Books+On+Our+List

When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan.  Intricately plotted, intelligently conceived, and relentlessly entertaining, Martin Clark’s new novel ties together family loyalty and the legal system in one slippery knot.
 * __Bel Canto by Ann Patchett__ **
 * __The Legal Limit by Martin Clark__ **

The son of an abusive father and a loving mother, Mason Hunt managed to escape the small town of Stuart, Virginia, for college and law school. When he and his family move back he becomes the town’s commonwealth attorney. But, Mason has a horrible, dark secret: Years before, he and his brother, Gates, witnessed a murder on a back country road. Now the events of one night may prove his undoing.  __**The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by [|John Boyne] **__ Berlin 1942

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. Children's book illustrator Irina McGovern enjoys a quiet and settled life in London with her partner, fellow American expatriate Lawrence Trainer, a smart, loyal, disciplined intellectual at a prestigious think tank. To their small circle of friends, their relationship is rock solid. Until the night Irina unaccountably finds herself dying to kiss another man: their old friend from South London, the stylish, extravagant, passionate top-ranking snooker player Ramsey Acton. The decision to give in to temptation will have consequences for her career, her relationships with family and friends, and perhaps most importantly the texture of her daily life. Hinging on a single kiss, this enchanting work of fiction depicts Irina's alternating futures with two men temperamentally worlds apart yet equally honorable. With which true love Irina is better off is neither obvious nor easy to determine, but Shriver's exploration of the two destinies is memorable and gripping. Poignant and deeply honest, written with the subtlety and wit that are the hallmarks of Shriver's work, //The Post-Birthday World// appeals to the what-if in us all.
 * __Post-Birthday World by [|Lionel Shriver] __ **

From a writer "of near-miraculous perfection" (//The New York Times Book Review//) and "a literary intelligence far surpassing most other writers of her generation" (//San Francisco Chronicle//), //The Emperor's Children// is a dazzling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way-and not-in New York City. There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite-an "It" girl finishing her first book; the daughter ofMurray Thwaite,celebratedintellectual andjournalist-and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, acash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray's nephew, Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. As the skies darken, it is Bootie's unexpected decisions-and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome-that will change each of their lives forever. A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune-of innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamour, disaster, and promise-//The Emperor's Children// is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment.  <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday Night Knitting Club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for just a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her whole world is shattered.
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">__The Emperor's Children by [|Claire Messud] : (Haven't finished)__ **
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Friday Night Knitting Club //<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif';">by [|Kate Jacobs] // **<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">

Luckily, Georgia's friends are there, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">

<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">The tradition of Marisa de los Santos and Anne Tyler comes a moving debut about a young mother's year of heartbreak, loss, and forgiveness...and help that arrives from unexpected sources. Four months after her husband's death, Janie LaMarche remains undone by grief and anger. Her mourning is disrupted, however, by the unexpected arrival of a builder with a contract to add a porch onto her house. Stunned, Janie realizes the porch was meant to be a surprise from her husband—now his last gift to her. As she reluctantly allows construction to begin, Janie clings to the familiar outposts of her sorrow—mothering her two small children with fierce protectiveness, avoiding friends and family, and stewing in a rage she can't release. Yet Janie's self-imposed isolation is breached by a cast of unlikely interventionists: her chattering, ipecac-toting aunt; her bossy, over-manicured neighbor; her muffin-bearing cousin; and even Tug, the contractor with a private grief all his own. As the porch takes shape, Janie discovers that the unknowable terrain of the future is best navigated with the help of others—even those we least expect to call on, much less learn to love. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> //<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Out Stealing Horses //<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he's out on a walk. From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss, and in the precise, irresistible prose of a newly crowned master of fiction. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Set in postwar Germany, //The Reader// is a provocative, morally challenging, and deeply moving novel about a young boy's erotic awakening in a clandestine love affair with a mysterious older woman. Falling ill on his way home from school, 15-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. For a time, the two become passionate lovers. Then, one day, Hanna disappears without a word. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael recognizes his former lover on the stand, accused of a hideous crime. And as he watches Hanna refuse to defend herself against the charges, Michael gradually realizes that she may be guarding a secret more shameful than murder. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">There are places that I have never forgotten. A little cobbled street in a smoky mill town in the North of England has haunted me for the greater part of my life. It was inevitable that I should write about it and the people who lived on both sides of its ‘Invisible Wall.’ ”
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Shelter Me Juliette Fay **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Out Stealing Horses; Per Petterson **
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The Reader **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by [|Bernhard Schlink] **//
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The Invisible Wall **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by [|Harry Bernstein], **//

The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up, in a small English mill town, was seemingly unremarkable. It was identical to countless other streets in countless other working-class neighborhoods of the early 1900s, except for the “invisible wall” that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. Only a few feet of cobblestones separated Jews from Gentiles, but socially, it they were miles apart.

On the eve of World War I, Harry’s family struggles to make ends meet. His father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams: new shoes that might secure Harry’s admission to a fancy school; that her daughter might marry the local rabbi; that the entire family might one day be whisked off to the paradise of America.

Then Harry’s older sister, Lily, does the unthinkable: She falls in love with Arthur, a Christian boy from across the street.

When Harry unwittingly discovers their secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.

