Adult Fiction Good Reads

Books with wide appeal and topics that will generate discussion.  These books are found in the Fiction section which is arranged alphabetically by author's last name. Click on the title to find it in the catalog.

The 19th Wife – David Ebershoff

The story of Ann Eliza Young's crusade against polygamy intertwines with a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. 

Alice I Have Been – Melanie Benjamin

Her name is Alice Liddell Hargreaves, but to the world she’ll always be known simply as “Alice,” the girl who followed the White Rabbit into a wonderland looks back on a life of intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy.

Bloodroot – Amy Greene

An Appalachian family is haunted by trauma, great gifts, and greater tragedies, In the middle is a beautiful, free-spirited woman whose choices drastically shape the lives of those who love her.

City of Thieves – David Benioff

During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake.

Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese  

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Dear and Glorious Physician – Taylor Caldwell  

Today St. Luke is known as the author of the third Gospel of the New Testament, but two thousand years ago he was Lucanus, a Greek, a man who loved, knew the emptiness of bereavement, and later traveled through the hills and wastes of Judea asking, "What manner of man was my Lord?"

Every Last Cuckoo – Kate Maloy

When a variety of wayward souls come seeking shelter in Sarah's own big, empty home, her past comes full circle. As this unruly flock forms a family of sorts, they—with Sarah—nurture and protect one another, all the while discovering their unsuspected strengths and courage.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer

Oskar Snell is on a mission to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  By the same author: Everything Is Illuminated.    

Firefly Lane – Kristin Hannah

Inseparable best friends Kate and Tully, two young women who, despite their very different lives, have vowed to be there for each other forever, have been true to their promise for thirty years, until events and choices in their lives tear them apart.

The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She is taken in by the dock master and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday, "Nell" sets out to trace her real identity. 

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer

January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name. 

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel – Jeannette Walls

Lily Casey Smith, this novel's feisty Texas protagonist, is a frontier teacher, a rancher, a rodeo rider, a poker player, and bootlegger. In Half Broke Horses, she survives droughts, tornadoes, floods, poverty, a bigamous husband, and whatever else fate can throw against her. 

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.  

The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova

A young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of--a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history. By the same author: The Swan Thieves. 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford

 – Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe. 

The Lace Reader – Brunonia Barry

Can you read your future in a piece of lace? All of the Whitney women can. But the last time Towner read, it killed her sister and nearly robbed Towner of her own sanity. Vowing never to read lace again, her resolve is tested when faced with the mysterious, unsolvable disappearance of her beloved Great Aunt Eva, Salem's original Lace Reader.

The Lady of the Rivers – Philippa Gregory

When the death of Joan of Arc shows her the dangers faced by strong women, Jacquetta, a psychic descendant of a river goddess, studies alchemy and becomes the secret wife of Richard Woodville before returning to the court of Henry VI. By the same author: The Other Boleyn Girl. 

The Last Time I Saw You – Elizabeth Berg

As onetime classmates meet up over the course of a weekend for their fortieth high school reunion, they discover things that will irrevocably affect the rest of their lives. 

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

 After a shipwreck, a sixteen-year old Indian boy finds himself trapped on a lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.     

Lone Wolf – Jodi Picoult

 A prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, gets a frantic phone call: his dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara. With her father's chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father's organs. 

Love Walked In – Marisa De Los Santos

 Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But Cornelia's life truly changes one snowy day when she finds troubled 11-year-old Clare Hobbes standing before her. 

Monsters of Templeton – Lauren Groff

In the wake of a disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in storybook Templeton, New York, looking to hide in the one place to which she swore she’d never come back. 

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

A dark, dystopian tale of three former friends, all alumni of a British boarding school, who unravel a horrifying secret about their almamater.

Noah’s Compass – Anne Tyler  

Liam Pennywell is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new and spare condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. 

Not My Daughter – Barbara Delinsky

When Susan Tate’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Lily, announces she is pregnant, Susan is stunned.  A single mother, she has struggled to do everything right.  Then comes word of two more pregnancies among other high school juniors who happen to be Lily’s best friends. 

Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout

At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her.     

Only Time Will Tell – Jeffrey Archer

A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school. But then his unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again.

The Paris Wife – Paula McClain

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

Pope Joan – Donna Woolfolk Cross

For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die–Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter.

The Red Garden – Alice Hoffman

A transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions. At the center of everyone’s life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look. By the same author: The Story Sisters, Incantation, Indigo, The River King. 

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other. By the same author: No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses. 

Room: A Novel – Emma Donoghue

Told entirely in the language of five-year-old Jack, describes the bond between parent and child, and what it means to journey from one world to another.   

Rules of Civility – Amor Towles

 The story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year- old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in 1938 in search of a brighter future.

Sarah’s Key – Tatiana de Rosnay

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv' roundup. Paris, May 2002: Journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. By the same author: A Secret Kept.

Save Me – Lisa Scottoline

 When an explosion rips through the nearly empty cafeteria of a Reesburgh (Pa.) Elementary School, lunch mother Rose McKenna leads two girls to safety before racing to rescue her own daughter, Melly. But Rose soon learns that she may face both civil and criminal charges for her heroics because one of the girls she saved was seriously injured in the resulting fire that killed three school staff members. By the same author: Think Twice, Look Again.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel – Beth Hoffman

Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell.

The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In the postwar calm of 1945 Barcelona, ten-year-old Daniel Sempere awakes from a nightmare and, to his horror, realizes that he can no longer remember the face of his deceased mother. In an effort to divert his son's attention from this sharply felt fear and loss, his father, a rare-book dealer, first swears Daniel to secrecy, then takes him to a clandestine library where Daniel is allowed to select a single book.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See

In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

Someone Knows My Name – Lawrence Hill

Kidnapped as a child from Africa, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice there prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people.

State of Wonder: a novel – Ann Patchett

Marina Singh, a big pharma researcher, is sent by her married boss/lover to the deepest, darkest corner of the Amazon to investigate the death of her colleague, Anders Eckman, who had been dispatched to check on the progress of the incommunicado Dr. Annick Swenson, a rogue scientist on the cusp of developing a fertility drug. By the same author: Run.

Still Alice – 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.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski

A tale reminiscent of "Hamlet" that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan C. Bradley

It is the summer of 1950, and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events. For Flavia, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. First in a series.

Thirteenth Tale – Diana Setterfield

Margaret Lea works in her father's antiquarian bookshop where her fascination for the biographies of the long-dead has led her to write them herself. She gets a letter from one of the most famous authors of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter. She is old and ailing, and at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Born out of wedlock, Mariam was forced to marry 40-year-old Rasheed when she was only 15. Then, 18 years later, her still childless husband angrily takes an even younger wife. Mariam and her "sister/daughter," Laila’s abject situation leaves them no emotional space for idle philosophizing; their resistance is from the very core of their being. By the same author: The Kite Runner.

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

Remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap.

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri

 – Eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague – Geraldine Brooks

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. By the same author: March, People of the Book.    

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose.