Biographies

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• Biographies

Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss One Tape at Time
By Rob Sheffield
BIOGRAPHY SHEFFIEL
In a memoir of love, loss, and music, a rock and pop culture critic shares the story of his romance and marriage, and his wife's tragic early death, all viewed from the perspective of the mix tapes that the couple had compiled.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
By Dave Eggers
BIOGRAPHY EGGERS
A respected magazine editor and founder, a onetime spokesman for Generation X, offers a satiric, eloquent, and thoroughly traditionshattering memoir that discusses deaths of his parents from cancer, his raising of his younger brother, and more.


Angela’s Ashes
By Frank McCourt
BIOGRAPHY MCCOURT
The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies.



Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
By Jung Chang
951.05 CHA
A Chinese woman chronicles the struggles of her grandmother, mother, and herself to survive in a China torn apart by wars, invasions, revolution, and continuing upheaval, from 1907 to the present.

John Adams
By David McCullough
BIOGRAPHY ADAMS
Chronicles the life of America's second president, including his youth, his career as a Massachusetts farmer and lawyer, his marriage to Abigail, his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, and his influence on the birth of the United States.

Books Remiscient of the Classics

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• Books similar to the classics
• A dash of romance

The Forgotten Garden
By Kate Morton
F MORTON
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she is an adult that she is not their child, leading Nell to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter.

Shadow of the Wind
By Carlos Ruiz Zafon
F RUIZ ZAFON
A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.

Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
F ZUSAK
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

History of Love
By Nicole Krauss
F KRAUSS
Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.

The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
F STOCKETT
Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project.

Clean Teen Adventures

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• Adventure
• Clean reads
• Teen titles
• Audiobooks
  

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
By James Patterson
BCD YA PATTERSO
After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "birdkids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.

Inkheart
By Cornelia Funke
BCD YA FUNKE
Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can "read" fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.

Mister Monday
By Garth Nix
BCD YA NIX
Although Arthur Penhaligon is supposed to die, he is saved by a key shaped like the minute hand of a clock, and now some bizarre creatures--including Mister Monday, his avenging messengers, and an army of dog-faced Fetchers--will stop at nothing to get the key.

The Kingdom Keepers
By Ridley Pearson
BCD YA PEARSON
Finn Whitman, an Orlando teen, is hired to be hologramed as a Disney World park "guide" but soon finds himself being transported into the Magic Kingdom in the dead of night to help fight a group of Disney villains, led by Maleficent, who want to take over Disney World--and maybe more.

Heir Apparent
By Vivian Vande Velde
BOT YA VANDE VELDE
While playing a total immersion virtual reality game of kings and intrigue, fourteen-year-old Giannine learns that demonstrators have damaged the equipment to which she is connected, and she must win the game quickly or be damaged herself.

Teen Fantasy with a Dash of Romance

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• Teen titles
• Fantasy
• Romance
• Fast pace
• Straightforward style

Keturah and Lord Death
By Martine Leavitt
YA F Leavitt
Talented storyteller Keturah is used to charming the people of her village with her stories. But one day Keturah must use her storytelling skills with quite a different audience. Lost in a forest, Keturah encounters Lord Death, who is ready to take her, but Keturah spins a story for him, and he agrees to grant her a twenty-four hour reprieve to find true love.

General Winston’s Daughter
By Sharon Shinn
YA F SHINN
Seventeen-year-old heiress Averie Winston travels with her guardian to faraway Chiarrin, a country her father's army has occupied, and once she arrives and is reunited with her fiance, she discovers that her notions about politics, propriety, the military, and even her intended have changed.

Sunlight and Shadow
By Cameron Dokey
YA F DOKEY
At the age of sixteen, Mina's father took her out of the shadows and into the sunlight in the hopes of giving her a new life, but Mina's mother retaliates by luring a handsome prince into a dangerous agreement to free Mina.

Book of a Thousand Days
By Shannon Hale
YA F HALE
Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.

Rose Daughter
By Robin McKinley
YA F MCKINLEY
Beauty grows to love the Beast at whose castle she is compelled to stay, and through her love he is released from the curse that had turned him from man to beast.

The Blue Sword
By Robin McKinley
YA F MCKINLEY
Harry, bored with her sheltered life in the remote orange-growing colony of Daria, discovers magic in herself when she is kidnapped by a Hillfolk king with mysterious powers.

