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A car tumbles down a snowy ravine. Accident or suicide? On the other side of the world, a young woman walks out of a sandstorm in sub-Saharan Africa. In the labyrinth of the Niger Delta, a young boy learns to survive by navigating through the gas flares and oil spills of a ruined landscape. In the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the internet looking for victims. Lives intersect, worlds collide, a family falls apart. And it all begins with a single email: “Dear Sir, I am the son of an exiled Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help ...” From http://www.kobobooks.com

28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen

Nolen presents 28 stories of Africans affected by the deadly virus. A photograph accompanies each of the 28 personal histories. The stories, ranging from those of orphaned children on their own, struggling to keep from being raped by adult neighbors, to that of an HIV-positive beauty queen. There is 12-year-old Lefa Khoele, stuck in grade 3 because every year he has been too sick to take end-of-year exams. An informative and emotional read.

Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay

In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions to the present life of Connie’s niece, Anne... This spellbinding tale – set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley – crosses generations and cuts to the bone. Book jacket

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

Five women form the Freesia Court Book Club in small, town Minnesota. Over the course of the next 40 years they love, laugh and learn their way through the many trials, triumphs and tragedies of their very different lives. They learn that the real saving grace of being alive is having best friends.

Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, is a forensic anthropologist who is sent by an international human rights group to work with local officials to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder on the island. Bodies are found and what follows is a story about love, family, identity, the unknown enemy and the quest to unlock the hidden past--all propelled by a riveting mystery.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The sensual, rebellious Anna renounces a respectable yet stifling marriage for an affair that offers passion even as it ensnares her for destruction. Her story contrast with that of Levin, a young, self doubting agnostic who takes a different path to fulfilment.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This valuable addition to the literature of the Holocaust assembles for the first time the three known versions of Frank's diary--the original, a self-edited version of same, and yet another edited by her father. It also contains a variety of related studies and reports, e.g., handwriting and paper analyses, new documentation regarding the Frank family's arrest, and a wealth of information about the diary's troubled publication history. Prepared under the auspices of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, this authoritative volume will silence forever those who have denied the diary's authenticity. It honors and enriches a story that has inspired most of the civilized world for over 40 years. Library Journal

The Archivist by Martha Cooley

A young woman’s impassioned pursuit of a sealed cache of T.S. Eliot’s letters lies at the heart of this emotionally charged story. The letters mean an unforgettable journey through marriage, madness, faith and desire; through the jazz-age of New York and into Europe beneath the shadows of the Holocaust. This is Cooley’s stunning debut novel; now available in paperback.

The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein

If you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoë, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama. Publishers Weekly

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize, this novel is about the relationship between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes) and George Edalji, a real but lesser known person. George was the son of an Indian-born, Church of England vicar and a Scots mother. In 1903, George was accused of writing obscene, threatening letters to his own family and of mutilating cattle in the community. He was convicted of criminal behavior in a blatant miscarriage of justice based on racial prejudice. Sir Arthur heard about George's case and began to advocate on his behalf. This is a combination psychological novel, detective story and literary thriller…great storytelling.

The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock

With the poignant arc of their histories and hopes, convictions and regrets intertwining, the three central characters of the Ash Garden are woven into an intricate, yet wide spanning tapestry of events evolving from the horror that was Hiroshima. From the market streets in Japan to German universities, from New York tenements to, ultimately a peaceful town in Ontario, three fates triangulate and attempt to balance the true costs and implications of a nightmare that has persisted in memory for more than half a century.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

A tour through the lives of several young people one long, hot summer in pre-war England, particularly the life of literate thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis. Her consciousness is just beginning to bloom. Time speeds ahead, children grow up, war breaks out and choices are made, particularly as to how a moral dilemma will be resolve.

An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark

An Audience of Chairs opens with Moranna MacKenzie living alone in her ancestral Cape Breton farmhouse, waging a war with the symptoms of bipolar disorder and grieving the loss of her two daughters, taken from her over thirty years previously. Amazon.com

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai

Two city boys find themselves exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China's infamous Cultural Revolution. The two friends meet the local tailor's daughter, and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation – their ticket out of their grim surroundings.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

It's 1962, and Dee Moray, an American starlet, has just fled the tumultuous Roman set of Cleopatra to hole up in a dilapidated hotel in an obscure Italian seaside village. Pasquale Tursi, the young proprietor of the Hotel Adequate View, is instantly smitten. Flash-forward 50 years. Claire, the ambitious yet practical young assistant to the once-legendary producer Michael Deane, is enduring another Wild Pitch Friday. A screenwriter desperate to sell his script ("Donner! An epic story of resiliency!") and an older Italian man bearing Deane's tattered business card both appear at Claire's door. Walter expertly traces the lines among these characters, using keen wit and snappy dialog to express the theme that "life was a glorious catastrophe." ~ Library Journal

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter-Annawadi's "most-everything girl"-will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy." From chapters.indigo.ca

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

At the home of an unnamed South American country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. It is a perfect evening – until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in and takes the entire party hostage.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The novel’s protagonist, Sethe, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free because she has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach

Dr. Ravi Kapoor has reached the end of his tether. He is over-worked and exhausted; his South London hospital is out of funds; and reporters are hounding him about the death of a pensioner, who, for three days lay on a trolley untended, the blood stiffening on her clothes. Even home life has become impossible as his father-in-law, a disgusting and difficult old man, has been kicked out of his nursing home and has moved into Ravi’s spare bedroom. But then that “tip top man,” his cousin, Sonny, has a brainwave, his “great eureka.”

Dunroamin is a converted guesthouse in Bangalore, where Sonny starts a home for old people. Travel and set-up are inexpensive, staff willing and plentiful -- and the British pensioners can enjoy the hot weather and take mango-juice with their gin.

Skillfully inter-weaving the stories of the inhabitants of Dunroamin, their characters and their families, Deborah Moggach has created a world in which hilarity is matched with the poignancy of getting old, and comedy with the darker issues of care in the community. ~ Book Description

Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!
A burnt-out political aide quits just before an election — but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock — an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers — to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on. Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn’t care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are hilarious — and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.

Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson

Southern fiction with quirky characters and astute observations about human nature. It’s the story of Nonny, a young Georgia woman caught in a feud between her adoptive and biological families. Biologically Nonny is a Crabtree, but she is adopted at birth and raised by the Fretts. The Crabtrees are a clan of slovenly, unwashed reprobates, and the Fretts, a semi-prosperous, if offbeat, family whose unique doll museum attracts tourists to the small town of Between, Georgia, population 90. Laugh out loud funny with some twists and turns.

The Birth House by Ami McKay

An arresting portrait of the struggles that women faced for control of their own bodies, The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare—the first daughter in five generations of Rares. As apprentice to the outspoken Acadian midwife Miss Babineau, Dora learns to assist the women of an isolated Nova Scotian village through infertility, difficult labors, breech births, unwanted pregnancies, and unfulfilling sex lives. During the turbulent World War I era, uncertainty and upheaval accompany the arrival of a brash new medical doctor and his promises of progress and fast, painless childbirth. In a clash between tradition and science, Dora finds herself fighting to protect the rights of women as well as the wisdom that has been put into her care. amazon.com

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant's gorgeous and mesmerizing novel, Birth of Venus, draws readers into a turbulent 15th-century Florence, a time when the lavish city, steeped in years of Medici family luxury, is suddenly besieged by plague, threat of invasion, and the righteous wrath of a fundamentalist monk. Dunant masterfully blends fact and fiction, seamlessly interweaving Florentine history with the coming-of-age story of a spirited 14-year-old girl. As Florence struggles in Savonarola's grip, a serial killer stalks the streets, the French invaders creep closer, and young Alessandra Cecchi must surrender her "childish" dreams and navigate her way into womanhood.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Set in 1982, this is a coming-of-age story about 13-year-old Jason Taylor who lives in Black Swan Green, a small town in England. Jason suffers from a stammer, but is desperate to fit in with his rowdy friends. Jason’s internal monologues create an exquisitely observed world full of its own language, landscape and customs. Mitchell is also the author of Ghostwritten, Number9Dream, and Cloud Atlas, the last 2 both finalists for the Booker Prize.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good. Author’s Website --- Gladwell.com

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

This is the tale of a 17th-century Persian village girl who makes her way with her mother to a rich uncle's house in the city of Isfahan. As poor relatives, they are treated as servants. The uncle, a master rug maker for the shah, grudgingly teaches her his trade, his love and respect for her increasing with her perseverance and obvious talent. His greedy wife convinces him to accept a three-month "marriage" contract for the girl with a rich horse trader. She learns how to please her "husband" (and herself) sexually, but also learns that he has no intention of making her his permanent wife as she has no money. She vows to make beautiful rugs on her own, and thus ensure her and her mother's financial security. She is banished from her uncle's house when she tells her friend about the marriage contract. She trusts a foreign merchant with her rug and he steals it. Now she must beg and find shelter and a way to begin a new rug. Like Sheherazade, the heroine's mother is a master storyteller, telling tales within this tale that Amirrezvani tells so magically. School Library Journal

Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

Vincent Lam is a 31--year-old Toronto emergency room physician, and this is his first book of short stories. Four recurring characters – all young medical students, link the twelve stories. Relationships are strained by ambition and overwork – love does not fare well. Decent men and women are thrust into indecent circumstances that test their humanity. Lam’s fiction strikes a fine balance between clinical and emotional details, successfully creating a collection of powerful, intricately crafted stories.