A wonderfully charming memoir written when the author wasninety-three, The Invisible Wall vibrantly brings to life an all-but-forgotten time and place. It is a moving tale of working-class life, and of the boundaries that can be overcome by love. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">In the tradition of //This Boy's Life// and //The Liar's Club//, J.R. Moehringer's //The Tender Bar// is a raucous, poignant, luminously written memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar. A national bestseller that was named one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2005 by the //New York Times, The Tender Bar// will reach an even larger audience in paperback.
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The Tender Bar : A Memoir **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by <span style="color: windowtext; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">[|J. R. Moehringer]  **//

//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Born on a Blue Day //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> is a journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today -- guided by its owner himself. Daniel Tammet sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film //Rain Man//. Daniel has a compulsive need for order and routine -- he eats the same precise amount of cereal for breakfast every morning and cannot leave the house without counting the number of items of clothing he's wearing. When he gets stressed or is unhappy, he closes his eyes and counts. But in one crucial way Daniel is not at all like the Rain Man: he is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life. He has emerged from the "other side" of autism with the ability to function successfully -- he is even able to explain what is happening inside his head. //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Born on a Blue Day //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> is a triumphant and uplifting story, starting from early childhood, when Daniel was incapable of making friends and prone to tantrums, to young adulthood, when he learned how to control himself and to live independently, fell in love, experienced a religious conversion to Christianity, and most recently, emerged as a celebrity. The world's leading neuroscientists have been studying Daniel's ability to solve complicated math problems in one fell swoop by seeing shapes rather than making step-by-step calculations. Here he explains how he does it, and how he is able to learn new languages so quickly, simply by absorbing their patterns. Fascinating and inspiring, //Born on a Blue Day// explores what it's like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human -- our minds. A bestseller in the UK, THE READING GROUP is about a group of women who meet regularly to read and discuss books, and how their lives become intertwined, both with the books they read and with each other's lives. What starts out as a good idea born from a glass of wine and the need to socialize, turns into much more. Over the span of a year, Clare, Harriet, Nicole, Polly and Susan -- five women of different ages, backgrounds and contrasting dilemmas -- transform themselves through the shared community of a book group. Their reading group becomes a forum for each of the women's views, expressed initially by the book they're reading and increasingly openly as the bonds of friendship cement. As the months pass, these women's lives become more and more intertwined. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; msofontkerning: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Rescued from a Dumpster on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a discarded diary brings to life the glamorous, forgotten world of an extraordinary young woman. For more than half a century, the red leather diary lay silent, languishing inside a steamer trunk, its worn cover crumbling into little flakes. When a cleaning sweep of a New York City apartment building brings this lost treasure to light, both the diary and its owner are given a second life. Recovered by Lily Koppel, a young writer working at the New York Times, the journal paints a vivid picture of 1930s New York–horseback riding in Central Park, summer excursions to the Catskills, and an obsession with a famous avant-garde actress. From 1929 to 1934, not a single day's entry is skipped. Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft's, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. As she turns the diary's brittle pages, Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lovely ingénue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Rome, Paris, and London? Compelled by the hopes and heartaches captured in the pages, Koppel sets out to find the diary's owner, her only clue the inscription on the frontispiece–"This book belongs to . . . Florence Wolfson." A chance phone call from a private investigator leads Koppel to Florence, a ninety-year-old woman living with her husband of sixty-seven years. Reunited with her diary, Florence ventures back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that burned with artistic fervor. Joining intimate interviews with original diary entries, Koppel reveals the world of a New York teenager obsessed with the state of her soul and her appearance, and muses on the serendipitous chain of events that returned the lost journal to its owner. Evocative and entrancing, //The Red Leather Diary// re-creates the romance and glitter, sophistication and promise, of 1930s New York, bringing to life the true story of a precocious young woman who dared to follow her dreams. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; msofontkerning: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Born on a Blue Day : Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by <span style="color: windowtext; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">[|Daniel Tammet]  **//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
 * //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Reading Group : A Novel //**//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">by [|//Elizabeth Noble//] **//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">
 * //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The Red Leather Diary : Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal //**//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">by [|//Lily Koppel//] **//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">

<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Wally Lamb's two previous novels, //She's Come Undone// and //I Know This Much Is True,// struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (//New York Times//).
 * //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The Hour I First Believed //**//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">by [|//Wally Lamb//] (This should be a summer read) **//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">

In //The Hour I First Believed,// Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.

When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American.

//The Hour I First Believed// is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity

//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">summer is a time to grow //<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> //seeds// Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead. //roots// Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. //leaves// Ama is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products. It is a new summer. And a new sisterhood. Come grow with them. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">In //The Rest of Her Life//, Laura Moriarty delivers a luminous, compassionate, and provocative look at how mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to one another.
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">3 Willows : The Sisterhood Grows **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by [|Ann Brashares]  **//
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Rest of Her Life **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by [|Laura Moriarty] **//<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">

Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy -- the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community. We see the story from Leigh's perspective, as she grapples with the hard reality of what her daughter has done and the devastating consequences her actions have on the family of another teenage girl in town, all while struggling to protect Kara in the face of rising public outcry.

Like the best works of Jane Hamilton, Jodi Picoult, and Alice Sebold, Laura Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life is a novel of complex moral dilemma, filled with nuanced characters and a page-turning plot that makes readers ask themselves, "What would I do?"

