The Current Book Club Choice

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover. She enthralls him with her passion but puzzles him with her odd silences. Then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and Hanna is on trial for a hideous crime. But as he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder. Masterfully evoking eroticism while addressing the moral dilemmas that continue to haunt postwar Germany, "The Reader" is an intimate coming-of-age story as well as a frank and sensitive exploration of the dark areas of a nation's uneasy and embattled conscience.


Bret Lott   Billie Letts   Chris Bohjalian   Pearl Cleage   Wally Lamb   Edwidge Danticat  

Jewel, by Bret Lott

In the backwoods of Mississippi, a land of honeysuckle and grapevine, Jewel and her husband, Leston, are truly blessed; they have five fine children. When Brenda Kay is born in 1943, Jewel gives thanks for a healthy baby, last-born and most welcome. Jewel is the story of how quickly a life can change; how, like lightning, an unforeseen event can set us on a course without reason or compass. In this story of a woman's devotion to the child who is both her burden and God's singular way of smiling on her, Bret Lott has created a mother-daughter relationship of matchless intensity and beauty, and one of the finest, most indomitable heroines in contemporary American fiction.


Where The Heart Is, by Billie Letts

Abandoned by her boyfriend at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma, Novalee Nation, 17 years old and seven months pregnant, soon discovers the treasures hiding in this small Southwest town. "A heartfelt, gratifying read".--"Publishers Weekly".


Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian

A talented midwife is arrested for murder when she saves a baby by performing a Caesarean section once she believes the mother has died -- only to have her assistant insist later that the woman was still very much alive. Told in the mesmerizing voice of the midwife's daughter, Midwives depicts the aftermath of the tragedy.


What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, by Pearl Cleage

This highly praised debut novel by a renowned African-American playwright/essayist is a gritty yet warm and inspiring story of hope, love, and homecoming. On learning she has the AIDS virus, Ava Johnson closes her beauty parlor in Atlanta and returns to her hometown in Michigan, devoting herself to counselling black girls in trouble. In the process she falls in love with a man convicted of murder.


I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb

This powerfully written story of the strained relationship between identical twin brothers and their sordid family history tackles sin and redemption and the ways in which pride surrenders itself to humanity. From the acclaimed author of the bestseller She's Come Undone.


Breath, Eyes, Memory, by Edwidge Danticat

After living for twelve years with her aunt in an impoverished village in Haiti, Sophie Caco travels to New York City to live with a mother she does not remember. With Breath, Eyes, Memory, author Edwidge Danticat has created a vivid novel of mothers and daughters, exile and return, disgrace and honor.

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