Summer+Reading+2013

The English Department encourages students to read for pleasure all summer long. We offer our recommendations for great reads here. The source for all annotations, unless otherwise noted, is the NoveList Database. In September, students will be held accountable for reading assignments by level as indicated below: **Students in English 9-12ACP -** At least two books of your choice. || **Students English 9-12H -** Read the assigned title below plus another book of your choice **9H** //Unbroken// Laura Hillenbrand **10H** //Grapes of Wrath// J. Steinbeck (your choice book should be by an American author) **11H** //1984// George Orwell **12H** //A Prayer for Owen Meany// J. Irving || **Students in Humanities ACP/H** //Unaccustomed Earth// Jhumpa Lahiri "There is No Race in the Schoolyard” Amanda Lewis Texts available outside room 309 before final exams. Article also available at:  @http://www.jstor.org/stable/3202503 || Note: Titles marked with an * have been nominated by teens across the country for the Young Adult Library Services Association's "Teens' Top Ten List." Students ages 12-18 can vote for their favorites from August 15-September 15. Visit this link for more information and for the complete list of nominees: []
 * Summer Reading 2013**
 * **Students in English 9-12CP -** At least two books of your choice.
 * **HUMOR**

//**America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't**// **Stephen Colbert** The writing team behind The Colbert Report delivers an election-time parody to inform readers about how our country is “Americeptional” in a wide range of subjects: like healthcare, Wall Street, energy, and, of course, elections. There are jokes galore. (Source: Amazon) //**Bossypants**// **Tina Fey** A comic memoir from Tina Fey which chronicles her rise as a comedy writer and provides acute wisdom on everything from motherhood, to fashion, to the difficulties of a cruise vacation. A razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq, this book explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad (Source: Amazon) //**Flashman in the Great Game: A Novel**// **George MacDonald Fraser** Fraser revives Flashman, a caddish bully from //Tom Brown's Schooldays// by Thomas Hughes, and relates Flashman’s adventures after he is expelled in drunken disgrace from Rugby school in the late 1830s. Flashy enlists in the Eleventh Light Dragoons and is promptly sent to India and Afghanistan, where despite his consistently cowardly behavior he always manages to come out on top. (Source: Barnes and Noble) **//Someday, Someday, Maybe// Lauren Graham** Set in 1995 in New York City, this is a story about being young in a city, about finding love, finding yourself, and perhaps most difficult of all in New York City, finding an acting job. (Source: Amazon) //**Native Tongue**// **Carl Hiaasen** Disillusioned by his job in the publicity department at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills theme park, burnt-out reporter Joe Winder finds the story of a lifetime when the last two blue-tongued mango voles left on earth are stolen. //**Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?**// **Mindy Kaling** In the style of //Bossypants//, this comic memoir details Kaling's beginnings (she co-authored a play in which she starred as Ben Affleck), her rise, and her career as writer and actress at //The Office//. Along the way, she offers her opinions on dating, shopping, and escaping parties. **//Where'd You Go, Bernadette?// Maria Semple** Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, her best friend. Then she disappears leaving Bee to solve the mystery of her disappearance. (Source: Barnes and Noble)
 * //Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk// Ben Fountain **

**CULTURAL CONTExTS**

//**Flight**// **Sherman Alexie** This is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. //**In the Time of Butterflies**// **Julia Alvarez** A fictional account of the young lives of Mirabal sisters Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa, otherwise known in the Dominican Republic as Las Mariposas, this story describes their suffering and martyrdom in the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship. Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. //**Dreaming in Cuban**// **Cristina Garcia** While Celia del Pino supports Fidel Castro, her daughter Lourdes lives in New York and blames Castro for her rape by a revolutionary, and her daughter Pilar laughs at her way of fighting Communisim. //**A Thousand Splendid Suns**// **Khaled Hosseini** This is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives-the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness-are inextricable from the history playing out around them. //**A Pale View of the Hills**// **Kazuo Ishiguro** The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman who now lives alone in England and is dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II. (Source: Amazon). In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path. **//In the Shadows of the Banyan// Vaddey Ratner** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Her life of privilege in Cambodia shattered by the outbreak of civil war on the streets of Phnom Penh, young Raami endures four years of loss, starvation, and brutal forced labor while clinging to memories of the legends and poems told to her by her father. //**The God of Small Things**// **Arundhati Roy** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In 1969, in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment. //**Almost a Woman**// **Esmeralda Santiago**"Negi," at thirteen, leaves rural Macún in 1961 to live in a three-room tenement apartment with seven young siblings, an inquisitive grandmother, and a strict mother who won't allow her to date. Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. (Source: Amazon). //**The Samurai’s Garden**// **Gail Tsukiayama** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Stephen, 20, leaves Hong Kong for Japan to recuperate from tuberculosis just as the Chinese prepare to invade, and in a small town, he develops strong relationships.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">//Americanah// Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">//The Cooked Seed// Anchee Min **