<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">It's a winter evening in Boston and the temperature has drastically dropped as a blizzard approaches the city. On this fateful night, Bernard Doyle plans to meet his two adopted sons, Tip the older, and more serious and Teddy, the affectionate dreamer, at a Harvard auditorium to hear a speech given by Jesse Jackson. Doyle, an Irish Catholic and former Boston mayor, has done his best to keep his two sons interested in politics, from the day he and his now deceased wife became their parents, through their childhoods, and now in their lives as college students. Though the two boys are African-American, the bonds of the family's love have never been tested. But as the snow begins to falls, an accident triggers into motion a series of events that will forever change their lives. This is at its very center, a novel about what truly defines family and the lengths we will go to protect our children. As she did in her bestselling novel //Bel Canto//, Patchett beautifully weaves together seemingly disparate lives to show how intimately humans can connect. Stunning and powerful, //Run// is sure to engage any Patchett fan and bring her even more admirers.
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Run **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by [|Ann Patchett] **//

<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Meet Pi Patel, a young man on the cusp of adulthood when fate steps in and hastens his lessons in maturity. En route with his family from their home in India to Canada, their cargo ship sinks, and Pi finds himself adrift in a lifeboat -- alone, save for a few surviving animals, some of the very same animals Pi's zookeeper father warned him would tear him to pieces if they got a chance. But Pi's seafaring journey is about much more than a struggle for survival. It becomes a test of everything he's learned -- about both man and beast, their creator, and the nature of truth itself. With a brilliant combination of sensitivity and a precise economy of language, Martel develops a story some readers might find less than credible. But his capacity for the mysterious, and a true understanding of the depths of human resilience will compel even the most skeptical of readers to continue on the fantastic journey with Pi, and an unusual 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. //(Summer 2002 Selection)//
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Life of Pi **//**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">by [|Yann Martel] **////**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">: (Hard to get into) **//

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Returning to the small Loire village of her childhood, Framboise Dartigen is relived when no one recognizes her. Decades earlier, during the German occupation, her family was driven away because of a tragedy that still haunts the town. Framboise has come back to run a little cafe serving the recipes her mother recorded in a scrapbook. But when her cooking receives national attention, her anonymity begins to shatter. Seeking answers, Framboise begins to see ther her mother's scrapbook is more than it seems. Hidden among the recipes for crepes and liquors are clues that will lead Framboise to the truth of long ago. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">"A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic." —William Styron
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Five Quarters of an Orange by Joanne Harris **
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates **

From the moment of its publication in 1961, **Revolutionary Road** was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

In his introduction to this edition, novelist Richard Ford pays homage to the lasting influence and enduring power of **Revolutionary Road**.

<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to shake his head and his life was never the same again. From that day forward his life became a hell of uncontrollable tics, urges, and involuntary utterances. Eventually he is diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive disorder, and Cory embarks on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist, enduring countless combinations of medications in wildly varying doses. Soon it becomes unclear what tics are symptoms of his disease and what are side effects of the drugs. The only certainty is that __it kept getting worse.__ Despite his lack of control, Cory is aware of every embarrassing movement, and sensitive to every person's reaction to his often aggravating presence. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life is a living hell. <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">The biblical story of Adam and Eve has fascinated people for centuries. Elliott twists this story and refashions an intimate account of this age-old tale, retelling it through the perspective of the first woman and her daughters. Putting a definite female spin on the familiar saga, the author manages to reinvigorate the temptation, the banishment from the Garden of Eden, and the Cain and Abel fratricide. Still, readers expecting a mere retelling of Old Testament chestnuts are in for a pleasant surprise, as the narrative moves well beyond that timeworn terrain. Elliott manages to conjure up an unexpectedly detailed account of a beautiful but often-brutal ancient world while painting the portrait of an extended family unit struggling to carve out a viable existence in the face of seemingly insurmountable internal and external obstacles. Readers who loved Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent (1997) will welcome this fresh addition to the biblical-fiction genre. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">The title characters in //Me & Emma// are very nearly photographic opposites--8-year-old Carrie, the raven-haired narrator, is timid and introverted, while her little sister Emma is a tow-headed powerhouse with no sense of fear. The girls live in a terrible situation: they depend on an unstable mother that has never recovered from her husband’s murder, their stepfather beats them regularly, and they must forage on their own for food. Stop here and you have a story told many times before, as fiction and nonfiction in tales like //[|Ellen Foster]//, or //[|I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings]// --stories in which a young girl reveals the horrors of her childhood. //Me & Emma// differentiates itself with a spectacular finish, shocking the reader and turning the entire story on its head. Through several twists and turns the reader learns that things are not quite the way our narrator led us to believe and everything crescendos in a way that (like all good thrillers) immediately makes you want to go back and read the whole book again from the start <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">A near-fatal accident in the dark of night—30-year-old Lizzy is struck in a hit-and-run—sets in motion a complicated, surprising story of love, loss and sacrifice. When Lizzy was two, her parents were killed in a plane crash, and she was sent to live with her beloved Uncle Mike, a Catholic priest. In prose as fresh and lovely as a Maine summer evening, Lizzy tells of seven halcyon years with her uncle. But when a bitter housekeeper falsely accuses Mike of sexually abusing Lizzy, her cozy world is shattered. Sent to live with relatives, Lizzy is told that Mike succumbed to the weak family heart and died. So how has he visited her in her hospital room after the hit-and-run? This, as well as the mystery of why Father Mike meekly accepted the accusations leveled against him, begins to come clear when Lizzy's accident and rehabilitation dredge up questions of another tragic event, long hidden. Following the structure of the Liturgy of the Hours from Invitatory to Matins, Wood (//My Only Story//) employs a sophisticated, layered architecture, circling from present to past to reveal shocking truths. Interspersed with Lizzy's first-person narration are sections told from Uncle Mike's third-person perspective, which provide mesmerizing insight into what is known and what is remembered. Wood's story unassumingly builds in power, right up to its moving final page. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">
 * <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Against Medical Advice by James Patterson and Hal Friedman **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Eve, A Noval of the first Woman: Ellisa Elliot **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Me and Emma: Elizabeth flock **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Any Bitter Thing: Monica Wood **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">In her light second novel, Clayton chronicles a group of mothers who convene in a Palo Alto park and share their changing lives as the late 1960s counterculture blossoms around them. Linda is a runner who tracks women's progress at the Olympics. Brett has one eye on the moon, where men are living out her astronaut dreams. Southern belle Kath isn't convinced she has dreams outside the confines of her marriage (but she's open to persuasion), while quiet Ally only hopes for what the other women already have: a child. Frankie, a Chicago transplant who has followed her computer genius husband to a nascent Silicon Valley, is the story's narrator and the ladies' ringleader, inspiring them all to follow her dream of becoming a writer. They write in moments snatched from their household chores and share their stories in the park. Though the narration and story lines are so syrupy they verge on hokey, Clayton ably conjures the era's details and captures the women's changing roles in a world that expects little of them. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">When Dr. Alice Howland first starts forgetting things like words when giving a speech, she thinks it might be because of menopause. But when she gets lost jogging near her house, on a route she has taken many times, she knows something is seriously wrong and seeks medical help. Not quite fifty, she is totally unprepared for the diagnosis - early onset Alzheimer's. As the disease progresses, Alice and her husband John learn everything they can about the disease and treatments, but Alzheimer's quickly takes its toll on both Alice and her family.
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Wednesday Sisters: Meg Clayton **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Still Alice: Genova **

