game
season, from their first day of practice in late November to the Alaska
State Championship Tournament in March. With insight, frankness, and
compassion, Michael D’Orso climbs into the lives of these fourteen
boys, their families, and their coach, shadowing them through an Arctic
winter of fifty-below-zero temperatures and near-round-the-clock darkness
as the Eagles criss-cross Alaska in pursuit of their—and their
village’s—dream. |
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Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen |
"Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside
Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as
a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the
Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world
filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and
passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of
life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was
both salvation and a living hell." "Jacob was there because his luck had
run out - orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on
this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great
Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any
job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because
she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide
mean streak. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great
gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus;
the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act - in fact, she couldn't
even follow instructions. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was
one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for
survival." |
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Floor of the Sky by Pamela Carter Joern |
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"In the Nebraska Sandhills, nothing is more
sacred than the bond of family and land - and nothing is more capable of
causing deep wounds. In Pamela Carter Joern's novel The Floor of the Sky,
Toby Jenkins, an aging widow, is on the verge of losing her family's ranch
when her granddaughter Lila - a city girl, sixteen and pregnant - shows up
for the summer. While facing painful decisions about her future, Lila
uncovers festering secrets about her grandmother's past - discoveries that
spur Toby to reconsider the ambiguous ties she holds to her embittered
sister Gertie, her loyal ranch hand George, her not-so-sympathetic daughter
Nola Jean, and ultimately, herself." "Propelled by stark realism in
breakneck prose, The Floor of the Sky reveals the inner worlds of
characters isolated by geography and habit. Set against the sweeping
changes in rural America, Joern's story bears witness to the fortitude and
hard-won wisdom of people whose lives have been forged by devotion to the
land." |
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Color of the Sea by John Hamamura |
| "Set in a small Ontario town in the 1960s,
Midnight at the Dragon Cafe is the story of a young girl whose life is
changed over the course of one summer when she learns the burden of secrets
and, ultimately, the grace of forgiveness. Su-Jen and her parents settle
uneasily into their new life in a town where they are the only Chinese
family, isolated by language and long hours at the diner they own. Things
change when Lee-Kung, Su-Jen's half-brother, arrives. He works in the
kitchen and smolders under the responsibilities he must carry as the
dutiful son, forming an alliance with his mother, a beautiful, bitter
stepmother. Su-Jen's father, one of the lo wa kew, the "old timers"
generation, works continually for a better future and strives to save face
at all costs." |
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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis |
| "The young man at the center of this story
will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National
Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by
a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his
birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school - such as,
say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football." "What
changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical,
Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first
great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt.
The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a
game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist
turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility
necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind
side." |
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Black Swan Green by David Mitchell |
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"Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what
is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest
Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen
chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an observed world
that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted
in boys' games on a frozen lake; of "nightcreeping" through the summer
backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War
and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry
boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck,
an elderly bohemian emigre who is both more and less than she appears; of
Jason's search to replace his dead grandfather's irreplaceable watch before
his parents discover he has smashed it; of first cigarettes, first kisses,
first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher's recession;
of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even
closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons." |
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The World Made Straight by Ron Rash |
| "Travis Shelton is seventeen the summer he
wanders onto a neighbor's property in the woods, discovers a grove of
marijuana large enough to make him some serious money, and steps into the
jaws of a bear trap. After hours passing in and out of consciousness,
Travis is discovered by Carlton Toomey, the wise and vicious farmer who set
the trap to protect his plants, and Travis's confrontation with the subtle
evils within his rural world has begun." "Before long, Travis has moved out
of his parents' home to live with Leonard Shuler, a onetime schoolteacher
who lost his job and custody of his daughter years ago, when he was framed
by a vindictive student. Now Leonard lives with his dogs and his sometime
girlfriend in a run-down trailer outside town, deals a few drugs, and
studies journals from the Civil War. Travis becomes his student, of sorts,
and the fate of these two outsiders becomes increasingly entwined as the
community's terrible past and corrupt present bear down on each of them
from every direction, leading to a violent reckoning - not only with Toomey
but with the legacy of the Civil War massacre that, even after a century,
continues to divide an Appalachian community." |
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The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield |
| "The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades
creating various outlandish life histories for herself - all of them
inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent
and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the
truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a
young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved
her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel
between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission."
"As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is
mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield
family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins
Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a
devastating fire." "Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling
but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth
from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them
while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves." |
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