Ehrenreich, Barbara
Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America

In an attempt to understand the lives of Americans earning near-minimum wages, Ehrenreich works as a waitress in Florida, a cleaning woman in Maine, and a sales clerk in Minnesota.

Jacobs, A. J.
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible

The author of Know It All documents his improbable adventure of living one year in literal compliance with biblical rules, a quest during which he adhered to famous and lesser-known scriptural laws, from being fruitful and multiplying to growing a beard and avoiding mixed-fiber clothing.

Kessler, Lauren 
Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family

Kessler's story of the Yasuis, a Japanese American family interned in a relocation camp during World War II, is an important example of the American experience, reflecting racism, hard work and endurance. Kessler follows the family from its first generation in the US to the descendents living throughout the country today. The text includes discussion questions for reading groups and an interview with Homer Yasui, son of the Yasui patriarch.

Krakauer, Jon
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Traces the events that surrounded the 1984 murder of a woman and her child by fundamentalist Mormons Ron and Dan Lafferty, exploring the belief systems and traditions that mark the faith's most extreme factions.

Larson, Erik 
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

A compelling account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 brings together the divergent stories of two very different men who played a key role in shaping the history of the event--visionary architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and Dr. Henry H. Holmes, an insatiable and charming serial killer who lured women to their deaths.

Mortenson, Greg
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace

A middle-grade adapted version of the New York Times bestseller about humanitarianism and providing Muslim children around the world with an education is enhanced with photos, maps, illustrations, and a special afterword by the author's daughter who worked with him as an advocate for the Pennies for Peace program.

Roach, Mary 
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.

Seierstad, Asne
The Bookseller of Kabul

Capturing the harsh realities of life in modern-day Afghanistan and plight of Afghan women, the Norwegian journalist provides a portrait of a committed Muslim man, a bookseller, and his family living in post-Taliban Kabul, Afghanistan.

Walls, Jeanette
The Glass Castle: A Memoir

The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities.

Alexie, Sherman
Flight

On the verge of committing an act of violence, a troubled, orphaned Indian teenager finds himself hurtled through time and into various bodies, before returning to himself, forever altered by his experiences.

Bohjalian, Chris
Trans-Sister Radio

With her daughter about to leave for college, forty something Alison Banks enrolls in a local college course to take her mind off things and finds herself falling for her instructor, Dana, a man who later confides that he wants to have a sex-change operation.

Boyle, T.C.
Tortilla Curtain

While leading their lives in their gated hilltop community in Los Angeles, Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher accidentally meet Mexican undocumented immigrants Candido and America Rincon, and their encounter brings them together in a relationship of error and misunderstanding.

Cather, Willa
My Antonia

A compassionate and gripping reflection on life and community in America through the life story of Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant woman living on the plains of Nebraska in the 1880s.

Cody, Robin
Ricochet River

Three teenagers growing up in Calamus, Oregon, in the 1960s--native American newcomer Jessie, star athlete Wade, and Wade's girlfriend, Lorna--struggle to escape the physical and mental confines of their small town.

Emmons, Cai (Oregon author)
His Mother’s Son

Her successful life as an emergency-room doctor unraveling as her young son's behavior becomes increasingly problematic, Jana Thomas remembers the past that she put out of her mind years earlier involving her violent younger brother and the parental role she assumed for his care.

Eugenides, Jeffrey
Middlesex

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her Grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

Ferris, Joshua
Then We Came to the End

The remaining employees at an office affected by a business downturn spend their time enjoying secret romances, elaborate pranks, and frequent coffee breaks, while trying to make sense of their only remaining "work," a mysterious pro-bono ad campaign.

Fisher, Karen
A Sudden Country

His life turned upside down by the deaths of his children from smallpox and desertion of his Nez Percé wife, Hudson's Bay Company trader James MacLaren joins a group of settlers headed west to Oregon in 1847 and encounters Lucy Mitchell, the wife of his employer, a woman who helps him confront his past, present, and future.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything, but beneath his young, handsome, rich exterior, lies a secret longing to be fulfilled. Considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest novels, The Great Gatsby is a riveting commentary on American Society in the 1920s.

Gloss, Molly (Oregon author)
The Jump-Off Creek

A dramatic novel detailing the trials and tribulations of a widowed homesteader against the backdrop of Oregon’s unforgiving and forbidding Blue Mountains.

Gruen, Sara
Water for Elephants

Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.

Haruf, Kent
Plainsong

From the unsettled lives of a small-town teacher struggling to raise two boys alone in the face of their mother's retreat from life, a pregnant teenage girl with nowhere to go, and two elderly bachelor farmers emerges a new vision of life and family as their diverse destinies intertwine.

Haruf, Kent
Eventide

(It is recommended that both Plainsong and Eventide be read sequentially.) A novel of small-town life in the high plains region around Holt, Colorado, follows the challenges, emotional upheaval, tragedies, and intertwined destinies of the local inhabitants as they cope with the changes they encounter.

Hosseini, Khaled
The Kite Runner

Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

Hosseini, Khaled 
A Thousand Splendid Suns

Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in war torn Kabul, incurring losses over the course of 30 years that test the limits of their strength and courage.

Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World

Irving, John
A Prayer for Owen Meany

Owen Meany hits a foul ball while playing baseball in the summer of 1953 that kills his best friend's mother, an accident that Owen is sure is the result of divine intervention.

Ishiguro, Kazuo
Never Let Me Go

A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.

Kallos, Stephanie
Broken for You

Margaret Hughes, a septuagenarian living in Seattle, takes in a series of boarders who help her cope with her illness, and whose lives become unexpectedly connected to each other.

Kesey, Ken (Oregon author)
Sometimes a Great Notion (set in Oregon)

When the union loggers of Wakonda go on strike, the Stamper family, a head-headed logging clan who own their own non-union family company, decide not only to keep working, but also to supply the regional mill with all the lumber the town would have supplied had it not been on strike.  

Lehane, Dennis
Shutter Island

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island's Ashecliffe Hospital in search of an escaped mental patient, but uncover true wickedness as Ashecliffe's mysterious patient treatments propel them to the brink of insanity.

McCarthy, Cormac
The Road (2007 Pulitzer Prize)

In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.

Otsuka, Julie
When the Emperor was Divine

A story told from five different points of view chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

Picoult, Jodi 
My Sister’s Keeper

Ruiz, Carlos Zafón
Shadow of the Wind

A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.

Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein

Tells the tragic tale of Victor Frankenstein and the tortured creation he rejects is a classic fable about the pursuit of knowledge, the nature of beauty and the monstrosity inherent to man.

Tyler, Anne
Digging to America

A chance airport encounter between two families--the Donaldsons, and the Iranian-born Yazdans--as both couples await the arrival of an adopted daughter from Korea prompts an examination about what it means to be an American.

Wells, H. G. 
The Island of Dr. Moreau

The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Edward Prendick, a young naturalist, finds himself stranded on a remote Pacific island run by the sinister Dr. Moreau, a mad scientist intent on creating a strain of beast men.

Zusak, Markus
The Book Thief

Living with a foster family in Germany during World War II, a young girl struggles to survive her day-to-day trials through stealing anything she can get her hands on, but when she discovers the beauty of literature, she realizes that she has been blessed with a gift that must be shared with others, including the Jewish man hiding in the basement.