Suggested Reading: Mrs. Suzanne Kottke

TITLE & AUTHOR

ORWELL, G

HUNT, I

The unforgettable story of young Jethro Creighton, who comes of age during the turbulent years of the Civil War.

A young boy reaches manhood while fleeing down the Mississippi River with Jim, a runaway slave.

The story of an exuberant, high-spirited boyhood by the Mississippi River that captures the magical years of the very young.

All Around The Town

Professor Alan Grant is found stabbed to death in his New Jersey home. All the evidence points to 21-year-old Laurie Kenyon when she awakens in her dormitory, covered with Grant's blood and clutching the knife that killed him.

All Quiet On The Western Front

REMARQUE, E

Harrowing account of WW I seen through the eyes of a German soldier.

All The Pretty Horses

John Grady Cole is a young Texas rancher who sets off for adventure in the beautiful but dangerous borderland of Mexico.

Amistad

PATE, A

True story of the 1839 mutiny on the Spanish ship "La Amistad". When the ship is intercepted by the US Navy, and the captives imprisoned, a series of charged trials for their freedom begins that call into question the controversial institution of slavery.

Animal Farm*

A devastating, satirical attack on the avaricious rulers in an imaginary totalitarian state.

Anna Karenina

Sensual, rebellious Anna renounces a respectable marriage and a fine position for a passionate and destructive romantic involvement.

Atlas Shrugged

RAND, A

The story of a man who said he would stop the motor of the world - and did.

Beach Music

The story of Jack McCall, an American expatriate in Rome, desperately seeking peace after his wife's suicide, and trying to find a way to heal himself and his closely-bound group of fiends.

KINGSOLVER, B

Taylor Greer flees her harsh life in Appalachia and heads west in this memorable novel of love and friendship, abandonment and belonging.

Bell Jar

Autobiographical novel about a young woman on the brink of madness and suicide.

Beloved*

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

Black Boy

Richard Wright's unforgettable story of growing up in the Jim Crow South. The book is told from the perspective of the adult Wright, who was still trying to come to grips with the cruel deprivations and humiliations of his childhood.

NEIHARD, J

The life story and personal vision of a Sioux warrior and medicine man who lived through the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the massacre at Wounded Knee and the death of his people.

Black Like Me

GRIFFIN, J

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.

Bluest Eye

Haunting story of a young black girl who prays every night for blue eyes, thinking that blue eyes would change her life and make it better.

Bonesetter’s Daughter

LuLing Young searches for the name of her mother, the daughter of the "Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain". Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China.

Bread Givers

Sara Smolinksy, the youngest daughter of a rabbi, watches as her father marries off her sisters into dire circumstances, and she vows to escape this fate.

Breath, Eyes, Memory

At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village in Haiti to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti.

Briar Rose

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

Bride Price

EMECHETA, B

A story about a Nigerian girl who is allowed to finish her education because a diploma will enhance her bride price, who then rebels against traditional marriage customs.

Catcher In The Rye

SALINGER, J

Holden Caulfield is the typically alienated private school rebel in this 1945 classic.

Cider House Rules

The story of Dr. Wilbur Larch - obstetrician, director of St. Cloud's orphanage, ether addict and abortionist - and his favorite orphan, Homer Wells.

Cold Mountain

A Confederate soldier's trek brings him into intense situations with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, as he travels on his journey home to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Cold Sassy Tree

On July 5^th, 1906, Will Tweedy's newly widowed grandfather elopes with Love Simpson, half his age, and a Yankee to boot!

Color Purple

WALKER, A

A triumphant novel of a black woman's life in the South.

Day No Pigs Would Die

To a 13-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a living, maturity comes early as he learns "doing what's got to be done," especially regarding his pet pig that cannot produce a litter.

Don Quixote

CERVANTES, M

Drowning Ruth

Set at the end of World War I, this is a beautifully written mystery, as well as a story of a family love, sibling rivalry, duty, loyalty and a possible murder.

Durango Street

When Rufus Henry gets out of work camp for Grand Theft Auto, he has only one place to go - back to Durango Street. Almost right away, he gets on the wrong side of the Gassers, has to join the rival Moors - and starts running for his life.