**Recent Award Winners** //**The Round House**// **Louise Erdrich (Alex and National Book Award)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, fourteen-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family. //**The Orphan Master's Son**// **Adam Johnson (Pulitzer Prize)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. //**Bring Up the Bodies**// **Hilary Mantel (Man Booker Prize)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This book depicts the downfall of Anne Boleyn at the hands of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell as Anne and her powerful family fight back while she is on trial for adultery and treason. //**The Song of Achilles**// **Madeline Miller (Orange Prize)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war. He has little understanding that the years which follow will test everything they have learned and everything they hold dear, and that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War. //**A Trick of the Light**// **Louise Penny (Anthony Award)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Artist Clara Morrow is about to have a prestigious show of her paintings when her childhood friend is found murdered, and Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Surete du Quebec, is called to investigate. //**Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club**// **Benjamin Alire Saenz (PEN Faulkner Award)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A collection of short stories about contradiction and conflict in the lives of those who reside on the border lands around the Rio Grande. //**Among Others**// **Jo Walton (Hugo & Nebula)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Seeking refuge in fantasy novel worlds throughout a youth under the shadow of a dubiously sane mother who dabbled in magic, Mori Phelps is forced to confront her in a tragic battle and gains unwanted attention when she attempts to perform spells herself.

**Young Protagonists** **(from all categories)**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is propelled into a mystery when a man is found murdered on the grounds of her family's decaying English mansion and Flavia's father becomes the main suspect. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">It is 1987, and only one person has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus -- her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. When he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June's world is turned upside down. But Finn's death brings a surprise acquaintance into June's life -- someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Margo Crane, a beautiful and uncanny markswoman, takes to the Stark River after being complicit in the death of her father and embarks on an odyssey in search of her vanished mother. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Struggling through his dyslexia to try to fulfill his girlfriend Fiorella's request for a letter revealing his secret self, eighteen-year-old Karl asks Fiorella's favorite author for help, and he agrees only if Karl will submit to a series of interviews, which prove helpful to both men. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In 1980s Atlanta, James Witherspoon is living a double life. He has two families, a public one and a secret one. When the daughters from each family become friends, James' secrets are revealed and lives are changed forever. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, fifteen-year-old Shorty, a poor gang member from the slums of Site Soleil, is trapped in the rubble of a ruined hospital, and as he grows weaker he has visions and memories of his life of violence, his lost twin sister, and of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who liberated Haiti from French rule in the 1804. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The Bigtree children struggle to protect their Florida Everglades alligator-wrestling theme park from a sophisticated competitor after losing their parents. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The Raven Boys is a thrilling adventure that captures you and takes you down the supernatural path with a daring girl named Blue, four complicated guys and one life-altering quest and mystery of finding the Glendower King. (Source: YALSA) **//Orchards// Holly Thompson** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Sent to Japan for the summer after an eighth-grade classmate's suicide, half-Japanese, half-Jewish Kana Goldberg tries to fit in with relatives she barely knows and reflects on the guilt she feels over the tragedy back home.
 * //The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie// Alan Bradley **
 * //Tell The Wolves I'm Home// Carol Rifka Brunt **
 * //Once Upon a River// Bonnie Jo Campbell **
 * //Dying to Know You// Aidan Chambers **
 * //The Fault in Our Stars// John Green **
 * //Silver Sparrow// Tayari Jones **
 * //In Darkness// Nick Lake **
 * //Swamplandia!// Karen Russell **
 * //Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe// Benjamin Alire Saenz **
 * //The Raven Boys//* Maggie Stiefvater **

**Overcoming Obstacles**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The devastating loss of their twin daughters in a flash flood turns the lives of Terry and Laura Sheldon upside down as their marriage is tested by grief, Terry's brief love affair, and their growing relationship with their foster child, a ten-year-old African American boy. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport set when India starts to prosper. This is a story about Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, and Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, and her beautiful daughter. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Ever had always wanted to live in a fairy tale, but with 302lbs weighing her down it's difficult to achieve. It's even harder with Skinny, her own private critic constantly belittling her. In this inspirational tale, Ever discovers the truth of learning how to overcome and accept the issues that plague her. (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A young illiterate African American man witnesses two black robbers kill a white store owner in Louisana in the late 1940s, and he is the one convicted. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Anna begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">When fourteen-year-old Anthony "Ant" Jones from the ghetto of East Cleveland, Ohio, gets a scholarship to a prep school in Maine, he finds that he must change his image and adapt to a world that never fully accepts him; but when he goes home he discovers that he no longer truly belongs there either. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.
 * //Buffalo Soldier// Chris Bohjalian **
 * //Behind the Beautiful Forevers// Katherine Boo **
 * //Skinny//* Donna Cooner **
 * //A Lesson Before Dying// Ernest J. Gaines **
 * //My Sister’s Keeper// Jody Picoult **
 * //Black Boy/White// //School// Brian F. Walker **
 * //Salvage the Bones// Jesmyn Ward **

**//historical Fiction//**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A novel of love, family, and justice follows Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in a Manhattan law firm, as she searches for the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski reflects back on his wild and wondrous days with a circus. It's the Depression Era and Jacob, finding himself parentless and penniless, joins the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. There he meets the freaks, grifters, and misfits that populate this world. Water for elephants tells of love in a world in which love's a luxury few can afford. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Forging a friendship at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean meet regularly at the first diner owned by black proprietors in their Indiana city and are watched throughout the years by a big-hearted man who observes their struggles with school, marriage, parenthood and beyond. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Ismae is the daughter of the God of Death. After a near escape from her arranged marriage to a convent, Ismae is trained in the arts of a handmaiden of Death- assassination. Sent to the household of a possible traitor, Gavriel, Ismae begins to see glimpses of faults within her convent, and honor in the man she is sent to spy on. (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Anna Jean Mayhew offers a riveting depiction of Southern life in the throes of segregation and what it will mean for a young girl on her way to adulthood-and for the woman who means the world to her. Infused with the intensity of a changing time, here is a story of hope, heartbreak, and the love and courage that can transform us from child to adult, wounded to indomitable. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Based on the true story of Arn Chorn-Pond, this is a raw and powerful novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In an alternative version of Victorian London, a seventeen-year-old Dodger, a cunning and cheeky street urchin, unexpectedly rises in life when he saves a mysterious girl, meets Charles Dickens, and unintentionally puts a stop to the murders of Sweeny Todd. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In the South, freed people, poor whites, and landowners survive the Civil War and begin Reconstruction. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.
 * //March// Geraldine Brooks **
 * //House Girl// Tara Conklin **
 * //Water for Elephants// Sara Gruen **
 * //The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat// E.Kelsey **
 * //Grave Mercy//* Robin LaFevers **
 * //The Dry Grass of August// Anna Jean Mayhew **
 * //Never Fall Down// Patricia McCormick **
 * //Dodger// Terry Pratchett **
 * //Jubilee// Margaret Walker **
 * //Code Name Verity*// Elizabeth Wein **

**Politics & gOVERNMENT**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">From Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Kennedy brothers and then to the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid story of one of America's most transformative and revolutionary political struggles. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel about Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State for a nominee who is a former member of the Communist Party. The Senator heading the confirmation subcommittee, while under pressure to move the nomination to the forward, is discovered to have a homosexual past and commits suicide rather than face exposure. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the rise of executive authority, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This book illustrates the world and impact of the third president, weaving the threads of Jefferson’s personality into a complete portrait of a singularly complex politician and thinker--a philosopher president. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">From Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court, comes this book about the history and evolution of the highest court in the land. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The country can’t wait to see how Corey Grace, a charismatic white senator from Ohio—who now has fallen in love with black movie star Lexie Hart—will perform in the most brutal of political contests. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Josh Swensen is not your average 17-year-old. At the age of two, he was figuring out algebraic equations with colored magnetic numbers. Josh’s wish comes true when his virtual alter ego, Larry, becomes a huge media sensation. The whole world is trying to figure out Larry’s true identity, and Josh is feeling trapped inside his own creation. (Source: Amazon)
 * //Parting of the Waters: America in the King Years-1954-1963// Taylor Branch **
 * //Advise and Consent// Allen Drury **
 * //Team of Rivals:The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln// Doris Kearns Goodwin **
 * //Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power// Rachel Maddow **
 * //Thomas Jefferson// John Meacham **
 * //Out of Order// Sandra Day O’Connor **
 * //The Race// Richard North Patterson **
 * //The Gospel According to Larry// Janet Tashjian **

