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.

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale [23], acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades, picking up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
 

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? 

The heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family's attempt to grapple with their mother's desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have.
 

Lillian Leyb, survivor of a Russian massacre, immigrates to New York in 1924.  Upon learning her 3-year-old daughter may still be alive, she journeys across North America through the Yukon wilderness and over the Bering Strait to find her.

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.

Forced to flee an America where anarchy and violence have completely taken over, empath Lauren Olamina--who can feel the pain of others and is crippled by it--becomes a prophet carrying the hope of a new world and a new faith christened "Earthseed".

Written in 1918, this enduring classic tells the story of a Bohemian immigrant to Nebraska, Antonia, through the eyes of her orphaned friend Jim.

When her husband Brad returns from Iraq, Elise is thrilled to have him home.  But the traumatic brain injury he suffered on duty has turned the patient, thoughtful man she married into someone quite different.  Faced with potentially losing the man she loves, Elise receives help from an unlikely source.  

Chang tells the story of three generations of women in her family who survived the political upheaval of China during the 20th century, beginning with her grandmother, a concubine to a warlord in feudal China, her mother, who rose to a prominent position in the Communist Party, to the author, raised during the Cultural Revolution until she was sent to study in England in 1978, giving a history of China from a personal perspective.

This is a graphic memoir by a New Yorker cartoonist, both hilarious and horrifying,  in which she uses cartoons, hand-written text, and photographs to recount the story of her parents' last years and to explore  her difficult relationship with them.

A maid in the house of the artist Vermeer inspires the painter to do a portrait of her wearing his wife's pearl earring, causing a scandal that changes the young woman's life.

An honest and controversial memoir of a Chinese-American mother who parents her two high achieving daughters in a strict, authoritarian way.

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.

In this National Book Award-winning memoir, journalist Coates recounts his experience growing up black and offers penetrating insight into the state of race relations in America today. 

Bestselling author Michael Connelly introduces Renee Ballard, a fierce young detective fighting to prove herself on the LAPD's toughest beat--the Late Show.

Young Henry was fascinated with his new school teacher, who was unconventional by the local standards of their seaside town. The adult Henry harbors a secret-- and it involves a murder in Chatham long ago.

The intertwined stories of three women in suburban Philadelphia: newly arrived Cornelia searching for a new life; judgmental, perfectionist Piper struggling with her best friend's cancer; and elusive, free-spirited Lake.

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. 
 

In chapters that alternate between the history of the Hmong and a highly personal story of a young Hmong girl who is severly ill with seizures, we learn about Hmong culture and the dramatic clash between it and American medicine in the early 1990s. The full title is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures.

The first in Italian author Ferrante’s four-book series, My Brilliant Friend introduces Lila and Elena, two girls growing up in the slums of 1950s Naples.   Bookish and quiet, Elena contrasts with her brash best friend Lila, whose path in life seems destined for marriage and motherhood in spite of her dreams of becoming a writer.  An acclaimed study of women’s friendship and the changing aspects of their lives, Ferrante masterfully captures the strengths and struggles of two extraordinary women.

The remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years--not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own.  

The novel on which the popular movie was based, this account of four women's lives in the Depression-era South is humorous, while also threaded with the more serious themes of racism, feminism, and domestic violence.

On the fifth anniversary of a seemingly ideal couple, wife Amy disappears and her husband Nick becomes the chief suspect. The novel alternates between Nick's point of view and Amy's (via her diary entries), engaging the reader in which version of events is accurate-- if any.

A group of six (including one man) meet monthly to discuss Jane Austen's novels. As the reader listens in on their discussions we hear not just about the books, but their lives and loves as well.

In this atmospheric thriller, the first female sheriff in rural Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, searches for a missing girl, battles local drug dealers, and seeks the truth about the death of her parents.
 

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.

As the founder of the lifestyle website TheChicSite.com and CEO of her own media company, Rachel Hollis developed an immense online community by sharing tips for better living while fearlessly revealing the messiness of her own life. Now, in this challenging and inspiring new book, Rachel exposes the twenty lies and misconceptions that too often hold us back from living joyfully and productively, lies we've told ourselves so often we don't even hear them anymore.

A boy named Amir,  born in pre-Soviet Afghanistan, befriends a servant’s son. Long after emigrating to California, Amir returns to Afghanistan to reconnect with his past and perhaps correct some of his childhood wrongs.

Through three decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, two wives of the same man become the closest of friends, and the reader gets a view into difficult lives they live.

A childhood Halloween prank with horrible consequences comes back to haunt a man and his family in this Madison-set thriller.  

In this sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set six years after Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage, the domestic tranquility of their estate at Pemberley is disrupted when a visitor is found murdered in the woods.

A dark and stormy night turns sinister when a nearby train wreck lands dozens of stranded travelers on the Torrington family and their decayed English manor on the occasion of twenty-year-old Emerald’s birthday dinner.   By the end of the evening, class distinctions are muddled, an after-dinner game turns nasty, family skeletons are revealed and youngest daughter Smudge’s Great Undertaking comes to fruition.  An odd and surprising romp set in a Downton Abbey-esque milieu, The Uninvited Guests takes many surprising twists to its unexpected end. 

A septuagenarian invites a young woman to live in her mansion while both heal from their troubled pasts.

Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life in this young adult novel.

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.
 

A troubled teenaged girl, who is helping an old woman organize her house, learns about the woman's early life as an Irish immigrant in New York City and in Minnesota, where she was sent at the age of nine, on an orphan train.

In August 1863, during Kit Carson's roundup of the Navajo, Santa Fe's Provost Marshal, Major Joseph Cummings, is found dead in an arroyo near what is now the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona. The murder, as well as the roughly million of today's dollars in cash and belongings in his saddlebags, is historically factual. Carson's explanation that he was shot by a lone Indian, which, even today, can be found in the U.S. Army Archives, is implausible. Who did kill Carson's ''brave and lamented'' Major?

Two Pulitzer Prize winning authors issue a call to arms against the oppression of women in the developing world. The book highlights individuals working to effect change -- covering topics such as sex slavery, maternal mortality, and gender-based violence.

Envisioning a summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl.
 

A Broadway actress returns home to small town Minnesota to care for her Down's syndrome nephew. This larger-than-life woman learns how far she's drifted from her core values, but with trademark Landvik humor.

This non-fiction page turner, set in Berlin during the rise of Adolph Hitler, tells the story of the American ambassador and his daughter, whose many love affairs blinded her to the increasing menace of the new Germany.

Ever since Draylah Omari was sixteen years old, it seemed like life had only dealt her a bad hand. Tragedies and betrayal have taken the people she loved most, including her best friend of over a decade, Glory. After finding out her boyfriend Lue, who was once her savior, is nothing but a wolf in sheep's clothing, Draylah decides to lock her heart up and focus only on her half finished brow bar. She's no longer in the mood to weather any storms, especially ones that are brought on by a man.

An earlier written sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird set in the 1950s, Go Set a Watchman casts the beloved characters of Scout and Atticus in a new light, and poses the question of how far we have really come in the battle against discrimination. 

Journalist Lopez befriends a schizophrenic former Juilliard student playing a battered violin beside a shopping cart of belongings in L.A. Chosen by Porchlight as their Madison Cares community read. The full title is The Soloist: a Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.

The dramas unfolding in Saigon and Madison in October 1967 are woven together in this work by Washington Post reporter Maraniss.

Martinez investigates the deaths of three migrant workers, the Chavez brothers. Martinez spends a year with the brothers’ extended family as they work their way across the U.S., including a stint at a Wisconsin meat packing plant.

This memoir combines accounts of McBride’s childhood in a mixed-race family and his mother’s life history, and is a powerful portrait of growing up, a meditation on race and identity, and a poignant hymn from a son to his mother.

The further adventures of Precious Ramotswe, the cunning, insightful head of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana.

Beryl Markham has grown up in the wilds of 1920s Kenya, raised by her British father and members of the local tribes.  Her unlikely upbringing gives her a boldness that helps her become a pioneering aviator and author, as well as a deep appreciation for the beautiful and wild spirit of Africa.  But affairs of the heart are a different matter, challenging even a woman as independent and strong as Markham. 

The haunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade--and of the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the cas

This non-fiction book tells the story of James Garfield, one of America’s least known Presidents, showing that his shooting by a deranged man, and subsequent death at the hands of his inept doctors, deprived the nation of a man who could have been an excellent leader.

In this pre- and post-9/11 novel Tassie, a student at thinly veiled UW-Madison, hires on as a nanny for the owner of a pricey French restaurant who adopts a mixed-race child.

In this novel by Australian Moriarty, three women are caught up in marital strife and murder when one of them finds, and reads, a letter meant to be opened after her husband’s death. 

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 [228] selection.

In this prize-winning novel of the Vietnam War, a double-agent, half-French and half-Vietnamese, leaves his homeland and comes to America after the Fall of Saigon. While building a new life in California, he continues to report back to his Communist supervisors.

A gothic ghost story and tale of sibling rivalry begins with the death of Elspeth Noblin, who bequeaths her London flat bordering on historic Highgate Cemetery to the twin daughters of her long estranged twin sister in Chicago.

