Custom Reading Lists
Are you ever at a loss for what to read next? Do you think there may be great books you have missed? Let an Omaha Public Library Readers' Advisory staff member suggest titles for you. Simply take a moment and fill out the form for Custom Reading Lists and a personalized list of potential titles will be sure to follow.
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Readers' Café
New for May 2013 in the Readers' Cafe:
Librarian's Choice:
ISBN: 9780316230810
Publication Date: 2013
The short story that was adapted to become the first chapter of this debut novel by current Stegner fellow Bulawayo won the Caine Prize in 2011, known as the African Booker. Indeed the first half of the book, which follows a group of destitute but fearless children in a ravaged, never-named African country, is a remarkable piece of literature. Ten-year-old Darling is Virgil, leading us through Paradise, the shantytown where she and her friends Bastard, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina live and play. "Before," they lived in real houses and went to school-that is, before the paramilitary policemen came and destroyed it all, before AIDS, before Darling's friend Chipo was impregnated by her own grandfather. Now they roam rich neighborhoods, stealing bull guavas and hiding in trees while gangs raid white homes. Darling and her friends invent new names for themselves from American TV and spent their time trying to get "rid of Chipo's stomach."
ISBN: 9780062225009
Publication Date: 2013
The story centers on Robert Chatham, a star-crossed African American whose games and first kiss are interrupted by the Mississippi flood of 1927. From the Hollandale refugee camp, Robert is hired as an errand boy at the Beau-Miel Hotel, a surreal brothel burned to the ground by a drunken music promoter. Robert then works as a WPA dynamiter, clearing swamps in rural Mississippi. Later, as an almost-prisoner of a family of feral trappers, the L'Etangs, he becomes involved with the group's lone female member, Frankie. When Robert leaves the L'Etangs, he faces a choice between escaping to the north with Frankie, who herself escaped the swamps, or remaining where he is with the mostly-mad Dora, his first kiss. Curious about the odd title? Wait until the last page.
ISBN: 9781620401200
Publication Date: 2013
Ten-year-old Helen is a precocious, imaginative child who must spend the summer with her guardian, Flora, while her father is in Oak Ridge, TN, during the last months of World War II. Helen is a "haunted little girl" who lost her mother at age three and whose grandmother, who raised her, has just died. She and her late mother's cousin, 22-year-old Flora, are isolated in Helen's family house on a mountaintop, quarantined from the polio that threatens their community. Helen is resentful of her caretaker, Flora, who cries easily and appears to Helen to be unsophisticated. But Flora is singled-minded in her attempts to do right by Helen. The aftermath of that formative summer will steer the course of Helen's life and haunt her forever.
ISBN: 9781594631764
Publication Date: 2013
An immense, ancient oak stands in Shadbagh, emblematic of the complexly branching stories in Hosseini's vital, profound, and spellbinding saga of family bonds and unlikely pairings forged by chance, choice, and necessity. We meet twin sisters, one beautiful, one plain; one an invalid, the other a caretaker. Two male cousins, one a charismatic wheeler-dealer; the other a cautious, introverted doctor. A disfigured girl of great valor and a boy destined to become a plastic surgeon.
ISBN: 9780451415738
Publication Date: 2013
After enduring a chaotic childhood, Emily McKellips yearns for a drama-free life, complete with a white picket fence. Her dreams are about to come true: She has a stellar career, a gorgeous house, and a fiancé any woman would die for. But as friends and family arrive in picturesque Valentine, Vermont, for her wedding, an uninvited guest shows up. Ryan is Emily's first husband from a disastrous starter marriage. They wed on a whim, only to discover that combustible chemistry couldn't ensure a happily ever after. But Ryan is no longer the headstrong boy she left behind. He's now a successful film producer who just happens to be scouting a resort in Valentine with his adorable retriever in tow.
ISBN: 9780770436407
Publication Date: 2013
Marra's sobering, complex debut intertwines the stories of a handful of characters at the end of the second war in bleak, apocalyptic Chechnya. Though the novel spans 11 years, the story traces five days in 2004 following the arrest of Dokka, a villager from the small Muslim village of Eldar. His eight-year-old daughter escapes, and is rescued by Dokka's friend Akhmed, the village doctor, who entrusts her to the care of Sonja, the lone remaining doctor at a nearby hospital. Why Akhmed feels responsible for Haava and chooses Sonja, an ethnic Russian keeping a vigil for her missing sister, as her guardian is one of many secrets; years of Soviet rule and the chaos of war have left these people unaccustomed to honesty.
ISBN: 9780062120397
Publication Date: 2013
Eli McCullough, the first male child born in the Republic of Texas, is kidnapped at age 13 by Comanches, and from then on his life becomes a study in conflict. During three years of living with the Indians, he wins their respect and is thought of as an upcoming chief. But by the time he turns 16, having mastered the art of scalping, he is set free. Forever restless, he becomes a Texas Ranger, a cattle rancher, and, later, a colonel in the Civil War. His son, Pete, is cut from a different cloth and rebels against his family's history of violence and anti-Mexican racism. His rebellion includes the love of a Mexican woman. Pete's daughter, Jeanne Anne, struggles to be taken seriously as a rancher and oil tycoon. The broody McCulloughs gain in wealth but often pay dearly. A strain of misunderstood lonesomeness hounds each generation.
ISBN: 9780385531115
Publication Date: 2013
Montaro Caine was eight years old when his brilliant father died. Years later, he finds himself continuing his undergraduate research on a coin fashioned of a rare metal previously unknown on Earth, which is the beginning of an intricate, electrifying journey.
ISBN: 9781250028525
Publication Date: 2013
An elegiac portrait of two adolescents displaced during WWII, the novel guides the reader through multiple points of view, including Eirene Sklavos, brought to Australia after her father's death in a Greek prison, and Gilbert Horsfall, who witnessed the death of his friend in the Blitz and attempts to integrate into an unwelcoming community.
May Featured Title
Need a guide to battling the Post Sookie Blues? Try this chart of fantastic paranormal and fantasy books specifically chosen to help you cope with the end of the Southern Vampire Series.
After Sookie Reader Chart
ISBN: 9781937007881
Publication Date: 2013
Sookie Stackhouse finds it easy to turn down the request of former barmaid Arlene when she wants her job back at Merlotte's. After all, Arlene tried to have Sookie killed. But her relationship with Eric Northman is not so clearcut. He and his vampires are keeping their distance…and a cold silence. And when Sookie learns the reason why, she is devastated. Then a shocking murder rocks Bon Temps, and Sookie is arrested for the crime. But the evidence against Sookie is weak, and she makes bail. Investigating the killing, she'll learn that what passes for truth in Bon Temps is only a convenient lie. What passes for justice is more spilled blood. And what passes for love is never enough.
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