Reading Lists: 2019

Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.
-The New York Times
Engrossing . . . Fast-moving . . . More than just a horse's tale, because the humans who owned, trained, and rode Seabiscuit are equally fascinating. . . . Hillenbrand shows an extraordinary talent for describing a horse race so vividly that the reader feels like the rider.
-Sports Illustrated

Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd exists in a cacophony of sound – the darkest and most trivial thoughts of every living being within hearing pound in his ears night and day. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, when he begins to suspect that the town is hiding something from him -- something so horrible that he is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. When Todd meets a girl in the forest, a being whose thoughts are silent to him, his world begins to fall apart, and he sets out on a journey through self-discovery to manhood that will test the limits of his grit, his physical strength, and his morality.

An all around amazing book! Set in the marsh close to the NC coast, the novel incorporates nearly every element of interest. A young girl is abandon and has little to no guidance, only making friends with the species around her and the rare human who shares the ecological interest and is not afraid to approach the "Marsh Girl". The book follows her coming to age story while developing a second story of murder and betrayal within the town.

The Graveyard Book traces the story of the boy Nobody "Bod" Owens who is adopted and raised by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard after his family is brutally murdered.

A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

Eleanor Arroway (Ellie) is an astrophysicist and telescope engineer that relentlessly pursues her interest in the Search for Extratarrestrial Intelligence (a project known even today as SETI). As a child she built radios to communicate with anyone listening on earth, pinning destinations and reaching all across the globe. The book begins with her coming of age as a skeptical, curious scientist that challenges religious preoccupation with faith in what cannot be seen. She doesn’t realize she lives a contradiction while keeping a dying project alive with her own grit. In the midst of a New Mexico desert sunset using what today is called the Very Large Array telescope, she discovers a signal that she could only pin with a map of the galaxy. It originates from the Vega star system, 25 light years away. 

In one night, the quiet operating room becomes the pulse of another civilization that begins to take form as prime number sequences and then an underlying data transmission that will change the world. Contact is a story of discourse on a personal level between faith and science, but also on a national stage. It is a story of tension between the unification of humanity and fragmentation of beliefs that surface when the world is faced with the decision to send one human on a journey to represent the human race in another star system. Although the premise of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence requires imagination, Carl Sagan (the Neil de Grass Tyson of the 1980s) writes an otherwise believable account of how a young scientist takes an astronomical leap of faith.

Since ISIS occupied Raqqa in eastern Syria, it has become one of the most isolated and fear-ridden cities on earth. 

The sale of televisions has been banned, wearing trousers the wrong length is a punishable offence, and using a mobile phone is considered an unforgivable crime.

No journalists are allowed in and the penalty for speaking to the western media is death by beheading.

Despite this, after several months of nervy and often interrupted conversations, the BBC was able to make contact with a small activist group, Al-Sharqiya 24. Finally, courageously, one of their members agreed to write a personal diary about his experiences.

Having seen friends and relatives butchered, his community's life shattered and the local economy ruined by these hate-fuelled extremists, Samer is fighting back in the only way he can: by telling the world what is happening to his beloved city.

This is Samer's story.

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men.

For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed between two ice floes. With no options left, Shackleton and a skeleton crew attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. Their survival, and the survival of the men they left behind, depended on their small lifeboat successfully finding the island of South Georgia--a tiny dot of land in a vast and hostile ocean.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing", to the last, "I am haunted by waters", A River Runs Through It is an American classic.

Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, A River Runs Through It has established itself as one of the most moving stories of our time; it captivates readers with vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and its near magical blend of fly fishing with the troubling affections of the heart.

Future – casting typically assumes that tomorrow, at its heart, will look much like today: we will possess amazing new technologies, but old humanist values like liberty and equality will guide us. Homo Deus dismantles these assumptions and opens our eyes to a vast range of alternative possibilities, with provocative arguments on every page, among them:
– The main products of the 21st century economy will not be textiles, vehicles, and weapons, but bodies and brains, and minds.
-While the industrial revolution created the working class, the next big revolution will create the useless class.
-The way humans have treated animals is a good indicator of how upgraded humans will treat us.
-Democracy and the free market will both collapse once Google and Facebook know us better than we know ourselves, and authority will shift from individual humans to networked algorithms.
-Humans won’t fight machines; they will merge with them. We are heading towards marriage rather than war.

This is the shape of the New World, and the gap between those who get on board and those left behind will be larger than the gap between industrial empires and agrarian tribes, larger even then the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals. This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

[from the book jacket]

My high school friends in New York City have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
"Why did you leave Sierra Leone?"
"Because there is a war."
"Did you witness some of the fighting?"
"Everyone in the country did."
"You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?"
"Yes, all the time."
"Cool."
I smile a little.
"You should tell us about it sometime."
"Yes, sometime."

This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. Children have become the soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What does war look like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived.

In "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier," Ishmael Beah... tells a powerfully gripping story: At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and finally, to heal.

This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Look beyond the inevitable comparison to The Hunger Games--Red Rising is the first book of a gritty, complex trilogy that blazes its own trail. On desolate Mars, the protagonist, Darrow, is caught in a class system that thrives on oppression and secrecy. He is a Red, the lowest member of society, born to toil in the bowels of the planet in service to the sovereign Golds. When Darrow suffers a devastating loss and betrayal he becomes a revolutionary, taking on a dangerous role in an attempt to bring about social justice. Questions of fate, duality, and loyalty, evolve in a cruel test of war between the sons and daughters of the ruling elite. By turns brutal and heartfelt, Red Rising is nonstop action with surprising twists and unforgettable characters. --Seira Wilson

George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is the account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones's Manor Farm into Animal Farm--a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal.

The funniest and most popular sportswriter in America abandons his desk to caddy for some of the world’s most famous golfers—and some celebrity duffers—with hilarious results in this New York Times bestseller.
 
Who knows a golfer best? Who’s with them every minute of every round, hears their muttering, knows whether they cheat? Their caddies, of course. So sportswriter Rick Reilly figured that he could learn a lot about the players and their game by caddying, even though he had absolutely no idea how to do it. Amazingly, some of the best golfers in the world—including Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Jill McGill of the LPGA tour, and Casey Martin—agreed to let Reilly carry their bags at actual PGA and LPGA Tour events. To round out his portrait of the golfing life, Reilly also persuaded Deepak Chopra and Donald Trump to take him on as a caddy, accompanied the four highest-rolling golf hustlers in Las Vegas around the course, and carried the bag for a blind golfer. 

Between his hilarious descriptions of his own ineptitude as a caddy and his insight into what makes the greats of golf so great, Reilly’s wicked wit and an expert’s eye provide readers with the next best thing to a great round of golf.

This novel is narrated by a butler who serves on the country estate of a Nazi-sympathizing British lord.  But the story is so much more than that. Ishiguro was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, largely due to this work.  

A simple parable that reveals profound truths, this is a story about four characters who live in a "Maze" and look for "Cheese" to make them happy.  "Cheese" is a metaphor for what you want to have in life and the "Maze" is where you go looking to find it.  Join us to learn how to develop the courage to deal with all types of change in a healthy and productive way.

If you are looking for a humorous, interesting, easy book to read, this is the book for you! This memoir of comedian Trevor Noah’s upbringing in South Africa is hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting.  Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of high school, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love. With conviction and courage, Noah tackles difficult obstacles to become a world renowned author, comedian and TV host today.

Rich Dad Poor Dad tells the story of a boy with two fathers, one rich, one poor, to help you develop the mindset and financial knowledge you need to build a life of wealth and freedom.

Five main ideas in the book:
-The poor and the middle-class work for money.   -The rich have money work for them.
-It’s not how much money you make that matters. It’s how much money you keep.
-Rich people acquire assets. The poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets.
-Financial aptitude is what you do with money once you make it, how you keep people from taking it from you, how to keep it longer, and how you make money work hard for you.
-The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind.

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines—puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. 

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

One of the last untold stories of World War II is also one of the greatest - a story of adventure, daring, danger and heroics, followed by a web of conspiracy, lies, and coverup.
THE FORGOTTEN 500 tells the story of Operation Halyard in 1944, the largest rescue ever of downed American airmen. More than 500 U.S. airmen were rescued, along with some from other countries, all right under the noses of the Germans, and mostly in broad daylight. The mission was a complete success - the kind that should have been trumpeted in news reels and on the front page.

