The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

 

The story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

229 pages (September 2007)

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Title Read-alikes: If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric L Gansworth; The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by L. Tam Holland; Character Driven by David Lubar; Winger by Andrew Smith; Matthew Meets the Man by Travis Nichols; What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen; Dumplin' by Julie Murphy; The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe; Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram; A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi; The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis; American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang; and The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.

 

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

 

552 pages (January 2005)

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Title Read-alikes: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys; Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit; Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli; Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang; All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton; Lovely War by Julie Berry; Ashes by Kathryn Lasky; Malka by Mirjam Pressler; The Love That I Have by James Moloney; The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel; They Went Left by Monica Hesse; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; and The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

An unforgettable journey into one man's remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others set in 1960s & 1970s Ethiopia and 1980s America.

 

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. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

667 pages (February 2009)

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Title Read-alikes: In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume; The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner; Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste; The Girls by Lori Lansens; The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne; Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss; The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu; The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers; Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford; State of Wonder by Ann Patchett; and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need, Ward is nonetheless embarking on a search of monumental proportions—to rediscover his grandmother, now long dead, who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life.

 

Wallace Stegner has said of his epic novel, "It's perfectly clear that if every writer is born to write one story, that's my story." It is a testament to the power of Stegner's prose and vision that Angle of Repose, winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, can be appreciated as America's story as well. Based on the correspondence of the little-known 19th century writer, Mary Hallock Foote, the novel's heroes represent opposing but equally strong strains of the American ideal. 

557 pages. (January 1971)

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Title Read-alikes: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout; The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides; The Only Story by Julian Barnes; 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster; A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul; The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich; Three Junes by Julia Glass; The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather; Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich; Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi; and All the Wild That Remains by David Gessner.

Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan

A sequel to the bestselling, much-beloved Wish You Were Here, Stewart O'Nan's intimate new novel follows Emily Maxwell, a widow whose grown children have long moved away. She dreams of visits by her grandchildren while mourning the turnover of her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood, but when her sole companion and sister-in-law Arlene faints at their favorite breakfast buffet, Emily's days change. As she grapples with her new independence, she discovers a hidden strength and realizes that life always offers new possibilities.

Like most older women, Emily is a familiar yet invisible figure, one rarely portrayed so honestly. Her mingled feelings - of pride and regret, joy and sorrow - are gracefully rendered in wholly unexpected ways. Once again making the ordinary and overlooked not merely visible but vital to understanding our own lives, Emily, Alone confirms O'Nan as an American master.

255 pages (March 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: This is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison; My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout; Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan; Tempting Fate by Jane Green; Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf; All Adults Here by Emma Straub; George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl; The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood; Who Asked You? by Terry Mcmillan; Bear Necessity by James Gould-Bourn; Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler; Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason; and Monogamy by Sue Miller.

Faith: a novel by Jennifer Haigh

In the spring of 2002, a perfect storm hits Boston: Trusted priests are accused of the worst possible betrayal. Faith explores the fallout for one devout family.

Estranged from her family, Sheila McGann returns home when her older brother, Art—a popular pastor—finds himself at the center of the maelstrom. Her strict mother is in a state of angry denial. Sheila’s younger brother, Mike, has convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who dodges Sheila’s questions and refuses to defend himself.

As secrets begin to surface, Faith explores the corrosive consequences of one family’s history of silence—and the resilience it finds through forgiveness. A suspenseful tale of one woman’s quest for the truth, Faith is a haunting meditation on loyalty and family, doubt and belief. Elegantly crafted, sharply observed, this is Jennifer Haigh’s most ambitious novel to date.

318 pages (May 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: Beartown by Fredrik Backman; Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng; All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin; Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout; The Precious One by Marisa De los Santos; This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper; One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel; The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin; The Gathering by Anne Enright; Household Words by Joan Silber; Maggie-Now by Betty Smith; The Widow Waltz by Sally Koslow; and The End of Day by Bill Clegg.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

From concert violinist Gerald Elias (who has played with the Utah Symphony) comes this debut set in the classical music world about the theft of a priceless violin.

Daniel Jacobus is a blind, reclusive, crotchety violin teacher living in self-imposed exile in rural New England. He spends his time chain-smoking, listening to old LPs, and occasionally taking on new students, whom he berates in the hope that they will flee.

Jacobus is drawn back into the world he left behind when he decides to attend The Grimsley Competition at Carnegie Hall. The young winner of this competition is granted the honor of playing the Piccolino Stradivarius, a uniquely dazzling three-quarter-size violin that has brought misfortune to all who possessed it over the centuries. But the violin is stolen before the winner of the competition has a chance to play it, and Jacobus is the primary suspect.

With the help of his friend and former musical partner, Nathaniel Williams, his new student,Yumi Shinagawa, and several quirky sidekicks, Jacobus sets out to prove his innocence and find the stolen Piccolino Strad. Will he be successful? The quest takes him through the halls of wealth and culture, across continents to Japan, and leads him to a…murder.

306 pages. (August 2009)

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Title Read-alikes: The Devil of Echo Lake by Douglas Wynne; The Lost Concerto by Helaine Mario; Farewell Performance by Tessa Barclay; The Rainaldi Quartet by Paul Adam; The Long Way Home by Louise Penny; The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow; Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey; Rock & Roll Never Forgets by Deborah Grabien; Vengeance by Stuart Kaminsky; The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John; and A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford

With Bliss, Remembered, the celebrated Frank Deford has produced a work of literature which ranks with the best of his many novels, including Everybody’s All American which Sports Illustrated ranked as one of the twenty-five best sports books of all time.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics Sydney begins an intense love affair with a German, but the affair abruptly ends when political forces tear them apart. Back in the US, Sydney is left healing her broken heart when a striking American begins to pursue her.

 

Sydney is daring, vulnerable, and memorable. With her the reader longs for an earlier time with its greater simplicity and honesty, when promises seemed to be forever but choices so dire in the enveloping shadows of a changing world

This book sounds so simple: Sydney Stringfellow, nearing death, sits her son down and tells him about a special, long-ago time of her life. But Deford’s beautifully written novel is a bit more complex than that. It introduces us to two Sydneys, the elderly-but-sprightly woman dying of cancer and the teenage girl, graceful and naive, who decided, against pretty tall odds, that she would swim for her country in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This is one of those novels that defies categorization. There’s romance in it, but it’s not a love story. It’s set, partly, against the backdrop of a world war, but it’s not a war story. There is heartrending tragedy, but it’s not a tragedy. The story doesn’t fully reveal itself until the end, when Deford ties all the threads together, showing us finally what he’s been building before our eyes. This multilayered, finely crafted, and elegantly constructed novel will appeal both to readers of historical fiction and to those who crave any kind of writing that is genuinely inspiring.

 

351 pages (June 2010)

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13 Book Club Questions to Energize Any Meetup from Bustle

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Title Read-alikes: Love and Ruin by Paula McLain; City of Women by David Gillham; The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; The Good German by Joseph Kanon; The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy; Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali; The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig; The Last Train to Paris by Michele Zackheim; The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab; Somerset by Leila Meacham; Butcher's Crossing by John Williams; and The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall.

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

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb....

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

278 pages (July 2008)

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Title Read-alikes: The Storied Life of A. J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin; La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith; Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson; Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay; The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner; Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole; I'll Be Seeing You by Suzanne Hayes; 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff; The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit; Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.