**Biographies, autobiographies, and Memoirs**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In this autobiography, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her relationship with her mother. Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Harvey Milk was groundbreaking civil rights leader for the gay community. Aretha tells the story of the man and the activist. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This acclaimed memoir tells the unforgettable story of a young boy's journey from a refugee camp in Sudan to Chicago, where his family survived on welfare. Mawi followed his father's advice to "treat people . . . as though they were angels sent from heaven," and realized his dream of a full-tuition scholarship to Harvard University. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This is Carol Burnett’s poignant tribute to her late daughter, and a funny and moving memoir about mothering a young woman through the struggles and triumphs of her life. Includes her personal diary entries, photographs, and correspondence. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her journey since. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Musician, composer, producer, arranger, and pioneering entrepreneur Quincy Jones has worked for five decades alongside the superstars of music and entertainment -- including Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ray Charles, Will Smith, and dozens of others. //Q// is his glittering and moving life story. (Source: Amazon). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The story of fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls who walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957 with eight other black students. The journey of the “Little Rock Nine,” as they came to be known, would lead the nation would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and change the landscape of America. This is Carlotta Walls' story. (Source: Amazon) **//My Beloved// //World// Sonia Sotomayor** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. (Source: Amazon) || **PASSING THE TEST OF TIME**
 * //Mom & Me & Mom// Maya Angelou **
 * //No Compromise: The Story of Harvey Milk// David Aretha **
 * //Of Beatles and Angels-A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard// Masar Asgedom **
 * //Carrie and Me// Carol Burnett **
 * //Wave// Sonali Deraniyagala **
 * //Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones// Q. Jones **
 * //A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School// Carlotta Walls LaNier **

//**Sense and Sensibility**// **Jane Austen** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Two sisters, one practical and conventional and the other emotional and sentimental, set their sights on men who will perfectly match their disparate personalities, with unexpected results. //**Go Tell it on the Mountain**// **James Baldwin** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This novel chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity - he is the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem, and it is March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. (Source: Barnes and Noble) **//Possession// A.S. Byatt** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The lives of two modern scholars parallel the lives of the two Victorian poets that the scholars are researching. **//A Clockwork Orange// Anthony Burgess** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This book presents Burgess' satire of the present inhumanity of man to man through a futuristic culture where teenagers rule with violence. **//Don Quixote// Miguel de Cervantes** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The first European novel, and one of the greatest, is a marvellously comic study of delusion and its consequences: Don Quixote, the old gentleman of La Mancha, takes to the road in search of adventure and remains undaunted in the face of repeated disaster. //**David Copperfield**// **Charles Dickens** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The story of an abandoned waif who discovers life and love in an indifferent world, this classic tale of childhood is populated with a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains who number among the author's greatest creations. //**The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes**// **Sir** **Arthur Conan Doyle** A collection of Sherlock Holmes mystery adventures, including "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-headed League," and "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." //**The Count of Monte Cristo**// **Alexandre Dumas** The Count of Monte Cristo is the story of Edmond Dantes, who is imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'lf on a false political charge; after escaping, he finds the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo and sets upon the course of revenge against his old enemies. //**A Room With a View**// **E.M. Forster** Lucy Honychurch falls in love while on a visit to Florence, and must choose between fulfilling her social role or following her heart. //**One Hundred Years of Solitude**// **Gabriel Garcia Marquez** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This book tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town. //**Midnight's Children**// **Salmon Rushdie** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai becomes inextricably linked to his nation, and experiences a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror modern India's course. //**Dracula**// **Bram Stoker** Having discovered the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire. //**Anna Karenina**// **Leo Tolstoy** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A classic nineteenth-century Russian novel in which a young woman is destroyed when she attempts to live outside the moral law of her society. //**The Autobiography of Malcom X**// **as told to Alex Haley** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This autobiography (written with Alex Haley) reveals Malcolm X's quick-witted integrity and the fierce idealism which led him to reject both liberal hypocrisies and black racialism. (Source: Amazon)

**Staff Picks** // We asked the entire staff for recommendations. Go to the English Department website for a complete list. //