In this groundbreaking collection, American Muslim women writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their real-life tales of flirting, dating, longing, and sex. Their stories show just how varied the search for love can be--from singles' events and college flirtations to arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist.

This title was added to the collection as part of a 2018 Library Takeover Event. See madisonpubliclibrary.org/engagement/library-takeover [235] for more information.
 

Twelve Native Americans came to the Big Oakland Powwow for different reasons. As we learn the reasons that each person is attending--some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent--momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything.  
 

Chosen as UW-Madison's 2013 Go Big Read. In Japan, a teenage girl is struggling-- and writing to a future anonymous reader about it in a diary. Ten years later the diary, along with letters in Japanese and French, wash ashore in a metal lunchbox on the coast of British Columbia. The woman who finds it sets out to identify the girl to see how she's fared in the intervening years.

This psychological mystery and romance set in suburban Washington, D.C. focuses on a veterinarian, her sister and mother, and the death of her father in an automobile accident when she was a child.

Adoption, race, class, and family are explored in this novel about three brothers and their widowed father.

This traditional mystery begins with the finding of the body of Jane Neal, a retired school teacher and talented amateur artist in the woods near a small Quebec village, the apparent victim of a tragic hunting accident.

A coming-of-age novel about the sexual awakening of a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fletcher is a provocative, witty look at contemporary sexual politics and timeless moral dilemmas - a moving and funny examination of sexuality, identity, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure who they are and where they belong.
 

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 tough, witty discourse on why food is more than the sum of its nutritional parts.

Found in a box on the doorstep of the richest woman in town, a newborn baby brings the parallel worlds of 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' together.

While her mic is accidentally on,  morning talk show host Meghan calls a guest a vulgar name on national television. Her entire world changes, including her career and relationships with her husband, grown son and  social worker sister.

Radioactive is an an innovative type of book: a graphic biography that adeptly combines the author’s vibrant cyanotype prints with a narrative story of Marie and Pierre Curie and their discovery of radioactivity and its applications in the last century. Weaving her own narrative and images together with historical documents, photographs, and artwork, Redniss has created a reading and viewing experience that uniquely blends art and science.

Narrated with humor, suspense, and empathy, a diverse cast of characters in small town in Wisconsin get entangled in family secrets, legal battles with a corrupt milk cooperative, gambling, dogfighting, and a miracle cure, amongst other things.

After fifteen years and two kids, writer Georgie and Neal’s marriage is hurting.  With the appearance of a magical phone that gives her a line to the past, Georgie is presented with the chance to make things right with her husband before things get bad—or discover if she and Neal were really meant to be together. 

An epic novel of love and history and the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of loss and tragedy, following a variety of characters through some of the major events in modern Indian history.

For eighty years, Radio Clinic operated on 98th and Broadway on Manhattan's Upper West Side. 'We are staying' chronicles the store's rise, struggles, and fall, and the family that owned it across those decades. Radio Clinic survived the 1977 blackout and looting but could not survive the rising rents. It is an immigrant story, a grandfather-father-daughter story, a story of a unique character a family business brings to a neighborhood, and a reflection on what has been lost as stores like these disappear.
 

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. 

Witnessing Whiteness invites readers to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations. The book also offers practical information on building knowledge, skills, capacities, and communities that support anti-racism practices, a hopeful look at our collective future, and a discussion of how to create a culture of witnesses who support allies for social and racial justice.
 

The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is traced through the personal histories of two who occupied the same house at separate times: Dalia, a woman whose family of Bulgarian Jews immigrated to Israel in 1948, and Bashir, a man whose family was driven out of Palestine.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
 

Treuer, an Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist, answers the most commonly asked questions about American Indians, both historical and modern. He gives a frank, funny, and personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway. 
 

Sold into a life of slavery at the Chinese silk factory in the early part of the 20th century, Pei finds friendship and independence amongst the women there despite the horrible conditions.

One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans.

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. 

When Joel, whose then-7-year-old brother was kidnapped in a Stockholm subway station in 1970, suddenly goes missing, his wife reaches out to an old friend for help. Danny Katz, a brilliant computer programmer and recovering heroin addict, as well as a divorced father of two young girls, begins to dig behind the digital veil in search of Joel, even though the investigation quickly interferes with his duties as a parent.

In this detective novel/biothriller French medievalist and archaeologist author Fred Vargas combines historical cryptology, the history of the plague and street life in modern day Paris.

Walls recalls growing up in a dysfunctional yet creative family with a brilliant, charismatic father, who was destructive and dishonest when he drank, and a free-spirited artist mother, who hated domesticity and the responsibility of raising a family.

An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi's past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power--and limitations--of family bonds. 

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.