Through the eyes of Atticus's children, Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930's in this novel from 1960.

A car collision between two men represents the dividing line between America and Mexico and between rich and poor in this humorous and serious political novel from 1996.

Small Plains, Kansas, January 23, 1987: In the midst of a deadly blizzard, the naked, frozen body of a teenage girl is found in a field. Seventeen years later, three families and three friends, their worlds inexorably altered in the course of one night, must confront the ever-unfolding consequences in award-winning author Nancy Pickard’s remarkable 2006 novel of suspense.

As a young man in the great Depression, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. For Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers in this 2006 novel was both his salvation and a living hell.

Julie Otsuka's commanding debut novel from 2002 paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view within a family, she has created a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion.

Francis Mayes buys and renovates an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside, describing all in her 1996 book.  An accomplished cook and food writer, she brings the reader along as she discovers the beauty and simplicity of life in Italy. 

A popular concept since its debut in 200, the tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like wildfire.

In this highly acclaimed contribution to African-American literature from 1937, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person—no mean feat for a Black woman in the ‘30’s.  Janie’s quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life’s joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace.

In Botswana, Precious Ramotswe is drawn to her profession to “help people with the problems in their lives in this first novel in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, published in 1998.

A delightfully irreverent jaunt from 1997 around the unparalleled floating nation (also known as Britain) by popular travel writer Bill Bryson.