~~2011-2012~~

Wed. September 12 
Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks  *Pick up Aug. 15 at the Reference Desk
Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up on Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's father is a Calvinist minister who seeks to convert the native Wampanoag, and Caleb becomes a prize in the contest between old ways and new, eventually becoming the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. 306 pp
 

Wed. October 24   
Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland
It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows which he hopes will earn him a place on the international artistic stage. Behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division, who conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which Tiffany will long be remembered. Never publicly acknowledged, Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman.  305 pp

Wed. November 28      
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow 
Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. (B&N) 296 pp

Wed. December 19 
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuke  *meet in the Board Room
A novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as ‘picture brides’ nearly a century ago. In eight sections, Otsuke traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco, to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture, and more…  129 pp
 

Wed. January 23 
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize winner Wilkerson chronicles the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. 622 pp  

Wed. February 27 
Persuasion by Jane Austen  
Eight years ago, Anne Elliot fell in love with poor, but ambitious, naval officer Captain Frederick Wentworth --- a choice not approved by Anne's family.  Lady Russell, friend and mentor to Anne, persuaded the younger woman to break off the match. Now, on the verge of spinsterhood, Anne re-encounters Frederick Wentworth as he courts her spirited young neighbour, Louisa Musgrove.  260 pp  

Wed. March 27 
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife. (Random House)  337 pp  

Wed. April 24 
Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein
 When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors.  373 pp 

Wed. May 22 
Chango’s  Beads and Two-tone Shoes by William Kennedy  *At Circulation Desk
When journalist Daniel Quinn meets Ernest Hemingway at the Floridita Bar in Havana, Cuba, in 1957, he has no idea that his own affinity for simple, declarative sentences will change his life radically overnight. So begins Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy's latest novel. Quinn's epic journey carries him through the nightclubs and jungles of Cuba and into the newsrooms and racially charged streets of Albany on the day Robert Kennedy is fatally shot in 1968. The odyssey brings Quinn, and his exotic but unpredictable Cuban wife, Renata, a debutante revolutionary, face-to-face with the darkest facets of human nature and illuminates the power of love in the presence of death.  328 pp   

Wed. June 26
Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene *Pick up at Circulation Desk
Described by Graham Greene as "the only book I have written just for the fun of it, this is the story of Henry Pulling, a retired and complacent bank manager, who meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. She soon persuades Henry to abandon his dull suburban existence to travel her way—to Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay. Through Aunt Augusta, one of Greene's greatest comic creations, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society; mixes with hippies, war criminals,  and CIA men; smokes pot; and breaks all currency regulations. (Penguin)  254 pp