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

Like Gregory’s previous book, The Other Boleyn Girl, this is historical fiction in which the women of Henry VIII's court come vividly to life: Henry's fourth wife, Bavarian-born Anne of Cleves; his fifth wife, English teenager Katherine Howard; and Lady Rochford (Jane Boleyn), the jealous spouse whose testimony helped send her husband... and sister-in-law Anne Boleyn to their execution. Rich in intrigue and irony, this is a tale where readers will savor Gregory's sharp staging of how and why.

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a string of slaves - Aminata Diallo is sent to live in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic "Book of Negroes". This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Aminata's eventual return to Africa is an engrossing account of an obscure chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Boyne has written a sort of historical allegory–a spare, but vividly descriptive tale that clearly elucidates the atmosphere in Nazi Germany during the early 1940s that enabled the persecution of Eastern European Jews. Through the eyes of Bruno, a naive nine-year-old raised in a privileged household by strict parents whose expectations included good manners and unquestioning respect for parental authority, the author describes a visit from the Fury and the family’s sudden move from Berlin to a place called Out-With in Poland. Amazon.ca

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Carrying into her adult years a sense of fatalism instilled during her hardscrabble birth, Nazneen finds herself married off to a man twice her age and moved to London, where she wonders if she has a say in her own destiny.

Broken Ground by Jack Hodgins

Broken Ground is a riveting exploration of the dark, brooding presence of the First World War in the lives of the inhabitants of a “soldier’s settlement” on Vancouver Island. From out of a stubborn, desolate landscape studded with tree stumps, the settlers of Portuguese Creek have built a new life for themselves. But when an encroaching forest fire threatens this fledgling settlement, it also intensifies the remembered horrors of war. The story of Portuguese Creek is told by several of its citizens, including a boy trying to recover from the sudden loss of his father, and a former teacher haunted by what happened to the soldiers he led in France. With a memorable cast of characters, and by turns heart-rending and tragic, humorous and humane, Broken Ground is a powerful novel that immerses us in the lives of an entire community.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly 'Cat's Table' with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another. As the narrative moves from the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story about the difference between the magical openness of childhood and the burdens of earned understanding. The Cat's Table is a vivid, poignant and thrilling book, full of Ondaatje's trademark set-pieces and breathtaking images: a story told with a child's sense of wonder by a novelist at the very height of his powers. Amazon.com

The Cellist of Sarajevo Cover The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. From amazon.ca

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever

The Children of Men by P. D. James

Near the end of the 20th century, for reasons beyond the grasp of modern science, human sperm count went to zero. The last birth occurred in 1995, and in the space of a generation humanity has lost its future. In England, under the rule of an increasingly despotic Warden, the infirm are encouraged to commit group suicide, criminals are exiled and abandoned and immigrants are subjected to semi-legalized slavery. Divorced, middle-aged Oxford history professor Theo Faron, an emotionally constrained man of means and intelligence who is the Warden's cousin, plods through an ordered, bleak existence. But a chance involvement with a group of dissidents moves him onto unexpected paths, leading him, in the novel's compelling second half, toward risk, commitment and the joys and anguish of love. In this convincingly detailed world--where kittens are (illegally) christened, sex has lost its allure and the arts have been abandoned--James concretely explores an unthinkable prospect. Publisher’s Weekly.

Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright

In a plot reminiscent of Penelope Stokes's The Blue Bottle Club and Angela Hunt's The Note, a journalist happens upon a human interest story that winds up teaching her lessons about love and forgiveness and renewing her own faith in human kindness. On Christmas Eve, twenty-something Hope Jensen is quietly grieving the recent loss of her adoptive mother when her apartment is robbed. The one bright spot in the midst of Hope's despair is a small jar full of money someone has anonymously left on her doorstep. Eager to learn the source of this unexpected generosity, Hope uses her newswoman instincts to find other recipients of "Christmas jars," digging until her search leads her to the family who first began the tradition of saving a year's worth of spare change to give to someone in need at the holiday. Wright commits some rookie mistakes in style and pacing; the novel veers heavily toward melodrama at some junctures, and he tends to show us and tell us about his characters. Still, the heart of this novella is its transformative message about the power of giving, a compelling theme that calls to mind books like Pay It Forward and The Kingdom Assignment. Publishers Weekly

Citizen Vince by Jess Walter

Vince Camden manages a doughnut shop in Spokane, Washington by day, and by night he relieves unlucky locals of their bankrolls at an after-hours poker game, sells his hooker pals pot at cost, and runs a lucrative credit-card theft ring. Vince landed in eastern Washington via the witness-protection plan…when a hit man, a local cop, and a Mob-boss-in-waiting get Vince in their crosshairs. Over the course of the next unforgettable week, on the run from Spokane to New York's Lower East Side, Vince will negotiate a maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and emerging mobsters. Darkly funny and surprisingly hopeful, Citizen Vince is the story of a charming crook chasing the biggest score of his life: a second chance.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified "dinery server" on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity' s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston

Joe Smallwood, an impoverished boy intent on making a name for himself, and Sheilagh Fielding, a journalist who pens his rise to power, confront their own frailties, secrets, and mutual love, in a novel of twentieth century Newfoundland.

Crashing Through by Robert Kurson

Blinded in a childhood accident, Mike May never hesitated to try anything—driving a motorcycle, hiking alone in the woods, downhill skiing—until the day, when May was 46, an ophthalmologist told him a new stem-cell and cornea transplant could restore his vision. May went forward, only to find that, even though his eye was now perfect, his brain had forgotten how to process visual input. Fascinated by colors and patterns, he had difficulty discerning facial features, letters, even men from women. Publisher’s Weekly

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Yearning to escape a life of prostitution during in London during the 1870s, Sugar, who is both intelligent and ambitious, finds her fate entangled with that of William, an egotistical perfume magnate, and his family. A rich evocation of Victorian England ala Dickens, unhindered by the restraints of Victorian propriety.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

In the rural farm country of northern Ontario, the lives of two families—the farming Pye family, and zoologist Kate Morrison and her three brothers—are brought together and torn apart by misunderstanding, resentment, family love, and tragedy.

Curiosity by Joan Thomas

Set in the early 19th century, some 40 years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, Curiosity is based on the lives of two real people: Mary Anning, a cabinetmaker’s daughter who at the age of 12 discovered the fossilized skeleton of an enormous finned creature in the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England; and Henry de la Beche, the son of an elite family who ran away from military college and now spends his time painting and making drawings of fossils. Quill & Quire

The Custodian of Paradise by Wayne Johnston

Sheilagh Fielding is a striking, unconventional, six-foot-three Newfoundland woman with a limp (back again from Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams for this sequel). Near the end of WWII, Fielding, a notorious St. John's columnist, holes up on the nearby deserted island of Loreburn after her mother dies leaving her a small inheritance. There, Fielding senses the presence of her mysterious "Provider," who has shadowed her all her life but whom she has never met face-to-face. As Fielding tells her story—abandoned by her mother at six; raised by a father who insinuates she's not his—Fielding's Provider draws closer to her solitary retreat. But Fielding has long kept another secret.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel - an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. ChaptersIndigo.ca

De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage

Two adolescent Lebanese hoodlums come of age in war-torn Beirut in Rawi Hage's debut novel. Bassam and George want to leave their impoverished country behind by means of a gambling scam. However once George is enlisted in the army, they both involved in crimes and violence beyond anything they could have expected, and their friendship comes to an end in a horrible act of betrayal.

Desert Queen: the Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell by Janet Wallach

Biography of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) who traveled to Teheran to visit her uncle, the British envoy there. Dominated even there by her Victorian father, head of a family-owned ironworks, she was denied permission to marry a moneyless diplomat. The first woman to earn a first-class degree in modern history at Oxford, she wrote seven influential books on the Middle East and, following WWI, was named oriental secretary to the British High Commission in Iraq. This colorful, romantic biography tells of a woman with an inexhaustible passion for a place that did not always substitute successfully for continuing heartbreak. Wallach, coauthor with her husband, John Wallach, and vividly evokes a memorable personality.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

This incredible real life story of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair tells the concurrent stories of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham’s story centers on the construction of his famous "White City" the centerpiece of the fair, with entertaining guest appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody and Thomas Edison. The sinister Dr. Holmes is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, may seem like an odd choice but it succeeds amid an atmosphere of suspense and horror.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

In a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, a fifty-two-year-old college professor who has lost his job for sleeping with a student tries to relate to his daughter, Lucy, who works with an ambitious African farmer.

Divergent (Divergent Trilogy #1) Cover Divergent by Veronica Roth

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself. From amazon.ca

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. amazon.com

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

In her most powerful novel yet, acclaimed author Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime. Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. Penguin

Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill

Winner of the BC National Award for Non-Fiction, and short-listed for both the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2011 Hilary Weston Writer's Trust Award. Eating Dirt is an extended postcard from the cut blocks -- a vivid portrayal of one woman's life planting trees, her insights into the forest industry and its environmental implications, and a celebration of the wonder of trees. Charlotte Gill spent almost twenty years working as a tree planter in the forests of Canada. During her million-tree career, she encountered hundreds of clear-cuts, each one a collision site between human civilization and the natural world. Charged with sowing the new forest in these clear-cuts, tree planters are a tribe caught between the stumps and the virgin timber, between environmentalists and loggers.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

A precocious and suicidal 12-year-old, and a fat and comely French concierge with a secret love for philosophy, forms an unlikely bond in this smart, witty, and tragic French novel.

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden

The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped North Korea's political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From Camp 14 , Blaine Harden unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state through the story of Shin's shocking imprisonment and his astounding getaway. Harden's harrowing narrative exposes this hidden dystopia, focusing on an extraordinary young man who came of age inside the highest security prison in the highest security state. Escape from Camp 14 offers an unequalled inside account of one of the world's darkest nations. It is a tale of endurance and courage, survival and hope.

Everything Was Good-bye by Gurjinder Basran

A young Indo-Canadian girl named Meena comes of age in the lower mainland of British Columbia where she struggles with identity, race, cultural and societal expectations. Local author Gurjinder Basran's novel won the Search for the Great B.C. Novel Contest and the 2011 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

The Far Side of the Sky by Daniel Kalla

Dr. Franz Adler, an Austrian Jew and renowned surgeon, is swept up in the wave of anti-Semitic violence washing over Vienna and flees to China with his daughter. There, at a Shanghai refugee hospital, Franz meets an enigmatic nurse, Soon Yi “Sunny” Mah. The chemistry between them is intense and immediate, until Sunny’s life is shattered. The danger escalates for Shanghai’s Jewish refugee community as the Japanese ally themselves militarily with Germany and attack Pearl Harbor. Soon, the Japanese overrun the European enclaves within Shanghai. Facing starvation, disease and the threat of internment—or worse—Franz struggles to keep the refugee hospital open while protecting his own family and fights to outwit the Nazis and save the city’s Jewish community from a terrible fate. HarperCollins.ca

The Fault in Our Stars Cover The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Where does the fault lie? For Hazel Grace, with tumors in her lungs, and Augustus Waters, who only has one leg left, the question is hardly worth considering. At a support group meeting in the "literal heart of Jesus" for teenagers with cancer, Hazel and Augustus meet and become friends. Over a few short months, their lives change rapidly and through hospital stays and travels abroad, they face their fates - also their hopes and dreams. From: http://yeahawesomeya.blogspot.ca/2012/07/book-talk-fault-in-our-stars.html

February Cover February by Lisa Moore

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twenty-five years later, but spirals back again and again to the "February" that persists in Helen's mind and heart. From amazon.ca

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark, erotic desires.Amazon.com

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

A second magnificent offering by Mistry that introduces four lives that intersect: a middle aged seamstress, a pair of tailors, uncle and nephew, who work for and rent rooms from her and a college student, the son of a former friend. Focuses on the past and present lives of these four individuals and utilizes their stories in a meaningful representation of the social and political travails and transfigurations that have been the hallmark of 20th century Indian life. A skillful, memorable novel.

Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews

Dempsey Killebrew’s life is in shambles. She is abruptly fired from her high-powered job as a Washington lobbyist when her boss is accused of political shenanigans and uses vulnerable Dempsey as his scapegoat. Out of work, out of money, and out of options, Dempsey goes to Guthrie, Georgia, at her father’s request, to work on a house he inherited. Not only is it a total mess, it’s also inhabited by an elderly distant relative with a shotgun who has only disgust for anyone named Killebrew—and no plans for moving out. Booklist

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the responsibility of privilege. Charting the characters' mistakes and joys as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever-changing and confusing world, Freedom is an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul, Minnesota—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Baby Boomers. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why is Walter working away from home so much? What has happened to their teenage son? Why has Patty, the bright star of Barrier Street, become "a very different kind of neighbor," coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? And what exactly is eccentric rocker Richard Katz—Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture?As the story explores the nature of love, it also tackles our tenuous relationship with nature. When Walter fights to preserve a habitat for an endangered bird, the troubled history between Patty, Richard and himself threatens to topple the deal, along with everything he believes about truth and illusion. www.oprah.com

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

A charming and moving novel about female friendship and the experiences that knit us together-even when we least expect it. Walker and Daughter is Georgia Walker's little yarn shop, tucked into a quiet storefront on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The Friday Night Knitting Club was started by some of Georgia's regulars, who gather once a week to work on their latest projects and to chat-and occasionally clash-over their stories of love, life, and everything in between. Amazon.ca

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The plot begins in 1956 Gilead, Iowa, where 77-year-old Reverend John Ames is facing death, and so he undertakes to write a letter to his young son…an account of his life, his ancestors, and his faith. This story spans four generations and is at heart a story about the relationships, bonds, obligations, and expectations between fathers and sons. Robinson succeeds in capturing life's universal struggles of strengths and weaknesses, joy and forgiveness within beautifully written prose.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries--and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title. Readers and art lovers alike will find this novel engaging, evocative, and insightful.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate. NoveList

The Girls by Lori Lansens

The fictional autobiography of conjoined twins, Rose and Ruby Darlen – a breathtaking novel about the profound and transcendent love between two extraordinary sisters. Author’s Website—Lori Lansens

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Walls, a successful writer and journalist, spent years trying to hide her family roots, but in this memoir she finally releases the details of her dysfunctional upbringing. The story begins when, on her way to a special event and she suddenly spots her mother dumpster-diving. Her mother was a flighty, self-indulgent Pollyanna unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenting, and her father, a troubled, brilliant inventor whose ability to turn his family's downward-spiraling circumstances into adventures allowed his children to excuse his imperfections until they grew old enough to understand what he had done to them and to himself. His grand plans to build a home for the family never evolved: the hole for the foundation of the "The Glass Castle," as the dream house was called, became the family garbage dump, and, of course, a metaphor for Rex Walls' life. Shocking, sad, and occasionally bitter, this gracefully written account speaks candidly, yet with surprising affection, about parents and the strength of family ties.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This Booker Prize-winning novel is the story of Rahel and her twin brother Estha, whose whole world is changed by the tragic events of a single day. Drawn from experiences in Roy's life, it is also a story of forbidden love and what a community will do to protect its traditions.

The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant

The felling of a celebrated giant golden spruce tree in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands takes on a potent symbolism in this probing study of an unprecedented act of eco-vandalism. First-time author Vaillant, who originally wrote about the death of the spruce for The New Yorker, profiles the culprit, an ex-logger turned environmentalist who toppled the famous tree—the only one of its kind—to protest the destruction of British Columbia's old-growth forest, then vanished mysteriously. Vaillant also explores the culture and history of the Haida Indians who revered the tree, and of the logging industry that often expresses awe for the ancient trees it is busily clear-cutting. Writing in a vigorous, evocative style, Vaillant portrays the Pacific Northwest as a region of conflict and violence, from the battles between Europeans and Indians over the 18th-century sea otter trade to the hard-bitten, macho milieu of the logging camps, where grisly death is an occupational hazard. A haunting portrait of man's vexed relationship with nature.

Gone Girl Cover Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? From amazon.ca

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A love story between Gatsby, an impoverished officer, and Daisy Buchanan, a legendary young Louisville beauty. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, and they fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey--a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad.