<span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;">**Ms. Anderson - //State of Wonder// Ann Patchett** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh journeys into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years--a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past. <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;">**Ms. Brown** - //**The Glass Castle**// **Jeannette Walls**<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Jeannette Walls grew up in a dysfunctional family, with charismatic parents who were sometimes full of life and more often unable to care for her and her brothers and sisters. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents’ betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. (Source: Barnes and Noble) **Mr. Brown** - //**Outliers: The Story of Success**// **M. Gladwell**Gladwell ta<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">kes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful, asking "what makes high-achievers different?" (Source: Amazon). **Dr. Cacace** - //**Wilderness Tips**// **Margaret Atwood** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Features tales of a gruesome discovery at an archeological dig in Britain, a girl who disappears only to haunt a series of paintings years later, and others. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The true story of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean. This is the story of what happened to him over the next three years of his life. (Source: Amazon). **Mr. Cluff** - //**Cloud Atlas**// **David Mitchell** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Many characters live out their lives from 1850 to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii, and eventually their disparate lives intertwine. **Dr. Cohen** - //**Snow Crash**// **Neal Stephenson** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In twenty-first-century America, a computer hacker finds himself fighting a virus that battles virtual reality technology and a deadly drug that turns humans into zombies. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This book presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment. **Ms. Ellis** - //**The Fault in Our Stars**// **John Green** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This biographical novel traces the story of Valentino Achak Deng, who as a boy of seven was separated from his family when his village in southern Sudan was attacked by government helicopters, and who then became one of the estimated 17,000 "lost boys of Sudan" before relocating from a Kenyan refugee camp to Atlanta in 2001. **Mr. Ford** - //**Anathem**// **Neal Stephenson** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Having lived in a monastery since childhood, away from the violent upheavals of the outside world, Raz becomes one of a group of formerly cloistered scholars who are appointed by a fear-driven higher power to avert an impending catastrophe. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This biography details the the adventurous life journey of John Adams, his participation in the American Revolution, his rise to the second Presidency of the United States, and his loving marriage to Abigail Adams. (Source: Amazon). **Dr. Keough** - //**Mayflower**// **Nathaniel Philbrick** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A fresh and vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From an arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip's War between colonists and natives decades later, the book provides a full history of the Mayflower. (Source: Amazon). **Ms. Lapato** - //**Wild Swans**// **Jung Chang** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. (Source: Amazon). **Ms. Moniz** - //**Isaac’s Storm**// **Erik Larson** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based, was to him preposterous - but Galveston would endure a hurricane that to this day remains the nation's deadliest natural disaster (Source: Barnes and Noble) **Mr. Reidy - //The Given Day// Dennis Lehane** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">An epic tale set at the end of World War I, this follows the experiences of a family whose lives mirror the political unrest of an America caught between its well-patterned past and an unpredictable future. **Mr. Scott -** //**Miles**// **Miles Davis (with Quincy Troupe)** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In this autobiography, Miles Davis speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he overcame it. He condemns the racism he encountered in the music business and in American society generally. He discusses the women in his life and talks about music and the legends he has played with over the years: Bird, Dizzy, Monk, Trane, Mingus, and many others. (Source: Amazon) **Ms. Sozio** - //**When the Elephants Dance**// **Tess Uriza Holthe** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In the final weeks of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, three different Filipino narrators recount the experiences of a people desperately struggling in the midst of the horrors of war. **Ms. Snyder -** //**The Dead Zone**// **Stephen King** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">After four and a half years in a coma, Johnny Smith awakens with a knowledge of the death zone and an ability to see the future, a horrible power that he does not want and cannot escape.
 * Mr. Chisum - //Unbroken// Laura Hillenbrand **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Ms. Derryberry - //The Buddha in the Attic// Julie Otsuka **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Mr. Finneron - //What is the What// Dave Eggers **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Ms. Gorman - //John Adams// David McCullough **

