| 16 Lighthouse Road by Debbie Macomber. When family court judge Olivia Lockhart denies a divorce petition to a young couple struggling after the death of their infant daughter, it starts the whole of Cedar Cove (loosely based on Kitsap County's own Port Orchard) talking in this charming entry in Macomber's popular Cedar Cover series. |
| About Alice by Calvin Trillin. Trillin, a staff writer with the New Yorker since 1963, has often written about the members of his family, notably his wife, Alice, whom he married in 1965. Avoiding expressions of grief, Trillin unveils a straightforward, honest portrait of their marriage and family life. |
| The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Arnold Spirit, a 14-year-old cartoonist from the Spokane Indian reservation, finds himself an outcast in his community when he transfers to a rich, white school in Alexie's humorous but compassionate semi-autobiographical novel about the power of friendship to both hurt and heal. |
| All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison. Growing up, love, loss, and moving on are just a few of the themes in this portrait of a blended family and one man's longing for his unattainable stepsister, Lulu. |
| Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik. During 30 turbulent years, a group of women in Freesia, Minnesota find their book group turning into a lifeline. |
| Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. In her first full-length nonfiction narrative, bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver opens readers' eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: you are what you eat. |
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Apples & Oranges by Marie Brenner. New York writer Marie Brenner's memoir of her lifelong rocky relationship with her brother, Carl, and their struggle to reach some accord after Carl is diagnosed with cancer. Carl's love for his apple orchard in Eastern Washington provides a local backdrop for this story of how family relationships can both harm and heal.
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An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke. After serving 10 years in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's historic house in Amherst, Sam Pulsifer is finally free to live his life—that is, until a copycat criminal begins torching the homes of other famous authors. Now Sam must find the identity of the arsonist before he is blamed for the crimes in this hilarious send-up of all things literary.
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| Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olssen. With extraordinary emotional power, Olsson's stunningly well-crafted debut novel recounts the unusual and unexpected friendship that develops between two women. Set against a haunting Swedish landscape, this is a lyrical and meditative novel of love and loss. |
| Away by Amy Bloom. Set in 1930s America, Away tells the epic story of immigrant Lillian Leyb, who embarks on a journey from New York's Lower East Side to Seattle's Jazz District and finally along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia, in search of her lost daughter. |
| Between Friends by Debbie Macomber. The New York Times bestselling author presents a story in which every woman will recognize herself -- and her best friend. Friends since the postwar 1950s, Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski share every grief and every joy, proving what friendship really means. |
| Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides. Sides' extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to life. A tale with many heroes and villains, at the center stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carson--the legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American West experience. |
| Bold Spirit by Linda Laurence Hunt. In 1896 a Norwegian immigrant named Helga Estby dares to cross 3,500 miles of the American continent, on foot, to win a $10,000 wager. |
| The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Set in 1939 Germany, The Book Thief tells the story of 9-year-old Liesel - along with a cast of vivid characters who stand up to the Nazis in small but telling ways - and Liesel's love of books that nourishes her through dark times. |
| Breakfast at Sally's by Richard LeMieux. In this compassionate and eye-opening account of life on the streets, local author LeMieux tells of his experiences living as a homeless person in Bremerton, Washington, after his business fails and he loses his house. |
| Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos. When elderly Margaret Hughes rents a room in her Seattle mansion to young tough-as-nails Wanda Schultz, the two form a friendship that helps both of them come to terms with ghosts from their troubled pasts. |
| Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. A picturesque novel of good-natured bums and warm-hearted prostitutes who lived on the fringes of Monterey, California, during the 1930s. |
| Can't Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg. In this comedy-mystery, those near and dear to Elner discover something wonderful: heaven is actually right here, right now, with people you love, neighbors you help, friendships you keep. |
| Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers. A novel about Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and the ghosts of the Clutters, the Kansas family murdered fifty years ago, in cold blood. Powers speculates about the truths Capote and Lee may have uncovered in Kansas and kept hidden, the circumstances that estranged the two friends, and the confessions in Capote's final months that reunite them. |
| Daughter of China by Meihong Xu. The true tale of a woman soldier in the Chinese Army, her forbidden love for an American, and her seemingly impossible escape from China. |
| Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. A celebrated writer pens an irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life. |
| The Egg & I by Betty MacDonald. A classic account of raising chickens and children in the 1940s on a dilapidated 40-acre farm on the rainy, remote Olympic Peninsula. |
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Quietly erudite concierge Renee moves through life unnoticed by the wealthy denizens of the elite Parisian apartments she manages. Similarly, 12-year-old whiz-kid Paloma hides her brilliance behind a façade of mediocrity and secretiveness. Soon, through the offices of a new tenant, the two meet and, following a series of shared experiences, begin to reveal their secrets and form a friendship.