Mrs. Mahoney's father was a 17 year-old Serbian soldier who protected these downed US airmen in Yugoslavia.

In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. 

Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too.

So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.

Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever.

Already a classic of war reporting and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded.
Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written—a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.

As a fourteen-year-old who just moved to a new town, with no friends and a louse for an older brother, Doug Swieteck has all the stats stacked against him. So begins a coming-of-age masterwork full of equal parts comedy and tragedy from Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt. As Doug struggles to be more than the “skinny thug” that his teachers and the police think him to be, he finds an unlikely ally in Lil Spicer—a fiery young lady who “smelled like daisies would smell if they were growing in a big field under a clearing sky after a rain.” In Lil, Doug finds the strength to endure an abusive father, the suspicions of a whole town, and the return of his oldest brother, forever scarred, from Vietnam. Together, they find a safe haven in the local library, inspiration in learning about the plates of John James Audubon’s birds, and a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage. In this stunning novel, Schmidt expertly weaves multiple themes of loss and recovery in a story teeming with distinctive, unusual characters and invaluable lessons about love, creativity, and survival.

In this sweeping adventure story, Stephen E. Ambrose presents the definitive account of one of the most momentous journeys in American history. Ambrose follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson's hope of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the heart-stopping moments of the actual trip, to Lewis's lonely demise on the Natchez Trace. Along the way, Ambrose shows us the American West as Lewis saw it - wild, awesome, and pristinely beautiful. Undaunted Courage is a stunningly told action tale that will delight readers for generations.

Written by former NBA Coach, Kevin Eastman, he provides his "25 powerful words that impact, inspire, and define champions."

Taken from the book's description, "The best are the best, in part, because of the words they choose to live by.  The best individuals and teams define their words, respect the power of those words, and use those words as a foundation for all they do.  This book provides the 25 Power Words that will help you learn from the best to create a framework and mindset to become your best."

Comedian Trevor Noah's autobiographical story of growing up a mixed race child in apartheid South Africa, where being so was considered a crime.

Set in 1960s South Carolina, The Secret Life of Bees follows Lily - a young girl who escaped her emotionally abusive father, T-Ray – as she discovers her inner voice and follows her dream to be a writer. The beekeeping sisters - August, May, and June - Lily finds herself living with help her realize her potential and reconnect with her mother. This novel tackles tough issues such as sexism and racism in the South and showcases the courage Lily, Rosaleen, and Zachary had to display to overcome social and personal challenges.

Along with the work of Lao Tzu, the writings of Chuang Tzu serve as the foundation of Taoist philosophy, which is a precursor to Zen Buddhism. The courage described here is one of letting go to worldly attachments and to certainty. Among Chuang Tzu's musings are those describing how he woke from a dream in which he was a butterfly only to wonder if he weren't in fact a butterfly dreaming he was a man.  The translation we are using is by the brilliant Christian philosopher Thomas Merton, and the introduction is by his Holiness the Dalai Lama. This reading group will be led by Ms. Chung and Mr. Barnard. A PDF version of this book is available on line.

Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind this fragile community. 

Credit: GoodReads

This is a personal account from Jon Krakauer about his experience during the 1996 Mount Everest disaster in which 8 climbers died.

Everything All at Once is a lifestyle, a philosophy, and an approach to change that has served Bill Nye the Science Guy well.  He has had the courage to develop a world view where there are no problems that can't be solved if you just use your curiosity, patience, and creativity.  Mr Nye urges all of us to stand up and become an active member of our democracy.  Everyone has an inner nerd just waiting to be awakened by the right passion.  Join me as we try to change the world.

In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

The setting is bleak: ash falls through the air like snow in this post-apocalyptic world. A young boy and his father trek through the wasteland in search of the coast and hope. Raiders, illness, and starvation threaten their lives as they push a shopping cart of belongings along the road to their salvation. The father, however, also shoulders memories that plague him throughout their journey, while the boy carries hope for the future.

