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Recommended Reading

Chronicles the off-beat and occasionally extraterrestrial journeys, notions, and acquaintances of galactic traveler Arthur Dent.

Holly has always depended on her husband’s practical advice to keep her going and despairs when she loses him to brain cancer, until a package arrives filled with advice for carrying on with her life without her beloved husband.

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.

Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, undertakes a media blitz to defend the rights of smokers, a job that has unexpected repercussions when he is targeted by someone out to prove just how hazardous smoking can be.

A poor seventeenth-century servant girl knows her place in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, but when he begins to paint her, nasty whispers and rumors circulate throughout the town.

Sergeant Raymond Shaw, a former prisoner of war, Congressional Medal of Honor winner, and American hero, is transformed into a programmed assassin by a Chinese psychological expert during his captivity in North Korea, and his primary target is a U.S. presidential nominee.

Planning to retire on his thirtieth birthday, a drug dealer is given the opportunity of getting out of the business if he will track down the runaway daughter of his boss’s old friend, but his search is complicated by the theft of a fortune in Ecstasy tablets, an angry mob of neo-Nazis, and by a series of betrayals.

When her interfering sister writes a personal ad for her, divorced preschool teacher Sarah Hurlihy finds herself plunged into the often riotous world of dating where she learns valuable lessons in life, love, and canine care.

Describes how, after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson persuaded his colleagues to fund the CIA’s efforts to arm the mujahideen and recounts the repercussions of that covert operation.

A nightmare world begins for Kevin, a young seminarian, when he receives a cell phone call from an unknown man directing him to confess his sin to the world in three minutes or be blown to bits.

A drug dealer of the future periodically moves away from his spaced-out world to become an informer for narcotics agents until he becomes unable to separate his two personalities.

A gripping collection of stories that includes many of the famous cases-and great strokes of brilliance-that made the leg­endary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction’s most popular creations.

In a tale spanning twenty-five years, a doctor delivers his newborn twin daughter during a snowstorm and, rashly deciding to protect his wife from the baby’s affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child.

The murder of a beautiful young woman in 1947 Los Angeles sparks a great investigation in which Bucky Bleichert, Lee Blanchard, L.A.P.D. Warrants Squad cops, ex-boxers, friends, and adversaries become obsessed by the case.

A bizarre accident in Uganda finds Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan appointed personal physician to infamous Ugandan leader Idi Amin and, over the next eight years, struggling with his own complicity in the dictator’s brutality and barbaric reign of terror.

Follows a young writer as he travels to Eastern Europe on a quest to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, and discovers an unexpected past that will resonate far into the future.

As six Californians get together to form a book club to discuss the novels of Jane Austen, their lives are turned upside down by troubled marriages, illicit affairs, changing relationships, and love.

Inman, an injured and disillusioned Confederate soldier, embarks on a harrowing journey home to his sweetheart, Ada, who herself is struggling to run the farm left her at her father’s sudden death.

Ten survivors struggle to reach safety after an ocean liner capsizes in mid sea.

Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years.

In a candid memoir, a successful entrepreneur traces his journey from growing up with an abusive stepfather, to life on the streets as a homeless man with a small toddler in tow, to his triumphant battle to the top as a self-made millionaire.

The daughters of a ruthlessly ambitious family, Mary and Anne Boleyn are sent to the court of Henry VIII to attract the attention of the king, who first takes Mary as his mistress and then Anne as his wife.

A fictionalized portrait of the legendary outlaw Jesse James, his violent career, and his murderer, Robert Ford, in an epic tale of the Old West.

When the beautiful and mysterious Vianne moves to Lansquenet and opens a chocolate shop across from the church, the inhabitants of the tiny village are torn between the solemn law of religion and the rewards of Vianne’s confections.

Follows the story of young William Harding, who unexpectedly finds himself falling for Sarah and, in three short months, feels the joy of first love and the heartache left behind when it ends.

When her new friend and co-worker, Sheba Hart, begins a passionate affair with a male student, schoolteacher Barbara Covett decides to defend Sheba and unknowingly reveals secrets they both hide.

Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant’s son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

Emerging from a tour of duty in Iraq with a badly injured leg, CIA soldier Roger Ferris takes on a mission to infiltrate the network of a master terrorist and bases his plan on a British intelligence operation from World War II.

A dramatic saga of intrigue and love set against the tumultous backdrop of Berlin in 1945 follows Jake Geismar, a former Berlin correspondent for CBS assigned to do a series of articles on the American occupation of Berlin, as he tries to find Lena, the German mistress he left behind, and stumbles upon a murder, which hurls him into a dark underworld of corruption.

After her “stand-in mother,” a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.

A portrait of Chris McCandless chronicles his decision to withdraw from society and adopt the persona of Alexander Supertramp, offering insight into his beliefs about the wilderness and his tragic death in the Alaskan wilderness.

An incisive portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life, in a debut novel that spans three decades, two continents, and two generations.

