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Nanci & Leane's Picks: Recommended Young Adult Books for Book Discussions

Abraham, Pearl The Romance Reader
Hemmed in by the strict codes of her Orthodox Jewish upbringing, the daughter of a rabbi escapes to the world of romance novels and begins to chafe at her family and her faith. A FIRST NOVEL.

Albom, Mitch Tuesdays with Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a collegue. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way thorugh it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Scwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.

Alcott, Louisa Man A Long, Fatal Love Chase
Written in 1866, this heretofore undiscovered gem by the author of Little Women tells the story of Rosamund Vivian, an intelligent, strong-willed, 18-year-old young woman who longs for adventure. But when she marries a wealthy, jaded young man, and is swept off to Europe, Rosamund too soon learns that her new husband is not as he had presented himself. First seriel to Ladies' Home Journal.

Allison, Dorothy Bastard out of Carolina
Tired of being labeled white trash, Ruth Anne Boatwright-- a South Carolina b astard who is attached to the indomitable women in her mother's family -- longs to escape from her hometown, and especially from Daddy Glen and his mean-spirited jealousy. A FIRST NOVEL.

Atwood, Margaret Eleanor Alias Grace
Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spirtualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or is she the victim of circumstances?

Atwood, Margaret Eleanor The robber bride
Charis and Tony all share a wound, and her name is Zenia. Beautiful, ssmart and hungry, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless, Zenia is the turbulent center of her own neverending saga. She entered their lives in the sixties, when they were in college. Over the three decades since, she has damaged each of them badly, ensnaring their sympathy, betraying their trust, and treating their men as loot. Then Zenia dies, or at any rate the three women - with much relief - attend her funeral. But as The Robber Bride begins, Roz, Charis and Tony have come together at a trendy restaurant for their monthly lunch when in walks the seemingly resurrected Zenia.

Bohjalian, Christopher A. Midwives
A talented midwife is arrested for murder when she saves a baby by performing a Caesarean section once she believes the mother has died -only to have her assistant insist later that the woman was still very much alive. Told in the mesmerizing voice of the midwife's daughter, Midwives depicts the aftermath of the tragedy.

Chopin, Kate. The awakening
In the summer of her 28th year, Edna Pontellier and her children, along with the wives and families of other prospective businessmen, spend the summer in an adyllic coastal community away fromt heir husbands and the sweltering heat of 1890's New Orleans. Aware of deep yearnings that are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood, Edna plunges into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long dormant desires, inflames her heart, and eventually blinds her to all else.

Diamant, Anita The red tent
The story of Dinah, a tragic character from the Bible whose great love, a prince, is killed by her brother, leaving her alone and pregnant. The novel traces her life from childhood to death, in the process examining sexual and religious practices of the day, and what it meant to be a woman.

Fremont, Helen After long silence
Helen Fremont was raised Roman Catholic in America, only to discover in adulthood that her parents were Jews who had survived the Holocaust. Delving into the extraordinary secrets that held her family together in a bond of silence for more than forty years, she recounts with heartbreaking clarity and candor a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the eloquence of truth.

Gilbert, Elizabeth Stern Men
Stern Men is a comedy that will remind readers of the work of John Irving: smart, finely crafted, and profoundly entertaining. On two remote islands off the coast of Maine, the local lobstermen have fought savagely for generations over the fishing rights to the ocean waters between them.

Golden, Arthur Memoirs of a Geisha
An alluring tour de force: a brilliant debut novel told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearnces are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love, always elusive, is scorned as an illusion.

Guterson, David Snow Falling on Cedars
On San Piedro Island, Pugent Sound, a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for cold-blooded murder in the shadow of World War II, and the journalist who covers the trial comes close once again to the wife of the accused, his boyhood love.

Hamilton, Jane. A map of the world
The Goodwins, Howard, Alice, and their little girls, Emma and Claire, live on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Although suspiciously regarded by their neighbors as "that hippie couple" because of their well-educated, urban background, Howard and Alice believe they have found a source of emotional strength in the farm, he tending barn while Alice works as a nurse in the local elementary school. But their peaceful life is shattered one day when a neighbor's two-year-old daughter drowns in the Goodwins' pond while under Alice's care.

Hansen, Ron. Hitler's niece
In September 1931, a 23-year-old woman was found dead in the Munich flat owned by Adolf Hitler, an unfinished letter on her desk and his handgun on the floor beside her. She was Geli Raubal, the daughter of Hitler's widowed half-sister, and, as Hitler later melodramatically claimed, the only woman he ever loved.

Irving, John A prayer for Owen Meany
Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he's God's instrument. He is.

Lipman, Elinor The inn at Lake Devine
It's the early 1960s and Natalie Marx is stunned when her mother inquires about vacation accommodations in Vermont and is refused because their family is Jewish. So begins Natalie's fixation with the Inn and the family who owns it. And when Natalie finagles an invitation to join a friend on vacation there, she sets herself upon a path that will inextricably link her adult life into this peculiar family and their once-restricted hotel.

McBride, James The color of water
A powerful portrait of growing up, a meditation on race and identity and a poignant beautifully crafted hymn from a son to his mother.

Miller, Sue The good mother
Recently divorced, Anna Dunlap had two passionate attachments; to her daughter, four-year-old Molly, and to her lover, Leo, the man who made her feel beautiful - and sexual - for the first time. They were a magical threesome - a little drunk on happiness and passion. Anna never expected the shocking charges that would threaten her new love, her new "family"... that would force her to prove she was a good mother.

Quindlen, Anna One true thing
After caring for her mother during her final, painful battle with terminal cancer, Ellen Gulden discovers many surprising things about her mother's life and finds herself accused of murdering her mother in a mercy killing. By the author of Object Lessons.

Roy, Arundhati God of small things
The story of an Indian family during the 1969 Communist disturbances in Kerala province. It is told through the eyes of a boy and his sister who are the children of a rich rubber planter. Politics, family drama, illicit love. A debut fiction.

Shreve, Anita The weight of water
More than a century after someone murders two people on a small island off the coast of New Hampshire; a photographer comes to shoot a photo essay about the famous crime. As she investigates the bleak, isolated lives of the victims, she comes to identify with their spiritual loneliness. For her own marriage is falling apart, crumbling into nights of heavy drinking and terrible silences.

Stegner, Wallace Earle Angle of repose
In Wallace Stegner's American classic, first published in 1971, wheelchair-bound historian Lyman Ward decides to write about the frontier lives of his grandparents at a time when he has lost connection with his living family. Of his relationship with his son, he says "That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf." It is an enterprise that will cast as much light on the lives of the members of succeeding generations as on the grandparents'.

Woolf, Virgina Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway, in her fifties, wife of an English MP, emerges from her house in Westminister one fine June morning to buy flowers for her party. And by that simple act she entwines her life with the lives of others who will hear, with her, Big Ben toll away the hours of their destinies that day.

Any comments, questions or suggestions can be emailed to Nanci Milone Hill, Assistant Director at nhill@noblenet.org.

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