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1776

1776
by David McCullough
Published 2005 by Simon & Schuster

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0743226712

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Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "Truman" and "John Adams," David McCullough returns with the story of the Revolutionary War--a book certain to be another landmark in the literature of American history.Simon & Schuster

 

Bel Canto

Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
Published 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0060188731

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From the bestselling author of "The Magician's Assistant" comes a marvelous novel of love, opera, and terrorism set in South America. Two couples, complete opposites, fall in love; sexual identities become confused; and a horrific imprisonment is transformed into an unexpected heaven on earth.

 

The Bonesetter's Daughter

The Bonesetter's Daughter
by Amy Tan
Published 2001 by Putnam Publishing Group

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0399146857

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"The Bonesetter's Daughter dramatically chronicles the tortured, devoted relationship between LuLing Young and her daughter Ruth. . . . A strong novel, filled with idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery."

-Los Angeles Times

 

Cane River

Cane River
by Lalita Tademy
Published 2001 by Warner Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0446527327

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"Five generations and a hundred years in the life of a matriarchal black Louisiana family are encapsulated in this ambitious debut novel that is based in part upon the lives, as preserved in both historical record and oral tradition, of the author's ancestors."

-Publisher's Weekly 03/12/2001

 

The Color of Water

The Color of Water
by James McBride
Published 1996 by Riverhead Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 1573220221

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James McBride grew up one of twelve siblings in the all-black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white. The object of McBride's constant embarrassment and continuous fear for her safety, his mother was an inspiring figure, who through sheer force of will saw her dozen children through college, and many through graduate school.

 

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
by Erik Larson
Published 2003 by Crown Publishers

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0609608444

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The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.

 

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
by Firoozeh Dumas
Published 2003 by Villard Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 1400060400

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"Dumas first came to the U.S. from Iran in the early '70s when her father was sent to California on a two-year contract from the National Iranian Oil Company. Her family soon discovered that his presumed skill in English was basically limited to 'vectors, surface tension and fluid mechanics.' In short, humorous, vignettes the author recounts their resulting difficulties and Americans' almost total ignorance of Iran, illustrating the kindness of people and her father's absolute love of this country. ...Throughout, Dumas writes with a light touch...her humor allows natives and nonnatives alike to look at America with new insight."

-11/01/2003 REVIEW: School Library Journal

 

Gilead

Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson
Published 2004 by Farrar Straus Giroux

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0374153892

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In 1956, toward the end of Rev. John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. This is also the tale of wisdom forged during his solitary life and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

 

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls
Published 2005 by Scribner Book Company

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0743247531

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In the tradition of Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club" and Rick Bragg's "All Over But the Shouting," Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric, and severely misguided family.

 

The Hummingbird's Daughter

The Hummingbird's Daughter
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Published 2005 by Little Brown and Company

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0316745464

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This historical novel is based on Urrea's real great-aunt Teresita, who had healing powers and was acclaimed as a saint. Urrea has researched historical accounts and family records for years to get an accurate story.

 

Intuition

Intuition
by Allegra Goodman
Published 2006 by Dial Press

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0385336128

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In another quiet but powerful novel from Goodman, a struggling cancer lab at Boston's Philpott Institute becomes the stage for its researchers' personalities and passions, and for the slippery definitions of freedom and responsibility in grant-driven American science.

 

The Known World

The Known World
by Edward P. Jones
Published 2003 by Amistad Press

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0060557540

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Henry Townsend, a black bootmaker and former slave in antebellum Virginia, becomes a proprietor of his own plantation--as well as his own slaves. This modern masterpiece explores what happens when he dies and "the known world" unravels.

 

March

March
by Geraldine Brooks
Published 2005 by Viking Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0670033359

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From Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, and has added adult resonance to portray the moral complexity of war and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism.

 

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
Published 2005 by Viking Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0670034169

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A doctor delivers his own twins, and upon seeing that the daughter has Down's syndrome, tells his nurse to take the baby to an institution and never reveal the secret. The nurse disappears into another city to raise the child herself in this tale of redemptive love and long-buried secrets that unfolds over a quarter of a century.

 

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
by Jim Fergus
Published 1999 by St. Martin's Press

Paperback, English. ISBN: 0312199430

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Based on an actual historical event, "One Thousand White Women" tells the story--in diary and letter form--of a young woman, who in 1875, travels to the American West to marry Little Wolf, the chief of the Cheyenne nation.

 

The Other Boleyn Girl

The Other Boleyn Girl
by Philippa Gregory
Published 2002 by Touchstone Books

Paperback, English. ISBN: 0743227441

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"Sisterly rivalry is the basis of this fresh, wonderfully vivid retelling of the story of Anne Boleyn. Anne, her sister Mary and their brother George are all brought to the king's court at a young age, as players in their uncle's plans to advance the family's fortunes."

-REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/27/2002

 

The Samurai's Garden

The Samurai's Garden
by Gail Tsukiyama
Published 1996 by St. Martin's Griffin

Paperback, English. ISBN: 0312144075

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Tsukiyama's classic story of love, sacrifice, and devotion. On the eve of World War II, a young Chinese man is sent to his family's summer home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. He will rest, swim in the salubrious sea, and paint in the brilliant shoreside light. But when he meets four local residents--a beautiful Japanese girl and three older people--what ensues is a tale that readers will find at once classical yet utterly unique. Author signings.

 

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
by Anne Fadiman
Published 1997 by Farrar Straus Giroux

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0374267812

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"When two divergent cultures collide, unbridgeable gaps of language, religion, social customs may remain between them. This poignant account by Fadiman, editor of the American Scholar, of the clash between a Hmong family and the American medical community reveals that among the gaps yawns the attitude toward medicine and healing."

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 08/11/1997

 

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction
by Tim O'Brien
Published 1990 by Houghton Mifflin Company

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 039551598X

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"A series of stories about the Vietnam experience, based on the author's recollections. O'Brien begins by sharing the talismans and treasures his select small band of young soldiers carry into battle...In addition to leisure reading, this collection offers potential for history classes studying war, for English classes doing units on short stories, and perhaps for sociology or psychology assignments."

-02/01/1991 REVIEW: School Library Journal

 

The Tortilla Curtain

The Tortilla Curtain
by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Published 1995 by Viking Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 0670856045

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From the author of The Road to Wellville comes his most controversial novel yet--a deeply moving story of the men and women who risk everything to cross the Mexican border and invade the American dream.

 

The Year of Magical Thinking 

The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
Published 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 140004314X

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Didion chronicles the experience of losing her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, to a massive coronary, just weeks after the two of them watched as their only daughter was put into an induced coma to save her life. With honesty and passion, Didion explores this intensely personal yet universal experience.