2015 Book Club in a Box

This is it!  This is the list from which you get to choose the 10 titles to be included in the 2015 Book Club in a Box. You can vote for your top 10 favorites here--on the right, or you can vote at the Library before November 8, 2014.

NONFICTION TITLES:

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown // A group of American rowers pursued gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

CARRY ME HOME by Diane McWhorter // A journalist chronicles the peak of the civil rights movement, focusing on the African American freedom fighters who stood firm on issues of civil rights and segregation during the movement's eventful climax in Birmingham.

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES by Siddhartha Mukherjee // A historical assessment of cancer addresses both the courageous battles against the complex disease and the misperceptions and hubris that have compromised modern understandings, covering such topics as ancient-world surgeries and the developments of present-day treatments.

MIRACLES AND MASSACRES by Glenn Beck // Details some of the little-known stories from American history that explain the American identity and where the country is headed in the future.

MY STORY by Elizabeth Smart // The daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, who was abducted, held captive, and repeatedly raped, recounts the constant fear she endured, her determination to maintain hope, her escape, and her transformation from victim to advocate.

OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell // Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent.

THE POWER OF HABIT by Charles Duhigg // An examination of the science behind habits, how we form them and break them.   

QUIET by Susan Cain // Introverts — approximately one-third of the population — are undervalued in American society.

THE SHORT AND TRAGIC LIFE OF ROBERT PEACE by Jeff Hobbs // A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets when he returns home. 

A STAR FOR MRS BLAKE by April Smith // Five American women-Gold Star Mothers-travel to France to visit the graves of their World War I soldier sons: a pilgrimage that will change their lives in unforeseeable and indelible ways

UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand  // Relates the story of a U.S. airman who survived when his bomber crashed into the sea during World War II, spent forty-seven days adrift in the ocean before being rescued by the Japanese Navy, and was held as a prisoner until the end of the war.

WILD by Cheryl Strayed //  A life-changing hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

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FICTION TITLES:

AMITY AND SORROW by Peggy Riley // A page-turning literary debut about a mother and her two teenage daughters who escape a polygamist cult and start over.

THE BOOK OF SECRETS by Elizabeth Joy Arnold // After years of marriage, Chloe and Nate Sinclair, bound by their love of literature, must finally come to terms with a tragic event from their past that they have turned their back on for so long and their failing bookstore that they once loved.

DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth // In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all. (Young Adult title)

DRACULA by Bram Stoker // During a business visit to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, a young English solicitor finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents. Jonathan Harker is attacked by three phantom women, observes the Count's transformation from human to bat form, and discovers puncture wounds on his own neck that seem to have been made by teeth. Harker returns home upon his escape from Dracula's grim fortress, but a friend's strange malady -- involving sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss, and mysterious throat wounds -- initiates a frantic vampire hunt. The popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 horror romance is as deathless as any vampire. Its supernatural appeal has spawned a host of film and stage adaptations, and more than a century after its initial publication, it continues to hold readers spellbound.

 THE GIVER by Lois Lowry // Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives. (Young Adult title)

THE GODDESS OF SMALL VICTORIES by Yannick Grannec // Sent to retrieve the records of mathematician Kurt Gèodel from his embittered widow, Princeton University librarian Anna Roth gradually learns the widow's painful experiences during and after World War II in the shadow of her husband.

GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn // A woman disappears from her Missouri home on her fifth anniversary; is her bitter, oddly evasive husband a killer?

THE HIDING PLACE by Corrie Ten Boom // An old Dutch watchmaker and his two daughters become the center of a major underground operation: to hide Jewish refugees from the occupying Germans. They break all the rules to save the lives of men, women, and children being hunted by the Nazis. The cost of their bravery is betrayal, and they end up in the dreaded Ravensbruck concentration camp. Nevertheless, they continue their efforts to save those around them.

THE INVENTION OF WINGS by Sue Monk Kidd // Traces more than three decades in the lives of a wealthy Charleston debutante who longs to break free from the strictures of her household and pursue a meaningful life; and the urban slave, Handful, who is placed in her charge as a child before finding courage and a sense of self.

JULIET'S NURSE by Lois Leveen // A retelling of Shakespeare's tragic romance from the perspective of Juliet's closest caregiver follows the experiences of a grieving mother who becomes a wet nurse to a powerful family's daughter and who learns her employer's darkest secrets as the girl comes of age.

LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING by Tiphanie Yanique // Chronicles the families of three siblings who survived a shipwreck off the Virgin Islands in 1916 and raised three generations on the islands, adapting to the unique language, rhythm and magic of island life over 60 years.

LETTERS FOR EMILY by Camron Steve Wright // A victim of Alzheimer's who knows that he is dying, Harry Whitney compiles a collection of original poems as a legacy for his granddaughter Emily, hoping that it will lead to a cache of letters that might bring together his estranged family.

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M.L. Stedman // Set on a remote Australian island, where a childless couple live quietly running a lighthouse, until a boat carrying a baby washes ashore.

THE LIONS OF LUCERNE by Brad Thor  // When a group of Secret Service agents is massacred in Utah and the president of the United States is abducted, surviving agent Scot Harvath vows to avenge his murdered colleagues and find the kidnappers.

LUCKY US by Amy Bloom // Forging a life together after being abandoned by their parents, half sisters Eva and Iris share decades in and out of the spotlight in golden-era Hollywood and mid-twentieth-century Long Island.

MARY COIN by Marisa Silver // Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother photograph inspires the story of two women one famous and one forgotten and their remarkable chance encounter. (see photo inset)

ME BEFORE YOU by Jojo Moyes // Taking a job as an assistant to extreme sports enthusiast Will, who is wheelchair bound after a motorcycle accident, Louisa struggles with her employer's acerbic moods and learns of his shocking plans before demonstrating to him that life is still worth living.

NEVERHOME by Laird Hunt // A farmer's wife leaves her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in this harrowing Civil War tale.

ORPHAN TRAIN by Christina Baker Kline // A historical novel about orphans swept off the streets of New York and sent to the Midwest in the 1920s.

THE ROUND HOUSE by Louise Erdrich// When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, fourteen-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.

THE STORIED LIFE OF A.J. FIKRY by Gabrielle Zevin // When his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A. J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life.

THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA by Katy Simpson Smith // A sweeping generational story, set in a small coastal town in North Carolina during the waning years of the American Revolution, follows fathers and daughters, mother and son, and master and slave as they search for redemption during a time of war, servitude, and love.

THE THING ABOUT DECEMBER by Donal Ryan // In a work short-listed for The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the innocent and painfully self-conscious Johnsey Cunliffe finds his cocooned rural Irish life suddenly disintegrating.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khalid Hosseini  // A moving story about two women set in Afghanistan. The book's story illustrates both the second class, serf-like treatment of two women and their subjection to physical and emotional brutality that was allowed, enabled and endorsed. We also get to see the bravery, kindness and self-resilience of these same two women. Despite the harsh reality of the story, the humanness and compassion shown by both women while trying to survive in such a brutal and oppressive environment is very uplifting.

THE UNAMERICANS by Molly Antopol // A stunning exploration of characters shaped by the forces of history, the debut work of fiction by Molly Antopol, a 2013 National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree.

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU by Jonathan Tropper //  A quirky family gathers for the Jewish ritual of sitting shiva after the death of its patriarch.

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