The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Tuesday, September 15 at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Library Meeting Room

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.

With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

A Ticket to Ride by Paula McLain
Tuesday, October 20 at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Library Meeting Room

In the long, hot Illinois summer of 1973, insecure, motherless Jamie falls under the dangerous spell of her older, more worldly cousin Fawn, who's come to stay with Jamie and her uncle as penance for committing an "unmentionable act." It is a time of awakenings and corruptions, of tragedy and loss, as Jamie slowly discovers the extent to which Fawn will use anything and anyone to further her own ends—and recognizes, perhaps too late, her own complicity in the disaster that takes shape around them.

Note: We are so very fortunate to have Ms. McLain coming to speak to us that evening.  I do hope that everyone else is as excited as I am at our good fortune in having another author come to speak to us during this session.

And Ladies Of The Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer
Tuesday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Library Meeting Room

"A great novel that is American to its core...so gently memorable, so bursting with life, that those who abandon themselves to its pages will find it claiming a permanent place close to their hearts." --New York Daily News "A warm, evocative, often hilarious picture of society, culture, politics and family life." --Atlanta Constitution "A warmly human story...never flags from first page to last." --Publishers Weekly A groundbreaking bestseller with two and a half million copies in print, "...And Ladies of the Club" centers on the members of a book club and their struggles to understand themselves, each other, and the tumultuous world they live in. A true classic, it is sure to enchant, enthrall, and intrigue readers for years to come. "It is hard to think of a better place to spend the summer than in AHelen Hooven Santmyer's? world." --Cosmopolitan Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Tuesday, December 15 at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Library Meeting Room

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life on his family's farm in remote northern Wisconsin where they raise and train an extraordinary breed of dog. But when tragedy strikes, Edgar is forced to flee into the vast neighboring wilderness, accompanied by only three yearling pups. Struggling for survival, Edgar comes of age in the wild, and must face the choice of leaving forever or revealing the terrible truth behind what has happened. A riveting family saga as well as a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is destined to become a modern classic.

We will meet Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Library Meeting Room
October 20, November 17, December 15, January 19 and February 16

Here’s a list of some of the titles we’ll be choosing from for the remainder of Fall and Winter:

Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.

Miss American Pie by Margaret Sartor

Set against the backdrop of the deep South in the 1970s, Miss American Pie is the unforgettable account of Margaret Sartor’s life from age twelve to eighteen. A raw document crafted from diaries, notebooks, and letters, this deeply personal yet universally appealing story astonishes with its candor. Young Margaret moves with ease between the seemingly trivial concerns of hairstyles and boys to more profound questions of faith and meaning. By turns funny and poignant, heartbreaking and profound, she tackles all of the decade’s issues—desegregation, drugs, the sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and the spread of charismatic evangelical Christianity—with humor, frankness, and unexpected insight.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

When high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. When Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.