Thanks to Melissa for hosting us. It was fun to hear the books that everyone suggested and loved. I appreciate Laura being the official note keeper for us. I hope you find a new favorite or two from this list!
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Dallas, 11/22/63: Three shots ring out.
President John F. Kennedy is dead.
Life
can turn on a dime—or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for
Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in a Maine town. While
grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling
piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow
survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family. Jake
is blown away . . . but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when
Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over
the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy
assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s
storeroom, and into the era of Ike and Elvis, of big American cars, sock
hops, and cigarette smoke. . . . Finding himself in warmhearted Jodie,
Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a
troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about
to be rewritten . . . and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
A powerful, blazingly
honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke
down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the
wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage
was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she
made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest
Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington
State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance
hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish
and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a
life that had come undone.
Strayed faces down rattlesnakes
and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty
and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style,
sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the
terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds
on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Running on Empty by L.B. Simmons
I had the perfect life.
Beautiful and loving husband.Three gorgeous little girls.
Successful career.
The only thing missing was the white picket fence. I really wanted that fence.
Three years ago, I lost that life. I lost my husband. And I lost myself. But, eventually, I found my way through the darkness. I’ve made peace with my new life. I have my girls, and that’s all that matters. They are my world. I have no illusions of ever falling in love again or getting whisked away on a white horse.
But then he came back into my life. On a freakin’ motorcycle.
There’s no way I’ll let him turn my life completely upside down. Absolutely no way.
The question is…
How long can I keep pretending that I’m happy with my life being right-side up?
Peony in Love by Lisa See
“I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.”
For
young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from
The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen
Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small
theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live
spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama,
Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a
good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be
obedient, Peony has dreams of her own.
Peony’s mother is against
her daughter’s attending the production: “Unmarried girls should not be
seen in public.” But Peony’s father assures his wife that proprieties
will be maintained, and that the women will watch the opera from behind a
screen. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant,
handsome man with hair as black as a cave–and is immediately overcome
with emotion.
So begins Peony’s unforgettable journey of love and
destiny, desire and sorrow–as Lisa See’s haunting new novel, based on
actual historical events, takes readers back to seventeenth-century
China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed.
Steeped
in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and
place–even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols,
pathways, and stages of existence, a vividly imagined place where one’s
soul is divided into three, ancestors offer guidance, misdeeds are
punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth. Immersed in the richness
and magic of the Chinese vision of the afterlife, transcending even
death, Peony in Love explores, beautifully, the many
manifestations of love. Ultimately, Lisa See’s new novel addresses
universal themes: the bonds of friendship, the power of words, and the
age-old desire of women to be heard.
Snow Flower and the Secret Hand by Lisa See
In nineteenth-century
China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of
seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that
will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by
sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a
unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in
secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow
Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs,
reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and
accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and
reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys
and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that
keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their
deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
Faith by Jennifer Haigh
When Sheila McGann sets
out to redeem her disgraced brother, a once-beloved Catholic priest in
suburban Boston, her quest will force her to confront cataclysmic truths
about her fractured Irish-American family, her beliefs, and,
ultimately, herself. Award-winning author Jennifer Haigh follows her
critically acclaimed novels Mrs. Kimble and The Condition with a
captivating, vividly rendered portrait of fraying family ties, and the
trials of belief and devotion, in Faith.
Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh
A chameleon, an enigma,
all things to all women -- a lifeline to which powerful needs and
nameless longings may be attached -- Ken Kimble is revealed through the
eyes of the women he seduces: Birdie, his first wife, struggling to hold
herself together after his desertion; second wife, Joan, a lonely,
tragic heiress who sees her unknowable husband as her last chance for
happiness; and Dinah, a beautiful but damaged woman half his age.
Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo, Lynn Vincent
"Do you remember the hospital, Colton?" Sonja said. "Yes, mommy, I remember," he said. "That's where the angels sang to me."
When
Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy, his family was
overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren't expecting,
though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed--a story
as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy's trip
to heaven and back.
Colton, not yet four years old, told his
parents he left his body during the surgery-and authenticated that claim
by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of
the hospital while he was being operated on. He talked of visiting
heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he
had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was
born. He also astonished his parents with descriptions and obscure
details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not
yet learned to read.
With disarming innocence and the plainspoken
boldness of a child, Colton tells of meeting long-departed family
members. He describes Jesus, the angels, how "really, really big" God
is, and how much God loves us. Retold by his father, but using Colton's
uniquely simple words, "Heaven Is for Real" offers a glimpse of the
world that awaits us, where as Colton says, "Nobody is old and nobody
wears glasses."
"Heaven Is for Real" will forever change the way you think of eternity, offering the chance to see, and believe, like a child
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Despite the
tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel
has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon
diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly
appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be
completely rewritten.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Sussex, England. A
middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral.
Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at
the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most
remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He
hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a
pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old
farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past
too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone,
let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed
suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse
on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable
ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly
incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise
beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows
the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside
and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a
butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.
Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
Eleven-year-old Melody
has a photographic memory. Her head is like a video camera that is
always recording. Always. And there's no delete button. She's the
smartest kid in her whole school—but no one knows it. Most people—her
teachers and doctors included—don't think she's capable of learning, and
up until recently her school days consisted of listening to the same
preschool-level alphabet lessons again and again and again. If only she
could speak up, if only she could tell people what she thinks and knows .
. . but she can't, because Melody can't talk. She can't walk. She can't
write.