"Still Alice" is a beautifully written, heartbreaking novel about the devastating affect Alzheimer's has on its victims and their families. Author Lisa Genova's choice of Alice - young, in shape, and intelligent (she's a Psychiatry Professor at Harvard) - shows that Alzheimer's can strike anyone, not just the elderly. The book is written from Alice's viewpoint, but Genova does a good job of showing the affect of Alzheimer's not only on Alice, but how her family (John, and their children - Anna, Tom, and Lydia) struggle with the changes in Alice. Genova does an excellent job of describing what is going on in Alice's head as the dementia increases. In fact, Genova does such a good job that I sometimes forgot the book was fiction and not about a real person.

"Still Alice" takes place over a relatively short period of time (September 2002 to September 2005) and it is frightening how fast the Alzheimer's takes over Alice. Genova skillfully captures the bewilderment Alice feels and there are some moments in the book that are very moving - especially a moment involving a black rug and a moment involving a message a healthier Alice left for a sicker Alice. The reaction of Alice's family as they deal not only with her having Alzheimer's but the fact that her children may inherit the disease is very realistic. Inevitably, of course, life goes on and Genova expertly shows Alice's family as they move on with their lives, even if readers won't always agree with their actions. If I have any quibble with the book, it's that it is one chapter too long - the second to last chapter ended on a poignant note and I think Genova should have stopped the book there.

"Still Alice" is a moving tale about the devastating affect Alzheimer's can have on a family. (A portion of the sale of each novel will go to the Alzheimer's Association.) <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> //<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Starred Review. //<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Hannah (On Mystic Lake) goes a little too far into Lifetime movie territory in her latest, an epic exploration of the complicated terrain between best friends—one who chooses marriage and motherhood while the other opts for career and celebrity. The adventures of poor, ambitious Tully Hart and middle-class romantic Kate Mularkey begin in the 1970s, but don't really get moving until about halfway into the book, when Tully, who claws her way to the heights of broadcast journalism, discovers it's lonely at the top, and Katie, a stay-at-home Seattle housewife, forgets what it's like to be a rebellious teen. What holds the overlong narrative together is the appealing nature of Tully and Katie's devotion to one another even as they are repeatedly tested by jealousy and ambition. Katie's husband, Johnny, is smitten with Tully, and Tully, who is abandoned by her own booze-and-drug-addled mother, relishes the adoration from Katie's daughter, Marah. Hannah takes the easy way out with an over-the-top tear-jerker ending, though her upbeat message of the power of friendship and family will, for some readers, trump even the most contrived plot twists. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">This is a dark, disturbing novel that was difficult to put down. I thought Brundage tackled some heavy issues in her debut novel, The Doctor's Wife, but she took on an even more massive load in Somebody Else's Daughter. Adoption, alcoholism, drug addiction, pornography, sexual abuse, murder, AIDS, prostitution, adultery. Thanks to Brundage's skill as an author, there is a lot going on, but it doesn't overwhelm. She slowly weaves together seemingly disparate story lines and characters in a masterful way that never fails to leave me in awe of her talent as a storyteller. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Sarah's key: De Rosney **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Firefly Lane: Hannah **
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Somebody else's Daughter: Brundage **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">In this pat but sweet attempt at FOB (fresh off the boat) chick lit, Tamila Soroush, a 27-year-old Iranian woman, flies to Tucson, Ariz., to stay with her older sister, Maryam (whom she hasn't seen in 15 years), and Maryam's orthopedic surgeon husband, Ardishir. Tami is there for a three-month stay, courtesy of a visa arranged by her loving parents, who want her to marry an Iranian with American citizenship and stay in the States. Tami concurs with this plan: "being married is a small price to pay if I can stay in the land of Opportunity." But on her way to her ESL class, Tami meets Ike, an affable American working at Starbucks while he raises money to open his own chain of coffee shops. Potential Iranian fiancé setups move forward while Tami and Ike's mutual feelings deepen. As she nears the end of her visa, Tami faces some tough choices. The plot is disposable and the agenda transparent, but watching Tami find her voice through such small comforts as being able to sit alone in a house, walk to school unescorted or buy lingerie with her sister will leave readers rooting for her. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">**The Next Thing on My List: Smolinski** __ <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">June Parker's life is meandering along until a freak car accident leaves Marissa, her 24-year-old passenger, dead and June wracked with guilt. June discovers a list Marissa had been keeping of 25 things she wanted to do by the time she turned 25. After a run-in with Marissa's brother, June resolves to complete the list. Kissing a total stranger and throwing away her scale prove far easier than pitching an idea at work or changing someone's life. But June approaches the list with aplomb, daring to speak up about being passed over for a manager position, and becoming a Big Sister to a quiet, studious Latina teen named DeeDee. But when June uncovers a secret of DeeDee's, she realizes changing someone else's life might involve changing her own as well. Clever and winning, Smolinski's novel will have readers rooting for June as they eagerly turn the pages to keep up with her progress on the list.
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Veil of Roses: Fitzgerald **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child’s illness and the mysterious death of one member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, //The Girls from Ames// is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life’s joys and challenges -- and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.
 * __<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">The Girls from Ames: Jeffrey Zaslow __**