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Berlin, 1939. A young, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is arrested in a Paris cafe. The star musician was never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths, the only witness that day, still refuses to speak of what he saw. When Chip Jones, his friend and fellow band member, comes to visit, recounting the discovery of a strange letter, Sid begins a slow journey towards redemption. (Goodreads). This brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed novel (Globe and Mail) recently won the fiction award at BC Book Prizes, in addition to the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award and Man Booker Prize.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

One rainy afternoon, while riding a city bus, Gretchen Rubin asked herself, “What do I want from life, anyway?” She answered, “I want to be happy”—yet she spent no time thinking about her happiness. In a flash, she decided to dedicate a year to a happiness project. The result? One of the most thoughtful and engaging works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject. This #1 New York Times Bestseller combines scientific research with common wisdom to create a formula that has inspired book clubs around the world. happiness-project.com

The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam

Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English school in Saigon. He is also a bon vivant, a compulsive gambler and an incorrigible womanizer. He is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of the Percival Chen English Academy. Fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, he is quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided country. He devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls around him, choosing instead to read the faces of his opponents at high-stakes mahjong tables. But when his only son gets into trouble with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival faces the limits of his connections and wealth and is forced to send Dai Jai away. In the loneliness that follows, Percival finds solace in Jacqueline, a beautiful woman of mixed French and Vietnamese heritage, and Laing Jai, a son born to them on the eve of the Tet offensive. Percival's new-found happiness is precarious, and as the complexities of war encroach further and further into his world, he must confront the tragedy of all he has refused to see.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humour, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat bordering Highgate Cemetery in a building occupied by Elspeth's lover, Robert, and the novel's most interesting character, Martin, whose wife is long suffering due to his crushing and beautifully portrayed OCD. Publisher's Weekly

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Fifth-grade scholarship students and best friends Henry and Keiko are the only Asians in their Seattle elementary school in 1942. Henry is Chinese, Keiko is Japanese, and Pearl Harbor has made all Asians-even those who are American born-targets for abuse. Because Henry's nationalistic father has a deep-seated hatred for Japan, Henry keeps his friendship with and eventual love for Keiko a secret. When Keiko's family is sent to an internment camp in Idaho, Henry vows to wait for her. Forty years later, Henry comes upon an old hotel where the belongings of dozens of displaced Japanese families have turned up in the basement, and his love for Keiko is reborn. In his first novel, award-winning short-story writer Ford expertly nails the sweet innocence of first love, the cruelty of racism, the blindness of patriotism, the astonishing unknowns between parents and their children, and the sadness and satisfaction at the end of a life well lived. The result is a vivid picture of a confusing and critical time in American history. Recommended for all fiction collections. Library Journal

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

In this remarkable book, Cunningham draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, life and death, creation and destruction. The novel moves along three separate but parallel stories, each focusing on the experiences of a particular woman during the course of one apparently unremarkable but in fact pivotal day.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Ogawa (The Diving Pool ) weaves a poignant tale of beauty, heart and sorrow in her exquisite new novel. Narrated by the Housekeeper, the characters are known only as the Professor and Root, the Housekeeper’s 10-year-old son, nicknamed by the Professor because the shape of his hair and head remind the Professor of the square root symbol. A brilliant mathematician, the Professor was seriously injured in a car accident and his short-term memory only lasts for 80 minutes. Booklist

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

The story opens with the announcement of the death of our hero, and then traces his past though his youth, marriage, career, and the achievement of his lifelong dream-the acquisition of his own home. This is the book that first brought Naipaul worldwide acclaim: it’s a richly comic novel that tells the moving story of a man without a single asset who enters a life devoid of opportunity, and whose ramshackle house becomes a potent symbol of his search for identity.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance.

The Imposter Bride Cover The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler

When a young, enigmatic woman arrives in post-war Montreal, it is immediately clear that she is not who she claims to be. Her attempt to live out her life as Lily Azerov shatters as she disappears, leaving a new husband and baby daughter, and a host of unanswered questions. Who is she really and what happened to the young woman whose identity she has stolen? Why has she left and where did she go? It is left to the daughter she abandoned to find the answers to these questions as she searches for the mother she may never find or really know. From HarperCollins.ca.

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

In 1527 when Rome is sacked by an invading army, Fiammetta Bianchini and Bucino Teodoldi, a fabulous courtesan and her dwarf companion, slip away with nothing more than a few swallowed jewels in their stomachs. They head for Venice, a city of wealth and trade where they start to rebuild their business. As a partnership they are invincible: Bucino, clever with a sharp eye and a wicked tongue and Fiammetta, beautiful and shrewd, trained from birth to charm, entertain and satisfy men who have the money to support her. Venice, however, holds its own temptations. But the greatest challenge comes from a young blind woman, a purveyor of health and beauty, who insinuates her way into their lives and hearts with devastating consequences for them all.

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

In 1923, 21-year-old Patrick Lewis, who grew up in Canadian logging country, arrives in Toronto. He becomes one of an army of searchers for Ambrose Small, millionaire personification of "bare-knuckle capitalism," who has vanished. Lewis' success in the search brings him into contact with Small's lover, Clara Dickens and then into a relationship with Clara's intimate friend, Alice Gull, an actress and political activist.

Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our Grand Tour of Italy by Jane Christmas

Since the beginning of time, mothers and daughters have had notoriously fraught relationships. "Show me a mother who says she has a good or great relationship with her daughter," Jane Christmas writes, "and I'll show you a daughter who is in therapy trying to understand how it all went so horribly wrong." To smooth over five decades of constant clashing, Christmas takes her arthritic, incontinent, and domineering mother, Valeria -- a cross between Queen Victoria and Hyacinth Bucket of the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances -- on a tour of Italy. Neither has been to Italy before, but both are fans of ancient art, architecture, and history. Will gazing at the fruits of the Italian Renaissance be enough to spark a renaissance in their relationship? As they wander along the winding Amalfi Coast, traverse St. Peter's Square in Rome, and sample the wines of Tuscany -- walkers, biscuits, shawls, and medications in tow -- they revisit the bickering and bitterness of years past and reassess who they are and how they might reconcile their differences. Unflinching and frequently hilarious, this book will speak to all women who have tried to make friends with their mothers.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The author of The Caged Virgin recounts the story of her life, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia and escape from a forced marriage to her efforts to promote women's rights while surviving numerous threats to her safety.

Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize, this novel is set in mid-1980s India, on the cusp of the Nepalese movement for an independent state. Jemubhai Popatlal, a retired Cambridge-educated judge, lives in Kalimpong, at the foot of the Himalayas, with his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook. Jemubhai, with his hunting rifles and English biscuits, becomes an obvious target. Besides threatening their very lives, the revolution also stymies the fledgling romance between 16-year-old Sai and her Nepalese tutor, Gyan. The cook's son, Biju, meanwhile, lives miserably as an illegal alien in New York. All of these characters struggle with their cultural identity and the forces of modernization while trying to maintain their emotional connection to one another. In this alternately comical and contemplative novel, Desai deftly shuttles between first and third worlds, illuminating the pain of exile, the ambiguities of post-colonialism and the blinding desire for a "better life," when one person's wealth means another's poverty.

It’s Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong

In 1996, young cycling phenomenon Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer which metastasized to his brain, lungs and abdomen. He goes on to recover and in 1999 won the grueling Tour de France (the first of seven consecutive wins). This memoir covers his early life, his rise through the endurance sport world and his medical difficulties. There are graphic details here, which may not be for the faint of heart: from chemo to surgical procedures to his wife's in vitro fertilization, you won’t be spared a single x-ray, IV drip, or unfortunate side effect. It’s a story about life, death, illness, family, setbacks and great triumphs.

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy

Members of a Canadian Chinese family recall their childhood days in Vancouver, B.C. during the 1930s and 1940s. A candid, yet affectionate portrait is drawn of family life and the collective Chinese community. Themes of tenderness and brutality, racism and loyalty, humour and heartbreak are woven into their experiences of that time and place.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they gather to raise their spirits and money. Forty years later their stories and histories continue. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery. Amazon.com

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami's brilliant tale features two seekers of truth: Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome World War II murder (but which in turn gave him the ability to speak with cats), and Kafka Tamura, a stoic, self-disciplined 15-year-old who runs away from home to escape an Oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. Murakami likes to blur the boundary between the real and the surreal—we are treated to such oddities as fish raining from the sky, a forest-dwelling pair of Imperial Army soldiers who haven't aged since WWII, and a hilarious cameo by fried chicken king Colonel Sanders—but he also writes touchingly about love, loneliness and friendship.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

The Known World by Edward Jones

In what is likely the best and most important novel about slavery since Toni Morrison's Beloved, Edward P. Jones confronts a phenomenon that some might find unthinkable: in the years before the Civil War, many free blacks owned slaves. The Known World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected connections, some reaching into the present day.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. Amazon.ca

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

The story takes place in 1975 and centers round the staff of a Yellowknife radio station.
Harry Boyd, a veteran announcer with a questionable past, overhears Dido Paris reading the news and immediately falls for her. Sharp-tongued and self-consumed, Dido ignores Harry and instead hooks up with Eddy, the intense radio technician who is radically inclined and sexually sadistic. Hay's description of the radio station is engaging, especially as we are continually aware of the foreign landscape that lies just outside its walls and her description of a voyage into the Barrens is powerful, capturing the magic of the wilderness and its effects on those who travel through it.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

Sarah Nickerson, like any other working mom, is busy trying to have it all. One morning while racing to work and distracted by her cell phone, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In that blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her over-scheduled life come to a screeching halt. After a brain injury steals her awareness of everything on her left side, Sarah must retrain her mind to perceive the world as a whole. In so doing, she also learns how to pay attention to the people and parts of her life that matter most. In this powerful and poignant New York Times bestseller, Lisa Genova explores what can happen when we are forced to change our perception of everything around us. Left Neglected is an unforgettable story about finding abundance in the most difficult of circumstances, learning to pay attention to the details, and nourishing what truly matters.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a lifeboat and is lost at sea with dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.

