via Book Movement
1. 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–Lt. Louis Zamperini. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.”
2. Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
“Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper’s yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful–and attempts a nail-biting escape.”
3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
“Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping.”
4. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel by Jamie Ford
“Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.”
5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
“In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.”
6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
“Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, they are bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine. Marion flees his homeland fresh out of medical school when he and his brother fall in love with the same woman. He goes to work in an underfunded New York hospital until his past catches up with him, nearly destroying him, and he must trust his life to his father and brother.”
7. The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain
“Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash “beautiful boy” Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband’s career.”
8. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
“In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women–black and white, mothers and daughters–view one another.”
9. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
“As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey–a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.”
10. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
“On the anniversary of the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris, Julia is asked to write an article on this dark episode and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah.”
Up and Coming:
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The library offers book club kits for several of the titles above. For more information about these kits, please visit the circulation desk or call to inquire: 978-774-0554.