The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. Photograph by photograph, recollection by recollection, occasionally with tears and often with great laughter, their sweeping and moving story is shared by Jeffrey Zaslow, //Wall Street Journal// columnist, as he attempts to define the matchless bonds of female friendship. It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women’s lives – their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters – and reveals how such friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them.

//The Girls from Ames// is the story of a group of ordinary women who built an extraordinary friendship. With both universal insights and deeply personal moments, it is a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.

//<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Expecting Adam //<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> is an autobiographical tale of an academically oriented Harvard couple who conceive a baby with Down's syndrome and decide to carry him to term. Despite everything Martha Beck and her husband John know about themselves and their belief system, when Martha gets accidentally pregnant and the fetus is discovered to have Down's syndrome, the Becks find they cannot even consider abortion. The presence of the fetus that they each, privately, believe is a familiar being named Adam is too strong. As Martha's terribly difficult pregnancy progresses, odd coincidences and paranormal experiences begin to occur for both Martha and John, though for months they don't share them with each other. Martha's pregnancy and Adam (once born) become the catalyst for tremendous life changes for the Becks. Focusing primarily on the pregnancy but floating back and forth between the present and recent and distant past, Martha Beck's well-written, down-to-earth, funny, heart-rending, and tender book transcends the cloying tone of much spiritual literature. Beck is trained as a methodical academician. Because of her step-by-step explanation of her own progress from doubt to belief, she feels like a reliable witness, and even the most skeptical readers may begin to doubt their senses. When she describes an out-of-body experience, we, too, feel ourselves transported to a pungent, noisy hawker center in Singapore. We, too, feel calming, invisible, supporting hands when she falls. Yet, whether or not readers believe in Beck's experiences is ultimately a moot point. There is no doubt that Adam--a boy who sees the world as a series of connections between people who love each other--is a tremendous gift to Beck, her family, and all who have the honor of knowing him <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; text-decoration: none;"> __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">**The Red Tent: Anita Diamant** __ <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider's look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob's daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah--all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery. "Like any sisters who live together and share a husband, my mother and aunties spun a sticky web of loyalties and grudges," Anita Diamant writes in the voice of Dinah. "They traded secrets like bracelets, and these were handed down to me the only surviving girl. They told me things I was too young to hear. They held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember." Remembering women's earthy stories and passionate history is indeed the theme of this magnificent book. In fact, it's been said that //The Red Tent// is what the Bible might have been had it been written by God's daughters, instead of her sons. //--Gail Hudson// //<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif';">--This text refers to the [|**Paperback**] edition. // <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">This clever and inventive tale works on three levels: as an intriguing science fiction concept, a realistic character study and a touching love story. Henry De Tamble is a Chicago librarian with "Chrono Displacement" disorder; at random times, he suddenly disappears without warning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. This leads to some wonderful paradoxes. From his point of view, he first met his wife, Clare, when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up to him exclaiming that she'd known him all her life. He, however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his 40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself time travelling to Clare's childhood and meeting her as a 6-year-old. The book alternates between Henry and Clare's points of view, and so does the narration. Reed ably expresses the longing of the one always left behind, the frustrations of their unusual lifestyle, and above all, her overriding love for Henry. Likewise, Burns evokes the fear of a man who never knows where or when he'll turn up, and his gratitude at having Clare, whose love is his anchor
 * __<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Expecting Adam: Martha Beck __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">__The Time Travelers Wife: Audrey Niffenegger__ **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Starred Review. See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (//laotong//, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (//Flower Net//) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of //nu shu//, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well.
 * __<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Snow flower and the Secret Fan: Lisa See __**