Elephant Man

John Merrick, trapped in the ugly body of a circus freak, finds love and becomes the toast of London society.

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.

Emma

Classic novel about a self-assured young lady whose capricious behavior is dictated by a romantic fantasy.

Finding Laura Buggs

One perplexing clue to her past sets Sandy Meyer on an incredible and harrowing journey in search of her lost family, a pilgrimage that brings her face to face with nerve-shattering suspense, unbearable terror and the magnificent capacity of the human heart.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

The epic story of Robert Jordan, who fought, loved and died with the anti-Fascist guerrillas of the Spanish Civil War.

Fountainhead

RAND, A

Novel of rebellious architect who refuses to lower his standards in work or love.

Go Ask Alice*

True and painful diary of a 15-year-old girl's experience with drugs that eventually leads to her death.

Going After Cacciato

A private deserts his post in Vietnam, intent on walking 8,000 miles to Paris for the peace talks. The remaining members of his squad are sent after him, but what happens then is anybody's guess.

Grand Opening

Brendan's parents decided to buy a run-down grocery store in a tiny Minnesota town in 1944-45. What they discover about small town idealism, bigotry and good old American values will change them and the town forever.

Grapes Of Wrath

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

Great Expectations

The story of young Pip's difficult coming-of-age in the genteel but corrupt world of Victorian society.

Great Gatsby

FITZGERALD, S

Classic novel of life in the 1920's.

Great Santini

A tyrannical father brutalizes his family, and particularly his oldest son, interpreting humanity as weakness in this unsparing novel. Tragedy is the outcome.

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.

Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (Book 2)

Harry Potter is in terrible danger indeed when he returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Chilling, malevolent voices whisper from the walls only to Harry, and it seems certain that his classmate Draco Malfoy is out to get him.

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. (Book 4)

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry vies with two other magicians' schools, the stylish Beauxbatons and the icy Durmstrang, in a Triwizard Tournament. Those chosen to compete will undergo three supreme tests. Could Harry be one of the lucky contenders?

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (Book 3)

Harry Potter "accidentally" causes the Dursleys' dreadful visitor Aunt Marge to inflate like a monstrous balloon and drift up to the ceiling. Fearing punishment, Harry lunges out into the darkness with his heavy trunk and his owl Hedwig.

Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)

ROWLING, J

Orphan Harry Potter's life changes when destiny calls and he isenrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Hatchet*

Compelling and realistic story of a young boy's survival in the Canadian wilderness.

Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Unsentimental yet compassionate portrayal of a cross-section of humanity in a small Southern town.

Heart Of Darkness And The Secret Sharer

CONRAD, J

Two brilliant short novels that explore the human soul, its capacity for good, and its inclination for evil.

Hobbit

Tolkien has created a world of fantasy called Middle-Earth, populated by small creatures known as Hobbits. This prelude to Lord of the Rings trilogy chronicles the adventures of Bilbo Baggins.

Honk And Holler Opening Soon

The "Honk" is a roadhouse - a little run-down, the center of a small universe. A young drifter happens upon the Honk and, in no time, brings more business and vitality to the place than it's seen in the last dozen years. A feel-good story, centered in America's heartland, where dreams can still come true and people still care enough about each other to give a leg up when it is needed.

Horse Whisperer

Teenager Grace Maclean loses a leg in a terrible accident while riding her horse, Pilgrim. Grace and Pilgrim are both emotionally scarred as well as physically devastated by the accident. Realizing that the fates of her daughter and the horse are linked, Grace's mother launches a campaign to find a '"horse whisperer'", someone who can cure troubled horses with only a calm voice and a soothing touch.

House Of The Spirits

The story of the Trueba family, with its deep loves and hates, following them from the turn of the century to the violent days of the overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in 1973.

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.

How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Fifteen interconnected stories portray the immigrant experience with humor and insight when the four Garcia girls come to America from the Dominican Republic in 1960.

