Title Author Recommended By:
11/22/1963 Stephen King Ms. Libby
12 Years A Slave Solomon Northup Ms. Anderson
The 100-Year-Old Man Who
Climbed Out the Window and
Disappeared Jonas Jonasson Ms. Quintanilla
The Adoration of Jenna Fox Mary Pearson Ms. Korba
The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
Ms. Panlilio and Ms.
Payne
Angels and Demons Dan Brown Ms. Pacatte
Black Swan Green David Mitchell Ms. Anderson
The Blind Side: Evolution of a
Game Michael Lewis Mr. Sommers
Blindness Jose Saramago Ms. Pacatte
The Book Thief Markus Zusak Ms. Mendez
Bottlemania Elizabeth Royte Mr. Forte
Brain on Fire Susannah Calahan Ms. Peters
The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao Junot Diaz Mr. Sutphin
Buck M.K. Asante Mr. Sutphin
Cannibal Reign Thomas Koloniar Ms. Libby
The Catcher In the Rye J.D. Salinger Ms. McCormick
The Coke Machine: The Dirty
Truth Behind the World's
Favorite Soft Drink Michael Blanding Ms. Long
Code Name Verity Elizabeth Wean Ms. Anderson
The Color Purple Alice Walker Ms. Balding
The Coming Plague: Newly
Emerging Diseases in a
World Out of Balance Laurie Garrett Mr. Quach
Counting Coup: A True Story
of Basketball and Honor on
The Little Big Horn Larry Colton Mr. Sommers
The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon Mr. Heuer and Ms. Peters
The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown Ms. Pacatte
Dead Mountain: The Untold
True Story of the Dyatlov
Pass Incident Donnie Eichar Ms. Anderson
The Dip: A Little Book That
Teaches You When to Quit
(and when to stick) Seth Godin Mr. Molnar
Follow the Rabbit Proof
Fence Doris Pilkington Ms. Anderson
God Help the Child Toni Morrison Mr. Thomas
The Good Food Revolution Will Allen Ms. Anderson
The Help Kathryn Stockett Ms. Pacatte
The Historian Elizabeth Kostova Mr. Heuer
Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Douglas Adams Mr. Thomas
How to Be Manly Maureen O'Leary Wanket Ms. Mendez
How to Lie with Statistics Darrell Huff Ms. McManus
Invictus: Nelson Mandela and
the Game That Made a
Nation John Carlin Mr. Sommers
Joseph Smith: A Rough
Stone Rolling Richard Lyman Bushman Ms. Long
The Jungle Upton Sinclair Mr. Mohun
Just Mercy: A Story of
Justice and Redemption Bryan Stevenson Ms. Harkness
Mi Planta de Naranja-Lima
José Mauro de
Vasconcelos Ms. Bernales
Mountains Beyond
Mountains: The Quest of Dr.
Paul Farmer, a Man Who
Would Cure the World Tracy Kidder Ms. Hubbell
My Struggle Vol 1 Karl Ove Knausgaard Mr. Sutphin
Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave Frederick Douglass Dr. Mullane
On Such a Full Sea Chang-rae Lee Ms. Mahoney
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde Ms. Bernales
Ready Player One Ernest Cline Ms. Libby
Refusing Heaven Jack Gilbert Ms. Bernales
Slam Nick Hornby Ms. Libby
Tattoos on the Heart: The
Power of Boundless
Compassion Gregory Boyle Ms. Peters
The Time Traveller's Wife Audrey Niffenegger Ms. Libby
Tinkers Paul Harding Mr. Sutphin
Touching the Void: The True
Story of One Man's
Miraculous Survival Joe Simpson Mr. Rubey
Tuesdays With Morrie: An
Old Man, a Young Man, and
Life's Greatest Lesson Mitch Albom Mr. Sommers
Unbroken: A World War II
Story of Survival, Resilience,
and Redemption Laura Hillenbrand Mr. Headley
Walk in Their Shoes: Can
One Person Change the
World? Jim Ziolkowski Mr. Sommers
West With the Night Beryl Markham Ms. Anderson
Would You Baptize an
Extraterrestrial? ...and Other
Questions from the
Astronomers' In-box at the
Vatican Observatory
G. Consolmagno and P.
Mueller Br. David
Zoot Suit Luis Valdez Ms. Mendez
Summary Length
A high school English teacher
goes back in time to prevent
the assassination of JFK.
