True story of the Detroit sportswriter who reconnects with his college professor when he learns the man is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. The book is a chronicle of their final lessons together.

On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.

Steve Allen's humorous and provocative examination of contemporary thought--or lack of it--probes the depths of mass ignorance in thinking, speech, and actions that predominate today's society.

Ambrose tells the extraordinary story of one of the most courageous expeditions in U.S. history--the trek of Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark across the uncharted territory of the American west.

Asimov chronicles the development of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future--a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.

In M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link, former magician's apprentice Skeeve tumbles up the corporate ladder, but that doesn't keep him from sleuthing around some dangerous dimensions. And in Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections, Skeeve's demon cohort, Aahz, leaves in a huff, and Skeeve finds him in the worst neighborhood in the galaxy.

A coast-to-coast bestseller in hardcover, this suspenseful thriller about the perilous consequences of sex with an alluring stranger is Baisden's hottest book ever.

Peninsula of Lies is nonfiction mystery, set in a haunting gothic locale and peopled by fascinating and eccentric characters. Its hero and heroine is Dawn Langley Simmons, a British writer who lived in Charleston, South Carolina, during the 1960s and became the center of one of the most unusual sexual scandals.

A married couple returns home from the opera to discover that their home has been burglarized and everything they own, down to the toilet paper roll and the casserole in the oven, have vanished. The novel explores what happens to the couple suddenly freed of all their worldly possessions.

This New York Times bestseller recounts the author's adventures in Savannah, where he encounters not just the interesting locals, but stumbles into a murder mystery as well.

In Dublin, a disparate group assembles for an introductory Italian course held in a drab classroom every Tuesday and Thursday. For this evening class, and their teacher, dreams of Italy guide them to new friendships, to new understandings of themselves, and ultimately, on a magical viaggio to Italia itself.

In Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires but start them--to burn books.

Five different women, residents of exclusive Prince George County, Maryland, reveal the humorous twists and turns of their moneyed lives in tales of high drama, social climbing, infidelity, and family secrets.

While in Paris, Robert Langdon learns the curator of the Louvre has been murdered, his body surrounded by bizarre ciphers. As Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu attempt to decipher the clues, they realize the riddles are connected to Da Vinci's works and may be linked to a mystery that stretches deep into the history of the Catholic Church.

A Harvard symbologist analyzes a mysterious symbol seared to the chest of murdered physicist and discovers evidence of the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood to carry out its vendetta against the Catholic Church.

Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.

Pat Buchanan's unflinching look at the increasing decline in Western culture and power maintains that the melting pot will soon become a salad bowl and that the impact upon American society will be devastating.

An outstanding tale of the child-hero Ender Wiggin, who must fight a desperate battle against a deadly alien race if mankind is to survive.

This autobiography tells the story of a young boy growing up during and after the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The boy must overcome the stigma of being labeled a member of the "landlord" class, but eventually triumphs as the result of the education he is allowed to complete after the death of Mao.

History and fiction merge seamlessly in Chevalier's luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Through the eyes of 16-year-old Griet, the world of 1660s Holland comes alive in this richly imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings.

An extraordinary story exquisitely told, Chevalier's "The Lady and the Unicorn" weaves history and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry that rivals in grace and grandeur the masterpiece that inspired it.

In this searing tale, Seaman Marlow recounts his journey to the dark heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the elusive Mr. Kurtz. Far from civilization as he knows it, he comes to reassess not only his own values, but also those of nature and society. For in this heart of darkness, it is the fearsome face of human savagery that becomes most visible.

Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the extraordinary family to which they were born.

In the spring of 1793, eighteen-year-old Nancy Randolph, the fetching daughter of one of the greatest of the great Virginia tobacco planters, was accused, along with her brother-in-law, of killing her newborn son. This gripping account of murder, infanticide, prostitution charges, moral decline, and heroism that played out in the intimate lives of the nation's Founding Fathers is as riveting and revealing as any current scandal -- in or out of Washington.

A young girl battles society's expectations as she strives to be educated in this novel based on the legend of the ninth century woman who rose to the position of Pope.

The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

Set in the 1800s, this is a story of a young woman in the frontier west. Mattie Spenser marries young to the handsomest man in her town. Mattie is surprised at his sudden interest in her, thinking herself too homely for his attention, but the whirlwind wedding and quick packing of belongings for the trip westward leaves little time for contemplation. Mattie soon finds the reasons for her lover's interest. Hard lessons in life follow. A great story told in the first person diary format.

Mentioned only briefly in Genesis, Diamant imagines Dinah's life story, from her loving upbringing by Jacob's wives in the red tent, to the tragic events hinted at in the Bible and their aftermath.

Captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.

Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich examines what it is like to live as one of the working poor. By taking a series of low-paying, unskilled jobs and trying to find food and housing, the author forces readers to consider life as a member of this working class.