I Am The Cheese*

Adam Farmer desperately tries to remember the events surrounding the mysterious disappearance of his parents.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The moving and beautiful autobiography of a talented black woman confronting her own life with dignity.

Imani All Mine

Imani All Mine tracks the progress of Tasha, a young, unwed mother, as she navigates her journey to adulthood in an increasingly violent world.

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 The Wild

When 24-year old Christopher McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness alone, never to be seen alive again, he left behind a storm of controversy and conflicting emotions over his odyssey.

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.

Island Of The Blue Dolphins*

Haunting story of a Native American girl who spent eighteen years alone on a rocky island far off the coast of California in the early 1800's.

Jane Eyre

The love story of a strong, yet gentle, woman and a harsh mannered society man with a mysterious past and a secret hidden in his attic.

Joy Luck Club

Chronicles the lives of four Chinese women, their forty-year friendship, and how the death of one member brings her daughter into the group, creating a new understanding for each.

Just Ella*

Kitchen God’s Wife

An unfolding of secrets that takes a mother and her daughter back to the small island outside Shangui in the 1920’s and throughout China during WW II.

Lasher

This sequel to The Witching Hour focuses on the brilliant and beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, and Lasher, the darkly compelling demon whom she finds irresistible and from whose evil spell and vision she must now flee.

Long Walk

Lord Of The Flies*

A group of English schoolboys, marooned on an island, set up there own society in this classic investigation of the roots of fear and violence.

Lord Of The Rings

TOLKIEN, J

Tolkien's trilogy of the Hobbits of Middle Earth and the Great War of Rings.

Lords Of Discipline

Losing Absalom

PATE, A

Absalom Goodman worked all his life to build a home for his family. Now the neighborhood has changed for the worse, lifelong dreams have turned into bitter realities, and Absalom is dying of cancer.

Love Medicine

This is a powerful and poetic tale of Kashpaws and Lamartines, two Native American families caught up in a multigenerational drama of anger, magic and healing.

Madame Bovary

Classic novel in which a woman defies the standards of convention in French society.

Map Of The World

HAMILTON, J

A drama about a rural American family filled with grief after their child drowns.

Memoirs Of A Geisha

The remarkable story of Nitta Sayuri, a gray-eyed geisha. In a world where ritual is prized above individual happiness, Nitta risks everything she has achieved for a chance at happiness.

Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke is a young woman of fervent ideals who yearns to effect social change, yet faces resistance from the society she inhabits. One of the most prominent novels of the Victorian era.

Monster; The Autobiography Of An LA Gang Member

Monster Kody, today known as Sanyika Sakur, spent 16 years as a gangbanger in South Central Los Angeles. His account begins at age eleven, when he was inducted into the ranks of the Crips, and ends (hundreds of bodies later) with Scott serving a seven-year prison term for beating a crack dealer.

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.

Notebook

When he returns home from World War II. Noah Calhoun is haunted by images of the girl he met 14 years earlier whom he loved like no other. Then Allie Nelson unexpectedly returns to town. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future.

October Sky

The author tells the story of growing up in a dying coal town in the 1950's, and how he made his dream of launching rockets into space come true.

On The Beach

Innocent victims faced with nuclear extinction make plans as the deadly rain moves in closer, and the world as we know it winds towards an inevitable end.

Paradise

MORRISON, T

Settled by nine African American clans during the 1940s, the town Ruby, Oklahoma represents a small miracle of self-reliance and community spirit.

Pigman

Two lonely high school students meet Mr. Pignati, an old man who lives in his dreams and makes daily visits to the baboons at the zoo. The three find love and laughter, but only for a short time.

Pigs In Heaven

This is a sequel to The Bean Trees. Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee Indian daughter, Turtle, are on a trip to the Hoover Dam, where Turtle is the only person to see a man fall over the side. The rescue makes Turtle a heroine, but becoming a heroine engenders a new disaster.

Pilot’s Wife

When Kathryn Lyon’s husband, Jack, a pilot, is killed in a plane crash, she must deal with her grief while simultaneously discovering that her husband was not the loyal man she thought.

Poisonwood Bible

The story of an American missionary and his family in 1959. A compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption.