866
pages
The unforgettable memoir of
a freeman kidnapped and
sold into slavery.
156
pages
Desperate to avoid his 100th
birthday party, Allan Karlsson
climbs out the window of his
room at the nursing home
and heads to the nearest bus
station, intending to travel as
far as his pocket money will
take him.
400
pages
Who is Jenna Fox?
Seventeen-year-old Jenna
has been told that is her
name. She has just awoken
from a coma, they tell her,
and she is still recovering
from a terrible accident in
which she was involved a
year ago. But what happened
before that? Jenna doesn't
remember her life. Or does
she? And are the memories
really hers?
288
pages
Paulo Coelho's masterpiece
tells the mystical story of
Santiago, an Andalusian
shepherd boy who yearns to
travel in search of a worldly
treasure.
208
pages
A murder mystery introducing
an ancient secret
brotherhood.
736
pages
Thirteen chapters provide a
monthly snapshot of Jason
Taylor's life in small-town
England from January 1982
to January 1983. Whether the
13-year-old narrator is battling
his stammer or trying to
navigate the social hierarchy
of his schoolmates or
watching the slow
disintegration of his parents'
marriage, he relates his story
in a voice that is achingly true
to life.
304
pages
Our protagonist becomes the
priceless package of size,
speed, and agility necessary
to guard the quarterback's
greatest vulnerability: his blind
side.
352
pages
A city is hit by an epidemic of
'white blindness' which spares
no one. Authorities confine
the blind to an empty mental
hospital, but there the criminal
element holds everyone
captive. A magnificent
parable of loss and
disorientation and a vivid
evocation of the horrors of the
twentieth century.
352
pages
Liesel Meminger is a foster
girl living outside of Munich,
who scratches out a meager
existence for herself by
stealing when she encounters
something she can’t
resist–books.
576
pages
A study of the impact bottled
water has ecologically and
economically.
266
pages
When twenty-four-year-old
Susannah Cahalan woke up
alone in a hospital room,
strapped to her bed and
unable to move or speak, she
had no memory of how she’d
gotten there. Days earlier,
she had been on the
threshold of a new, adult life:
at the beginning of her first
serious relationship and a
promising career at a major
New York newspaper. Now
she was labeled violent,
psychotic, a flight risk. What
happened? Susannah tells
the astonishing true story of
her descent into madness,
her family’s inspiring faith in
her, and the lifesaving
diagnosis that nearly didn’t
happen.
288
pages
Oscar is a sweet but
disastrously overweight
ghetto nerd who—from the
New Jersey home he shares
with his old world mother and
rebellious sister—dreams of
becoming the Dominican
J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of
all, finding love.
339
pages
MK’s memoir is an
unforgettable tale of how one
precocious, confused kid
educated himself through
gangs, rap, mystic cults,
ghetto philosophy, and,
eventually, books. It is an
inspiring tribute to the power
of literature to heal and
redeem us.
272
pages
Cannibal Reign follows the
fortunes of a small band of
survivors, as they make their
way across a nightmare
landscape populated by
bestial, flesh-eating savages
after an asteroid strike
destroys America.
512
pages
“...a good ‘coming of age’
tale" _ Ms. McCormick
224
pages
Eye-opening information
about a product that is
ubiquitous in our lives.
384
pages
Code Name Verity is a
visceral read of danger,
resolve, and survival that
shows just how far true
friends will go to save each
other.
