By Colm Toibin
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, May 25, 2010.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

A diligent young woman with few opportunities in nineteen–fifties Ireland is packed off by her family to Brooklyn, where she encounters new and bewildering experiences before a family crisis presents her with a stark choice between her new life and her old one.

By J. Courtney Sullivan

Four college first year students at Smith form an intense bond that grows stronger throughout their college years and is put to the test after graduation.

By Rohinton Mistry
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

A portrait of India featuring four characters. Two are tailors who are forcibly sterilized, one is a student who emigrates, and the fourth is a widowed seamstress who decides to hang on. A tale of cruelty, political thuggery and despair by an Indian from Toronto, author of Such a Long Journey..

By John Grisham

In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill.

By Mitch Albom
Recommended By Marie McLaughlin, Head of Circulation

“Have a Little Faith is a book about a life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man’s journey, but it is everyone’s story (From the Publisher).”

By Robert Ferrigno
Series Assassin Trilogy
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“Set in a future American divided into two major regions, Edgar-finalist Ferrigno’s final entry in his Assassin trilogy nicely ties up the wildly diverse plot lines that have motivated his many characters (Publishers Weekly).”

By E.L. Doctorow

A tale inspired by a true story finds the blind Homer Collyer closeted within a once-grand Fifth Avenue mansion with his damaged brother and remembering a life marked by colorful characters, political events, and technological achievements.

By Joyce Maynard

Maynard tells the story of a long weekend and its repercussions through the eyes of a then 13-year-old boy, Henry, who lives with his divorced mother, Adele.

By Kazuo Ishiguro

Five short stories using music and nightfall as themes.

By Elizabeth Strout
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk

A collection of thirteen linked short stories recounting the experiences of Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who witnesses the changes in her town and the world at large.

By Per Petterson

A dreamy recitation of memories and the present day, as experienced by an aging widower in rural Norway.

By Jennifer Cody Epstein

A fictional portrait of Pan Yuliang, a real-life 20th-century Chinese prostitute turned successful artist. It is the story of a woman forced to choose between following her heart and pursuing her art.

By Janice Y.K. Lee
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk

Claire Pendleton, newly married and arrived in Hong Kong in 1952, finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of Melody and Victor Chen, a wealthy Chinese couple. While the girl is less than interested in music, the Chens’ flinty British expat driver, Will Truesdale, is certainly interested in Claire, and vice versa. Their fast–blossoming affair is juxtaposed against a plot line beginning in 1941 when Will gets swept up by the beautiful and temptestuous Trudy Liang, and then follows through his life during the Japanese occupation.

By Ann Cleeves
Series Shetland Island Quartet
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference

Set in the remote Scottish Shetland Islands, this taut, atmospheric thriller, the first in a new series, will keep readers guessing until the last page.

By Diana Athill

At ninety-one, Athil offers a spry dispatch on the condition of being elderly, having realized that copious literature describes the experience of youth, "but there is not much on record about falling away."

By Pat Conroy

Set in the late 1960’s, Leo Bloom King is living in Charleston, S.C. and trying to make sense of his brother’s suicide.

By Dave Eggers
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“Eggers chronicles the tribulations of Syrian-born painting contractor Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who, while aiding in rescue efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, was inexplicably arrested by military personnel and swept into a bureaucratic maelstrom of civil injustices (Library Journal).”