The story of Jan Zabinsky, the director of the Warsaw zoo, and his wife Antonina, who sheltered 300 Jews and Polish resisters in the zoo's cages and sheds during WWII.

When she visits her liberated and loving aunt, life dramatically changes for a 15-year old Nigerian girl who has grown up in sheltered privilege with a wealthy father who is politically courageous but religiously fanatic.

This coming-of-age story centers on young Hayat Shah, a Pakistani-American living in Milwaukee. His family'’s dynamics, and their various levels of engagement with Islam, are at the center of the novel.

Civil rights advocate and legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that a new permanent under-class has been created by the war on drugs and the denial of equal access to employment, housing, public benefits and education to ex-prisoners.

An orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and meets a Chinese herbalist, who becomes her soul mate, on the journey.

A young girl is killed in a car accident following Carmen's wedding. For 25 years after Carmen, her family and friends lives head in a variety of trajectories-- yet with each person carrying an emotional burden about that night.

London, a beautiful immigrant from Trinidad, was given to her husband by her father in order to settle a debt. Standing by her husband's side to make him the envy of his associates is a day in the life, but behind closed doors, the abuse that she encounters has her looking for a way out. When she meets a young thug named Kalil, he opens her eyes to a world she never knew. 

Private detective Jackson Brodie investigates three cases: two disappearances from long ago and a search for a witness to a murder. In typical fashion for this series, however, Brodie's personal life shares center stage with the detective work.

In this multi-layered novel, a dying octogenarian recalls her past, including her forced marriage, her sister's suicide, and the publication of her sister's science fiction novel, The Blind Assassin.

Austen's classic of social manners follows Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy as they try to achieve married bliss, in spite of bad first impressions and meddling families. 

Ove has always lived his life according to strict principles, earning him the status of lead curmudgeon in his neighborhood.  But when life threatens to overwhelm even the firmly stoic Ove, a comedic cast of characters comes to the rescue—and proves that help can come from the most surprising of sources. 

This Booker Prize winner is suspenseful tale of memory and self-knowledge. When Tony receives a classmate's diary from 40+ years before, it leads to a re-examination of his younger years and what he thought was true.

Anna Pigeon's first job as a National Park employee in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area basis for this book-- Barr's 17th in the series. The setting of the desert surrounding Lake Powell and the houseboat renting tourists that populate the park are central features of this story, which reveals a broken-hearted and widowed Anna just getting started on what we know to be a long career in solving crimes.

When Miss Norma was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she was advised to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But instead of confining herself to a hospital bed for what could be her last stay, Miss Norma--newly widowed after nearly seven decades of marriage--told her doctor, "I'm ninety years old. I'm hitting the road." And so Miss Norma took off on an unforgettable around-the-country journey in a thirty-six-foot motorhome with her retired son Tim, his wife Ramie, and their dog Ringo. This book was the 2018 Fond du Lac Reads selection. 

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? In 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, four teenage siblings visit a fortune-teller who is reputed to be able to predict the date of a person’s death; this bestselling novel by Madison author Chloe Benjamin follows them across the country and through next five decades.
 

According to everyone in the Windy City, Mayhem has an icebox in place of his heart and no lady has ever been able to penetrate it, except for Xenobia Bell, who shattered Mayhem’s heart into a million pieces. That was eight years ago, and the heartache still feels fresh to Mayhem. Then he meets Olena, who​ is content with keeping a rotation of male lovers until she is cornered aggressively by Mayhem, who claims her as his woman. Will Mayhem set aside his relationship paranoia to be the man that Olena wants, or will he take Olena down the same path of hurt that Xenobia took him down? 

A former nun recounts her cloistered life as well as her romance with a priest 25 years her senior that culminated in  marriage.  Joys and sorrows follow as she has two children, yet loses her husband to cancer and one daughter to murder.

Interwoven stories of three American women at the start of World War II: a single 40-year old postmistress in a small town on Cape Cod,  a newlywed new to the town, and a reporter in London working under Edward R. Morrow.