368
pages
The Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel that tells the story of
two sisters through their
correspondence.
300
pages
Laurie Garrett takes you on a
fifty-year journey through the
world's battles with microbes.
768
pages
Counting Coup is a sobering
exposé of a part of our
society long since cut out of
the American dream.
434
pages
Told from the perspective of a
young, autistic boy, this book
will help you understand what
it means to walk in someone
else’s shoes.
226
pages
Dan Brown's novel is a
thrilling masterpiece—from its
opening pages to its stunning
conclusion.
597
pages
In February 1959, a group of
nine experienced hikers in the
Russian Ural Mountains died
mysteriously on an elevation
known as Dead Mountain. A
fascinating portrait of the
young hikers and a skillful
interweaving of their story and
the author's investigations,
here for the first time is the
real story of what happened
that night on Dead Mountain .
288
pages
A little book with a big punch. 96 pages
This extraordinary story of
courage and faith is based on
the actual experiences of
three girls who fled from the
repressive life of Moore River
Native Settlement.
160
pages
"Another thoughtful novel by
Morrison. I can’t wait to talk to
students about it” - Mr.
Thomas
The Good Food Revolution is
the story of Will's personal
journey, the lives he has
touched, and a grassroots
movement that is changing
the way our nation eats.
304
pages
Kathryn Stockett creates
three extraordinary women
whose determination to start
a movement of their own
forever changes a town.
544
pages
Breathtakingly suspenseful
and beautifully written, The
Historian is the story of a
young woman plunged into a
labyrinth where the secrets of
her family's past connect to
an inconceivable evil: the
dark fifteenth-century reign of
Vlad the Impaler and a time-
defying pact that may have
kept his awful work alive
through the ages.
909
pages
"Simply the funniest book I
have ever read." - Mr.
Thomas
224
pages
How To Be Manly is more
than a coming of age story--
it's a gritty quest full of
heart...a sharp, comic novel
about trying to do the right
thing… even when you’re not
sure what that is.
354
pages
"There is terror in numbers,"
writes Darrell Huff in How to
Lie with Statistics . And
nowhere does this terror
translate to blind acceptance
of authority more than in the
slippery world of averages,
correlations, graphs, and
trends. Huff sought to break
through "the daze that follows
the collision of statistics with
the human mind" with this
slim volume, first published in
1954.
144
pages
An arresting narrative of the
birth of the Mormon Church,
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone
Rolling also brilliantly
evaluates the prophet’s bold
contributions to Christian
theology and his cultural
place in the modern world.
288
pages
An arresting narrative of the
birth of the Mormon Church,
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone
Rolling also brilliantly
evaluates the prophet’s bold
contributions to Christian
theology and his cultural
place in the modern world.
784
pages
A must-read -- an ardent
activist, champion of political
reform, novelist, and
progressive journalist, Upton
Sinclair is perhaps best
known today for The Jungle
— his devastating exposé of
the meat-packing industry. A
protest novel he privately
published in 1906, the book
was a shocking revelation of
intolerable labor practices and
unsanitary working conditions
in the Chicago stockyards.
304
pages
Just Mercy examines who is
on death row in America,
including children tried as
adults, and the legacy of
racism, poverty and inequality
that underlies the
disproportion of people of
color who are executed.
352
pages
"A beautiful book about
growing up too fast. My
favorite book in my early
teens. Warning: It's a
weeper." - Ms. Bernales
178
pages
"This totally inspiring book will
force you to consider how far
you are willing to go to right
the wrongs of our world.” -
Ms. Hubbell
332
pages
An audacious, addictive, and
profoundly surprising
international literary
sensation; unafraid of the big
issues--death, love, art, fear--
and yet committed to the
intimate details of life as it is
lived, My Struggle is an
essential work of
contemporary literature.