Light Between Oceans Cover The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. From goodreads.com

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst’s fourth novel—just awarded England’s Man Booker Prize—is a scathing examination of the sexual, racial, and class fault lines of the Thatcher era as they converge in one young man’s life. It is a sumptuously written parable of the well-upholstered rise, decline and disgraceful fall of Nick Guest, an Oxford postgraduate who is a proud, detached connoisseur of literature, music and style. It is the first gay novel to win the Booker prize in its 36 years.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Published in 1955, this novel caused a storm of controversy; it is still provocative today. It’s Nabokov's classic story about a middle-aged, expatriate European man's obsessive love for a 12-year-old girl. Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be slippery.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to re-enter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope. http://www.alongwaygone.com/

Love and Summer by William Trevor

It’s summer, and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn’t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger begins photographing the mourners at Mrs. Connulty’s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn’t know that the Connultys were said to own half the town. But Miss Connulty resolves to keep an eye on Florian … and she becomes a witness to the ensuing events. In a characteristically masterful way, Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations in an Irish town during one long summer. (Roundhouse.ca) “Love and Summer is so exquisite I had to pace myself reading it, so it wouldn't end too soon.” Belfast Telegraph

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" comes a masterful evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than fifty years. This is the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying love to the beautiful Fermina Daza, whom he lost to Dr. Juvenal Urbino so many years before. Garcia Marquez has created a vividly absorbing fictional world, as lush and dazzling as a dream and as real and immediate as our own deepest longings. In this chronicle of a unique love triangle, Marquez’s trademark "ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America" thrive. "It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity," praised Publishers Weekly. Amazon.com

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield, raped and murdered by her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Gone from this life, Susie narrates her story from Heaven, where she watches over the family and friends she left behind, as they struggle to come to terms with their loss.

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Loving Frank is a meticulously researched and powerfully imagined fictional portrayal of the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. The two met when Cheney's husband hired Wright to design a house, and eventually they would abandon their spouses and children to travel across Europe. By the time they returned to Wisconsin, their affair was the subject of national scandal. Nancy Horan's first novel tells the tale from Cheney's perspective, and shows her to be an independent, free-thinking woman, willing to defy societal expectations to live with the brilliant and problematic Wright.

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill

Baby, almost 12, and her father, Jules, 26, have taken up residence at a once-stylish downtown Montreal hotel. Jules exudes style: fur hat, long leather jacket and slippery leather boots. He also has a heroin habit. Montreal’s decrepit downtown is seen through Baby’s eyes as an enchanted place where everyone plays an endless game of dress-up. Baby moves in and out of foster homes and even into a detention centre where every kid she meets is a character. Although nothing shakes her love for Jules, there’s only one career option for an attractive, neglected girl, no matter how bright and imaginative. Attracting a local pimp, Baby enters the sex trade while still scoring A’s at school. These scenes are hard to bear. But O’Neill lets us see beyond the squalor into the heart of a girl who won’t –through pluck, brains, and a last-minute authorial rescue – be destroyed.

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland

In 1880 the Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted "Luncheon of the Boating Party," which portrayed 14 of his friends and colleagues at rest along the Seine. Susan Vreeland's marvellously rich and layered novel “Luncheon of the Boating Party” takes this luminous painting as the inspiration for her narrative, and all the people depicted in the painting are given textured and fascinating lives. Vreeland masterfully captures the atmosphere of fin-de-siFcle France, a time of artistic innovation, excitement, and change. This is historical fiction filled with rapturous life.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Brought together by a shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship on the cusp of blossoming into something more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and Mrs. Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a permanent foreigner. The Major has always taken special pride in the village, but will he be forced to choose between the place he calls home and a future with Mrs. Ali? Amazon

Making an Exit: a Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter
by Elinor Fuchs

Fuchs celebrates the richness and folly of life and language in this loving and often funny tribute to her nonconformist mother, Lillian Kessler. Born in 1908, Kessler attempted to take the well-paved path of a proper lady twice, first by attending Radcliffe and then by marrying an accomplished, high-society violinist. But she eventually forged her own way, getting divorced, leading WPA projects, entertaining suitors and business associates at lavish parties and ambitiously building the Kessler Corp., selling "spare parts"—all while first abandoning, then raising her daughter on her own.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

First published in Austria in 1946, this is the story of Viktor Frankl's struggle to hold on to hope during his three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. Frankl's training as a psychiatrist informed every waking moment of his ordeal and allowed him a remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. His assertion that "the will to meaning" is the basic motivation for human life has forever changed the way we understand our humanity in the face of suffering.

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland

Standing beside the charismatic Napoleon, Josephine's own importance and fascinating history have often been overshadowed. In a fictionalized account of Josephine's diaries and her correspondence, author Sandra Gulland has shed light on Josephine's pre-Napoleon life. This, the first of three books about Josephine, covers her childhood in Martinique, her first marriage, the birth of her children, her life during the revolution, and her marriage to Napoleon. Gulland leaves readers eager to know the rest of Josephine’s story.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Chiyo is sold from her poor fishing village and the parents she loves to a renowned Geisha House in Gion. She is transformed from an inquisitive young girl into Sayuri, the most sought after geisha in Gion. As Sayuri rises to the height of her profession, World War II erupts and she has to find a new way to be in the world.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

This is the story of the birth of fraternal twins – a healthy boy and a girl with Down’s syndrome. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Kentucky in 1964 when young Norah Henry goes into labour. Her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill (who secretly adores the Doctor), to take her to a home and later tells his wife that Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's undetected lie warps his marriage: he grapples with guilt, Norah mourns her lost child, and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well. A deeply moving drama covering twenty-five years in the lives of two families.

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

Kelly Corrigan finds a lump on her 37th birthday, and is soon diagnosed with breast cancer. But she has so much going on in her life – children, husband, parents, brothers and friends – that she doesn't focus on telling us about her treatment battle. Instead, she talks about her childhood with her ebullient father and practical mother, fights over jeans in her adolescence, globetrotting in college, and finding the love of her life. Along the way, her father is diagnosed with prostate cancer, facing it with faith and a positive attitude. Father and daughter encourage each other, and ultimately triumph.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Divakaruni

Tilo, an Indian clairvoyant, becomes queen of the pirates who kidnapped her for her powers, and she gains immortality and the skills of a mistress of spices, which she uses to help mortals before falling in love with Raven.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Thirteen-year-old Anna was genetically engineered to be a perfect match for her cancer-ridden older sister Kate. Since birth, she has donated platelets, blood, her umbilical cord, and bone marrow as part of her family's struggle to lengthen Kate's life. Anna is now expected to donate a kidney in a last-ditch attempt to save her sister. As this compelling story opens, Anna has hired a lawyer to represent her in a medical emancipation suit for the right to control her own body. Meanwhile, Jesse, the neglected oldest child of the family, is out setting fires, which his firefighter father inevitably puts out. There seems to be no easy answer, and readers are likely to be sympathetic to all sides of the case. This is a real page-turner and frighteningly thought-provoking.

My Stroke of Insight: a Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jean Bolte Taylor

When Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive left-hemisphere stroke at the age of 37, she was uniquely qualified to understand the mechanics what was occurring inside her brain. As a neuroanatomist, she realized what was happening to her even as, over the course of four hours, her cognitive rational mind began to deteriorate to the point that she lost her ability to walk, talk, and comprehend the concept of time. Despite the massive trauma, and years of rehabilitation before she could operate normally, Taylor was amazed and delighted at her new appreciation of her healthy right brain: she found herself in a world of euphoric sensory experience, a kind of primitive and powerful awareness that humans have mostly forgotten in their abstract, conceptual, left-brain lives. Her memoir is a redemptive story of illness and recovery, as well as a fascinating scientific exploration of the human nervous system, and how unaware we are of its many secrets.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli emigrate from India to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1968. Ashima immediately gives birth to a son, Gogol, who grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends and even becomes a successful architect. But like many second-generation immigrants, he never quite finds his place in the world. He dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he finds no peace and breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. Beautifully moving storytelling focusing on neither comedy nor tragedy but on real life.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

After the 9/11 terrorist attack, Dutch equities analyst Hans van den Broek, his British wife, and his young son are forced to flee their devastated TriBeCa loft and find themselves living in the once-glamorous, now-dilapidated Chelsea Hotel. Hans's wife, horrified at the destruction and appalled at American politics, soon flees back to London with their son in tow. To fill the emotional hole in his life, Hans turns to cricket, that anachronistic and civilized sport, as an escape from his trauma and confusion, and finds himself becoming a friend, and sometimes accomplice, to an ambitious wheeler-dealer from Trinidad with dreams of building a cricket arena in Brooklyn. With a wry sense of humour and occasional unexpected stabs of poignancy, author Joseph O'Neill creates a wonderfully specific novel set against a backdrop of globalized crisis, and fractured, frightened families.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived "in the now." In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

