When Hurricane Katrina devasted New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun stayed behind to help those in need. Because he was from Syria his looks made him look suspect and he was arrested and held in a maximum security prisoner with no rights afforded. His story, and that of his wife, Kathy are told in the pages of this book.

Sean King and Michelle maxwell are called by Sean's old mentor to defend Edgar Roy, an alleged serial killer held i n a secure, fortress-like Feferal Supermax facility awaiting trial.

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota-based pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to tract down her former mento, Dr. Annick Swenson. The last person sent to find Dr. Swenson was Marina'a research partner, Anders Eckman, who apparently died on his mission.

Wild and wooly plot of slightly crazy people.the book has con artists, scams of all sorts taking place in the Florida Keys during hurricane season.

Real nineteenth century heroines of China's Pearl River Delta. Three young girls make the radical decision not to marry or join a nunnery (their only choices then) but instead to earn their living.. Their battle for independence would change the lives of thousands of others.

From the author of Cave of the Clan Bear comes a story of AYla and Jondalar as they adjust to life among the zelandoni.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa.
She was a poor, black tobacco farmer whose cells, taken without her knowledge in 1951-became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning and gene mapping.

Will Alexander is the sheriff in a small town in southern Appalachia, and he knows the local thug Holland Winchester has been murdered. The only thing is the sheriff can find neither the body nor someone to attest to the killing.

For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die. Pope Joanm 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. Medieval women were forbidden to learn. When her brother is killed in a Viking raid, Joan takes up his cloak and his identity and enters the monastery of Fulda as Brother John Anglicus.

Enzo, the dog, is smarter than most humans. He just can't talk. Enzo tells his family's story....Denny the race car pro, Zoe, his daughter, and Eve the wife who dies of brain cancer. Enzo lives through the pain of losing and regaining Zoe and admires the fortitude of Denny, who overcomes with great compassion and wisdom.

Always the master of words and thoughts, Berry describes the childhood memories of Andy Catlett. Sometimes the memories seem like Berry's own. The town of Port Arthur figures prominently, as is usual in Berry's books.

Action-packed! In one bloody night, three of Washington's most powerful politicians are executed with surgical precision. Their assassins then deliver a shocking ultimatum to the AMerican government" set aside partisan politics and restore power to the people.

Gracie Lee was married to Dennis, who ends up murdered while in the hospital. There are several women who could have done it: Gracie, Carol, Dennis' first wife, Dennis' pregnant girlfriend, his mother or his daughter. Gracie is the protagonsit and also tells the story.

Published posthumously in 1964. The book is a memoir of his years in Paris in the 1920s and features glimpses of Scott Fitzgerals, Gertrude Stein and tender memories of his first wife, Hadley.

In the aftermath of a failed marriage, several unsuccessful pregnancies Zoe Baxter throws herself into her career as a music therapist. An unexpected friendship with another woman blossoms into love and marriage and a desparate fight to gain custody of her fertilized eggs.

The story of Agnes Schofield, a teacher, whose life among her extended family has become a chore. I was not always sure what was going on, as the story would suddenly take a different turn. However, the characters did come alive and seemed to be people I knew.

An interesting story of a woman painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few female post-Renaissance painters. After being raped by her painting teacher, she is humiliated in papal court as a loose woman and her testimony is dismissed. Befriended by Galileo, has Cosimo d'Medici 11 as a patron, she still struggles thru life.

An excellent story of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, and the possibility that she was his only true love, They wer part of a hard-drinking and fast-living crowd which included John Dos Passos, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerals Gertude Stein and others who hardly valued traditional family and monogamy.

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.

This is a most unusual book full of the superstitions of the people of the Balkans.. The author is from Belgrade and was named by the
The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty, and included in the National Book Foundation's list of 5 under 35.

Quick read about an EMT and his relationship with a daughter he raises alone. Peter Webster and his daughter, Sloan, go thru teenage years, a harrowing escape from death and the problem of the misssing mother.

The book is entertaining as it discusses lots of English history, but I found it a little long on 9th earls, etc. Interesting to me is how the very priviledged aristocracy consider themselves poor as they struggle to keep up six large estates. The Mitford family is very unusual and fun to read about.

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.
Moving from Addis Ababa to New York and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love, betrayal, medicne and ordinary miracles-two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

Hours before his untimely and suspicious death, world-renowned astrophysicist, Thom Bergmann shares his diswcovery of exrtaterrestial life with his wife, Lucy.. Thom entrusts Lucy with his flash drive, which holds the keys to his secret work. Lucy keeps the secret but is then asked by THom,s friendm anthroopologist Pierre Saad to smuggle a newly discovered artifact out of Egypt.

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air force bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was the bombardier, Louis Zamperini. So began one of the most extraordinary stories of the Second World War.

Leah and little Louis escape Austria overr treacherous footpaths, and Murphy and Elisa begin their trip to New York with the promise of healing Charles' disfiguement.
But then Elisa is once more caught in the web of international intrigue, While Jewish refugees drift homelessly on the open seas, she stands precariously beyween Hitler's domination of Europe and the possibility of destroying his power once and for all.

The first novel in the Century Trilogy, Fall of Giants follows the fate of five interrelated families-American, German, Russian, English and Welsh-as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.

Called a novel, but actually the story of Jeannette Wall's (Glass Castle) grandmother, an amazing and daring woman. Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette's grandmother was helping her father break horses at the age of six. At fifteen she left home to teach in a frontier town, riding 500 miles on her pony. She learned to drive a car and fly a plane, and with her husband. Jim, ran a vast ranch in Arizona. Lily survived tornados, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy.

Gladwell has put together a collection of his articles from The New Yorker. The stories give us a unique way of looking at the world. One of my favorites is why there are so many kinds of mustard and only one of ketsup.

Aloma is an orphan, raised by her aunt and uncle, educated at a mission school in the Kentucky mountains. Aloma goes to live with Orren whose family died in an accident. Orren is overworked and withdrawn . The young couple has a lot to work through.