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> At twelve, Lucy Marie McGowan already knows she’ll be a psychologist when she grows up. And her quirky and conflicted family provides plenty of opportunity for her to practice her calling. Now Lucy, her “profoundly gifted” twin brother, Milo, her commitment-phobic mother, and her New Age grandmother are leaving Chicago for Timber Falls, Wisconsin, to care for her dying grandfather—a complex and difficult man whose failure as a husband and father still painfully echoes down through the years.
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">__Thank You for All Things by Sandra Kring__ (January 2010) **

Lucy believes her time in the rural town where the McGowan story began will provide a key piece to the puzzle of her family’s broken past, and perhaps even reveal the truth about her own missing father. But what she discovers is so much more—a lesson about the paradoxes of love and the grace of forgiveness that the adults around her will need help in remembering if their family is ever to find peace and embrace the future.

By turns heart-wrenching and heart-mending, **Thank You for All Things** is a powerful and poignant novel by a brilliant storyteller who illustrates that when it comes to matters of family and love, often it is the innocent who force others to confront their darkest secrets.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">At age forty-four, Alice Eve Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she was engaged to an inspiring man, joyfully raising her adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Alice tells her fiancé that she's never been happier. And then the stomach pains begin.
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">__What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen__ **

In her unflinchingly honest and ruefully witty voice, Alice nimbly carries us through her metamorphosis from a woman who has come to terms with infertility to one who struggles to love a heartbeat found in her womb - six months into a high-risk pregnancy.

//What I Thought I Knew// is a page-turner filled with vivid characters, humor, and many surprises and twists of fate. With the suspense of a thriller and the intimacy of a diary, Cohen describes her unexpected journey through doubt, a broken medical system, and the hotly contested terrain of motherhood and family in today's society. Timely and compelling, //What I Thought I Knew// will capture readers of memoirs such as //Eat, Pray, Love//; //The Glass Castle//; and //A Three Dog Life//.

<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The Red Lobster perched in the far corner of a run-down New England mall hasn’t been making its numbers and headquarters has pulled the plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift with a near-mutinous staff. All the while, he’s wondering how to handle the waitress he’s still in love with, what to do about his pregnant girlfriend, and where to find the present that will make everything better.
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">__Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan__ **

Stewart O’Nan has been called “the bard of the working class,” and //Last Night at the Lobster// is one of his most acclaimed works to date.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> The two silent Ss of Des Moines beckon twenty-three-year-old Vivette with a sexy finger, a promise. So, in the mid-1990s, she convinces Grandpa Joe-Joe to sell his Buick for twenty dollars, leaves behind her friends, her job at a hip New England bakery, and an affair with a married man, and moves to Iowa. Margaret, who left the same bakery years earlier on her own restless quest, offers pointers from her cautiously settled Nebraska life.
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">__Reconsidering Happiness by Sherrie Flick__ **

In a story of lust and longing, love and loneliness, disappointment and desire stretching from the East Coast to the West, these two pioneering women navigate through secrets, lies, decisions, and compromises shared over pool tables, postcards, and shots of whiskey. Starting up, starting over, slowing down, they crisscross each other s lives like highways on a map, always escaping, flying toward a dreamt future, and trying to avoid the charted course. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; text-decoration: none;"> =<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">__The Middle Place__ [= 1&contrib=Kelly+Corrigan|Kelly Corrigan] = <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Newspaper columnist Corrigan was a happily married mother of two young daughters when she discovered a cancerous lump in her breast. She was still undergoing treatment when she learned that her beloved father, who'd already survived prostate cancer, now had bladder cancer. Corrigan's story could have been unbearably depressing had she not made it clear from the start that she came from sturdy stock. Growing up, she loved hearing her father boom out his morning HELLO WORLD dialogue with the universe, so his kids would feel like the world wasn't just a safe place but was even rooting for you. As Corrigan reports on her cancer treatment—the chemo, the surgery, the radiation—she weaves in the story of how it felt growing up in a big, suburban Philadelphia family with her larger-than-life father and her steady-loving mother and brothers. She tells how she met her husband, how she gave birth to her daughters. All these stories lead up to where she is now, in that middle place, being someone's child, but also having children of her own. Those learning to accept their own adulthood might find strength—and humor—in Corrigan's feisty memoir. **<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[|The Handmaid's Tale] by Margaret Eleanor Atwood  **<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The lives of a suddenly jobless corporate executive, a teacher navigating a difficult relationship with her daughter and a young lavender farmer intertwine in Cook's straightforward novel. When a generous compensation package gives Noreen "Nora" Kelly-whose career defined her identity-18 months salary to forge a new path, she realizes she has little in common with her former work companions and strikes up a friendship with next-door neighbor Tess Tabares, who's struggling to connect with her college-bound daughter. The women begin taking daily walks and soon Rosemary "Rosie" Stockton, who owns her family's lavender farm, joins in. Despite their very different-yet all very prickly-personalities, the three women soon form a tight bond. With her easygoing style, Cook (Must Love Dogs) engages readers, drawing them into the daily lives of these new friends. Geographical inconsistencies-the novel is set in Massachusetts but has a distinctive Southern flair-may bother some readers but most will be satisfied with this breezy beach read.
 * <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[|Wildwater Walking Club, The] by Claire Cook **
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">So Much For All That: Lionel Shiver __****<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> (Does not come out until March 2010) **<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Following her breakout bestseller, [|//The Time Traveler's Wife//], Audrey Niffenegger returns with [|//Her Fearful Symmetry//], a haunting tale about the complications of love, identity, and sibling rivalry. The novel opens with the death of Elspeth Noblin, who bequeaths her London flat and its contents to the twin daughters of her estranged twin sister back in Chicago. These 20-year-old dilettantes, Julie and Valentina, move to London, eager to try on a new experience like one of their obsessively matched outfits. Historic Highgate Cemetery, which borders Elspeth's home, serves as an inspired setting as the twins become entwined in the lives of their neighbors: Elspeth's former lover, Robert; Martin, an agoraphobic crossword-puzzle creator; and the ethereal Elspeth herself, struggling to adjust to the afterlife. Niffenegger brings these quirky, troubled characters to marvelous life, but readers may need their own supernatural suspension of disbelief as the story winds to its twisty conclusion <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Sally had an affair. She was exhausted and in desperate need of a break. When her business trip was unexpectedly cancelled, she decided to get away anyway. She met Mark and their tryst began. They talked about lives they lead, about their work and about their families. When the vacation came to an end, the two parted ways thinking they would never see each other again.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Her Fearful Symmetry: Audrey Niffenegger __**
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The Wrong Mother: Sophie Hannah __**