Contemporary, Fast-paced Women's Literature

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• Contemporary titles
• Fast pace
• Women's literature

The Truth about Forever
By Sarah Dessen
YA F DESSEN
The summer following her father's death, Macy plans to work at the library and wait for her brainy boyfriend to return from camp, but instead she goes to work at a catering business where she makes new friends and finally faces her grief.

My Sister’s Keeper
By Jodi Picoult
F PICOULT
Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Kate begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body.

Interred with Their Bones
By Jennifer Lee Carrell
F Carrell
Receiving a mysterious box from her eccentric mentor, who claims it contains a newly found work by Shakespeare, theater director/scholar Kate Shelton is horrified when her theater is burned to the ground and her mentor killed, an event that identifies the work of a murderer who sets up crime scenes to resemble Shakespearean deaths.

The Time Traveler’s Wife
By Audrey Lee Niffenegger
F Niffenegger
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel.

Watermelon
By Marian Keyes
F Keyes
When her husband, James, leaves her after she delivers her first child, Claire retires to her family in Dublin, where she slowly recovers from the experience, giving James a big surprise when he shows up again.

Action Thrillers

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• Action
• Thriller
• Read-alikes for Dan Brown or John Grisham

Honor among Thieves
By Jeffrey Archer
F ARCHER
Saddam Hussein, in his ongoing desire to humiliate the U.S., arranges for the theft of the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives. His aim is to destroy the document in front of CNN cameras on July 4th for all the world to see, and so destroy the credibility of his arch-enemy.

Eye of the Storm
By Jack Higgins
F HIGGINS
Elusive master terrorist Sean Dillon reemerges during the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein hires him to assassinate Margaret Thatcher, and only Martin Brosnan can stop him.

The Spy who Came in from the Cold
By John le Carre
F LE CARRE
Alec Leamas wants to stop being a spy but he agrees to take a final assignment in order to prove to the enemy that their leader is a double agent.

The Hades Factor
By Robert Ludlum
F LUDLUM
People are horribly and painfully dying from the effects of a hitherto unknown viral agent, and Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith is assigned to solve the mystery of the virus' abrupt appearance. An old friend from the FBI, who may or may not be on the same side, warns him off, and Smith begins to take the warnings seriously when the disease strikes too close to home.

The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud
By Julia Navarro
F NAVARRO
A catastrophic fire at the Turin cathedral, where the Holy Shroud is kept, and the discovery of a dead man without a tongue set off an investigation by the elite Italian Art Crimes Department that leads back to the mysterious origins of the relic.

The Unburied
By Charles Palliser
F PALLISER
Invited to spend the holidays with his old friend, Austin, in the cathedral close of Thurchester, unworldly academic Dr. Courtine becomes engrossed in a haunting, two-hundred-year-old mystery with ties to both a medieval manuscript and to terrifying events in the present.

The Confessor
By Daniel Silva
F SILVA
In the wake of a Munich writer's assassination, Mossad agent Gabriel Allon and Vatican priest Pietro embark on dangerous journeys that reveal long-buried secrets affecting the fates of millions of people.

And Then You Die
By Iris Johansen
MYSTERY JOHANSEN
When Bess Grady gets the assignment to photograph the small Mexican village of Tenajo for a travel magazine she expects it to be a nice, easy job. She even takes her sister along with her and is planning to make a vacation of it. The “vacation” is cut short when she arrives in Tenajo to find everyone has been killed by a new form of Anthrax.

Compelling Evidence
By Steve Martini
F MARTINI
In a courtroom drama, Talia Potter, indicted for the murder of her judge husband, turns to her lover, Paul Madriani--her husband's ex-law partner--to defend her.

Action-packed Historical Fiction on CD or Tape

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• Audiobooks
• Action
• Historical fiction

The Widow of the South
By Robert Hicks
BCD Hicks
A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers.

Trophies and Dead Things
By Marcia Muller
BCD Muller
When a client of hers is murdered, detective Sharon McCone discovers that the dead man had disinherited his children and left his estate to four strangers, all with ties to a distant crime.

The March
By E. L. Doctorow
BCD Doctorow
Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating march through Georgia and the Carolinas during the final years of the Civil War has a profound impact on the outcome of the war.

The Painted Drum
By Louise Erdrich
BCD Erdrich
Discovering a cache of valuable Native American artifacts while appraising an estate in New Hampshire, Faye Travers investigates the history of a ceremonial drum, which possesses spiritual powers and changes the lives of people who encounter it.