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| Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. When the totalitarian regime orders all books to be destroyed, Guy Montag, a "fireman" assigned to burn books, suddenly realizes their merit. |
| Flight by Sherman Alexie. Alternately heartbreaking and wondrous, Sherman Alexie's first novel in ten years tells the story of an orphan careening through foster homes until finally, not long after we meet him, he is about to commit an act of violence when he suddenly begins an unforgettable journey through time. |
| The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl. Memoirist Patricia Hampl (Blue Arabesque, A Romantic Education) tells the very personal story of growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, the dutiful daughter of a Czech florist and a wary, tale-telling Irish mother who imbues Hampl with her passion for words. In transcendent prose, Hampl speculates on why she never left home in spite of her black sheep tendencies: "nothing is harder to grasp," she writes, "than a relentlessly modest life." |
| Follow the River by Alexander Thom. After being captured in an Indian raid in 1755, Mary Draper Ingles follows the Ohio River for 1,000 miles to return home to Virginia by herself. |
| The Gentleman from Finland: Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express by Bob Goldstein. A sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant story of the misadventures of a traveler who discovers that a journey on the world's longest rail line is much more than a long train ride. |
| The Ghost at the Table by Suzanne Berne. The Fiske family is gathered at the exquisitely restored New England home of the second of three sisters. The family table groans with the weight of guilt and blame in this taut, psychological drama of a family's unraveling. |
| Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. |
| The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. In 1930s China, Wang Lung struggles to hold his family together during a devastating drought in Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize winning classic. |
| The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The story of the Isle of Guernsey under German occupation during World War II is told through a series of letters by the island's occupants in this surprisingly feel-good novel of courage and hope in adversity. |
| The Highest Tide by Tim Lynch. While the Pacific Northwest sea continues to offer him discoveries from its mysterious depths, a teenaged boy struggles to deal with the difficulties that come with the equally mysterious process of growing up. |
| Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. From the vantage point of 1986, Chinese-American Henry Lee remembers his friendship with Japanese student Keiko, who is later shipped off to an internment camp, and explores his fascination with jazz and Seattle's jazz venues in 1940's Seattle. |
| The House on Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper. Whitehouse correspondent Helene Cooper's very personal memoir of growing up in an elite household in Liberia, until a political coup sends her family on the run first from Sugar Beach, then from Liberia to America. On the way, they must leave behind Cooper's best friend and foster sister, a member of Liberia's Basso tribe. |
| I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven. In this classic by Margaret Craven, a young vicar diagnosed with a fatal disease journeys to Kingcome, a Kwakiutl village on the coast of British Columbia, in the hope that he will learn enough, fast enough, to be prepared to die. |
| Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell. A literary adventure that takes the reader around the globe evading a killer, solving Shakespearean puzzles, and embarking on a deadly treasure hunt. |
| Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Bronte's brooding classic set the standard for gothic romance with its atmospheric first-person narrative of a governess, Byronic employer, and mysterious manor on the English moors. |
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A Journal for Jordan by Dana Canedy. Killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King left behind a 200 page manuscript for his infant son Jordan that forms the basis of A Journal for Jordan. Part memoir, part love story, A Journal for Jordan tells of King's relationship with his wife Dana, his love for the son he never knew, and Dana's fiercely honest account of her quest to find answers about her husband's death.
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Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Trapped in a go-nowhere job and yearning for more in her life, Julie Powell challenges herself to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking—all in the space of a single year. The result is a hilarious culinary memoir, true to Julia Child's indomitable spirit, about finding fulfillment—and a new life—through food.
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| The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. After the sudden loss of her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days. |
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The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Descended from a long line of Salem fortune tellers, self-proclaimed unreliable narrator Towner Whitney returns to Salem after a lengthy exile only to find herself drawn into investigating the mysterious disappearance of two women, a mystery that threatens to reprise shocking secrets from Towner's childhood.
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| The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature by Jonathan Rosen. Native New Yorker Rosen uses his personal fascination with bird watching to provide an eloquent and thoughtful backdrop for musings on history, philosophy, and the joy of discovering nature in unexpected places. |
| Lost German Slave Girl by John Bailey. On an 1843 spring morning in New Orleans' Spanish Quarter, a woman recognizes a German girl who disappeared twenty-five years earlier and is now a slave, with no memory of her family's perilous journey from their German village. This tour de force of investigative history is a fascinating exploration of slavery and its laws, a reconstruction of mid-19th-century New Orleans, and a riveting courtroom drama. |
| The Lottery by Patricia Wood. The story of stubborn, simple everyman Perry Crandall, who wins the Washington State Lottery and finds his life changed, Wood's charming novel offers a refreshing glimpse of the world through the eyes of a man with limited cognitive abilities and boundless generosity of spirit. |
| Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker. After witnessing the devastating consequences of AIDS and economic disaster on the children of Zimbabwe, Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, volunteered at an orphanage where a critically ill infant, Chipo, was trusted to their care. Their story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love and determination can achieve. |
| Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. In this acclaimed debut, fact and fiction blend beautifully to illuminate the relationship of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. |
| Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean. In this sublime debut novel, set amid the horrors of the siege of Leningrad in World War II, a gifted writer explores the power of memory to save . . . and betray. |
| March by Geraldine Brooks. The Pulitzer prize-winning author of Year of Wonders creates a story of the Civil War as seen through the character Captain March, a recreation of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. |