This novel, based on true events in the author’s childhood, portrays the community of Elizabeth, New Jersey in the early 1950’s, when it was hit by  three major plane crashes within a few months, leaving residents to struggle with the repeated tragedies.

Two couples, an undocumented Mexican husband and wife camping in a canyon and well-heeled Americans living in a gated community, cross paths repeatedly and usually unknowingly in this novel set in Southern California.

The nine boys who made up the Olympic rowing team, sons of western loggers and hardworking laborers, may not have had the pedigree of the elite teams of the east, but they set out to prove themselves to the world at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  Author Brown captures the struggles, including the Great Depression, poverty, and the loss of family, of a team that showed the nation what pulling together meant.

Bill Bryson relates the history of a household by touring his own home, a Church of England rectory built in the nineteenth century, and relating stories of everyday objects and how they transformed the way people lived.

After living 20 years in England, Bryson reacquaints himself with America by walking the Appalachian Trail and shares his comic insight into the trail's people, politics and history. The full title is A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.

A humorous and loving look at small town life at the beginning of the 20th century. Young Will Tweedy narrates the tale of his grandfather's romance with a younger woman, his purchase of the first automobile in the county, and life at the general store owned by his family.

This novel tells the story of five friends who grew up together in the fictional small town of Little Wing, Wisconsin: a famous musician, a wealthy commodities trader, a former rodeo star, and a married couple who stayed in the community as farmers.

Young Walter Moody arrives on the wild shores of 1860s New Zealand ready to make his fortune, but a chance encounter with a group of local men leads to a quest to discover the causes of several mysterious events.  A sprawling novel with strong Victorian influences, The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize in 2013.  

In an intricate, alternate reality noir detective novel set Alaska where 2 million displaced  Jews settled after World War II.

This warm and practical book by Madison area author, psychotherapist, and mindfulness teacher Mare Chapman, M.A., based on Chapman’s ‘Mindfulness for Women’ course, guides the reader through an intimate journey, showing how women form disempowering beliefs that cause them to lose themselves in relationships, and how to regain connection with their true selves through mindfulness. 

This kit was added to the collection with support from the Madison Public Library Foundation.
 

This hilarious, fast-paced tale about a club of anarchists in turn-of-the-century London is a rediscovered classic by an author best known as the creator of the "Father Brown" detective stories.

In this novel, set in Northern California in 1969, and based loosely on the stories of Charles Manson’s followers, a disaffected and lonely teenager meets a group of girls who follow a manipulative, charismatic, and dangerous man, and joins them.

Your first year teaching at a poor urban school can really be tough. Esme, however, has energy, wit, big ideas and a touch of cynicism. Written in diary form, we read about her successes and failures as a teacher as she experiences them over the course of a year.

A diverse group of high school seniors in Charleston,  S.C. are close friends in 1969 and reunite 20 years later.

In this humorous novel about a dysfunctional family, three siblings find that their reckless brother has drained the $2 million dollar bank account their father left them at his death, money they have all been planning to use to solve their own financial problems. 

A young single woman falls in love with a seeming prince charming, then ends up more committed to his delightful daughter than he.

In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.​ Evicted was selected as the 2016 UW Go Big Read title. 

Sweet ghetto nerd Oscar dreams of being a famous writer… and of falling in love. He may not get either wish, due to a curse that’s dominated his Dominican family for generations. A Pulitzer Prize winner.

5-year old Jack narrates the story of his life from the 11 by 11 foot room where he and his mother are confined by Old Nick.

This stream-of-consciousness novel tells the story, part realistic and part fantastic, of a quirky little town on the Oregon coast, and the lives of its inhabitants, including Salish Indians, Irish immigrants, and a crow who talks.

Dumas chronicles her life in America with a collection of zany-but-true family stories.

A portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come, written by two-time Pulitzer-Prize finalist and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan. 2018-2019 UW-Madison Go Big Read selection.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Egan turns to historical fiction, telling the story of Anna Kerrigan, who grows up during the Great Depression to eventually become the first female diver at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, while also unraveling the mysteries of her father’s disappearance and caring for her mother and disabled sister.
 

In this satire on contemporary information technology, a naive young woman gets a job at a huge social media company where she becomes relentlessly connected, and loses her own personal life and privacy.

Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of the brutal Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II, discovers a beautiful garden tended by the emperor’s exiled former gardener Aritomo.  Haunted by the death of her sister during the war, Yun Ling asks Aritomo to help her build a garden in memory of her sister.  But as she learns more about the garden’s intricacy and beauty, its connection to the pain and deceit of the past are also revealed.   

After a tragic hunting accident in which Landreaux Irons accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor’s five-year-old-son, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition - the sweat lodge - for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and his wife will give their own five-year-old-son, LaRose, to their grieving neighbors to raise as their own. 
 

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is an intersex person, a situation with roots in her grandparent's desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

Young Lucy Mercer Rutherford is hired as the private secretary for Eleanor Roosevelt but soon falls deeply in love with Eleanor’s ambitious and charismatic husband Franklin.  When the affair is discovered by Eleanor and threatens Franklin’s presidential chances, Franklin ends it with Lucy, vowing to never betray Eleanor’s trust again.  But the connection is strong between the two, and when Franklin is in declining health, the two meet again.  This novel, told from Lucy’s perspective, is based on historical events and sources.

A comic memoir by the former Saturday Night Live writer, actress and star of the sitcom “30 Rock”.

Anna Fox lives alone -- a recluse in her New York City home, drinking too much wine, watching old movies ... and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move next door: a father, a mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble -- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. In this gripping Hitchcockian thriller, no one and nothing are what they seem.

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts--and shapes--their family's future.

A chance discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II causes Henry Lee, a Chinese-American and recent widower, to reflect on his first romance with Keiko, which ended when her family was evacuated.

The personal dynamics and moral compromises of a married Midwestern couple, their son Joey, and their rock star friend Richard Katz are explored against a backdrop of contemporary American issues including ecological degradation and war profiteering.

While modern medicine has developed breathtaking advances in the pursuit to extend life, the ability of doctors treat the realities of aging and dying often runs counter to the best interests of the patient.  Surgeon Gawande examines the limitations of medicine at the end of life, and speaks with those in the profession who are turning ‘a good death’ into a quality life to the very end. 

An Indian-American researcher arrives in a remote area of India to study the freshwater dolphins and meets two very different men, each important to her work and life there.

The author of Eat, Pray, Love examines her decision to marry and broadens her book to include interviews with married people from a variety of cultures as well as Western research on marriage.

The Signature of All Things

A rich, layered family saga triptych that spreads over Greece, Scotland, New York City and Long Island during three summers. The family patriarch and his son are the focus of this 2002 National Book Award winner.

Opening up a vintage clothing shop in Madison has always been Violet’s dream, but making it a success is entirely different challenge.  Teenager April is trying to recover from a broken engagement and the looming birth of her child.  Amithi struggles with the betrayal of her husband and tension with her tradition-averse daughter.  These different women connect over vintage cloth and learn to face down the upheavals of their lives to emerge stronger together. 

A gothic tale set in 1907 Wisconsin told from two viewpoints: Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman who advertises for a wife for practical reasons, and Catherine Land, a beauty hungry for riches, posing as a dowdy daughter of a missionary.

Bestselling author Grann presents a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
 

In a major novel unlike anything he has written before, John Grisham takes the reader on an incredible journey, from the Jim Crow South to the jungles of the Philippines during World War II; from an insane asylum filled with secrets to the Clanton courtroom where upstanding citizen and World War II hero Pete Banning's defense attorney tries desperately to save him from conviction for the murder of the esteemed Reverend Bell, the most mysterious and unforgettable crime Ford County had ever known.
 

