A heart-wrenching but ultimately inspiring memoir recounts the author's painful childhood as the unwanted daughter of a wealthy yet abusive Chinese family, from which she escaped to the West.

Based on real events and people, this novel follows a Ukrainian family that returns to their devastated town soon after the Chernobyl disaster, where death and privation await them in the wake of the world's worst nuclear accident.

A lot of people falsely accuse Jenny Nimmo of copying JK Rowling but actually in some ways I enjoy this series more then the Harry Potter series. It is a lot lighter, funnier and a fun read. The author is extremely creative and her writing style is fun and light, unlike Harry Potter which gets darker the later you get in the series. Charlie Bone is a normal young boy until he suddenly finds he can hear the voices of people in photographs. He is one of the endowed, one of the descendants of the magical Red King and is sent to study at Bloors Academy. There he has many adventures, from having to save his great-great uncle who has traveled nearly one hundred years into the future, to helping rescue a boy turned invisible.

Bleach is one of my favorite manga and anime series. I have read all the books released so far and watched every episode in both the Japanese and the new English dubbed episodes. It tells the story of Ichigo Kurosaki, who has been able to see the spirits of the dead for most of his life. But now, at 15, a run-in with the Shinigami, or "Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki, suddenly finds him with her powers. Now, he must take over her Soul Reaper duties until she regains her powers, protecting innocent living and dead from evil ghosts called Hollows. What makes this among my favorite series is that it combines action, good story, and character development. Often, you find mangas where all you get is a lot of fighting but the relationships between characters is forgotten. In Bleach you get to see the relations between the characters and the characters themselves changing as the story progresses and a lot of brilliant action and sword fights!

Phenomenal, compulsively readable group biography. Here's just a preview: Diana left her wealthy young husband to take up with and eventually marry Sir Oswald Mosley, infamous leader of British fascism; Unity became close friends with Adolf Hitler and a proponent of Nazism; Jessica, a vocal Communist, eloped with a notorious cousin who was also a nephew of Winston Churchill; Deborah married the Duke of Devonshire; and Nancy (Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate) and Jessica (The American Way of Death) became acclaimed, bestselling authors, the world responded with avid, insatiable and at times alarmingly intrusive curiosity. This was a fascinating character study (we see Unity deal with her eccentric father and follow her obsession with Adolf Hitler), survey of the politics of the time, and ultimately a story of family bonds.

An outstanding biography of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) which has been described as a 'haunting drama of artistic fame.' Millay was a Jazz Age phenomenon who caused a sensation wherever she went. Through her poetry, thousands of documents and  letters to and from the poet, and flawless research, the author presents Millay as a troubled and ambitious genius who brought herself out of poverty into her standing-room-only readings only to later suffer from an addiction to morphine and an untimely death. The book takes you to her travels in Paris and the then-unfashionable Greenwich Village where she cavorted with some of the most famous writers of the time. Whether or not you are familiar with her poetry, this is a fascinating tale of the burden, in a sense, of genius and ambition.

The author's first book - Crow Lake - is on my list of all time favorites. This time, she reworks a very old familiar story about good and evil, love and loss in a small farming town in northern Canada. Like a personal story told to you by a good friend, the characters and place will stay with you, still vivid long after finishing the book. It's a beautifully written intimate novel, and an extremely satisfying read.

By the author of A Simple Plan, this is a horror, science fiction, psychological thriller all in one impossible to put down, page-turner package.  The story of a group of friends on a trip to Mexico that goes horribly wrong. (way worse than lost luggage or a bout with Montezuma's Revenge.) Warning: this book is not for the faint hearted! 

I'm not usually a fan of vampire stories, but this is a very enjoyable story about historians (a father and daughter) attempting to track down Dracula.  There is romance, travel (all over Eastern Europe and Istanbul), and lots of well-drawn characters, including a vampire librarian! 

I picked this up because it was short-listed for the Booker Prize.  It is very witty and some passages were so funny I couldn't resist reading them aloud to my husband.  The first section was a bit slow, and it is uneven throughout, but still worth it for those mean and very British flashes of humor. The author of Some Hope returns with a story of complex family relationships, offering a trenchant novelistic analysis of marriage, adultery, parenthood, and assisted suicide.

Heartwarming story of a young woman who heads west from Kentucky to start a new life.  On the way, she is given a baby at an Indian Reservation and takes her to Tucson, where they make new friends and carve out a new life for themselves.

Haven Kimmel's heartwarming and funny account of her upbringing in Indiana in a very unconventional family.

'Not for the squeamish' applies big time to this book!  A fascinating and truly horrifying account of the journey of the Ebola virus from the Central African rain forest to a Washington, D.C. animal test lab.  The virus's effect on the human body is gruesome, fatal and without cure.

The author was one of the original nine African-American teenagers to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.  A ninth grader at the time, she uses her own teenage diaries and media coverage from that period to give her teen's-eye-view of the traumatic day-to-day experience.  That she and the others survived the school year is a miracle.  This personal account makes the idealistic and abstract notion of being a trailblazer for school integration acutely specific and real.  Should be required reading for today's teens, who will be shocked by the relentless emotional and physical abuse the unwelcome students endured and the failure of many adults in authority to stop it.  An abridged version was published for students in grades 7 and up.

Even if you don't think you're interested in astronauts and the history of the U. S. space program, this book is irresistibly interesting and entertaining.   Among the most memorably poignant passages: the very real prospect that your test-pilot husband will be "burned beyond recognition" when an experimental flight fails.  Most memorably humorous passages: astronaut Pete Conrad's cheeky responses to the extensive battery of physical, psychological and stress tests.