"Christopher Boone is a fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a great deal about math and very little about human beings. When he finds his neighbors' dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his world upside down." - BarnesandNoble.com
On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books. This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a suspenseful, deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Keeping fact, speculation, and contradiction playing off one another as the details unfold, author Lee Martin creates a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. His beautiful, clear-eyed prose builds to an extremely nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss." - BarnesandNoble.com
"The story of four young friends in New Orleans whose lives are pulled in drastically different directions when they enter high school. Meredith, Brandon, Stephen , and Greg, once inseparable, are torn apart by envy, secret passion, and rage. Soon two violent deaths disrupt the core of what they once shared. Five years later the friends are reunited, and, when one of the deaths is discovered to be a murder, secrets unravel and the casual cruelties of high school develop into acts of violence that threaten an entire city." - From the back of the book
"When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt. As Laurel’s fascination with Bobbie’s former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret. Her search for the truth will lead her furtherfrom her old life—and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her. In this spellbinding literary thriller, rich with complex and compelling characters—including Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan—Chris Bohjalian takes readers on his most intriguing, most haunting, and most unforgettable journey yet." - BarnesandNoble.com
"Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Russian monarchs Nicholas and Alexandra as seen through the eyes of the Romanov's young kitchen boy, Leonka" - BarnesandNoble.comMinneapolis Pageturners' rating:
"The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children. When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name. Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools." - BarnesandNoble.com
"Between 1994 and 2000, Omar Nasiri worked as a secret agent for Europe's top foreign intelligence services. From the netherworld of Islamist cells in Belgium to the training camps of Afghanistan to the radical mosques of London, he risked his life to defeat the emerging global network that the West would come to know as Al Qaeda. As an Arab and a Muslim, he was able to infiltrate the rigidly controlled Afghan training camps, where he encountered men who would later be known as some of the most-wanted terrorists on earth. Sent back to Europe by Al Qaeda's top recruiter with instruction to form a sleeper cell, Nasiri instead spied on the radical imams of "Londonistan" as they funneled cash and aspiring jihadis back to the Afghan camps. A gripping insider's account of both Islamist terror networks and the intelligence services that spy on them, Inside the Jihad offers a completely original perspective on the ongoing battle against Al Qaeda." - From the back cover
"The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family as once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family." - From the back of the book
Water for Elephants is a story about Jacob Jankowski, an eldery man who relives his glory days traveling with the Benzini Brothers Circus through flashbacks. Jacob joins the circus when his parents are killed in a car crash, leaving him lost and alone. He is instantly caught up in the glamor and behind-the-scenes scandal of circus life while being swept away by Marlena, a circus performer who is married to the angry and irrational circus manager. The reality of circus life and a forbidden love make up this very colorful story that combine Jacob's flashbacks and present-day stories bringing the circus business during the Great Depression to life.