Being stuck inside her head is making Melody go out of
her mind—that is, until she discovers something that will allow her to
speak for the first time ever. At last Melody has a voice . . . but not
everyone around her is ready to hear it.
From multiple Coretta
Scott King Award winner Sharon M. Draper comes a story full of heartache
and hope. Get ready to meet a girl whose voice you'll never, ever
forget.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
On a May afternoon in
1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and
disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil,
gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It
was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was
struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of
the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The
lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning
and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing
his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his
defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried
him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.
But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a
journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into
the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open
ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy
aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of
endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering
with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate,
whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of
his will.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.
Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity,
Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and
spirit
Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer
From Ann Packer, author of the New York Times best-selling novels The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words,
a collection of burnished, emotionally searing stories, framed by two
unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a
single family over the course of a lifetime.
A wife struggles to
make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her
teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman
shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and
reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips
with the joy—and vulnerability—of fatherhood. And, in the masterly
opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a
sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling
power of sex.
Ann Packer is one of our most talented archivists
of family life, with its hidden crevasses and unforeseeable perils, and
in these stories she explores the moral predicaments that define our
social and emotional lives, the frailty of ordinary grace, and the ways
in which we are shattered and remade by loss. With Swim Back to Me, she delivers shimmering psychological precision, unfailing intelligence, and page-turning drama: her most enticing work yet.
Inferno by Dan Brown
In the heart of Italy,
Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing
world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary
masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.
Against this
backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an
ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret
passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic
poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . .
before the world is irrevocably altered
The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives by Katie Couric
In this inspiring book,
Katie Couric distills the ingenious, hard-won insights of such leaders
and visionaries as Maya Angelou, Jimmy Carter, Michael J. Fox, and Ken
Burns, who offer advice about life, success, and happiness—how to take
chances, follow one’s passions, overcome adversity and inertia, commit
to something greater than ourselves, and more. Along the way, Katie
Couric reflects on her own life, and on the shared wisdom, and
occasional missteps, that have guided her from her early days as a desk
assistant at ABC to her groundbreaking work as a broadcast journalist.
Moving and empowering, The Best Advice I Ever Got is for all of
us, young or old, who want to hear from some of today’s best and
brightest about how they got it right, got it wrong, and came out on
top—so we can too.
I Have a Secret by Cheryl Bradshaw
A murderer has climbed
aboard PI Sloane Monroe’s twenty year class reunion cruise with one goal
in mind: revenge. After former prom king, Doug Ward, is stabbed and
tossed over the side of the ship, and a second in Doug’s former circle
of friends is found dead a few days later, Sloane returns to her native
California to hunt down the murderer. But in a town where everyone is
harboring secrets, how many more will die before she discovers the
truth?
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Enzo knows he is
different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and
an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching
television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of
his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver.
Through
Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and
he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the
eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he
and his family have been through.
A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it
Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel by Heather McElhatton
There are hundreds of lives sown inside Pretty Little Mistakes,
Heather McElhatton's singularly spectacular, breathtakingly unique
novel that has more than 150 possible endings. You may end up in an
opulent mansion or homeless down by the river; happily married with your
own corporation or alone and pecked to death by ducks in London; a Zen
master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park.
Is it destiny or decision that controls our fate? You can't change your past and start over from scratch in real life—but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can! But be warned, choose wisely
Lies I Told My Children by Karen McQuestion
Karen McQuestion not
only admits to having lied to her children, she lists it as one of her
top secret parenting strategies. Some of her finest parenting moments,
she recounts, have involved deception. On planes she’s translated the
garbled pilot’s announcement to her advantage saying, “This plane won’t
ever land if you keep kicking the back of that seat!” and once
introduced a new entrée to her fussiest eater by saying, “Honestly,
we’ve had this before and you really liked it.”
Among the 30
essays collected here (many previously published in the Chicago Tribune,
Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, or broadcast on NPR's Lake
Effect) are the author’s account of her first time cooking Thanksgiving
dinner for the in-laws, an identity mix-up at a Chinese restaurant, and a
description of the most important place she visited while in Washington
D.C.—the women’s bathroom in the Department of Agriculture building.
Throughout, McQuestion shares stories of her life and family with humor
and heartwarming insights.
The Yada Yada Prayer Group by Neta Jackson
What do an ex-con, a former drug addict, a real estate broker, a college student, and a married mother of two have in common?
Nothing,
or so I thought. Who would have imagined that God would make a prayer
group as mismatched as ours the closest of friends? I almost didn't even
go to the Chicago Women's Conference--after all, being thrown together
with five hundred strangers wasn't exactly my "comfort zone." But
something happened that weekend to make us realize we had to hang
together, and the "Yada Yada Prayer Group" was born! When I faced the
biggest crisis of my life, God used my newfound Sisters to show me what
it means to be just a sinner saved by grace
Luke has never been to
school. He's never had a birthday party, or gone to a friend's house for
an overnight. In fact, Luke has never had a friend.
Luke is one
of the shadow children, a third child forbidden by the Population
Police. He's lived his entire life in hiding and now, with a new housing
development replacing the woods next to his family's farm, he is no
longer even allowed to go outside.
Then, one day Luke sees a
girl's face in the window of a house where he knows two other children
already live. Finally, he's met a shadow child like himself.
Jen
is willing to risk everything to come out of the shadows -- does Luke
dare to become involved in her dangerous plan? Can he afford not to?
Be sure to check out www.goodreads.com for more exciting books to read!