| The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. When a father chooses to institutionalize his daughter born with Downs' Syndrome, the nurse entrusted with her care disappears to another town to raise the child as her own. Kim Edwards' intricate tale of familial secrets, grief, and love brims with compassion. |
| Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers. After the death of her longtime friend, schoolteacher Julia Garnet takes an apartment in Venice, falls in love with an art dealer, and unravels the ancient story of Tobias and the Angel at her new church. |
| Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. On a war torn tropical island, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations. |
| My Jim by Nancy Rawles. A spare and beautiful meditation on love and loss, this novel follows the life of Sadie, the abandoned wife of the escaped slave Jim from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. |
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
** This set is a Large Type kit. It contains 7 large type books and 7 regular type books. It will be heavier than the normal kit. |
| Night by Elie Wiesel. In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoire Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? |
| Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Thirteen linked tales featuring crotchety schoolteacher Olive Kitteridge intertwine themes of the beauty and rhythm of ordinary life with the natural wonders of coastal Maine. |
| An Ordinary Woman by Cecilia Holland. The true story of pioneer Nancy Kelsey who traveled from Missouri via covered wagon in 1841 to become California's first white woman settler. |
| The Other by David Guterson. Two friends growing up in 1970s Seattle take radically different paths in adulthood, one becoming a teacher and family man. When the other chooses a life in the wild, his friend must decide whether to help him disappear forever. |
| A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. Calling herself a simple, honest woman, enterprising Catherine Lord answers an ad for a reliable wife, planning all along to slowly poison her husband, leaving herself a wealthy widow. Soon we find that her new husband is not what he claims to be either, in this suspenseful and surprising gothic thriller set in 1907 Wisconsin. |
| River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, "The River of Doubt" is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on Earth, the Amazon. |
| Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers by Elizabeth Edwards. The wife of vice-presidential candidate John Edwards presents a moving account of the importance of community in her life, from her childhood as a Navy pilot's daughter to her experiences of her husband's political campaigns to the death of her son and her own battle with breast cancer. |
| Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. On board the slave vessel Ibis, en route from India to Mauritius in 1838, a picaresque cast of fugitives, opium merchants, slaves, and overseers come together as jahaj-bhais or "ship-brothers" in an epic high-seas adventure that spans from the poppy fields of the Ganges to the back streets of Canton. |
| Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A historical and suspenseful tale of a boy's quest through the secrets and shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proven to be as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget. |
| Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Set in 19th-century China, See's national bestseller tells a story of two young women who find solace with each other, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. |
| The Soloist by Steve Lopez. Los Angeles columnist Steve Lopez tells the true story of his unusual friendship with former Julliard musician Nathaniel Ayers who struggles with homelessness and schizophrenia. |
| Sometimes I Dream in Italian by Rita Ciresi. A bittersweet comedy about sisters, love, and the Italian-American experience. |
| The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. Here is a searing novel that vividly captures the delicate balance of class and gender in contemporary India, as witnessed through the lives of an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife and her stoic, illiterate domestic worker. |
| The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child--and the lack of understanding that led to tragedy. |
| The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. Edgar Sawtelle, born mute, is outcast from his remote Wisconsin home - along with three devoted yearling dogs - when his paternal uncle insinuates his way into the affections of Edgar's widowed mother in this unique modern re-envisioning of Hamlet. |
| Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. An extraordinary novel of life under Nazi occupation--discovered and published 62 years after the author's tragic death at Auschwitz. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, it is both a piercing record of its time and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art. |
| Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb. The story of what happens to a young Irish girl abandoned in Morocco when her parents are murdered. Alone in the world, her search for home and family takes her down some surprising paths. |
| Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Chinua Achebe's first novel portrays the collision of African and European cultures in people's lives. Okonkwo, a great man in Igbo traditional society, cannot adapt to the profound changes brought about by British colonial rule. Yet, as in classic tragedy, Okonkwo's downfall results from his own character as well as from external forces. |
| Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson. The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban's backyard. |
| The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Librarian Henry De Tamble must contend with "chrono-displacement" disorder, which makes him travel back and forth in time. |
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Both a leisurely coming-of-age story set in the South during the Depression and one of the most powerful statements of the Civil Rights movement, Lee's classic novel recounts the trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman -- as seen through the eyes of eight-year-old Scout Finch. |
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| Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill. Two-year-old Ursula Wong, of Chinese and Finnish decent, falls down a mine shaft in Upper Michigan, and as rescue efforts are carried on, stories about her remarkable ancestors are revealed. |
| Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Water for Elephants tells the story of a young man who leaves his life as a Cornell University veterinary student and jumps onto a train that happens to house the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. |
| The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips. In depression-era Alabama, two sisters in a coal-mining town set out to solve a mystery when one of them witnesses a woman toss a baby into a well in a story that explores themes of community, family, and coming together during hard times. |
| The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Eleven short works by early feminist Gilman, including the haunting title story of madness and control, combine anger, humor, and visionary insight to explore woman's roles in the early twentieth century. |
| The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman. Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses) presents the carefully-researched true story of Warsaw Zoo Directors Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who during World War II smuggled over 300 Jews from Warsaw, sometimes sheltering them in the zoo's empty cages - decimated by the Berlin Zoo after the Nazi occupation of Poland. |
