GUIDELINES:

• Our only "rule" is that a selection must be available for purchase in paperback and must have ample availability in the Montgomery County Public Library system.
  MCPL search > Note quantities, queues, and digital versions.
  
  
• Members take turns as "nominators" (alphabetically by first name; see home page), emailing a few suggestions that the group then votes on at meetings. We generally alternate between fiction and non-fiction. Following are some accumulated ideas.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Review: The New York Times
455 pages (paperback)
Edith's suggestion
First published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads — driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California.
Borrow from the Internet Archive >

The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Review: The New York Times
544 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
Three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women — mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends — view one another.

The Lost Wife, Alyson Richman
368 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
From the glamorous ease of life in Prague before the Occupation, to the horrors of Nazi Europe, The Lost Wife explores the power of first love, the resilience of the human spirit- and the strength of memory.

Short stories to be selected, Edgar Allan Poe
Sue's suggestion

The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson
Review: The New York Times
784 pages (paperback -- a new record!)
Connie's suggestion (from Larry Bostian)
Rewriting history and probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power, and even love on such an Earth.

The Martian, Andy Weir  
Review: The New York Times
387 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
Review: The New York Times (1946)
656 pages (paperback, restored edition)
Edith's suggestion
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on American politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power.
Borrow from the Internet Archive >

The Arrangements, Chimamanda Adichie
Stephanie's suggestion
SHORT STORY ONLINE
About the 2016 American election

The Moor's Account, Laila Lalami
Review: The New York Times
336 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
Set in 1527, the imaginary tale of a north African slave who goes with a Spanish expedition to the New World.

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Review: The New York Times
544 pages (paperback)
Nettie's suggestion
The beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

News of the World, Paulette Jiles
240 pages (paperback)
Paula's & Cindy's suggestion
In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
352 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
512 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
An extraordinary epic of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan

Bambi: A Life in the Woods, Felix Salten (UNABRIDGED original edition)
Approximately 272 pages
Janice's suggestion for 2022
The classic childrens' book is far from the Disney animated film version. This Austrian coming-of-age story was originally published in in 1923, and is considered one of the first environmental novels. American copyright of the novel expires January 1, 2022 -- at which time it will enter the public domain and be available freely. More...

The Daughter's Tale , Armando Lucas Correa
336 pages (paperback)
Ann's suggestion
An unforgettable, "searing" (People) saga exploring a hidden piece of World War II history and the lengths a mother will go to protect her children [publisher]

The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead
224 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. [NYT]

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
368 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
This shining and heartbreaking novel may be one of the greatest love stories ever told. [NYT]

The Overstory, Richard Powers
512 pages (paperback)
Nettie's suggestion
A sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of — and paean to — the natural world
NOTE: LONG HOLDS QUEUE IN LIBRARY

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Review: The Guardian
Fiction, 384 pages (hardback)
Janice's & Heidi's suggestion
A painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature....Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child. And in her isolation that child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonders — and dangers — of her private world.

Deacon King Kong, James McBride
384 pages (hardcover)
Sue's suggestion
A feverish love letter to New York City, people, and writing... a wise and witty tale about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting
NOTE: LONG HOLDS QUEUES IN LIBRARY

Next Year in Havana, Chanel Cleeton
400 pages (paperback)
Sue's suggestion
A Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution
NOTE: LONG HOLDS QUEUE IN LIBRARY

The Orphan's Tale, Pam Jenoff
368 pages (paperback)
Sue's suggestion
A powerful novel of friendship set in a traveling circus during World War II, The Orphan's Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival.

The Good Mother, Sue Miller
322 pages (paperback)
Sue's suggestion
Sue Miller's critically acclaimed bestseller about a woman torn between motherhood and sexuality

The Library of Legends, Janie Chang
400 pages (paperback)
Sue's suggestion
A captivating historical novel — the third in a loosely-connected trilogy — in which a young woman travels across China with a convoy of student refugees, fleeing the hostilities of a brutal war with Japan.

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
464 pages (hardcover)
Janice's suggestion
2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Based on the extraordinary life of the author's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
NOTE: HOLDS QUEUES IN LIBRARY

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
352 pages (hardcover)
Cindy's suggestion
Examines sisterhood, personal identity, starting fresh, and what it means to be Black (and White) in America. Bennett is known for creating taut family dramas, and like her brilliant debut, The Mothers, this novel shows just how strong the bonds of sisters are, even at their weakest. On many best-books-of-2020 lists.
NOTE: LONG HOLDS QUEUES IN LIBRARY

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
448 pages (paperback)
Heidi/Erin's suggestion
"Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths."
NOTE: LIBRARY HAS ONLY A FEW COPIES

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
304 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
"A regretful woman finds herself in a magical library, where she gets to play out her life had she made different choices."
NOTE: LONG HOLDS QUEUES IN LIBRARY

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
400 pages (paperback)
Janice's suggestion
"Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets."

An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
336 pages (paperback)
Joan's suggestion
"This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control."