In this novel of drama and satire, the bombing of the Great Ape Language Lab and the subsequent removal of their bonobo apes to a new life on reality TV brings together married reporter John Thigpen and primate-loving scientist Isabel Duncan.

This novel follows the fate of two half-sisters born in eighteenth century Ghana, and their descendants.  One sister marries the British head of a slave trading colony, while the other is captured in the same colony and sold into American slavery. 

In this darkly comic novel, the family patriarch mistakenly believes he is dying of cancer (it’s really eczema) while his wife and grown children swirl around him getting ready for a wedding.

After his young wife suffers brain damage and is left with the mind of a 6-year old, Aaron Maciver quietly divorces her and marries her nurse, and the two raise her as their child along with their daughter and son in this chronicle of an unusual family.

Leni and her troubled family embark on a new way of life in Alaska’s wilderness in 1974 – hoping this is finally the solution for her troubled POW father. In Alaska, Leni and her family are tested and when change comes to their small community her father’s anger threatens to explode and divide the town. (from LibraryReads)
 

Hank Skirmshander looks to be a rising baseball star, but his talents take a serious dive while playing for Westish College.  His one errant throw impacts the lives of five people in unexpected ways.

Set in a small town in the plains of Colorado, this novel tells the interrelated stories of eight characters whose lives undergo radical change during the course of one year.

The drowning pool at Beckford had been a spot where accused witches were ‘tried’—drowned to prove their innocence.  Lately the pool has claimed more women, ostensibly from suicide.  But when women of the town and relatives of the dead women begin to suspect a more sinister motive behind the deaths, they reveal deceptions and betrayals at the core of their small town.  

Louis Zamperini, a champion runner in the 1930s, joined the U.S. Army Air Force in 1941. As a bombardier in World War II, he crash-landed in the Pacific, surviving forty-seven days on a raft and two years of abuse in Japanese POW camps.  His post-war life was a happy and productive one, a relief to the reader that Hillenbrand recounts in the final quarter of the book.

A fictionalized portrayal of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, her love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright, and the scandal it created.

 In 1952, a poor Afghan father travels across the desert with his young son and daughter, about to make a decision that will have complex repercussions for years to come in this saga of family love, honor and sacrifice.   

P.I. Holland Taylor reluctantly agreed to help Minnesota gubernatorial candidate and media darling Carol Catherine Monroe. A scandal that could rattle the skeletons in her closet had to be diffused. But the murder of an innocent campaign worker hit Taylor where it hurt and taught him a simple truth--some sins can never be forgotten or forgiven.
 

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world.

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the lives of of people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control, who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain--into the future.

The author of this memoir was a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with lung cancer in his mid-thirties. Writing in his last months of life, he talks about his childhood and college studies, explains why he decided to become a doctor, and describes his experiences with his illness. 

This memoir, which inspired a television series, was written by a middle-class college graduate who describes the thirteen months she spent in a federal prison for drug trafficking crimes she committed in her younger days.

Small-town Georgia in 1964 is the setting for this novel of beekeeping, civil rights, and a girl's yearning for her deceased mother. Despite the difficult subjects, this novel is sad but warm and, ultimately, uplifting.

Inspired by events in the life of anthropologist, Margaret Mead, this is the fictional story of a love triangle among three anthropologists working in New Guinea, who display three completely different approaches to studying other cultures.

Young, independent Taylor heads west from Kentucky to Tucson, seeking a life change. Young, independent Taylor heads west from Kentucky to Tucson, seeking a life change.

Harrison William Shephard, whose father is American and mother is Mexican, lives in Mexico in the 1930s with Diego Rivera, his wife Frida Kahlo, and their houseguest Leon Trotsky.

The compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.
 

One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he's loved has been taken away--and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.

Cleaning guru Marie Kondo outlines her method of ‘tidying up,’ going beyond a simple how-to manual to ask what our stuff means to us emotionally and what we consider to be truly precious.  