448
pages
Former slave, impassioned
abolitionist, brilliant writer,
newspaper editor and
eloquent orator whose
speeches fired the abolitionist
cause, Frederick Douglass
led an astounding life. 96 pages
Fan, a female fish-tank diver,
leaves her home in the B-Mor
settlement (once known as
Baltimore), when the man she
loves mysteriously
disappears. Fan’s journey to
find him takes her out of the
safety of B-Mor, through the
anarchic Open Counties,
where crime is rampant with
scant governmental oversight,
and to a faraway charter
village, in a quest that will
soon become legend to those
she left behind.
432
pages
Wilde forged a devastating
portrait of the effects of evil
and debauchery on a young
aesthete in late-19th-century
England.
176
pages
The race is on, and if Wade's
going to survive, he'll have to
win—and confront the real
world he's always been so
desperate to escape.
384
pages
Jack Gilbert writes poetry
about the mundane in all its
beauty. He talks about love,
sadness, and morality in
simple language that moves
the heart.
112
pages
Just when everything is
coming together for Sam, his
girlfriend Alicia drops a
bombshell. Make that ex-
girlfriend-- because by the
time she tells him she's
pregnant, they've already
called it quits. Sam does not
want to be a teenage dad. His
mom had him at sixteen and
has made it very clear how
having a baby so young
interrupted her life. There's
only one person Sam can turn
to--his hero, skating legend
Tony Hawk. Sam believes the
answers to life's hurdles can
be found in Hawk's
autobiography.
304
pages
An amazing story that
chronicles Homeboy
Industries, a gang-
intervention program in Los
Angeles — this book reminds
us how people can make a
difference in our world.
240
pages
An enchanting debut and a
spellbinding tale of fate and
belief in the bonds of love.
546
pages
An old man lies dying.
Confined to bed in his living
room, he sees the walls
around him begin to collapse,
the windows come loose from
their sashes, and the ceiling
plaster fall off in great chunks,
showering him with a lifetime
of debris: newspaper
clippings, old photographs,
wool jackets, rusty tools, and
the mangled brass works of
antique clocks. Soon, the
clouds from the sky above
plummet down on top of him,
followed by the stars, till the
black night covers him like a
shroud. He is hallucinating, in
death throes from cancer and
kidney failure...
191
pages
"Joe Simpson and his
climbing partner, Simon
Yates, had just reached the
top of a 21,000-foot peak in
the Andes when disaster
struck. Simpson plunged off
the vertical face of an ice
ledge, breaking his leg. In the
hours that followed, darkness
fell and a blizzard raged as
Yates tried to lower his friend
to safety. Finally, Yates was
forced to cut the rope,
moments before he would
have been pulled to his own
death..."
218
pages
"Albom writes a lot of great
books, but I think this is the
best. It is about love and
dying." - Mr. Sommers
192
pages
The story of an unbreakable
human spirit that makes the
reader feel that there’s
nothing life can throw at you
that you can’t overcome. Also
recommended by Arlo Rudy,
Class of 2015.
528
pages
Walk in Their Shoes is the
powerful, personal story of
Jim Ziolkowski's inspiring
mission to change the world
one community at a time.
272
pages
Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the
middle of England, Beryl
Markham and her father
moved to Kenya when she
was a girl, and she grew up
with a zebra for a pet; horses
for friends; baboons, lions,
and gazelles for neighbors.
She made money by scouting
elephants from a tiny plane.
And she would spend most of
the rest of her life in East
Africa as an adventurer, a
racehorse trainer, and an
aviatrix—she became the first
person to fly nonstop from
Europe to America, the first
woman to fly solo east to west
across the Atlantic. Hers was
indisputably a life full of
adventure and beauty.
293
pages
Witty and thought provoking,
two Vatican astronomers
shed provocative light on
some of the strange places
where religion and science
meet.
304
pages
Zoot Suit is a play that tells
the story of Henry Reyna and
the 38th Street Gang, who
were tried for the Sleepy
Lagoon murder in Los
Angeles, during World War II.
214
pages