Date

Title

Author

Comments

Rating

March 20, 2008

The Senator's Wife

Sue Miller

A young mother strikes up an unexpected friendship with the wife of a retired Senator. She is drawn to this private, poised woman but comes to a final, terrible breach of trust that could ruin everything.

April 17, 2008

Plantation: A Lowcountry Tale

Dorothea Benton Frank

When Caroline Wimbley Levine returns to South Carolina to see about Mother, a maddeningly eccentric character, she discovers that something is different this time around. It lies somewhere in the distance between her and her mother - and in her understanding of what it means to come home.

May 22, 2008

Before You Know Kindness

Chris Bohjalien

This novel is a searing account of what happens when seemingly disparate issues of gun control, deer hunting, and vegetarianism combine after a terrible accident involving a gun that is accidentally fired.

June 19,2008

Keeping Faith

Jodi Picoult

A heart-wrenching custody battle over a young girl, Faith, after she starts to perform miracles and to show "stigmata", involuntary bleeding corresponding to Christ's wounds. Faith becomes the subject of interest for TV, media, journalists, rabbis, priests, and psychiatrists.

July 17,2008

My Sister's Keeper

Jodi Picoult

Anna was conceived as a 'designer' baby to save her sister from the certain death. After thirteen years of enduring procedures to keep her sister alive, Anna decides to fight for the right to have control of her own body.

August 21, 2008

Follow the Stars Home

Luanne Rice

Diane Robbins was left alone with a newborn baby because her husband could not accept a child that was not perfect. Her brother-in-law, the town pediatrician, stood by Diane and her exceptional daughter and hid his love for Diane.

September 18,2008

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver

The end of colonial rule in Africa is shown in microcosm through the tragicomic collapse of a Baptist missionary family. The mother and all four daughters take turns narrating and their distinctive voices are full of life.

October 16, 2008

Gilead

Marilynne Robinson

Gilead is a letter expressng the hopes and fears that a father, now in the twilight of his life, will never be able to share with his young son. The father shares memories and reflects on the meaning and purpose of faith.

November 20,2008

Meeting Canceled

December 18,2008

Run

Ann Patchett

Bernard Doyle, an Irish Catholic Bostonian politician, married, had one son, adopted two more — a pair of African-American brothers — and, four years later, lost his wife to cancer. Sixteen years afterh that, a random accident brings the boys' birth mother and her daughter back into the story.