In the summer of 1961, life in New Bremen, Minnesota moves slowly for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum.   The tragic death of a child in a train accident prompts old memories to resurface between the Drum and Brandt families, revealing the pain and dark shadows that lurked just under the surface of an idyllic life, and introducing Frank to the harsh realities of adulthood.

Two events focused attention on Chicago in 1893: the World’s Fair with it’s hundreds of newly built structures (all white), and the investigation into the crimes of Dr. Henry Holmes, reputedly the first American serial killer.

An account of the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas and killed 6,000 people. Larson uses personal papers, letters, newspapers and government archives as the source material for this engrossing tale.

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. 

British naturalist Macdonald undertakes the training of a goshawk as a means of working through the grief at the sudden loss her father, himself a falconer.   

An Indian boy, Piscine Patel (aka ‘Pi’) and his zookeeping family are emigrating to Canada. While on a container ship enroute to their new life, an accident at sea leaves Pi and a tiger in a lifeboat floating on the Pacific Ocean.

Twelve narratives spanning the twentieth century are twined together in this novel of an African-American mother and her children.  

This is the first in a series of gentle mysteries. Precious Ramotswe operates in Botswana, running an agency where the solving of the ‘mystery’ is often secondary to the exploration of family, customs and alternate methods of justice.

New York City in the early 1970s is portrayed in this set of connected stories including a street priest, a judge, heroin addicts, mothers of sons killed in Vietnam, and a man who walks on a cable between the World Trade Center towers in August, 1974.

Hadley Richardson’s marriage to Ernest Hemingway, then a young reporter, took her from small-town St. Louis to the glamour of Paris in the 1920’s. Based on letters, biographies, and memoirs, this is a fictional account of their marriage, told from Hadley's point of view.

Written for anyone who has or anticipates caring for an aging loved one, Holding the Net, the author’s story of caring for her own mother as a hospice consultant, offers practical details about caregiving and challenges the notion that anyone can be an expert when it comes to caring for an aging parent; all we can do is our best.
 

A deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging, A Place for Us follows an Indian family through the marriage of their daughter, from the parents' arrival in the United States to the return of their estranged son.
 

Le Cirque des Reves (The Dream Circus) appears unexpectedly on the outskirts of towns and treats its audiences to dazzling illusions. Danger lurks behind the scenes, however, as two powerful teachers have set up a duel-to-the-death between their two magician proteges.

A last-minute invitation to a weekend barbeque has lasting effects for three couples, and leaves them questioning their friendships and the guilt underlying even the most commonplace moments. 

In Murakami’s poignant coming-of-age story, Toru, a college student in 1960s Japan, is devoted to Naoko, a thoughtful young woman who shares Toru’s sense of isolation and yearning for beauty.  But while Naoko struggles with the harsh realities of life, Toru discovers that he must make a choice between his love for her and the unknown possibilities of adulthood. 

Sy’noba, a young female lioness with roots from the savanna in Africa finds herself battling with her true identity living in civilization amongst humans. The pride’s king, Koja, who already has two wives has his eyes set on Sy’noba, his first wife little sister. With jealousy brewing in the pride, will Asha turn on her sister, Sy’noba? Will Sy’noba find herself when her back is against the wall or will she become Koja’s third wife?

A Honduran young man rides the tops of trains through Mexico to the U.S. to reunite with his mother as chronicled by Pulitzer Prize winning author Nazario. From his family’s life of poverty in Honduras to life-risking attempts to cross the border to political realities in Mexico and the U.S., this highly engaging work is sure to challenge some of our beliefs about immigration. Chosen as UW's 2011 Go Big Read [221] selection.

This story of a community and a family, whose attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby dramatically divides the town, explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood - and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

In a friendship of complete opposites Emma and Dexter meet once a year on the anniversary of their meeting in a humorous and moving story chronicling their relationships, families and careers.

Claire and Henry have a loving, passionate marriage with one big problem:  Henry is a time traveler, involuntarily dropping in and out of time.  This unusual love story follows Claire and Henry's relationship, as the two meet out of sync, with different memories of each other or none at all, testing the strength of their devotion in a world which could change in an instant. 

