American Library Association (ALA) College Bound

TITLE & AUTHOR

SYNOPSIS

Beloved*

In post-Civil War Ohio, the past continues to haunt the ex-slave Sethe, and the surviving members of her family.

Bless Me, Ultima

Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past. A depiction of life for a Chicano family in the American Southwest.

Brave New World

Briar Rose

Yolen's recasting of the Sleeping Beauty is evocatively grounded in the horror of the Holocaust.

Catch-22

HELLER, J

A savagely funny war novel: military madness and civilian insanity in WW II.

Chosen

The odyssey of two young men journeying from boyhood to manhood, set against the background of the conflicts and traditions of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews.

Ellen Foster

Ellen Foster, cast adrift after the deaths of her drunken father and misused mother, moves from one bad situation to another until she finds a real home.

Farewell To Arms

One of Ernest Hemingway's most enduring creations, a tale of love set on the Italian front during WW I.

Grapes Of Wrath

Powerful chronicle of dispossessed landowners who leave Oklahoma during the Great Depression and head for the "promised land" of California.

Handmaid's Tale

The story is set in a future America where women are categorized in terms of whether or not they are able to bear children, and function in the strictly defined roles assigned to them by men.

House On Mango Street

CISNEROS, S

Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago, captures her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories in order to rise above hopelessness and create a space for herself.

In The Time Of Butterflies

An eloquent account of the human cost of political oppression, this novel tells the story of life in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo dictatorship through the eyes of the Mirabal sisters.

Into Thin Air

The tragedy that took the lives of experienced mountain guides and novice climbers in a raging blizzard atop Mt. Everest in 1996 is chronicled with clarity, poignancy and brutal honesty by someone who had witnessed the event first-hand.

Killer Angels

A gripping novel of the four days of the Battle of Gettysburg, as seen by the members of the Union and Confederate.

Lesson Before Dying

Set in the 1940's, this is a heartbreaking story of friendship between two black men, one condemned to die.

Member Of The Wedding

Young Frankie cannot understand why everyone disapproves of her idea of going on her brother’s honeymoon. Then she realizes "member of the wedding" doesn't mean what she thinks.

Native Son

Caught up in forces of racism he can't understand or control, Bigger Thomas, a black man living in Chicago in the early 1930’s, turns to violence.

Nectar In A Sieve

The story of a simple woman in a village in India who, married as a child bride, worked with her husband to wrest a living from the ravaged land.

Old Man And The Sea

HEMINGWAY, E

The tragic tale of a Cuban fisherman and the giant marlin he kills and loses.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Cowed by a sadistic nurse, the inmates of a mental hospital are galvanized by a new patient, the free-spirited McMurphy, who enters a pitched battle of wills with the nurse.

Perfect Storm

In 1991 the forces of nature converged to create a 100-year storm that caught the North Atlantic fishing fleet at sea and unprotected.

Siddharta

Things They Carried

A profound study of men at war and the intangible burdens of soldier - grief, terror, love, longing.

To Kill A Mockingbird

LEE, H

Magnificent novel of a quiet Southern town rocked by a crisis of conscience.