One night while Sally and her husband are watching TV and to Sally's surprise, Mark's name comes up on the news. To her surprise, his wife and child have both been killed. When they show Mark's picture, Sally realizes that the man she was with was not really Mark, her short term lover was using the identity of someone else. Now she is in panic mode and scared for her family. Will she be able to protect her family from this madman that she once shared a bed with? <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">

<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. //The Year of the Flood// is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible. Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers... Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away... By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, //The Year of the Flood// is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">In the very first line of "A Change in Altitude," a young white doctor who has arrived in Nairobi to conduct research, announces, "We're climbing Mount Kenya." In those four words to his wife, he suggests the story's central questions: Why is Patrick telling Margaret, with her scant climbing experience, rather than asking her? Can the young American couple rise to the physical and psychological challenge? And what will this climb allow them to discover about Kenya and about themselves? The novel, set in the 1970s, is told from Margaret's angle and, because she is a photographer, that perspective is often visual and sharply focused. It's clear from the beginning that she's especially sensitive to those who claim authority, and that includes all five of her climbing partners: She and Patrick, accompanied by a guide and porters, take on Mount Kenya with two European couples well accustomed to wielding the authority of post-Mau Mau white colonials. Patrick and Margaret's landlord, Arthur, is the one who has suggested the climb, and Margaret has certainly noticed the proprietary attention he pays her. Arthur's athletic wife, Diana, has noticed, too. Shreve moves relentlessly from plot point to plot point, and Arthur's frank interest, Diana's jealousy and Margaret's inability to keep up with the other climbers create plenty of momentum to keep readers panting alongside. Mount Kenya's debilitating altitude sickness, with the ongoing possibility of delusional behavior, renders the atmosphere fraught with tension. Shreve's prose is workaday here and the dialogue is occasionally stiff, but she knows how to keep a reader engaged. Sometimes, Margaret's interior monologue does a good job of explaining a bit of action: "After she had stumbled a couple of times, she noticed that the cook, whose name she didn't know (whose name she didn't know!), stood near her in case she fell badly." More often, however, Margaret's thoughts are separated from the action and tend to state her dilemmas baldly. In the middle of the night, she wakes in their mountain shelter to find rats crawling over her, and allows Arthur to comfort her by taking her hand. The passage describing the morning after seems designed to reassure those readers who are a little slow on the uptake: "She wondered who else had seen her hand in Arthur's, and if that explained the angry voices outside." Margaret and Patrick are thwarted in their attempt to reach the summit when the jealous Diana breaks away from the group as they cross a treacherous glacier. The ensuing accident haunts Margaret for the rest of the novel. As she sorts through her own guilt and resentment at being blamed, she finds herself sexually attracted to Rafiq, a young journalist of Pakistani and Welsh descent. Rafiq's brown skin (but not too brown) embodies Kenya's exotic appeal, and Margaret's reflection that there is "something inscrutable" about this man is obtuse, to say the least. She is, however, attracted to him for other reasons, too, chief among them his political and moral sensibility. The sexual threats to Patrick and Margaret's marriage are played out against a series of yet more ominous threats: Thieves steal their car, furniture and research notes; Margaret overhears a conversation about a mass grave that hides massacred protesters; Arthur and Diana's servant is viciously raped. The landscapes Margaret is drawn to photograph are spectacular, but fire ants, buffaloes, leopards and snakes all surprise her (the leopard and snake, appearing in tandem, are perhaps two natural threats too many). She decides to concentrate, ultimately, on photographing the people of Kenya, and her decision to take a newspaper job provides some of the novel's richest material. She leads Rafiq to former servants so that he can write about the harsh privations they endure as urban migrant workers separated from their villages and families. And when Patrick takes Margaret along to a psychiatric hospital where "many of the women suffered from hallucinations and delusions, while others could not control their bodies," her desire to photograph them is fueled by her shock and outrage at their treatment -- and perhaps by concern over her own dependent condition. By the end, Margaret's personal crisis crowds out the novel's consideration of the political crises in East Africa or, for that matter, the moral challenges facing white visitors like herself. Shreve packs an impressive amount of sympathetic and intelligent detail into this narrative, but ultimately the novel is more interested in Margaret's gooey self-discovery and the resolution of her romantic dilemma. But Shreve's introduction to recent Kenyan history, however romanticized, may lead readers, like Margaret, to learn more about the country's rich ethnic cultures and ongoing political struggles. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">In //Have a Little Faith//, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight-year journey between two worlds--two men, two faiths, two communities--that will inspire readers everywhere. Albom's first nonfiction book since //Tuesdays with Morrie, Have a Little Faith// begins with an unusual request: an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from Albom's old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy. Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he'd left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor--a reformed drug dealer and convict--who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof. Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Albom observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat. As America struggles with hard times and people turn more to their beliefs, Albom and the two men of God explore issues that perplex modern man: how to endure when difficult things happen; what heaven is; intermarriage; forgiveness; doubting God; and the importance of faith in trying times. Although the texts, prayers, and histories are different, Albom begins to recognize a striking unity between the two worlds--and indeed, between beliefs everywhere. In the end, as the rabbi nears death and a harsh winter threatens the pastor's wobbly church, Albom sadly fulfills the rabbi's last request and writes the eulogy. And he finally understands what both men had been teaching all along: the profound comfort of believing in something bigger than yourself. //<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Have a Little Faith //<span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;"> is a book about a life's purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man's journey, but it is everyone's story. Ten percent of the profits from this book will go to charity, including The Hole In The Roof Foundation, which helps refurbish places of worship that aid the homeless. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; msobidifontfamily: Tahoma; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; msobidifontfamily: Tahoma; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">For the first 10 years of her life, Lily Casey Smith, the narrator of this true-life novel by her granddaughter, Walls, lived in a dirt dugout in west Texas. Walls, whose megaselling memoir, //The Glass Castle//, recalled her own upbringing, writes in what she recalls as Lily's plainspoken voice, whose recital provides plenty of drama and suspense as she ricochets from one challenge to another. Having been educated in fits and starts because of her parents' penury, Lily becomes a teacher at age 15 in a remote frontier town she reaches after a solo 28-day ride. Marriage to a bigamist almost saps her spirit, but later she weds a rancher with whom she shares two children and a strain of plucky resilience. (They sell bootleg liquor during Prohibition, hiding the bottles under a baby's crib.) Lily is a spirited heroine, fiercely outspoken against hypocrisy and prejudice, a rodeo rider and fearless breaker of horses, and a ruthless poker player. Assailed by flash floods, tornados and droughts, Lily never gets far from hardscrabble drudgery in several states—New Mexico, Arizona, Illinois—but hers is one of those heartwarming stories about indomitable women that will always find an audience. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; msobidifontfamily: Tahoma; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">At first, the worst week of Janzen's life—she gets into a debilitating car wreck right after her husband leaves her for a guy he met on the Internet and saddles her with a mortgage she can't afford—seems to come out of nowhere, but the disaster's long buildup becomes clearer as she opens herself up. Her 15-year relationship with Nick had always been punctuated by manic outbursts and verbally abusive behavior, so recognizing her co-dependent role in their marriage becomes an important part of Janzen's recovery (even as she tweaks the 12 steps just a bit). The healing is further assisted by her decision to move back in with her Mennonite parents, prompting her to look at her childhood religion with fresh, twinkling eyes. (She provides an appendix for those unfamiliar with Mennonite culture, as well as a list of shame-based foods from hot potato salad to borscht.) Janzen is always ready to gently turn the humor back on herself, though, and women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating honesty with which she describes the efforts of friends and family to help her re-establish her emotional well-being. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; msobidifontfamily: Tahoma; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Narrator Mathilda Savitch is an adolescent girl negotiating life after the death of her older sister, Helene. Her parents, especially her alcoholic mother, are too traumatized to give her the comfort she needs, so she lives in an elaborate world of her own invented logic. Mathilda evaluates sex, religion and national tragedy in language that is constantly surprising, amusing and often heartbreaking. She speaks with the bold matter-of-factness of a child, but also reveals a deep understanding of life far beyond her years: I wondered why god would unlock a door just to show you emptiness, she says.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The Year of the Flood: Margaret Atwood __**
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">A Change in Altitude: Anite __**<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> Shreve
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Have A Little Faith: Mitch Albom __**
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Half Broke Horses: Jeannette Walls __**
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: Rhonda Janzen __**
 * __<span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Mathilda Savitzh: Victor Lodato __**

It made me wonder if maybe he was in cahoots with infinity. Lodato chooses every word with extreme care; Mathilda's observations read like a finely crafted epic poem, whose themes and imagery paint an intricate map of her inner life. She's a metaphysical Holden Caulfield for the terrifying present day. <span style="font-family: 'BacktalkSans BTN','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">

. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> __<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 130%;">Belong to Me” by Marisa de los Santos __ Everyone has secrets. Some we keep to protect ourselves, others to protect those we love. A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised herself when she was gripped by the sudden desire to head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she's made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt, the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake, and Cornelia develops an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman. As their individual stories unfold, the women become entangled in a web of trust, betrayal, love and loss that challenges them in ways they never imagined, and that ultimately teaches them what it means for one human being to belong to another.