**Sports**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to represent the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> In this chronicle broadcaster Joe Castiglione <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">offers his insider account of one of the most dominant baseball teams of the past decade. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Bill Belichick's thirty-one years in the NFL have been marked by amazing success—most recently with the New England Patriots. David Halberstam explores the nuances of both the game and the man behind it. He uncovers what makes Bill Belichick tick both on and off the field. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets, and in the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pits America’s best ultra-runners against the tribe. (Source: Amazon). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Early in 2004, two writers and Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, decided to chronicle the upcoming season, one of the most hotly anticipated in baseball history. They sit together at Fenway, exchange emails, and write about the games and created a collection of fan's notes for the ages. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Basketball has always been an escape for Finley. He lives in broken-down Bellmont, a town ruled by the Irish mob, drugs, violence, and racially charged rivalries. Life at home is difficult. In his final year of high school, he meets and befriends Russ, and their unique friendship may turn out to be the answer they both need. (Source: Amazon). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This history of America's pastime describes the evolution of baseball from early bat and ball games to its growth and acceptance in different regions of the country. The impact of the Civil War on the sport is discussed and baseball's path to becoming America's national game is analyzed. (Source: Amazon). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, tells her story of victory and resilience as well as facing down her greatest challenge: early-onset Alzheimer's disease. (Source: Amazon). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Adventure writer Lisa Taggart takes us behind the scenes of female athletics, deep into the training regimens and the ultimate victories, to see what makes these women tick. Whether their sport is soccer, cycling, mountain biking, or volleyball, these athletes will inspire you. (Source: Amazon). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The Best American series is short fiction and nonfiction selected from magazines, journals, and websites. Featuring writing from Paul Solotaroff, Jeanne Marie Laskas, Wells Tower, Wright Thompson, and others. (Source: Amazon)
 * //One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, An Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season// Chris Ballard **
 * //Can You Believe It?// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Joe Castiglione (with D. Lyons) **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">//The Education of a Coach// David Halberstam **
 * //Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen// Christopher McDougall **
 * //Faithful// Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King **
 * //Boy 21// Matthew Quick **
 * //Baseball’s First Inning: A History of the National Pastime Through the Civil War// W. Ryczek **
 * //Sum It Up// Pat Summitt (with Sally Jenkins) **
 * //Women Who Win: Female Athletes on Being the Best// ed. Lisa Taggart **
 * //The Best American Sports Writing 2012// Michael Wilbon ed. **

**Mysteries, Suspense, and Adventure**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is propelled into a mystery when a man is found murdered on the grounds of her family's decaying English mansion and Flavia's father becomes the main suspect. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A new girl in Amherst, Massachusetts, comes to terms with her mother's suicide and her best friend's disappearance with the help of Emily Dickinson's poetry--and her dress. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This is the story of Kenton Grua, a boatsman who, in the spring of 1983, attempted to use a flood as a hydraulic slingshot that would hurl him and two companions through 277 miles of ferocious white water and catapault them through the heart of the Grand Canyon. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">When her mother abandons her on Whidbey Island, Washington, a fourteen-year-old girl with psychic abilities, meets a Ugandan orphan with a secret. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">When beautiful, smart Nicole, disfigured by acid thrown in her face, and computer hacker Jay meet in the school psychologist's office, they become friends and Jay resolves to find her attacker. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Surviving a pandemic disease that has killed everyone he knows, a pilot establishes a shelter in an abandoned airport hangar before hearing a random radio transmission that compels him to risk his life to seek out other survivors. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided when his fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Monument 14 is a book filled with terror, fear, and love, all inside a supermarket where 14 kids are trapped inside. They are unable to leave as a monster hailstorm has hit leading to variety of other disasters like a chemical weapon spill. Now they must find a way to escape their town Monument and get to safety in Alaska. (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">In 1926, during the Prohibition, Joe Coughlin defies his strict law-and-order upbringing by climbing a ladder of organized crime that takes him from Boston to Cuba, where he encounters a dangerous cast of characters who are all fighting for their piece of the American dream. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">After his father is murdered, seventeen-year-old Finn Maguire, the prime suspect in the case, must race to clear his name and identify the true killer. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A wakes up in a different body every day. It has always been that way for A and A has rules to live by, like not getting too involved in the person's life. Then A meets Rhiannon, the girlfriend of Justin, the boy whose body he is inhabiting. Suddenly, none of the rules apply because A has found himself falling for Rhiannon and she won’t leave A’s mind even after A has left Justin’s body. (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">When the choir director at the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups is found murdered, Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec is called to investigate. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Chief Inspector Wexford is now retired, but a chance encounter with Tom Ede, a Detective Superintendent with the London police, draws Wexford out of retirement and into a very difficult and dangerous investigation. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">At an outpost in the Kandahar mountain range, a team of American soldiers watches a young Afghan woman approach. She has come to ask for the return of her brother's body. The camp's tense atmosphere comes to a boil as the men argue about what to do next. Taking its cues from the Antigone myth, this novel recreates the chaos, intensity, and immediacy of war.
 * //The Flavia de Luce Series// Alan Bradley **
 * //Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things// Kathryn Burak **
 * //The Emerald Mile// Kevin Fedarko **
 * //The Edge of Nowhere// Elizabeth George **
 * B//urning Blue// Paul Griffin **
 * //The Dog Stars// Peter Heller **
 * //Defending Jacob// William Landay **
 * //Monumoent 14*// Emmy Laybourne **
 * //Live by Night// Dennis Lehane **
 * //Crusher// Niall Leonard **
 * //Every Day*// David Levithan **
 * //The Beautiful Mystery// Louise Penny **
 * //The Vault// Ruth Rendell **
 * //The Watch// Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya **

**Science Fiction and Fantasy**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">When her evil father King Leck dies, Bitterblue is made queen of a kingdom she knows nothing about. As she struggles to come to terms with both who she is and the legacy her father left on the city, Bitterblue tries to discover the secrets of her father's crimes by walking the streets of her own city in disguise. Filled with struggle, suspense and surprises, will she be able to turn her kingdom into a better place? (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A manuscript from the lost civilization of Edil-Amarandah chronicles the experiences of sixteen-year-old Maerad, an orphan gifted in the magic and power of the Bards, as she escapes from slavery and begins to learn how to use her Gift to stave off the evil Darkness that threatens to consume her world. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Three civilizations from different planets in widely varying stages of development clash in what could be either a mutually disastrous or beneficial encounter. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Dragons and humans have finally achieved peace, and the anniversary celebration is fast approaching. For Seraphina Dombegh - who is half dragon and half human - life is about blending in. However, a series of events will place her in the path of the Prince Lucian, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, and a hunt for a killer determined to start a war. (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Expecting to inherit her family's Liveship, Althea Vestrit now must defend this animate, intelligent treasure from both her scheming brother-in-law, who plans to use it as a slave ship, and a nation of ruthless pirates, led by Captain Kennit. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Sunday loves to write stories, the only problem is that when she reads them aloud, they tend to come true. So when a frog claiming to be a cursed human comes along, he asks her to do two things, to read a few stories and to kiss him. What Sunday doesn’t know is that if she kisses him, her life will change forever. (Source: YALSA) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">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 is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him. This is a journey in which a boy must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">High school sophomore Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth. The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? Told in a year’s worth of journal entries, this story chronicles Miranda’s struggle in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A seemingly routine day in the life of City Watch commander Sam Vimes is abruptly interrupted by an unsolved murder, an impending war, an unwanted new recruit, and a pesky government inspector. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Nathaniel, a magician's apprentice, summons up the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Lovelace.
 * //The Diviners// Libba Bray **
 * //Graceling// and //Bitterblue*// Kristen Cashore **
 * //The Naming:The First Book of Pellinor// Alison Croggon **
 * //Enchantress from the Stars// Sylvia Louise Engdahl **
 * //Seraphina//* Rachel Hartman **
 * //Ship of Magic// Robin Hobb **
 * //Enchanted//* Alethea Kontis **
 * //The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking// Patrick Ness **
 * //Life as We Know It// Susan Pfeffer **
 * //Thud!// Terry Pratchett **
 * //The Amulet of Samarkand// Jonathan Stroud **

**Nonfiction**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Eben Alexander was a neurosurgeon who knew completely that near-death experiences were fantasies produced by the brain when under extreme stress. Then he underwent one himself. In this book, he recounts his divine experience and shares his new perspective. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This book follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. It takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors into the lives of North Koreans. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In //Gulp// we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. (Source: Barnes and Noble) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Swarns tells the untold story of Ms. Obama’s black, white, and multiracial ancestors; a history that the First Lady herself did not know. (Source: Amazon) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This is a true story of survival in the vast Arctic wilderness during World War II. In November 1942, a US cargo plane crashed into the Greenland Ice Cap; four days later, the B-17 assigned to find it also crashed. This book tells the story of these crashes and the fate of the survivors. (Source: Amazon) ||  ||
 * //Proof of Heaven// Eben Alexander **
 * //Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea// Barbara Demick **
 * //Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal// Mary Roach **
 * //American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama// R. Swarns **
 * //The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration// Isabel Wilkerson **
 * //Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II// Mitchell Zuckoff **