A selection of challenging and entertaining discussion books plus a binder full of reviews and information about the authors is available for a checkout period of 6 weeks.

Ali, Monica. Brick Lane

After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in a monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbor Mrs. Islam? What is a Hell's Angel? And how much she can comfort the naïve and disillusioned Chanu? (pub. info.) Books donated by SAU-Read.

Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Discussing this book would be a good way to celebrate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-1806. This is nonfiction but it reads like fiction. There was only one death on this expedition and that man is buried in Iowa. Topics for discussion could include the treatment of Native Americans, of blacks, of women, the passion for exploration and the westward movement, the different ways of life in different parts of the country, and the characters of Lewis, Clark, and Jefferson.

Bank, Melissa. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, and relationships, and the treacherous waters of the workplace. Books purchased by The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library.

Barrett, Andrea. The Voyage of the Narwhal

The setting is the mid-1800s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in the Arctic. There are two parallel stories: one concerns the male explorers and the Inuit in the Arctic and the other concerns the women back in the United States waiting for them and traveling only in their imaginations. The time period is strongly evoked with ideas of race, culture, and evolution.

Bloom, Stephen. Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

In 1987, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside Postville, Iowa (pop. 1,465), both reviving and dividing the town. Award-winning journalist Bloom expertly documents the conflict and gains new perspective on the troubles haunting many American communities today. (publisher info.)

Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code

An ingenious code hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci. A desperate race through the cathedrals and castles of Europe. An astonishing truth concealed for centuries...unveiled at last. (pub. info.)

Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood

As Capote reconstructs the apparently motiveless 1959 murder of the Clutter Family in rural Kansas, followed by the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates suspense and empathy in what he called a "nonfiction novel". Books purchased by The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library

Chapman, Fern Schumer. Motherland

In 1938, when Edith Westerfeld was 12, her parents sent her from Germany to America to escape the Nazis. Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to deal with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details. Fifty-four years later, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern to reconnect and reconcile with her past. (publisher info.)

Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With a Pearl Earring

Set in the prosperous Holland of the 1660s in the painter Vermeer's Delft household, a 16-year-old hired servant named Griet becomes increasingly involved with her employer. This book has been called a "fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction and an appealingly new take on an old master." It is definitely a book club favorite.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness

Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey into the African continent in search of the enigmatic Kurtz. This classic explores the workings of consciousness as well as the grim realities of imperialism. Books donated by SAU-READ.

Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker

We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and NYC today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital dangerous secret. (pub. info.)

Dai Sijie. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

In this enchanting tale about the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening, two hapless boys are exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China's infamous Cultural Revolution. There they meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. (publisher info.) The books in this DIBS were donated by SAU-Reads.

Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent

The little known Biblical story of Dinah, daughter of the patriarch Jacob and his wife Leah. In Chapter 34 of the Book of Genesis, Dinah’s tale is a short, horrific detour in the familiar narrative of Jacob and Joseph. Diamant imaginatively tells this story from the perspective of its women.

Enger, Leif. Peace Like a River

A father and his two young children go on a journey into the Badlands in the heart of winter in the 1960s. They are searching for the oldest son, who escaped from jail in Minnesota. The reader experiences many facets of belief from what seem like coincidences to downright miracles. This title is the first "All Iowa Reads" selection. This DIBS also contains a CD of the Leif Enger interview from "About Books" on WVIK.

Erdrich, Louise. The Master Butchers Singing Club

Drawing on her paternal German ancestry, Erdrich tells the story of Fidelis Waldvogel, a WWI sniper and master butcher with a "talent for stillness" and for singing. After marrying Eva, the pregnant fiancée of his best friend, who was killed in the war, he emigrates to America, settling in Argus, North Dakota. All Iowa Reads choice for 2005 Books purchased by The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library

Fredriksson, Marianne. Hanna's Daughters: A Novel of Three Generations

Fredriksson is Swedish, and the story is set in Sweden from the 1870s through the 1980s. Anna is holding vigil at her mother Johanna's bedside and longs for reconciliation not only with her but also with her grandmother Hanna. She tries to piece together the fragments of her past through tattered letters, diaries, and old photographs. Eventually, her ancestors' pasts become vivid. This saga should be of special interest to anyone intrigued by family history.

Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying

Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in Bayonne, Louisiana, in the 1940s. He is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who teaches at the plantation school, is compelled by his aunt and Jefferson's Godmother to impart his learning and pride to Jefferson before he dies. He does this very grudgingly, but in the end he and Jefferson seem to forge a bond in order to do what is unexpected. Gaines' writing is subtly simple, but powerful.