Set in the Balkans, this novel blends contemporary storytelling and myth by combining the difficulties of a present day war-torn place with a grandfather's recollections of the past and the folktales of the region.

Written in 1949, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future, where Big Brother is always watching.  And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative still resonates today.

A college-aged woman is faced with difficult decisions when her boyfriend dives off a pier and becomes a quadriplegic. Set in Madison, with many small details local readers will love.

A kiss at a christening party leads to the dissolution of marriages and the creation of a new blended family, the repercussions of which are traced through fifty years.  

EMT and former nurse Perry moves back to his hometown - New Auburn, WI - after years away.  His stories about his emergency calls are compelling and his ruminations on small town life unique.

Kim Phúc, informally known as “the Napalm Girl,”  was immortalized as a badly burned child running from a bombing in one of the most horrifying, iconic images of the Vietnam war. Yet despite the physical and emotional pain she suffered, this memoir details how she found faith, forgiveness, and peace.
 

The discovery of the naked frozen body of a beautiful teenage girl during a 1987 Kansas blizzard and the subsequent disappearance of the son of a judge begin this novel with surprising twists and a convincing portrait of small town life.

A daughter born with a severe bone disease is the central focus of the family, to the detriment of her older sister and her parents’ marriage. When her mother pursues a suit against her obstetrician best friend, the family implodes.

While wolf exper Luke Warren lies in a coma, his estranged gay son Edward and his daughter Cara have conflicting views on end of life care.

A Catholic nun shares her perspective of our system of capital punishment after she is asked to counsel Patrick Sonnier, a death-row inmate. She writes of her experiences as she gets to know Patrick, including her shock at the brutality of his crime, her sympathy with his pain and her efforts to abolish the death penalty.

A suburban mother raising three teenage children and running a landscaping business has an ordinary life with ordinary problems until the family is engulfed in a violent tragedy.

Lake District raised and Oxford educated Rebanks provides a poetic, loving and realistic portrait of the farms and shepherds in one of England’s most rugged regions.  Far from an elegy for a disappearing way of life, Rebanks emphasizes the importance of maintaining a connection to the land, and recognizing the worth of rural work.

This memoir of family, friends and food by the former restaurant critic for The New York Times and current editor of Gourmet Magazine focuses on the early childhood and adulthood of the author, and shows what led to her love of food.

Paroled after serving time for a crime he might not have committed, Brock Bookchester is back in his hometown of Words, Wisconsin.  As he slowly tries to reconnect with family and friends, the residents of Words find that only by taking risks and making sacrifices can a community make one of its own whole again.  Revisiting the world he created in Driftless, Rhodes creates a detailed, poignant portrait of those who call small towns home. 

A mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both.
 

A chronicle of the author's year long quest to find happiness through testing ideas from age old wisdom, popular culture, and current scientific research.

In the Rust Belt town of North Bath, New York, police chief Doug Raymer is convinced he’s ‘everyone’s fool’ as he grapples with the revelation his now-dead wife cheated on him, engages in an ongoing feud with the curmudgeon Sully Sullivan and otherwise tries to maintain order in a town filled with down-on-their-luck but lovable characters. 

In the summer of 1944, most of the men have been shipped off to war, and Door County’s cherry harvest is threatened.  Faced with the possibility of losing their livelihood, the Christiansen family lobbies to use Germans housed at a nearby POW camp for labor.  But when friendships are sparked between enemies and former servicemen begin coming home with an intense hatred of Germany, the prospects for trouble are inevitable.  

Marjane continues her graphic novel memoir. As a teen she leaves war torn Iran for Vienna where she tries dating and recreational drugs. Readjustment to a patriarchal, fundamentalist society follows, as she returns to her homeland.

