Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
by Amy Chua

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Traces the rewards and pitfalls of a Chinese mother's exercise in extreme parenting, describing the exacting standards applied to grades, music lessons, and avoidance of Western cultural practices.

The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison

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Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dreams grow more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity.

Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

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An obese New Orleans misanthrope who constantly rebukes society, Ignatius Reilly gets a job at his mother's urging but ends up leading a workers' revolt

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
by Kristin Kimball

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Documents the first year spent by the Harvard-graduate author with her new husband on their sustainable farm in the Adirondacks, describing how she withdrew from big-city life to be married in their barn loft, the difficult obstacles they faced attempting to provide a whole diet for 100 locals and the rewards of a physical-labor lifestyle.

The Dovekeepers
by Alice Hoffman

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A tale inspired by the tragic first-century massacre of hundreds of Jewish people at Masada presents the stories of a hated daughter, a baker's wife, a girl disguised as a warrior, and a medicine woman who keep doves and secrets while Roman soldiers draw near.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
by ZZ Packer

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In a debut collection by an award-winning short story writer, a scout troupe of African-American girls is confronted by a group of disabled white girls, a young man considers his allegiance to his father during the Million Man March in Washington, and an international group of work-seeking drifters find themselves starving in Japan.

Game of Thrones: Book One of a Son of Ice and Fire
by George R. R. Martin

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In a world where the approaching winter will last four decades, kings and queens, knights and renegades struggle for control of a throne. Some fight with sword and mace, others with magic and poison. Beyond the Wall to the north, meanwhile, the Others are preparing their army of the dead to march south as the warmth of summer drains from the land. Although the romance of chivalry is central to the culture of the Seven Kingdoms, and tournaments, derring-do and handsome knights abound, these trappings merely give cover to dangerous men and women who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. When Lord Stark of Winterfell, an honest man, comes south to act as the King's chief councilor, no amount of heroism or good intentions can keep the realm under control.

My Life As An Experiment: One Man's Humble Quest to Improve Himself by Living as a Woman, Becoming George Washington, Telling No Lies and Other Radical Tests
by A. J. Jacobs

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A.J. explores the big issues of our time – happiness, dating, morality, marriage – by immersing himself in eye-opening situations. In his role as human guinea pig, Jacobs fearlessly takes on a series of life-altering challenges that provides readers with equal parts insight and humor. (And drives his patient wife, Julie, to the brink of insanity.) Among the many adventures: He outsources his life to a team of people in Bangalore, India. He spends a month practicing Radical Honesty, in which you say what's on your mind. He goes to the Academy Awards disguised as a movie star, to understand the strange and warping effects of fame. He commits himself to ultimate rationality, using cutting-edge science to make the best decisions possible. He attempts to follow George Washington's rules of life. And, for a month, he followed his wife's every whim.

The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern

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The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway, a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love, a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands. True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Perfect Peace
by Daniel Black

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When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain't what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon' be a boy." From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less
by Terry Ryan

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The author describes her mother Evelyn's struggles with poverty in the 1950s as she tried to build a happy home for her ten children, with the help of wit, poetry, and prose during the contest era of the 1950s and 1960s.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
by Beth Hoffman

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For years, 12-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille – the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt from Savannah, Tootie Caldwell, who whirls CeeCee into her world of female friendship, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart.

Truman
by David McCullough

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A biography of the U.S. president explores Truman's brutal frontier childhood, his education, his dogged optimism, his rise through the ranks of the Pendergast machine that controlled Missouri politics, and more.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand

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On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared – Lt. Louis Zamperini. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.

The Untelling
by Tayari Jones

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After the loss of her father and sister fifteen years ago, twenty-five-year-old Aria attempts to reinvent herself through beginning a family of her own, only to find that she must deal with the past before she can look to the future.

The Wrong Mother
by Sophie Hannah

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A year after a brief vacation affair, Sally Thorning hears her one-time lover's name on the news and is shocked to hear that the man's wife and daughter have died, a situation that quickly escalates to the point that Sally's own family is placed in danger.

22 Britannia Road
by Amanda Hodgkinson

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In this tale of a Polish family desperately trying to put itself back together after WWII, Silvana and Janusz travel to England where they attempt to put the past behind them. But the secrets they carry pull at the threads of their fragile peace.

The Art of Fielding
by Chad Harbach

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At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Bossypants
by Tina Fey

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From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon, comedian Tina Fey reveals all, and proves that you're no one until someone calls you bossy

Caleb's Crossing
by Geraldine Brooks

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In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, she has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure. The narrator of the story is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's minister father tries to convert the Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the tribe's shaman, against whose magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later, Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. There, Bethia finds herself reluctantly indentured as a housekeeper and can closely observe Caleb's crossing of cultures.

The Color of Water
by James McBride

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A young African-American man describes growing up in an all-black Brooklyn housing project, one of twelve children of a white mother and black father, and discusses his mother's contributions to his life and coming to terms with his confusion over his own identity.

Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three
by Mara Leveritt

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On the evening of May 5, 1993, in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight-year-old boys disappeared. The next afternoon, the naked bodies of Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moor were found submerged in a nearby stream. The crime scene had yielded few clues, the police were stymied, and citizens' alarm mounted as weeks passed without an arrest. Finally, a month after the murders, detectives announced three arrests – and a startling theory of the crime: that the children had been killed by members of a satanic cult.

Empire of the Summer Moon
by S. C. Gywnne

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Describes in sometimes brutal detail the actions of both whites and Comanches during a 40-year war over territory, in a story that begins with the Comanche kidnapping of a white 9-year-old girl, who grew up to love her captors, marry a Comanche chief and have a son, Quanah, who became a great warrior.

In Defense of Food
by Michael Pollan

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"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of food journalist Pollan's thesis. Humans used to know how to eat well, he argues, but the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real." Indeed, plain old eating is being replaced by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals. Pollan's advice is: "Don't eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food." Looking at what science does and does not know about diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about what to eat, informed by ecology and tradition rather than by the nutrient-by-nutrient approach.

Leaving Atlanta
by Tayari Jones

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A tale based on the Atlanta child murders of 1979 finds Tasha coping with her parents' separation in the wake of a first crush Rodney struggling to make friends while vying for his abusive father's approval, and Octavia facing down the in crowd at school.

Lost in Shangri La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
by Mitchell Zuckoff

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In 1945, a sightseeing trip over "Shangri-La" turned deadly when the plane crashed, leaving only three survivors who, battling for their survival, were caught between man-eating headhunters and the enemy Japanese, in this real-life adventure drawn from personal interviews, declassified Army documents and personal photos and mementos.

Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
by Wes Moore

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Two kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a few years of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.

The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain

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Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash "beautiful boy" Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband's career.

Silver Sparrow
by Tayari Jones

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In 1980s Atlanta, two teenage girls become friends, with only one knowing that they are in fact both daughters of the same bigamist father, and as their friendship develops their father's secret begins to unravel.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
by Steven D. Levitt

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In a follow-up to the best-selling Freakonomics, the authors offer a new analysis that is bigger, more provocative, and sure to challenge the way readers think all over again.

Swamplandia!
by Karen Russell

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This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness.

Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief.

The Tiger's Wife
by Téa Obreht

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Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, young physician Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man would go on such a farfetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the tiger's wife.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell

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An introduction to the Tipping Point theory explains how minor changes in ideas and products can increase their popularity and how small adjustments in an individual's immediate environment can alter group behavior.

The Weird Sisters
by Eleanor Brown

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The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from; one another, their small hometown, and themselves; might offer more than they ever expected.