Night by Elie Wiesel

Winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, author Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1994. This is the terrifying record of his memories of the death of his family and of his own innocence. First published in 1958, this new edition is translated by his wife, Marion Wiesel.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

There is no warning in anticipation of the Night Circus; it arrives where yesterday it had not been. Celia and Marco are illusionists who have been trained by their masters to meet in competition on these mysterious grounds, but instead engage in a passionate love affair that provokes deadly consequences. This darkly playful and imaginative debut novel is filled with colourful characters and fantastic dreamscapes. It enchants. The Night Circus was nominated for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state’s best witness, but she can’t remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

One fine morning in west Texas, a young Vietnam vet is antelope hunting when he comes upon the carnage of a drug deal gone bad. Both heroin and a suitcase of cash remain at the site, along with a number of bodies. The cash is enough to entice the otherwise upright Llewelyn Moss to steal it, although conveniently it's not so much that it can't be carried, not even after Moss receives the first in a long line of wounds. He knows he's making the worst mistake of his life but can't resist the temptation or the chance to test himself. He knows he'll be hunted (and hunted he is) but believes he can outsmart the hunters.

Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is still only in her later 30s, has already ensured her place in history and is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable people in the world. But, of course, it is her public and uncompromising repudiation of Islam for which she is best known. The brutal murder of Theo van Gogh, with whom she had made a brief film denouncing the treatment of women in Islam, brought her to world fame. The Globe and Mail.

North to the Night by Alvah Simon

In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come.
With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpetual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges five months later a transformed man.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge , a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her.

On the Outside Looking Indian by Rupinder Gill

... "I am 30 years old. I wore my hair in two braids every day until I was 12. I dressed more conservatively than most Amish, barely left my house until I was 18 and spent the last 12 years studying and working hard on my career like a good little Indian girl. The time has come; you are witness to the dawning of my Indian Rumspringa, a Ram-Singha if you will. But instead of smoking and drinking Bud Lights in a park while yelling 'Down with barn raising!' I plan to indulge in a different manner — by pursuing everything I wish had been a part of my youth. Things I always felt were part of most North Americans' adolescent experience. I will learn to swim, go to summer camp, see Disneyworld, take dance lessons, have sleepovers and finally get the pet I longed for my whole life. McClelland.com.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A richly told chronicle of life and death, this is a story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the eyes of the Buendía family.

The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

Arthur Dunn, a stolid, salt-of-the-earth farmer, and his brother Jake, a handsome, smooth-talking snake in the grass live in the fictional northern Ontario town of Struan. Their lifelong mutual resentments and betrayals culminate in a battle over Arthur’s beautiful wife Laura. Observing and eventually intervening in their saga, is Ian, a teenager who goes to work on Arthur's farm to get close to Laura, seeing in her the antithesis of the mother who abandoned him and his father. It’s a standard romantic dilemma—whom to choose: the goodhearted but dull provider or the seductive but unreliable rogue — gains depth as Struan’s residents weather the Depression, war and the coming of television. It's a world of pristine landscapes and brutal winters, where beauty and harshness are inextricably intertwined.

T he Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes

Life is a circle, and what goes around, comes around. Just ask a trio of unforgettable women in Marina Keyes’s enchanting new novel. Written in the charming and chatty voice that has become Keyes’s signature style, the hilarious and heartwarming new novel proves there are three sides to every story, especially in the world of publishing.

Outliers: the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

The best-selling author of Blink identifies the qualities of successful people, posing theories about the cultural, family, and idiosyncratic factors that shape high achievers, in a resource that covers such topics as the secrets of software billionaires, why certain cultures are associated with better academic performance, and why the Beatles earned their fame.

The Painted Girls Cover The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.

Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose

In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses as examples the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

No twentieth-century American writer has captured the popular imagination as much as Ernest Hemingway. This novel tells his story from a unique point of view - that of his first wife, Hadley. Through her eyes and voice, we experience Paris of the Lost Generation and meet fascinating characters such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. The city and its inhabitants provide a vivid backdrop to this engrossing and wrenching story of love and betrayal that is made all the more poignant knowing that, in the end, Hemingway would write of his first wife, "I wish I had died before I loved anyone but her."

Paula by Isabel Allende

In 1991, while living in Madrid with her husband, Isabel Allende’s daughter, Paula, contracted a rare blood disease, and lapsed into an irreversible coma. Isabel began to write this book by her bedside, driven by a desperation to communicate with her unconscious daughter. She tells of her own Chilean childhood, the violent death of her uncle, Salvador Allende, and the family's flight to Venezuela from the oppressive Pinochet regime. Eventually, hope waning, Allende and her son-in-law take the comatose Paula to California, where the author lives with her second husband. The climactic scenes of Paula's death in the rambling old house by the Pacific Ocean seem to take place in another time and space. Only a writer of Allende's passion and skill could share her tragedy with her readers and leave them exhilarated and grateful.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks follows up her Pulitzer Prize-winning March with a novel that traces the origins of one of the world's most precious books, the illuminated manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. Hanna Heath, an Australian book conservator, arrives in war torn Bosnia in order to help restore the Haggadah, and Brooks uses this as a jumping-off point to travel back through time to show the winding path of the holy treasure. Created in Seville in the 14th century, the book barely escaped destruction during the Inquisition; it traveled through Venice and Vienna before nearly falling into the hands of the Nazis in Yugoslavia. “People of the Book” is a richly evocative journey through history---the novel captures the beauty and mystery of Jewish tradition despite being continually surrounded and hounded by the ravages of war and persecution.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Anne Elliot, heroine of Austen's last novel, did something we can all relate to: Long ago, she let the love of her life get away. She had allowed herself to be persuaded by a trusted family friend that the young man she loved wasn't an adequate match, and that she could do better. The novel opens some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, and she's still alone. But then the man she never stopped loving comes back from the sea.

Plague of Doves (08 Edition) Cover The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

The unsolved murder of a farm family still haunts the white small town of Pluto, North Dakota, generations after the vengeance exacted and the distortions of fact transformed the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation.

Part Ojibwe, part white, Evelina Harp is an ambitious young girl prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. And Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who bears witness, understands the weight of historical injustice better than anyone. Through the distinct and winning voices of three unforgettable narrators, the collective stories of two interwoven communities ultimately come together to reveal a final wrenching truth. From amazon.com

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. It is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable construction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Possession: a Romance by A.S. Byatt

The lives of two modern scholars parallel the lives of the two Victorian poets that the scholars are researching.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious “Third Force.” As his naïve optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the sake of politics, or for love? Amazon

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading (Back of the book). Nafisi has produced an original work on the relationship between life and literature. Publishers Weekly

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . . Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers . . . Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity. amazon.com

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The story of Dinah, a tragic character from the Bible whose great love, a prince, is killed by her brother, leaving her alone and pregnant. The novel traces her life from childhood to death, in the process examining sexual and religious practices of the day, and what it meant to be a woman.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence

Room by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It's where he was born and where he and his Ma eat and play and learn. At night, Ma puts him safely to sleep in the wardrobe, in case Old Nick comes. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where Old Nick has kept her for seven years, since she was nineteen. Chapters

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". The result, based upon two papers she delivered to literary societies at Newnham and Girton in October of that year, was "A Room of One's Own", an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. Woolf begins with a simple opinion: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved."

The Round House (P.S.) Cover The Round House by Louise Erdrich

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. From amazon.ca

A Rule against Murder by Louise Penny

When wealthy, cultured Irene Finney and her four grown-up children arrive at the Manoir Bellechasse in the heat of summer for her late husband, the staff springs into action. But as the heat wave gathers strength, old secrets and bitter rivalries begin to surface, and the morning after the ceremony, a body is found. The family now has another member to mourn. A guest at the hotel, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache suddenly finds himself in the middle of a murder enquiry and the hotel is full of possible suspects. –From the Publisher

Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

A harrowing and highly entertaining memoir that includes the story of Augusten’s affair, at age 13, with the 33-year-old son of his mother's psychiatrist. Augusten is the son of a poet with a "wild mental imbalance" and a professor with a "pitch-black dark side." He’s sent to live with Dr. Finch when his parents separate and his mother comes out as a lesbian. Ultimately a feel-good story as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs' survivor mentality will guide him through.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday

The action in this debut novel centres on British fisheries scientist Dr. Alfred Jones, who has been enlisted by the prime minister to bring salmon into Yemen. This project is financed by the wealthy Sheikh Muhammad, who sees fishing as a unifying activity that will break down the barriers of sect, class, and religion. Dr. Alfred's impossible assignment is documented not only through traditional narrative but also through e-mails, letters, bureaucratic memos, and media interviews, which exposes the ineptitude of Kafkaesque government agencies. Beyond the intriguing plot is a telling contrast between capitalism, clearly identified as the religion of Western culture, and Muslim culture. ~ Library Journal

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

An international art dealer and a modern-day slave from Louisiana become friends after the art dealer is roped into volunteering at a homeless shelter by his saintly wife. Sounds like it's got to be fiction, but it's a biographical account by the co-authors. Then Deborah, the wife, discovers that she has cancer. An emotional tale of their story: a telling of pain and laughter, doubt and tears--unforgettable.