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende
368 pages (paperback)
Ann's suggestion
"One of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in [Isabel Allende’s] long career." - NYT

The Island of Sea Women, Lisa See
400 pages (paperback)
Ann's suggestion
"Set on a Korean island and draws on the centuries-long history of the haenyeo, female divers who have effectively created a matrifocal society" - NYT

NON-FICTION:

Posthumous Keats, Stanley Plumly
Review: The New York Times
396 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
Incisive in its observations and beautifully written, Posthumous Keats is an ode to an unsuspecting young poet — a man who, against the odds of his culture and critics, managed to achieve the unthinkable: the elevation of the lyric poem to sublime and tragic status.
NOTE: ONLY ONE COPY IN LIBRARY -- but available from Internet Archive

The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
Review: The New York Times
608 pages (468 excluding notes) (paperback)
Paula's suggestion
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and now a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer — from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Mighty Justice: My Life in Civil Rights, Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe
(originally published as Justice Older than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree)
* LOCAL AUTHOR *
304 pages (paperback)
Joan's suggestion
From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation's capital, from the white male bastion of the World War II Army to the male stronghold of Howard University Law School, from the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister-in all these places Dovey Johnson Roundtree (b. 1914) sought justice.

Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time, Dava Sobel
OR Illustrated Version
Review: The New York Times
208 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of John Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, Hermione Lee
Review: The New York Times
528 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
Penelope Fitzgerald, one of the most quietly brilliant novelists of the twentieth century, was a great English writer whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore
Review: The New York Times
464 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
In Jill Lepore's riveting work of historical detection, Wonder Woman's story provides the missing link in the history of the struggle for women's right — a chain of events that begins with the women's suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later.

Bad Blood, John Carreyrou
368 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
A gripping story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron — a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

Educated, Tara Westover
352 pages (hardcover)
Heidi's suggestion
An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.
One of President Obama's favorite books of 2018
NOTE: Not yet in paperback (only Large Print)

The Library Book, Susan Orlean
336 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
Orlean chronicles the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, John M. Barry
546 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
A sobering account of the 1918 flu epidemic, compelling and timely.

The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary, John Simpson
400 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
An intensely personal memoir and a joyful celebration of English, ... a story of how words come into being, how culture shapes language, and how technology transforms words.

Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir, Deirdre Bair
368 pages (paperback)
Stephanie's suggestion
National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her fifteen remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the biographical art.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain
368 pages (paperback)
Ann's suggestion
It is to introverts — Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak — that we owe many of the great contributions to society.

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Reiss
432 pages (paperback)
Ann's suggestion
The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world's first multi-racial society.

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, Rebecca Traister
368 pages (paperback)
Ann's suggestion
A remarkable portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the unmarried American woman

Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, Stacey Abrams
320 pages (paperback)
Heidi's suggestion
A blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country.

Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High, Melba Pattillo Beals
240 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
In this essential autobiographical account by one of the Civil Rights Movement's most powerful figures, Melba Pattillo Beals of the Little Rock Nine explores not only the oppressive force of racism, but the ability of young people to change ideas of race and identity.
NOTE: ONLY ONE HARDCOPY IN LIBRARY -- but unlimited audiobook access.

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai
368 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel
208 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day — "the longitude problem.

Lost in Shangra-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, Mitchell Zuckoff
432 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
Award-winning former Boston Globe reporter Mitchell Zuckoff unleashes the exhilarating, untold story of an extraordinary World War II rescue mission, where a plane crash in the South Pacific plunged a trio of U.S.military personnel into a land that time forgot.

Born a Crime, Trevor Noah
304 pages (paperback)
Connie's suggestion
The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
640 pages (paperback)
Edith's suggestion
Told through the migration of three black families, it is the story of how and why millions of Black Americans left the South between 1915 and 1970 to escape Jim Crow laws and find safety, better pay and more freedom in the North.

NOT IN COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM

Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications, Marlene Wagman-Geller
Non-Fiction, 336 pages (hardcover)
Heidi's suggestion
Explores the dedications in fifty iconic books that are an intrinsic part of both literary and pop culture, shedding light on the author's psyche, as well as the social and historic context in which the book was first published.

Who Are We - and Should It Matter in the 21st Century?, Gary Younge
Non-Fiction, 256 pages (paperback)
Paula's suggestion
What does it mean to call yourself British in the 21st Century? If Obama was raised by his white mother, why is he the first black president? Why do Muslims feel more at home in America, which invaded Iraq, than in France, which opposed the invasion? Who are we, and why does it matter?

The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki
Fiction, 544 pages (paperback)
Cindy's suggestion
Junichiro Tanizaki's magisterial evocation of a proud Osaka family in decline during the years immediately before World War II is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the twentieth century and a classic of international literature.

World Made By Hand, James Howard Kunstler
Fiction, 317 pages (paperback)
Joan's suggestion
In The Long Emergency, celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production combined with climate change had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge.

Martin Marten, Brian Doyle
320 pages (paperback)
Nettie's suggestion
"Two energetic, sinewy, muddled, brilliant, creative animals, one human and one mustelid — come sprint with them through the deep, wet, green glory of Oregon's soaring mountain."