On a wet day in 1986, businesswoman Laura Schroff passed Maurice, an 11-year-boy panhandling for spare change.  She walked on, but something made her stop and go back.  That day, recounted in this true story, marked the beginning of a life-changing friendship that enriched both Schroff and Maurice, and underscores how one moment of kindness can have lasting benefits. 

In this collection of humorous essays, David Sedaris discusses childhood, family and relationships, revealing that "normal" is truly a relative term.

Threatened by bankruptcy, May and Pearl, two beautiful girls living in Shanghai in the 1930s, are placed in arranged marriages to Chinese men living in Los Angeles where the girls struggle to form a new life.

A western reporter shares what she learned as a burka wearing woman living with a bookseller's family in Afghanistan. Life after the fall of the Taliban includes stories both horrifying and uplifting.

An aging author, after creating many varying life histories for herself over the years, summons a young biographer to write her story in this gothic tale combining mystery, ghost story and family drama.

When tragedy brings best friends Asim and Mulani together, giving Mulani what she's always wanted, she feels like the streets now has their king and queen. But one mistake is all it took for Asim to walk away from Mulani and into the arms of another woman and even down the path of matrimony. After the hurt that Asim has caused, Mulani goes harder than ever unwilling to love again. Can sexy Maddox aka Dox from the Bronx, break down Mulani's walls? And will Asim allow that to happen?

In this Pulitzer Prize winning book, Daisy Goodwill attempts to understand her place in the world as she nears the end of her life. She narrates her own biography, from her birth in Manitoba in 1905 when she loses her mother to childbirth, through her college years, her marriages and her work as a newspaper columnist.

Two boys are sent to the countryside to be re-educated in this fable set during China's Cultural Revolution. They discover hope through forbidden western literature, but find hope can be cruel and corrupting.

In this humorous love story a proper, retired British army officer and a shopkeeper of Pakistani heritage begin a romance despite family problems and cultural barriers.

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who is everything they dreamed. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. 

In this National Book Award-nominated novel, a rag-tag group of traveling Shakespearean actors struggle to survive in a landscape that has been decimated by a global pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population.  In flashbacks, members of the group recall their lives during the pandemic and what it took for them to survive, with some surprising connections. 

A down-to-earth multigenerational tale of a Croatian family who journey from their Balkan village to Siberia and ultimately to Milwaukee, WI.

A tale of love, loyalty, child custody, death and betrayal with parallels to the sport of auto racing... narrated by a dog.

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. One of his first clients was Walter McMillian, a man on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. Here Stevenson details the legal journey to McMillian’s release as well as those of others he’s helped in his now thirty year career. The book is a call to action, true crime page-turner and critique of the American system of justice — and was chosen as UW-Madison’s 2015 Go Big Read.

The Post family and friends embark on a celebratory two-week vacation in the island paradise of Mallorca.  But humorous revelations of secrets and infidelities promise to turn their holiday into one they’ll never forget. 

Two brothers left their hometown in Maine to become New York City lawyers. One is now a hotshot corporate attorney, the other works for Legal Aid. When their sister in Maine needs help, both go back to assist—and secrets large and small are revealed.

This ‘novel in stories,’ set in small town Maine, centers on Olive Kitteridge, a difficult-to-like retired teacher and her friends and acquaintances. Together they reveal their follies, foibles, difficulties and capacity for change.

After witnessing the love prosper between her friends, Jah and Jazmin, Cassie longs for her own loving relationship. Hoping that things would evolve, Cassie gives longtime friend Rock a try.  Sit back, buckle up and enjoy the ride as Cassie tries to figure out her life with the support of her friends and family—the ones she actually can stand. 

Turtle Alveston, who at age 14 has already survived the death of her mother and a childhood in the woods of northern California with her tortured, abusive father, finds herself questioning her future - and planning her escape - after she meets Jacob, a high-school boy who shows her other possibilities for her life. 
 

