The following titles are available in sets of approximately fifteen copies; sometimes more. Those with an asterisk * have a study guide to accompany the title. Please call (801) 359-9670 to check availability. We invite you to select books from the following themes. (Some titles may be found in more than one category.)

Best Sellers

* Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir  – (Frank McCourt, 1996) McCourt’s account of his parents’ return to Ireland from New York when he was four chronicles a childhood through extreme poverty and “swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor…a work of lasting beauty.”

* The Bean Trees – (Barbara Kingsolver, 1988) Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and leaving town as soon as she could. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three year old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.

Bee Season – (Myla Goldberg, 2001) An eccentric family falls apart at the seams in an absorbing debut that finds congruencies between the elementary school spelling-bee circuit, Jewish mysticism, Eastern religious cults and compulsive behavior. Nine-year-old Eliza Naumann feels like the dullest resident of a house full of intellectuals until she discovers a rare aptitude for spelling, winning her school and district bees with a surreal surge of mystical insight, in which letters seem to take on a life of their own. Goldberg’s quiet wit, balanced by an empathetic understanding of human foibles, animates every page. While coming-of-age stories all bear a certain similarity, Goldberg strikes new ground here, and displays a fresh and distinctive voice.

The Book Thief - (Markus Zusak, 2007) It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

The Boy in the Stiped Pajamas - (John Boyne, 2006) When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Cold Mountain - (Charles Frazier, 1997) An adventure story and love story are intertwined in this powerful and majestically moving book about a man who had been fighting at Petersburg and decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the woman he loves fights to revive her fathers farm and survive. He encounters slaves, marauders, bounty hunters and witches either try to help or hurt him. An Authentic American Odyssey.

The House on Mango Street - (Sandra Cisneros, 1984) A story of harsh realities and beauty unfold as Cisneros describes the story of the young girl, Esperanza Cordero, growing up in a latino section of Chicago. Depicted in a series of vignettes this novel produces a novel about this young girl “coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.”

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language - (Eva Hoffman, 1989) Author Eva Hoffman spent her childhood in Poland until her family immigrated to Vancouver in 1959, where 13-ear-old Eva lost all sense of place and belonging. Lost in Translation is a moving memoir that takes the experience of exile based on cultural and linguistic differences and humanizes it to such a degree that it becomes relevant to the lives of a wider group of readers.As Hoffman savors the nuances of her adopted language, she remains ever conscious of assimilation's perils. Hoffman's is a penetrating, lyrical memoir that casts a wide net as it joins vivid anecdotes and vigorous philosophical insights on Old World Cracow and Ivy League America; Polish anti-Semitism; the degradations suffered by immigrants; and Hoffman's cultural nostalgia, self-analysis and intellectual passion.

* One Hundred Years of Solitude – (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967) This Nobel Prize winning author has created a multi-generational story using magical realism. The widely loved novel “is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race,” according to William Kennedy in The New York Times.

Reading Lolita in Tehran – (Axar Nafisi, 2003) Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading.  

* Snow Falling on Cedars - (David Guterson, 1995) In 1954 a local fisherman of San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound is found suspiciously drowned. A Japanese American is charged with his murder and with it brings the memories of a community Japanese residents sent into exile during WWII while its neighbors watched. Great at creating suspense, and a desire to change.

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