Enrich, Inspire, Transform
Top
Books for adults Book Clubs
Books Page 9 of 23, showing 10 records out of 226 total
Guest List, The
Lucy Foley

A wedding celebration turns dark and deadly in this deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller. On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It's a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride's oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn't wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more importantly, why?

(12 copies)  Reserve

Guide for the Perplexed, A
Dara Horn

Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an application that records everything its users do. When an Egyptian library invites her to visit as a consultant, her jealous sister Judith persuades her to go. A century earlier, another traveler arrives in Egypt: Solomon Schechter, a Cambridge professor hunting for a medieval archive hidden in a Cairo synagogue. Both he and Josie are haunted by the work of the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, a doctor and rationalist who sought to reconcile faith and science, destiny and free will. But what Schechter finds will reveal the power and perils of what Josie's ingenious work brings into being: a world where nothing is ever forgotten.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Half-Blood Blues
Esi Eduygan

Half-Blood Blues, winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize is a story set in Paris about music, race, love and loyalty.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Emily Henry

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college, they go together like salt and pepper. Except, now, for reasons they're still not discussing, they don't. They broke up six months ago. And still haven't told their best friends. Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group's yearly getaway for the last decade. After years of being in love how hard can it be to fake it for one week in front of those who know you best?

(12 copies)  Reserve

Have You Eaten Yet? Stories From Chinese Restaurants Around the World
Cheuk Kwan

An examination of Chinese restaurants with a focus on the chefs, entrepreneurs, labourers, and dreamers who can be found in Chinese kitchens worldwide. This non-fiction book charts a living atlas of the global Chinese migration, revealing the synergies of politics, culture and family.

(12 copies)  Reserve

Heart Berries
Mailhot, Terese Marie

Guileless and refreshingly honest, Terese Mailhot's debut memoir chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Native heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the reservation. Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II; Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father--an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist--who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot "trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain and what we can bring ourselves to accept." Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Help, The
Kathryn Stockett

The setting is racially divided Jackson, Mississippi and the story involves three women who team up for a clandestine project.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Henna Artist, The
Alka Joshi

Seventeen-year-old Lakshmi escapes an abusive marriage and makes her way to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. She becomes the best and most requested henna artist -- and confidante -- to wealthy women of upper class. But keeping the secrets of the wealthy means she can never reveal her own. She is startled when she is confronted by her husband, with a young girl in tow -- a sister Lakshmi never knew about. Suddenly the life she has carefully cultivated is threatened. Still she applies her talents and lifts up those around her as she does.

(9 copies)  Reserve

Hidden Figures
Margot Lee Shetterly

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space.

(14 copies)  Reserve

Hillbilly Elegy
Vance, J.D.

Shares the story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle class life and the collective demons ofthe past.

(15 copies)  Reserve