In this debut novel, a runaway bestseller in Sweden, a mother, drawn by a mysterious clue back to the island where her 6-year-old son Jens disappeared 20 years ago, is determined to find out what really happened that gray September day. In the process, she finds a shocking connection to Öland's most notorious murder case: the killing spree of a wealthy young man who fled the island and died years before Jens was even born. 
 

After enduring a rough childhood in a working-class Irish enclave in 1940s Queens, Eileen seems set for a stable life with a graduate degree in nursing and a scientist husband with a bright future.  But her hopes for herself and her family are jeopardized when Edmund is diagnosed with ­Alzheimer’s at age 51. 

In 1950s Ireland, when Ellis Lacey is unable to find a job in her home country, she leaves reluctantly for Brooklyn, NY.  After a period of isolation she begins to find happiness, yet when a tragedy takes her back to Ireland the limitations of her old life conflict with her newfound possibilities in America.

In this acclaimed prequel to The Lord of the Rings, hobbit Bilbo Baggins has his peaceful existence interrupted when he is persuaded to join a band of dwarfs in retrieving a famous hoard of gold far beyond the Misty Mountains.  Along the way, he encounters trolls, elves and the ferocious dragon Smaug.

A chilling domestic drama that blends psychological suspense with a touch of modern horror. The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. When doctors are unable to help, the Barretts turn to a local Catholic priest, who suggests an exorcism and connects the family with a reality TV production company that is eager to document the family’s situation. 
 

A slap of an obnoxious toddler at a backyard party results in an arrest and court case,  and leads to an exploration of the diverse lives of the partygoers.

A police procedural mystery set in Sweden, where Inspector Huss solves violent crimes, yet manages a happy home life including teenage twin daughters and a husband.

A humorous exploration of personal relations and cultural clashes between two families. The traditional American Donaldsons and the Iranian-American Yazdans adopt Korean girls at the same time, with different plans and parenting styles.

Four women, inseparable during their university days in 1970s Bombay, reunite when one discovers that she is dying of cancer.  The thirty years since they last met, however, has seen their lives changed in ways that none expected. 

A personal reflection on upward mobility in America seen through the lens of a white, working-class family in the Midwest.  The UW-Madison Go Big Read Common Book Program selection for 2017. 

A fictionalized biography of the author's  grandmother, Lily Casey Smith,  who was a mustang breaker, school teacher, bootlegger, poker player, racehorse rider, bush pilot, ranch wife and mother.

A luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must recalibrate her life when her academic career goes off track. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence. But there's another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend.

Frances Wray and her mother, formerly genteel but fallen on hard times and devastated by the toll of the Great War, offer a portion of their London house to rent.  A young lower-class couple, the Barbers, become the Wrays’ ‘paying guests.’  Drawn to the vivacious Mrs. Barber, Frances embarks on a relationship that quickly turns into something far more serious with unimagined repercussions.

From birth, the Savage brothers were taught by their father, Deuce, that life is like a sandwich; any way you flip it, the bread comes first. They were taught to get money, not fall in love, so they left a wreckage of broken hearts on their road to getting money. Yet, now, as mature men, they realize that you’re not rich until you have something that money can’t buy. And money certainly cannot buy the women that have stolen these brothers’ hard and stubborn hearts.

Left for dead after an accident, astronaut Mark Watley is stranded on the surface of Mars.  Left with only enough food and supplies for a few months, Watley has to rely on his wits and ingenuity to survive.

Madison author Wildgen tackles sibling rivalry and the cutthroat world of restaurants when brothers Britt, Leo and Harry open rival restaurants in a small town near Philadelphia.  

Between World War I and 1970, six million black Americans left the South for the East Coast, West Coast, or Midwest. This non-fiction book tells the story of  this “Great Migration” by focusing on the lives of three of the people who made the move.

Perry Crandall (IQ 76) narrates his life after the death of his Gran, who raised him after his parents abandoned him. When he wins a $12 million lottery, his avaricious family schemes to appropriate his prize.

In a series of essays, women writers of all ages discuss the impact of time and illness on their bodies and the process of taking control of their body image.