Power Of One

Peekay, a white boy born in 1939 in South Africa as the seeds of apartheid are newly sewn, begins an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice.

Presumed Innocent

A courtroom novel about a prosecuting attorney who is charged with the murder of a female colleague with whom he once had an affair.

Pride And Prejudice

A superb comedy of manners, detailing the romantic clash between an opinionated woman and her proud beau.

Prince Of Tides

Reservation Blues

ALEXIE, S

A mythic tale of an all-Indian rock band traveling from reservation bars to Seattle and on to Manhattan.

River, Cross My Heart

When 6-year-old Clara Bynum drowns, 12-year-old Johnnie Mae must come to terms with the powerful and confused emotions sparked by her sister's death.

Sense And Sensibility

AUSTEN, J

Two high-spirited sisters search for true love in a straight-laced society.

Separate Peace

Two young prep school roommates learn to cope with the emotions of adulthood when one of them is struck down by a crippling accident.

Shabanu: Daughter Of The Wind*

The second daughter of a Pakistani family, Shabanu has been brought up with more freedom than most Muslim girls. Should she listen to the stirrings of her own heart when her family insists on an arranged marriage?

Siddharta

Skellig

When Michael's baby sister becomes seriously ill and he discovers a creature not quite human in the crumbling garage in the backyard, Michael knows that the well-being of this creature is somehow linked to his sister's recovery.

Slaughterhouse Five

Snow Falling On Cedars

In 1954 on the isolated beaches of San Pedro Island in Puget Sound, a local fisherman mysteriously drowns. When a Japanese American is charged with his murder, it becomes clear over the course of the ensuing trial that much more is at stake than one man's guilt.

Song Of Solomon

Macon Dead, an upper-class Northern black businessman, tries to insulate his family the danger and despair of the rank and file blacks with whom he shares the neighborhood. The plan leads his son onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped.

Speak

Melinda enters high school as an outcast - silent, angry and traumatized by rape. Her black humor and honest depiction of the high school experience will resonate with many teens.

Stones From The River

At the beginning of WW I, Trudi Montag, a dwarf, is born to an unstable mother and a gentle father in a small Rheinish town. Through the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich into the era following WW II she first struggles with - and later draws strength and wisdom from - her inability to fit into a conformist and repressive society.

Sula

Traces the lives of two black women from their youth in small-town Georgia, through their divergent paths of womanhood to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.

Summer Of My German Soldier

An unlikely friendship between an awkward, lonely Jewish girl and a German POW during WW II leads to tragedy.

Perks Of Being A Wallflower

To Kill A Mockingbird

LEE, H

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

Tree Grows In Brooklyn

The Nolans live in Brooklyn slums from 1902 to 1919. This is the story about Francie, the daughter, and beginnings of wisdom.

Tuck Everlasting

Uncle Tom's Cabin

This 1852 novel of slavery poses the question: "What is it to be a moral human being?"

Vinegar Hill

When Ellen Grier and her family return to Holly's Field, Wisconsin, it is not exactly a happy homecoming as her husband, James, has been laid off from his job in Illinois. For the time being, the family has moved in with Ellen's in-laws, Fritz and Mary-Margaret, an unhappy pair who dislike their daughter-in-law almost as much as they despise each other:

War Of The Worlds

WELLS, H

Martians invade Earth in this science fiction classic.

Watership Down

Picturesque saga of a maverick band of rabbits that, against all odds, seek a new home and a better society.

When The Legends Die

An extraordinary novel about a young Native American boy left alone in the wilderness after his parents' deaths who resolves never to return to the white man's world that had condemned his father.

Where The Heart Is

17-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation finds herself stranded at a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. In this small southwestern town she discovers the hidden treasures of a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people willing to help a homeless, jobless girl.

Wuthering Heights

A savage, tormented orphan falls wildly in love with the daughter of his benefactor.

Yellow Raft In Blue Water

A fierce saga of three generations of Native American women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship.

Yellow Wallpaper

Chilling masterpiece in which a woman descends into madness as the only escape from a suffocating marriage and a patronizing world.