List+of+Books

// Farewell to Manzanar // (Houston) Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp—with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the nation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In."

// Night // (Wiesel) Night A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as //The Diary of Anne Frank//, //Night// awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

// The Book Thief // (Zusak) It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist- books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

// Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet // (Ford) Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, //Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet// is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. While "scholarshipping" at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship - and innocent love - that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart

// Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever // by [|Bill O'Reilly], [|Martin Dugard]

// Pensees // (Pascal) The Pensées is simply the compelling "Thoughts" of mathematician, physicist, and religious thinker Blaise Pascal. Originally intending to publish a book defending Christianity, Pascal died before he could complete it. The thoughts and ideas for his book were collected and complied, posthumously, and then published as the Pensées. Pascal's thoughts are as powerful as they are comprehensive. He discusses with great wonder and beauty the human condition, the incarnation, God, the meaning of life, revelation, and the paradoxes of Christianity. He passionately argues for the Christian faith, using both argumentation and his famous "Wager."

// The Cost of Discipleship // (Bonhoeffer) The Cost of Discipleship compels the reader to face himself and God in any situation. Bonhoeffer speaks of "Cheap Grace": preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. "Cheap Grace" is grace without discipleship. "Costly Grace" is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. "It's costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."

// The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare // (Chesterton) Drawing on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, G.K. Chesterton's ultimate masterpiece is firmly rooted in its time and place--turn-of-the-century London--but it defies temporal boundaries and literary classification. Published in 1908, it falls between surreal detective story and psychological thriller, almost bordering on science fiction--grandparent to BLADE RUNNER perhaps

// Screwtape Letters // (Lewis) Wormwood, a demon apprentice, must secure the damnation of a young man who's just become a Christian. He seeks the advice of an experienced devil, his uncle Screwtape. Their correspondence offers invaluable---and often humorous---insights on temptation, pride, and the ultimate victory of faith over evil forces. 160 pages, from Zondervan.

// Till We Have Faces // (Lewis) The unlovely Orual, eldest daughter of the King of Glome, becomes so consumed by her mingled love for and jealousy of her beautiful half-sister that she makes a complaint to the gods---and receives an answer she did not expect. This novel, possibly Lewis' best work and his personal favorite, is the compelling reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. 313 pages, softcover from Harcourt.

// Out of the Silent Planet // (C.S. Lewis) This book begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Once on the planet, however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity.

// Murder on the Orient Express // (or another Poirot novel) by Agatha Christie. When someone is murdered on a train, only detective Hercule Poirot is clever enough to discover “whodunit”.

// Hound of the Baskervilles // or 4 short stories by A. Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s foremost detective, Sherlock Holmes. When someone is murdered on the moor, only detective Sherlock Holmes is clever enough to discover “whodunit”. 4 Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, master of the macabre, known for “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

// The Big Sleep // (Raymond Chandler) When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

// Once Was Lost // (Sara Zarr) As a pastor's kid, it's hard not to buy into the idea of the perfect family, a loving God, and amazing grace. But lately, Sam has a lot of reasons to doubt. Her mother lands in rehab after a DUI, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. When a young girl in her small town goes missing, the local tragedy overlaps with Sam's personal one, and the already worn thread of faith holding her together begins to unravel. In her third novel, acclaimed author Sara Zarr examines the coexistence of affliction and hope, and what happens when everything you thought you believed—about God, your family, and yourself—is transformed.

// All Quiet on the Western Front // (Remarque) As with any book dealing with the horrors of war, it is not exactly a pleasant book to read. It is not supposed to be. It is full of violence and death and loss and a kind of perpetual suffering and terror that most of us have never and will never experience. What is so extraordinary about this book is the author's ability to so vividly place the reader right there on the front line with the main character.

// Jane Eyre // (Bronte) On the surface a fairly conventional Gothic romance (poor orphan governess is hired by rich, brooding Byronic hero-type), //Jane Eyre// hardly seems the stuff from which revolutions are made. But the story is very much about the nature of human freedom and equality, and if Jane was seen as something of a renegade in nineteenth-century England, it is because her story is that of a woman who struggles for self-definition and determination in a society that too often denies her that right. But self-determination does not mean untrammeled freedom for men or women. Rochester, that thorny masculine beast whom Jane eventually falls for, is a man who sets his own laws and manipulates the lives of those around him; before he can enter into a marriage of equals with Jane he must undergo a spiritual transformation. Should the lesson sound dry, it's not. //Jane Eyre// is full of drama: fires, storms, attempted murder, and a mad wife conveniently stashed away in the attic. This is very sexy stuff - another reason Victorian critics weren't quite sure what to make of it.

// Heidegger and a Hippo, // __or__ //Plato and a Platypus.// Here's a lively, hilarious, not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers. It's Philosophy 101 for those who know not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. (Philosophy)

// Hunger Games, Catching Fire, // and //Mockingjay// – (a trilogy by Suzanne Collins) The Hunger Games are an annual spectacle in which a group of children are forced by the government to fight one another to the death on TV. //The Hunger Games// is set in an unspecified future time when things have gone pretty spectacularly badly for humanity. We experience this ordeal through the eyes of Katniss, a resident of District 12, a harsh, cold region mostly given over to coal-mining. She is a passionate 16-year-old who hates the Capitol and is devoted to her family; she volunteers for the Games to take the place of her sister, whose name came up in the lottery. Katniss is a skilled hunter and sheer death with a bow and arrow. She doesn't like to kill. But she doesn't want to die either.

// True Grit // (Portis) Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross' father was shot and killed. Told through her eyes, True Grit is the story of how she and hard-drinking Marshal Rooster Cogburn set out to find and prosecute his murderer. //The Washington Post// calls it an "epic and a legend".

// Stitches // (Small) One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die. In //Stitches//, Small, the award-winning children’s illustrator and author, re-creates this terrifying event in a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. As the images painfully tumble out, one by one, we gain a ringside seat at a gothic family drama where David—a highly anxious yet supremely talented child—all too often became the unwitting object of his parents’ buried frustration and rage**.** Searing yet redemptive, this graphic memoir was a finalist for the National Book Award.

// Maus I or II // (Spiegelman) 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrated narrative of Holocaust survival. A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.

// Hunger of Memory // (Richard Rodriguez) is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum.

// Oliver Twist // (Dickens) This darkly satiric indictment of the social ills of Victorian London tells the story of a young orphan who becomes involved with a gang of criminals.

// Run, Baby, Run // by Nicky Cruz is the life story and Christian testimony of a Puerto Rican teenager who became leader of a notorious gang in New York. (Violence, mature themes)

// The Visitation // by Frank Peretti

Dreamhouse Kings series by Robert Liparulo

// The Help // by Kathryn Stockett

// Uncle Tom’s Cabin // by Harriet Beecher Stowe

// Book blurbs courtesy of GoodReads.com and Christian Books.com //