You can check out these books from our collection:
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz [Man Booker Prize shortlist, 2008]
Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry [Man Booker Prize shortlist, 2008]
As Roseanne, a patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, decides to record the events of her life, hiding the manuscript beneath the floorboards in her bedroom, she learns that the hospital will be closed in a few months and that her caregiver, Dr. Grene, has been asked to evaluate the patients and decide if they can return to society. As he researches her case, Dr. Grene discovers a document written by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseanne’s life than what she recalls.
The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti [Alex Award, 2009]
Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony’s Orphanage for boys. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren’s long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?
The Spellman files by Lisa Lutz [Alex Award, 2008]
Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy: she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.
This is history on a grand scale -- a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship, and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri [Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2000] (808.8 LAH)
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
Danticat tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates.
The Bone People by Keri Hulme [Man Booker Prize, 1985]
Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro [Man Booker Prize, 1989]
A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England.
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey [Man Booker Prize, 1988]
This striking novel, set in Victorian England and Australia but told with a contemporary perspective, depicts the fatal and unrequited love shared by two remarkable misfits.
Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala [Man Booker Prize, 1975]
Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood [Man Booker Prize, 2000]
The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul [Nobel Prize in Literature, 2001]
The autobiographical novel of a journey from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England.
Ellmann's account of Wilde's extravagantly operatic life as poet, playwright, aesthete, and martyr to sexual morality is notable not only for the full portrait it gives of Wilde, but also for Ellmann's assessment of his subject's literary greatness.
Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1, the Pox Party by M. T. Anderson [National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, 2006]
Young Octavian is being raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers. After he opens a forbidden door he learns the hideous nature of their experiments and his own chilling role in them.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 2, the Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson [Michael L. Printz Award honor book, 2009]
Caught in the crossfire of the American Revolution, escaped slave Octavian joins the British army in hopes of finally securing his own freedom.
Marilynne Robinson spins an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart.
Ha Jin’s novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War.
Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming -- a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England’s history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England—until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon [Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2001]
Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America the comic book.
15-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from home, both to escape his father's oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. As Kafka flees, so too does Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome murder. What follows is a kind of double odyssey, as Kafka and Nakata are drawn inexorably along their separate but somehow linked paths, groping to understand the roles fate has in store for them.
Set in twenty-first century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life-and the entire future of humanity-is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love.
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