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory. [Excerpt from Amazon.com]

Emma Bovary is a bored and unhappy middle-class wife whose general dissatisfaction with life leads her to act out her romantic fantasies and embark on an ultimately disastrous love affair.

A small town in present day West Virginia is suddenly thrown back in time to 1632 Germany--right in the middle of the Thirty Years War.

Visiting Italy with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional lower-class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England she becomes engaged to the supercilious Cecil Vyse, but finds herself increasingly torn between the expectations of the world in which she moves and the passionate yearnings of her heart.

The grim harshness of a West Virginia coal town is the setting for this well-written novel. The town of Annadel must deal with the company that now controls it before all remnants of the lives that they once had are lost. A fictional account of a true story of the uprising of 10,000 miners against their company, hired thugs, and ultimately the US government.

Banana Rose, the chosen name of the unique and searching Nell, lives the idyllic life in the Taos communes of Arizona. Having met the love of her life, she follows her husband, Gauguin, back to his home in Minnesota where love and life become question marks rather than answers.

Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of G. Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them.

Out on parole from a conviction of murdering her husband, Niki Fife hires PI Kinsey Millhone to follow a trail leading to the real killer.

Badger's Drift is the ideal English village, complete with vicar, bumbling local doctor, and kindly spinster with a nice line in homemade cookies. But when the spinster dies suddenly, her best friend kicks up an unseemly fuss, loud enough to attract the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. And when Barnaby and his eager-beaver deputy start poking around, they uncover a swamp of ugly scandals and long-suppressed resentments seething below the picture-postcard prettiness.

A Japanese-American fisherman's 1954 murder trial becomes the backdrop of a story that follows a doomed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl, a simmering land dispute, and the wartime internment of San Piedro's Japanese residents.

Narrated by a 15-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, this dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of processing emotions.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist offers an intimate portrait of Engine 40, Ladder 35 on the Upper West Side of New York City, which lost 12 men in the World Trade Center attack. Halberstam tells a story that is about the individuals themselves, as well as the effect this cataclysmic event has had on the victims' families, their surviving colleagues, and their community.

This novel will surely lead to great discussion in any group. Jane Hamilton explores the lives of Alice, Howard and Theresa, three people whose lives are brought together tragically by the death of Theresa's youngest child. An Oprah pick.

A true story about a wealthy lawyer taking on one of the most difficult and costly cases of his life. A large company has knowingly and intentfully tainted the drinking water of the poor people of a small town in Massachusetts. Reading this book will bring nice discussions of the American legal system, corporate responsibility, and the ethics of law.

It was just a test . . .But something had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. What was to have been a standard ten-day survival test had suddenly become an indefinite life-or-death nightmare.Now they were stranded somewhere in the universe, beyond contact with Earth . . . at the other end of a tunnel in the sky. This small group of young men and women, divested of all civilized luxuries and laws, were being forced to forge a future of their own . . . a strange future in a strange land where sometimes not even the fittest could survive.

In the autumn of 1788, amid the moors and glens of the Scottish Lowlands, two brothers and two sisters each embark on a painful journey of discovery. Jamie and Evan McKie both want their father Alec's flocks and lands, yet only one brother will inherit Glentrool. Leana and Rose McBride both yearn to catch the eye of the same handsome lad, yet only one sister will be his bride. A thorny love triangle emerges, plagued by lies and deception, jealousy and desire, hidden secrets and broken promises.

Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion: a roughhewn, undersized horse with a sad little tail and knees that wouldn't straighten all the way. But, thanks to the efforts of three men, Seabiscuit became one of the most spectacular performers in sports history. The rags-to-riches horse emerged as an American cultural icon, drawing an immense following and becoming the single biggest newsmaker of 1938 -- receiving more coverage than FDR or Hitler. Laura Hillenbrand beautifully renders this story of one horse's journey from also-ran to national luminary.

Tony Horwitz returns home from reporting on foreign war zones to discover a different conflict raging on his own doorstep. Though the Civil War ended in 1865, it remains very much aflame in the hearts and minds of Americans, Southerners in particular. Propelled by his own lifelong passion for the South and the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a ten-state journey of discovery--personal, historical, and sociological--to understand why he and millions of other Americans obsess on the 1860s.

In 1917, a Cherokee woman who leaves her community to marry a white man finds herself isolated and discriminated against as she tries to settle in to her new life.

Years ago, Mallory and Saxton's steamy affair ended with the birth of a child that Saxton-and his fiancée, TV superstar Deena Ingram-know nothing about. As this long-buried secret comes to the surface, Mallory and Saxton are forced to confront a scandalous past they longed to forget and an exciting future neither could have predicted...

Howarth's book describes the incredible story of Norwegian commando Jan Baalsrud's escape from Nazi pursuers. Though frostbitten and snowblind, Baalsrud makes his way to a small arctic village where he is aided in his escape by the heroic residents.