Crime and Punishment
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
BCD Dostoevs
Raskolnikov, a nihilistic young man in the midst of a spiritual crisis, makes the fateful decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker, justifying his actions by relying on science and reason, and creating his own morality system. The aftermath of his crime and Petrovich's murder investigation result in an utterly compelling, truly unforgettable cat-and-mouse game.

Fantasy or Science Fiction Similar to that of Orson Scott Card

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• Fantasy or Science Fiction
• Read-alikes for Orson Scott Card or Brandon Sanderson
• Emphasis on the human experience

The Ring of Five Dragons
By Eric Lustbader
SCIFI LUSTBADE
After suffering for a century under the oppressive V'ornn invaders, the Kundalan people put their hopes on Dar Sala-at, a hero foretold by prophecy, who can wield the sorcerous power of the lost Ring of Five Dragons to save his people.

Lord of the Isles
By David Drake
SCIFI DRAKE
Mysteriously transported one thousand years into the future after a cataclysm destroys the empire of the Isles, a woman sorcerer finds herself in a small town, far from the centers of power, where she and a small group of individuals become the focus of a new struggle for dominance.

Dies the Fire
By S. M. Stirling
SCIFI STIRLING When a strange electrical storm over the island of Nantucket suddenly causes all electronic devices to cease to function, the world is faced with an unimaginable transformation.

Dark Teen Fantasy

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• Teen titles
• Fantasy
• Dark mood
• Suspense

Mistborn
By Brandon Sanderson
SCIFI SANDERSO
This book is set in a dark, bleak imaginary world where ash falls from the sky, and a mysterious and powerful leader rules with an iron fist. Vin is a servant-class girl who has the ability to influence the people around her, but was recently abandoned by her brother. Kelsier is a brilliant thief with abilities of his own, who is assembling a thieving crew for a big job. He needs Vin, but must teach her how to trust again before he can help her realize her full potential.

The Golden Compass
By Philip Pullman
YA F PULLMAN
Lyra Belacqua is an orphan growing up within the walls of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's world is not like our own. For one thing, people there each have a personal daemon, an animal companion that is connected with their identity and soul. Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra sets out to find her best friend who has mysteriously disappeared into the Far North.

The Secret Hour
By Scott Westerfeld
YA F WESTERFE
Upon moving to Bixby, Oklahoma, fifteen-year-old Jessica Day learns that she is one of a group of people who have special abilities that help them fight ancient creatures living in an hour hidden at midnight—creatures that seem determined to destroy Jess.

Dreamhunter
By Elizabeth Knox
YA F KNOX
In a world where select people can enter "The Place" and find dreams of every kind to share with others for a fee, a fifteen-year-old girl is training to be a dreamhunter when her father disappears, leaving her to carry on his mysterious mission.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow
By Jessica Day George
YA F GEORGE
Blessed—or cursed—with an ability to understand animals, the Lass has always been an oddball. When an isbjorn (polar bear) seeks her out and promises that her family will become rich if the Lass will accompany him to his castle, she doesn’t hesitate. But the bear is not what he seems, nor is his castle, which is made of ice and inhabited by silent servants.

Christian Romances

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• Clean reads
• Christian fiction
• Romance

Agent in Old Lace
By Tristi Pinkston
ROMANCE PINKSTON
Shannon Tanner's boyfriend, Mark, is stealing money from her father and making millions doing it. When Shannon learns Mark's secret, he turns on her, kidnapping her best friend. Shannon realizes that one person stands between her and certain death--FBI agent Rick Holden--but the only way to save herself and her friend and stop Mark once and for all is by sending Rick away.

Counting Stars
By Michele Holmes
ROMANCE HOLMES
Paul Bryant is a widower who finds out he has cancer; desperate to find someone to raise his children in the event of his death, he meets Jane.

Beguiled
By Deeanne Gist
ROMANCE GIST
Rylee Monroe walks dogs in old-money Charleston, a part of the city recently targeted by a daring thief. Logan Woods works the crime beat for the local paper but dreams of a life as a nonfiction writer. When the string of robberies takes a strange twist, Logan sees the making of a once-in-a-lifetime book that seems to circle around this charming, eye-catching dogwalker.

Sanctuary
By Beverly & David Lewis
F LEWIS
A secret past forces Melissa James to flee her marriage and seek refuge with a Pennsylvania Dutch family, while her husband fears his own mistake will prevent their reunion.