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley

Tom Ripley is sent to Italy in order to coax Dickie Greenleaf back home to the United States. Ripley becomes very fond of Tom. In fact, he's so fond that he wants to be like him-EXACTLY like him. The important thing about identity is not who you are, but who you think you are. Suave, agreeable, and utterly immoral, Ripley sets a tone of menace and paranoia that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner

A story of fierce cruelty and fierce, yet redeeming, love. Both transform the life of Amir who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the Afghan monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces. (NY Times Bk. Review) Books donated by SAU-Read

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial of Hurston's fiction, this novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston's use of dialect which this book was first published in 1937 outraged other African American writers who accused her of pandering to white readers by giving them the black stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by almost universal admiration for her depictions of black life. (from Amazon.com)

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible

This story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. It is a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption over the course of three decades.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In stories that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Books donated by SAU-Read

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk

This is the first part of Nobel Prize winner Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. His descriptions of the streets, alleys, houses, palaces, and mosques of Cairo in the 1920s are reminiscent of Charles Dickens' descriptions of 19th century London. All the senses are aware. There are very few novels translated from Arabic into English, so this is a really unusual look into the historic customs and culture of a relatively unfamiliar society.

Mason, Daniel. The Piano Tuner

In 1886 a shy, middle-aged piano tuner named Edgar Drake receives an unusual commission from the British War Office: to travel to the remote jungles of northeast Burma and there repair a rare piano belonging to an eccentric army surgeon who have proven mysteriously indispensable to the imperial design. (pub. info.)

McBride, James. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

As an adult the author finally persuaded his mother to tell her story. She was a rabbi's daughter, born in Poland, and raised in the South. She fled to Harlem, married a black man, founded a Baptist church, and put twelve children through college. But it wasn't easy.

McCracken, Elizabeth. Niagara Falls All Over Again

(All Iowa Reads 2004 selection)
Mose Sharp is the only boy among six sisters in a close-knit Jewish family in Valley Junction, Iowa. Dad dreams of Mose taking over the family business, but Mose has other plans. He heads for the vaudeville circuit and teams up with Rocky Carter. Carter and Sharp is what is known as a knockabout act, with Mose (now called Mike) playing straight man. (from Booklist) The books in this DIBS were purchased by The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library.

Munro, Alice. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

In the nine breathtaking stories that make up her celebrated tenth collection, Alice Munro achieves new heights, creating narratives that loop and swerve like memory, and conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves. Nationalist Book Critics Award Finalist and one of Time Magazine's Five Best of the Year in Fiction (publisher info.) The books in this DIBS were donated by SAU-Reads.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita

The story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel (publisher info.) Books donated by SAU-Read

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Tehran, a bold and inspired teacher secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics....a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature. (publisher info.) Books donated by SAU-Read.

Oates, Joyce Carol. We Were the Mulvaneys

Set in the Chautauqua Valley, upstate New York, the Mulvaneys were blessed with everything that makes life good. But something happens on Valentine's Day 1976 that changes everything, their relationships with each other and their places in the social and economic structure of the town. Oates uses lots of details creating a wonderful geography, not only physical but mental. The story's narrator seems to be in everybody's head at one time or another and sometimes outside his own head and simply omniscient. Look for answers to those great universal questions of What is death? What is love? What is truth? What is family?

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar

This is a chronicle of the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under-maybe for the last time. Such is Plath's skill that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. The Bell Jar is a haunting American cult classic with a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow soon to be released. (publisher info.)

Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead

(All Iowa Reads book 2006) In 1956, toward the end of Rev. John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. This is also the tale of wisdom forged during his solitary life and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten. Books purchased by The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library.

Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America

In an alternate version of American history, Charles Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President in 1940. For one Jewish boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America. (pub. info.)

Seiffert, Rachel. The Dark Room

Seiffert's absorbing, internationally acclaimed debut explores the modern German psyche through the experiences of three ordinary people: a young photographer's assistant kept out of the war due to a physical disability, a teenage girl whose parents have been taken into Allied custody and must lead her siblings on a harrowing journey to find their grandmother, and (two generations later) a teacher searching for the reason why the Russians imprisoned his beloved grandfather (publisher info.) Books donated by SAU-Reads

Trevor, William. The Story of Lucy Gault

The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of violence leads the parents of 9-year-old Lucy to leave for England. Lucy runs away, hoping to convince her parents to stay. Instead, she sets off a series of tragic misunderstandings resulting in a brilliant, subtle, and moving story of love, guilt, and forgiveness. (publisher info.) Books donated by SAU-Read.

Welty, Eudora. The Ponder Heart

Uncle Daniel Ponder, whose fortune is exceeded only by his desire to give it away, is the talk of Clay County and a constant source of vexation for his niece, Edna Earle, whose determined efforts to thwart his generosity prove inadequate to his ingenuity. This DIBS includes the Masterpiece Theatre videocassette version of the book. ("QC Area Reads" book for 2005-2006) Books purchased by The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library.