Let's start the voting!!!! Oh you have until the day before our meeting, January 13th, 11pm :)
Honolulu
by: Alan Brennert
From the bestselling author of Moloka’i, comes a rich, unforgettable story of a young “picture bride” who journeys to Hawai'i in 1914 in search of a better life. After escaping her oppressive family and in Korea, Jin makes her way to a strange and beautiful small capital just as it’s beginning its maturity into the great multicultural city it is today. But paradise has its dark side, whether it’s the daily struggle for survival in Honolulu’s tenements, or a crime that will become the most infamous in the islands’ history...
With passionate knowledge of people and places far off the tourist track, Honolulu is a spellbinding tale of four women in a new world, united by dreams, disappointment, sacrifices, and friendship.
A Version of the Truth
by: Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman
In Literacy and Longing in L.A., hailed as "the most delightful read of the year" by Liz Smith in the New York Post, authors Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack captivated readers with a brilliantly imagined first novel. Now Kaufman and Mack return, introducing a character with a unique voice you'll never forget: Cassie Shaw, an irrepressible young woman who reinvents herself --- with unexpected consequences --- in a funny, wise, and utterly original novel about friendship, love, wildlife, and other forces of nature.
In the wilds of Topanga Canyon, Cassie is right at home --- with the call of birds, the sound of wind in the trees, the harmony of a world without people. But everywhere else, life is a little harder for Cassie. Her mother believes in Big Foot. Her wisecracking pet parrot is a drama queen. And at the age of thirty, newly single and without a college degree, Cassie desperately needs a decent paycheck. Which is why, against all her principles, she lies on her resumé for an office job at an elite university --- and then finds herself employed in academia by two professors who are as rare as the birds she covets.
One of her new bosses is Professor William Conner, a sexy, handsome, cheerfully aristocratic expert in animal behavior. Soon, under Conner's charismatic tutelage, Cassie carefully begins her personal transformation while meeting the kind of people who don't flock to wildlife preserves --- from impossibly brilliant academics to adorably spoiled college boys. But her future --- and unlikely new career --- is teetering on one unbearable untruth. And Cassie's masquerade is about to come undone... in a chain of events that will transform her life --- and the lives of those around her --- forever.
Still Alice
by: Lisa Genova
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, STILL ALICE captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...
Reminiscent of A BEAUTIFUL MIND, ORDINARY PEOPLE and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, STILL ALICE packs a powerful emotional punch and marks the arrival of a strong new voice in fiction.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by: Cheryl Strayed
At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State --- and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, WILD powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened and ultimately healed her.