McCarthy’s simplistic style reflects the minimalist tale perfectly, and the characters remain nameless to embody the relationship between every boy and his father. Written in 2006, this is McCarthy’s most recent novel, and it won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007. It is a dark and powerful novel; not for the feint of heart. Feiknt

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals  into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. 

"Liu successfully interweaves hard science and adventure in this series debut." - The Washington Post

"Wildly imaginative, really interesting." - President Barack Obama

Winner of the Hugo Award

Developing video games—hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it's nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

Erik Weihenmayer is the first and only blind person to summit Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. He and his team picked their way across deep crevasses and through the deadly

Take a trip to the remote jungles, villages, and mountains of Guatemala. 

Immerse yourself in paramilitary death squads, political intrigue, and a civil war that claimed the lives of some 200,000 Guatemalans and that “disappeared” countless others at the hands of a US-backed government. 

Walk alongside author Daniel Wilkinson, as he  recounts his experiences as a graduate student investigating the arson of a coffee plantation. 

Dive into the elaborate mystery that Wilkinson uncovers and its connection to a 1954 coup, as well as a centuries-old plantation system. 

Witness the courage it takes to reveal what is hidden within silence.

While many people know the stories and characters of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, most do not know about the Highlander Folk School in rural Tennessee. This autobiography by Myles Horton, founder and leader of Highlander, reveals an institution at the heart of educating Civil Rights leaders in how to affect non-violent, meaningful change in communities across the South. Horton's narrative is engaging and insightful, but this brief autobiography is about more than Horton and civil rights: it's about how teaching and learning sit at the center of transformation in individuals and communities.

Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jeffrey Marx, a former ballboy for the NFL Baltimore Colts, reunites with a past Colt team captain and superstar, Joe Ehrmann, as he serves as a volunteer coach for a high school football team.  This book chronicles a season of Gilman Greyhound football, following this outstanding coach and his relationship with his high school players as he teaches the keys to a successful defense: penetrate, pursue, punish, and love.  That's right, love.  How does love work in football?  In high school?  In life?

Sunrise Over Fallujah, is a novel by bestselling and award-winning author Walter Dean Myers, who also wrote the book Fallen Angels.  This tale follows the trials and experiences of eighteen-year-old Harlem native Robin “Birdy” Perry through the opening months of the Iraq War in 2003.  Having seen 9/11 as a teenager, Birdy feels compelled to do something important for his country. So, he joins the U.S. Army. He becomes part of the Civil Affairs Battalion, dedicated to winning the hearts and minds of Iraqi civilians as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Birdy’s unit does everything from handing out supplies, to playing soccer with kids, to trying to soothe things over following accidental deaths.  The unit feels proud of what they are doing, and because they do their work so well, they are given the task of working with Special Operations forces to secure a cache of improvised explosive device detonators from southern Iraq.  The story follows Birdy, who questions why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; and Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman.  This powerful, riveting novel brings to life the challenges and courage soldiers face in the time of war.

Our parents are our first teachers, teaching us to love, to eat, to dress ourselves, to read, all in preparation for joining society. But what happens when that process is hijacked? Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho, never going to school or learning anything contrary to her parents’ fundamentalist/survivalist world view. Eventually, she makes her way to Brigham Young University and discovers a world not defined by the anticipation of an imminent apocalypse. Tara attains the highest distinction offered, but at what cost? Can she live in her new world and maintain her relationship with her family?

The Music Lesson is the story of a struggling young musician who wanted music to be his life, and who wanted his life to be great. Then, from nowhere it seemed, a teacher arrived. Part musical genius, part philosopher, part eccentric wise man, the teacher would guide the young musician on a spiritual journey, and teach him that the gifts we get from music mirror those from life, and every movement, phrase, and chord has its own meaning... all you have to do is find the song inside.

Young Reuben Land has little doubt that miracles happen all around us, suspecting that his own father is touched by God. When his older brother flees a controversial murder charge, Reuben, along with his older sister and father, set off on a journey to find him that will take them to the Badlands and through a landscape more extraordinary than they could have anticipated. Enger’s novel is at once a heroic quest and a haunting meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.