When the young and beautiful wife of a much older embassy worker and amateur gardener is found murdered near northern Kenya’s Lake Turkana, his personal pursuit of the killers not only sets him up as their next target, but as a suspect among his embassy colleagues.

A collection of seven western tales involving destiny, trust, survival, and fatal decisions.

A shooting victim, suffering from amnesia, finds himself with a Swiss bank account in the name of Jason Bourne, a professional assassin being manipulated by a top-secret American government organization to kill his arch rival, the dreaded Carlos.

Working as a salesgirl at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus, Mirabelle, a beautiful aspiring artist, embarks on a love affair with Ray Porter, a wealthy, lonely businessman she meets at the store, and together they struggle to understand the meaning of love, in a bittersweet tale of romance.

A lone human survivor in a world that is overrun by vampires, Robert Neville leads a desperate life in which he must barricade himself in his home every night and hunt down the starving undead by day.

Kitty Fane’s affair with Assistant Colonial Secretary Townsend is interrupted when she is taken from Hong Kong by her vengeful bacteriologist husband to accompany him to his new post amid a raging cholera epidemic.

Suspense builds to a feverish intensity as popular late-night radio host Gabriel Noone befriends a troubled listener, a thirteen-year-old boy who has endured a childhood of traumatic sexual abuse and who sees Gabriel as a surrogate father.

Having lost his biggest client to an unscrupulous boss, Max Skinner journeys to Provence to inspect a vineyard he has inherited and finds additional challenges in the vineyard’s inferior wine and a California woman’s claim on the estate.

Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash during a hunting trip near the Rio Grande, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation in which their only hope of survival is local sheriff Ed Tom Bell.

In 1935 England, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses an event involving her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie Turner, and she becomes the victim of her own imagination, which leads her on a lifelong search for truth and absolution.

A satirical glimpse into Manhattan’s upper class follows Nanny, a struggling NYU student who takes a position caring for the son of the rich and glamorous X family, as she learns how to juggle a vast array of tasks so that a Park Avenue wife never has to lift a well-manicured finger.

Recounts the story of how a notorious gang of MIT blackjack savants devised and received backing for a system for winning at the world’s most sophisticated casinos.

Now ailing and surrounded by her children, sixty-five-year-old Ann Grant Lord reminisces about a glorious summer weekend some forty years earlier during which she met and lost the love of her life.

Michael T. Steel becomes the participant in a wager between heaven and hell. As a man on top of the world, he has ten days to live every truth in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin fight in the Napoleonic Wars.

A group of young suburban parents, including a handsome stay-at-home dad, a former feminist, an Internet surfer, and an over-structured mom, finds its sleepy existence shattered when a convicted child molester moves back into town and two of the parents have an affair.

As best friends Miles and Jack leave Los Angeles for Santa Ynez wine country in preparation for Jack’s impending nuptials, they embark on a raucous, weeklong road trip that allows the two to contemplate their life choices.

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in a darkened salon during the course of a fraudulent seance, and from this moment they try to expose and outwit each other at every turn.

Schoolboy Michael Berg, 15, meets an older woman and they have an affair, which she breaks off and disappears. Seven years later Berg, now a law student attending a trial, sees her in the dock, accused in a crime dating back to World War II and the death camp at Auschwitz.

After her husband leaves her for a younger woman, forty-five-year-old Adrienne Willis reconsiders her life, until a trip to Rodanthe in North Carolina’s Outer Banks leads to an encounter with successful surgeon Paul Flanner.

Scenes from the past and a collection of intensely personal letters tell the story of a long married couple now confined to a nursing home.

Vibrantly brings to life the extraordinary story of Hadassah, a beautiful peasant girl who, after chosen to become Esther, queen of Persia, gains favor with the king and saves her people, in an exciting historical novel set in pre-Islamic Persia.

Chronicles the exploits of Becky Sharp, an unscrupulous young woman who is determined to achieve wealth and social success, and her sentimental companion, Amelia, who has fallen for a caddish soldier, in the classic novel set against the backdrop of English society in the early 1800s.

This the story of Evie Decker, one of the most overweight girls in her high school in Pulqua, North Carolina. Evie falls in love with a rock and roll singer named Bertram “Drumstrings” Casey. To demonstrate her devotion to him, Evie uses a pair of nail scissors to carve his name on her forehead—but because she does it while looking in the mirror, the word is spelled YESAC. Although her father wants her to go to a plastic surgeon, Evie refuses. Tyler explores the relationship between Drum and Evie with compassion and grace.

Louisiana governor Willie Stark’s obsession with political power leads to the ultimate corruption of his gubernatorial administration, in the story of the rise and fall of a Southern demagogue in the 1930s.

Twenty-eight-year-old Maggie Feller, who goes from job to job on the fringes of show business, and her older sister Rose, a lawyer, have had no contact with their grandmother, Ella, since their mother’s death years ago, but all three need to find each other to reach happiness.

A small-town girl fresh out of an Ivy League college lands a job at a prestigious fashion magazine, but wonders if the glamorous perks are worth working for the editor from hell.