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Pivotal to this novel is the key in ten-year-old Sarah's pocket. It opens the cupboard in which she has hidden her younger brother from the French police, who are rounding up Jews in Paris. It is July 16, 1942, and Sarah, along with her parents and hundreds more people, are brought to the stadium Vélodrome d'Hiver, where they spend several days without food or water before being sent to French camps en route to Auschwitz. Library Journal

Saturday by Ian McEwan

Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before.On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne’s day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary.

School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauemeister

In this remarkable debut, Bauermeister creates a captivating world where the pleasures and particulars of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence…Delivering memorable story lines and characters while seducing the senses, Bauermeister’s tale of food and hope is sure to satisfy. Publisher’s Weekly

The Sea by John Banville

Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with the recent loss of his wife. He decides to return to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child. His memory of that time evolves around the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In those long-ago summers, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with the twins, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl. But in a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son. Good Reads.com

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

An impressive debut novel from a new voice in fiction, The Secret History tells of a small circle of friends at an esteemed college in New England, whose studies in Classical Greek lead them to odd rituals, shocking behavior.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Lily Owens is coming of age and is fleeing an abusive father. She is tormented by not knowing the truth about her involvement in her mother's violent, untimely death. Her search for answers leads her to Tiburon, South Carolina, where she meets the women who will guide her on her inner journey to adulthood.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Large Print Edition)

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love-and its threatened loss-the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In post-World War II Barcelona, young Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a massive sanctuary where books are guarded from oblivion. Told to choose one book to protect, he selects The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax. He reads it, loves it, and soon learns it is both very valuable and very much in danger because someone is determinedly burning every copy of every book written by the obscure Carax.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

In the mid 1930's two well-educated sisters from Shanghai go to Los Angeles to become brides of the "Gold Mountain men" when their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. When the get to Los Angeles they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months. When one of the sisters becomes pregnant they vow that no one will ever know.

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

Enduring family ties are the theme of Trigiani's love story of Ciro and Enza, which is based on the author's Italian heritage. At the close of the 19th century, Ciro and his brother are left at a convent in the Italian Alps when their widowed mother can no longer care for them. While the boys grow under the nuns' watchful care, Enza and her large family are living in a neighboring village. When Enza's beloved baby sister dies, Ciro is hired as the grave digger. Their paths cross, separate, and cross again when they both immigrate to New York. Ciro becomes a shoemaker in lower Manhattan, while Enza works as a dressmaker at the Metropolitan Opera. They marry, settle in northern Minnesota, and raise a family. Through tragedy, happiness, struggle, and success, Enza and Ciro's devotion to their families and their abiding love for each other shine through. ~ Library Journal

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living–and whom he does it for. This tale of two hired guns during the Gold Rush, is ‘weirdly funny, startlingly violent and steeped in sadness (HarperCollins.ca). Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; listed on Tom Perotta’s Favourite Fiction of 2011 (Salon.com) and Notable Fiction of 2011 (Washington Post).

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Lily at 80 reflects on her life, beginning with her daughter days in 19th-century rural China. Foot-binding was practiced by all but the poorest families, and the graphic descriptions of it are not for the fainthearted. Yet women had nu shu, their own secret language. At the instigation of a matchmaker, Lily and Snow Flower, a girl from a larger town and supposedly from a well-connected, wealthy family, become laotong, bound together for life. Even after Lily learns that Snow Flower is not from a better family, even when Lily marries above her and Snow Flower beneath her, they remain close, exchanging nu shu written on a fan.

The Soloist by Mark Salzman

As a child, Renne showed promise of becoming one of the world's greatest cellists. Now, years later, his life suddenly is altered by two events: he becomes a juror in a murder trial for the brutal killing of a Buddhist monk, and he takes on as a pupil a Korean boy whose brilliant musicianship reminds him of his own past.

State of Wonder Cover State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness. Stirring and luminous, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest's jeweled canopy. From www.goodreads.com.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind.

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

This is a compelling journey seen through the eyes of a woman nearing the end of her life. At ninety, Hagar Shipley speaks movingly of the perils of growing old and reflects with bitterness, humor, and a painful awareness of her own frailties on the life she has led. From her childhood as the daughter of a respected merchant, to her rebellious marriage, Hagar has fought a long and sometimes misguided battle for independence and respect. In the course of examining and trying to understand the shape her life has taken, her divided feelings about her husband, her passionate attachment to one son and her neglect of another, she is sometimes regretful, but rarely penitent.

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi

Trudi Montag is a dwarf living in Germany during the two World Wars. To its credit, Stones does not wilt from the comparison. Hegi's book has a distinctive, appealing flavor of its own. Stone's characters are off-center enough to hold your attention despite the inevitable dominance of the setting: There's Trudi's mother, who slowly goes insane living in an "earth nest" beneath the family house; Trudi's best friend Georg, whose parents dress him as the girl they always wanted; and, of course, Trudi herself, whose condition dooms her to long for an impossible normalcy. Futhermore, the reader's inevitable sympathy for Trudi, the dwarf, heightens the true grotesqueness of Nazi Germany. Stones from the River is a nightmare journey with an unforgettable guide.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

In this enchanting debut novel, a mute boy with the ability to communicate with dogs becomes suspicious of his uncle after the death of his father—a plot, readers of Hamlet will find familiar. However, there is much more going on in this novel than merely a re-enactment of Shakespeare's play: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is full of strange magic, lyrical prose, and a love of animals that are uniquely its own. Author David Wroblewski toiled on the novel for ten years, and the result is a rich and lovingly crafted book with a timeless classic quality.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

A novel set in Ireland in the 1920s charts the progress of a young girl whose entire life seems to be falling apart when the threat of arson drives the family from their country home.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope. Amazon

Suddenly by Bonnie Burnard

A phone call in the night, an unexpected diagnosis-suddenly, life can change forever. sandra, Colleen and Jude have been friends for nearly a lifetime. Now, with sandra's crisis, everyone must find a way to endure the present and imagine the future. sweeping through and beyond the second half of the 20th century-from men in space to 9/11- the novel creates an astonishingly intimate portrait of three women balanced on the knife edge of middle age. ChaptersIndigo.ca

The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

Their lives as a diplomat and lawyer frozen by the ascendancy of the Taliban, Moshen and Zunaira find their situation becoming a nightmare when Zunaira is arrested and condemned to death. In crisp prose and an ominous—but not heavy handed—tone as the author contrasts the criminally absurd world of the Taliban's theocracy with touching and ultimately heartbreaking relationships of love and sacrifice that humanize the whole tragic society.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by C. Alan Bradley

When Flavia's father, Colonel de Luce, gets implicated in a murder case, and arrested, she must piece together the curious clues--a dead bird left on the doorstep, a valuable postage stamp that's been missing for decades, a corpse she finds in the cucumber patch, and a mysterious suicide--in order to prove his innocence. Flavia is an engaging sleuth to tag along with, and Bradley evokes mid-century England with panache.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

Orphaned at the age of eight, British-born Lilly devotes her life to the teachings of the Qur'an from within a Sufi shrine, but is persecuted for her foreign heritage, forcing her to flee to London, where she is equally disconnected.

Sylvanus Now by Diana Morrissey

Newfoundland fisherman Sylvanus Now determinedly works to earn enough money to afford a suit that will help him to court the beautiful Adelaide, whose family compromises her dream of escaping her stultifying port community.

Taking the Leap by Pema Chodron

Best-seller Pema Chödrön draws on the Buddhist concept of shenpa to help us see how certain habits of mind tend to “hook” us and get us stuck in states of anger, blame, self-hatred, and addiction. The good news is that once we start to recognize these patterns, they instantly begin to lose their hold on us and we can begin to change our lives for the better. Amazon.ca

Tell it to the Trees by Anita Rau Badami

"One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family's house. It's the body of their tenant, Anu Krishnan. Why had she, a stranger to the mountains, been foolish enough to go out into the blizzard? From this gripping opening, Anita Rau Badami threads together a story of love and need, and of chilling secrets never told aloud. For Anu, seeking a secluded retreat from the city, the Dharmas--the authoritarian Vikram, his aged mother, gentle Suman whom he has brought from the bustling warmth of India in a swiftly arranged marriage, their young daughter, Varsha, and her little brother--are a tightly knit family with values to uphold. The joy of Suman's good Indian cooking, the tales told by old Akka, the beauty of the place, delight her; but she soon realizes that the Dharma family holds unexpected secrets--Suman is a trapped, silent and fearful woman--and the memory of Vikram's first wife who died in an accident casts a long shadow over the household. Anu's arrival will change the balance of the Dharma household, and when the secrets start to spill out, something terrible is bound to happen..."--Publisher.

