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Recommended Reading

2003 One Book, One County Selection
Eleven-year-old Reuben shares the story of how his father, trying to raise his sons alone in 1960s Minnesota, takes their family on a quest to find Reuben’s older brother, who has been charged with murder.

Peace Like a River Readalike: Father and Son Relationships
Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing, searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind.

Peace Like a River Readalike: Father and Son Relationships
Martin Dean spent his life analyzing absolutely everything and passing on his self-taught knowledge to his son, Jasper. But now that his father is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the man who raised him in intellectual captivity, and the irony is this: theirs was a great adventure.

2004 One Book, One County Selection
Working in Gaborone, Botswana, sleuth Precious Ramotswe investigates several local mysteries, including a search for a missing boy and the case of the clinic doctor with different personalities for different days of the week.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Readalike: Multicultural Mysteries
Hamish MacBeth stories depend on the detective’s human nature instincts and the culture of the Scottish Highlands.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Readalike: Multicultural Mysteries
The Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels have a sense of place which centers around the Navaho reservation. The books feature the clash of traditional culture and religion with an increasingly modern and secular American society.

2005 One Book, One County Selection
An unlikely extended family is formed when a high school teacher helps a pregnant student make a home with two elderly bachelor ranchers.

Plainsong Readalike: Sense of Place
In a saga that spans three generations, patriarch John Northridge and four other members of his family narrate their history on the plains of Nebraska. The characters’ love for their native landscape, and the animals that are a part of their lives shine through in this compelling drama.

Plainsong Readalike: Sense of Place
Calvin Millet struggles to cope with marital breakup, his daughter’s terminal illness, bankruptcy, and the destruction of his house by a tornado, but the arrival of a mysterious traveling salesman helps Calvin and the other inhabitants of Ebb, Nebraska, rediscover hope and second chances.

Plainsong Readalike: Sense of Place
Set in present day small town Wyoming, this novel of quiet beauty and character is told in spare, clear prose. Seventy-year-old Jess has to come to terms not only with his own aging, but also the wasting injuries of his best friend, his hatred of his daughter-in-law, his confusion about a fragile but opinionated granddaughter, and a captive bear.

Plainsong Readalike: Sense of Place
Introduces the colorful and offbeat inhabitants of a sleepy, southern Georgia town, including Roger, a studious peanut virologist; Della, a newcomer and painter of chickens; and Louise, who is trying to summon Martian invaders.

2006 One Book, One County Selection
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.

My Sister’s Keeper Readalike: Contemporary Issues
The members of the extended Seton family are confronted by a terrible accident when a partially loaded hunting rifle in the wrong hands leads to tragedy, testing the values, convictions, and relationships that hold the family together.

My Sister’s Keeper Readalike: Contemporary Issues
Three adult siblings embark on a tumultuous summer when the oldest, a successful Manhattan doctor, investigates his sister’s chromosomal disorder against his mother’s wishes.

My Sister’s Keeper Readalike: Contemporary Issues
A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.

My Sister’s Keeper Readalike: Contemporary Issues
Her Mormon community shattered by the murders of her two younger sisters, Veronica Swan severs ties with her family in her inability to forgive their killer, a decision that causes her to discover profound truths about sin and compassion.

2007 One Book, One County Selection
The author traces his boyhood enthusiasm for rockets that eventually led to a career at NASA, describing how he built model rockets in the family garage in West Virginia, inspired by the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik.

October Sky Readalike: Coming of Age
As wise and funny as it is thrilling and original — the story of two young men, during the infamous siege of Leningrad, on an impossible quest that propels them from lawless streets to the devastated countryside behind German lines to secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake

October Sky Readalike: Coming of Age
The author describes his all-American childhood growing up as a member of the baby boom generation in the heart of Iowa, detailing his rich fantasy life as a superhero known as the Thunderbolt Kid and his remarkably normal 1950s family life.

2008 One Book, One County Selection
In the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Nan Wu, who had studied in the U.S. in the mid-1980s, leaves China with his wife and son to seek the freedom of the West, embarking on a migration that takes them through the heart of contemporary America.

A Free Life Readalike: Contemporary Immigrant Experience
Three Iranian sisters — Marjan, Layla, and Bahar Aiminpour — flee the turmoil of the Islamic Revolution in their native country to seek refuge in Ireland, where they open the exotic Babylon Café.

A Free Life Readalike: Contemporary Immigrant Experience
Abandoned amid the offbeat inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel when his English wife and son return to London following September 11th, Hans, a banker originally from the Netherlands, struggles to find himself in his adopted country.