Theft by Peter Carey

Two-time Booker-winner Carey returns with a magnificent high-stakes art heist wrapped around a story of two brothers and the things people will do for art, for love . . . and for money. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo – and exploring themes of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption – this great novel will make you laugh out loud.

There is a Season: a Memoir in a Garden by Patrick Lane

Believed by many to be one of the finest poets of his generation, Patrick Lane is also a passionate gardener. He lives on Vancouver Island, a place of uncommon beauty, where the climate is mild, the air is soft, and the growing season lasts nearly all year long. Lane has gardened for as long as he can remember, and sees his garden’s life as intertwined with his own. And when he gave up drinking, after years of addiction, he found solace and healing in tending to his yard. In this exquisitely written memoir, he relates stories of his hard early life in the context of the landscape he’s created. As he observes the seasonal changes, a plant or a bird or the way a tree bends in the wind brings to mind an episode from his storied past.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

This story depicts the rise and fall of Okonkwo, a Nigerian whose sense of manliness is more akin to that of his warrior ancestors than to that of his fellow clansmen who have converted to Christianity and are working hard to appease the British administrators who infiltrate their village. The tough, proud, hardworking Okonkwo is at once a quintessential old-order Nigerian and a universal character. Achebe creates a many-sided picture of village life and a sympathetic hero.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behaviour. Goodreads

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in war torn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town's first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Though Relin's writing is not top-caliber, Mortenson's story comes through as exciting and inspiring.

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden's first novel is the story of two Cree friends, Xavier and Elijah, who leave their pristine northern country to end up in the horrific trenches of World War I. Loosely based on the real life of a famous Canadian sniper, the story is told from two first-person views: those of Xavier and his old aunt and only living relative, Niska. After the war, Niska is taking her wounded nephew back home north to the bush in a canoe. Their trip is the three-day road of the title, which also refers to the journey taken after death.

The Time in Between by David Bergen

In David Bergen's moody, thoughtful novel, Charles Boatman, a Vietnam War vet, returns to Vietnam 30 years after the war to try to come to terms with his accidental killing of a young boy in a village. After about a month in Vietnam, he disappears. Two of his grown children, Ada and Jon, who live in B.C., come to Danang to search for him but Charles does not want to be found. While there, Ada falls in love with Vu, an older, well-known Vietnamese artist. Meanwhile, Jon leaps into the expatriate gay scene. In essence, this is the story of a father and a daughter and their attempt to understand the depth and meaning of their similarities and differences.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born.

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

Meet Oskar Matzerath, "the eternal three-year-old drummer." On the morning of his third birthday, young Oskar makes an irrevocable decision: "It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; that I would stop right there, remain as I was--and so I did; for many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same attire." Oskar goes from one picaresque adventure to the next--he joins a troupe of traveling musicians; he becomes the leader of a group of anarchists; he falls in love; he becomes a recording artist--until some time after the war, he is convicted of murder and confined to a mental hospital. Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The premise has built-in appeal: little changes can have big effects, when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. Gladwell's thesis that ideas, products, messages and behaviors "spread just like viruses do" remains a metaphor as he follows the growth of "word-of-mouth epidemics". The book’s roots as a series of articles for The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer, are revealed in the smorgasbord-style presentation of intriguing snippets summarizing research on topics such as conversational patterns, infants' crib talk, judging other people's character, cheating habits in schoolchildren, memory sharing among families or couples, and the dehumanizing effects of prisons.

Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life by Brian Brett

For twenty years writer Brian Bretthas tended a small island farm, affectionately named Trauma Farm. Poetic and evocative, this illuminating memoir of his experiences allows readers to reconnect with the land and get closer to the source of our food. Beginning naked in darkness, Brian Brettmoves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field. Brettunderstands both tall tales and rigorous science as he explores the small mixed farmomeditating on the perfection of the egg and the nature of soil while also offering a scathing critique of agribusiness and the horror of modern slaughterhouses. Whether discussing the uses and misuses of gates, examining the energy of seeds, or bantering with his family, farm hands, and neighbours, he remains aware of the miracles of life, birth, and death that confront the rural world every day. Trauma Farmtells a story thatis poetic, passionate, practical, and frequently hilarious, providing an unforgettable portrait of one farm and our separation from the natural world, as well as a common-sense analysis of rural life.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie--who is 600 miles away--because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die. So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories--flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of his shortcomings as a husband. Ironically, his wife Maureen, shocked by her husband's sudden absence, begins to long for his presence. Is it possible for Harold and Maureen to bridge the distance between them? And will Queenie be alive to see Harold arrive at her door? From amazon.ca

A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison

This chilling, suspenseful, and powerful debut weaves fictional characters into the reality of contemporary slavery. The novel opens on the serene shores of Tamil Nadu, India, as a tsunami rips apart the coastal towns. Two survivors, orphaned sisters who have lost nearly everything, are thrown into the havoc and are immediately sold into the sex trade. The teenage girls are passed from one criminal to the next, experiencing horrors that span the globe. Meanwhile, an American lawyer caught up in a midlife crisis takes a sabbatical to India and helps prosecute human traffickers. His work becomes entwined with the plight of the two sisters, and he sets out to rescue them from the international trade. ~ Library Journal

The Wars by Timothy Findley

The year is 1915. Robert Ross, a young Canadian, enlists as an officer. He is not yet twenty as we follow him from his cloistered home in Toronto across the Atlantic to Ypres and the horrors of the battlefield. He finds himself in a nightmare world of trench warfare, of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performs a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Jacob Jankowski, a young man suddenly adrift at the height of the Depression, enters the world of a second-rate circus struggling to survive through one-night stands in town after town. Working in the circus menagerie, Jacob meets Marlena, the beautiful star of the equestrian act, and her husband, August, a charismatic but cruel animal trainer. He also comes to know Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable - until Jacob finds a way to reach her. Sara Gruen writes with humour and humanity, warmth and whimsy, depicting a world where even love was a luxury few could afford.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families - the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from the former British empire, as they make their way in modern England.

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Balram Halwai is a complicated man - Servant, Philosopher, Entrepreneur, Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

In Maguire's Oz, Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West, is not wicked; nor is she a formally schooled witch. Instead, she's an insecure, unfortunately green Munchkinlander who's willing to take radical steps to unseat the tyrannical Wizard of Oz. She suffered a tumultuous childhood (spent with an alcoholic mother and a minister father) and eye-opening school years (when she befriends her roommate, Glinda). This book is for readers who like satire, and love exceedingly imaginative and clever fantasy.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

In a prequel to Jane Eyre, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway lives in Dominica and Jamaica in the 1830s before she travels to England, becomes Mrs. Rochester, and goes mad.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State--and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

The Woefield Poultry Collective by Susan Juby

Woefield Farm is a sprawling thirty acres of scrub land, complete with dilapidated buildings and one halfsheared, lonely sheep named Bertie. It’s “run”—in the loosest possible sense of the word—by Prudence Burns, an energetic, well-intentioned twenty-something New Yorker full of backto- the-land ideals, but without an iota of related skills or experience. Prudence, who inherited the farm from her uncle, soon discovers that the bank is about to foreclose on Woefield Farm, which means that Prudence has to turn things around, fast. But fear not! She’ll be assisted by Earl, a spry seventy-something, banjo-playing foreman with a distrust of newfangled ideas and a substantial family secret; Seth, the alcoholic, celebrityblogging boy-next-door, who hasn’t left the house since a scandal with his high-school drama teacher; and Sara Spratt, a highly organized eleven-year-old looking for a home for her prizewinning chickens, including one particularly randy fellow soon to be christened Alec Baldwin. Full of offbeat charm and characters you won’t soon forget, The Woefield Poultry Collective is a heartwarming novel about learning how to take on a challenge, facing your fears, and finding friendship in the most unlikely of places. With alternating narratives, Susan Juby shows how a team of misfits can find acceptance and success, even with—and sometimes in spite of—their highly unorthodox approach.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Year of Magical Thinking, is the author’s memoir of what happened in the year after losing her husband, novelist John Gregory Dunne, to a fatal heart attack. His death came at a time when their daughter Quintana was in intensive care for complications after pneumonia. Having been married for 40 years, and having spent most days writing together, consulting with each other, and most evenings dining together or with friends, her book is a record of the hour of his death and the days that followed, when she fails to fully comprehend what had happened, and the months after that of grieving and being regularly and painfully stunned by the fact of his passing. Winner of the 2005 National Book award for nonfiction.

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen “guests” hid inside the Zabinskis’ villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.

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