Manly Man Book Club

The Library

70 volumes  ·  17 gentlemen  ·  7 rounds  ·  est. June 2015

70
Books Read
10
Active Members
7
Rounds
11
Decades Covered

Round 7

March 2026 – ?
Dark Matter

Dark Matter

Blake Crouch · 2016

One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has ach...

KidnappingFictionRealityScience FictionPsychological
The Ministry of Time

The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley · 2024

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible -- for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Comm...

Fictiondystopianscience fictionnyt:hardcover-fiction=2024-05-26New York Times bestseller
Small Things Like These

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan · 2021

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

FictionIrelandHistorical fictionCatholic Church
This Tender Land

This Tender Land

William Kent Krueger · 2016

In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota's Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training School is a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. After committing a terrible crime, Odie and Albert are forced to flee, stealing away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi in search of a place to call home.

American literaturenyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2019-09-22New York Times bestsellerFiction, historicalMississippi, fiction

Round 6

August 2024 – January 2026
Red Team Blues

Red Team Blues

Cory Doctorow · 2023

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a—contain your excitement—self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war betwe...

Cyber intelligence (Computer security)CybersecurityCyber SecurityCryptocurrenciescryptocurrency
Gabriel's Moon

Gabriel's Moon

William Boyd · 2024

In his most exhilarating novel yet, Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a childhood home in flames. His days are spent as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he's offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

FictionHistorical FictionThrillerMysteryEspionage
A Naked Singularity

A Naked Singularity

Sergio De La Pava · 2012

Casi is a hotshot public defender working on the front line of America's War on Drugs. So far he's on the winning side. He's never lost a case. But nothing lasts forever, and pride like his has a long way to fall. Funny, smart and always surprising, A Naked Singularity speaks a language all of its own and reads like nothing else ever written.

Colombian AmericansFictionPublic defenders
Incel

Incel

ARX-Han · 2023

Savage, hilarious, and everything in between, INCEL is a pitch-dark comedy about one man's harrowing quest to ascend.

Fiction, psychologicalFiction, general
A Children's Bible

A Children's Bible

Lydia Millet · 2020

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime new novel follows a group of 12 eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders decide to run away, leading the younger ones into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

Fiction, satireBrothers and sisters, fiction
Redeployment

Redeployment

Phil Klay · 2014

Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters struggle to make meaning out of chaos.

FictionWar storiesAfghan War (2001-) fast (OCoLC)fst01695175Short storiesIraq War (2003-2011) fast (OCoLC)fst01802311
The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club

Richard Osman · 2020

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

MysteryEnglish literaturenyt:trade-fiction-paperback=2021-08-22New York Times bestsellerOlder people
Pirate Latitudes

Pirate Latitudes

Michael Crichton · 2009

From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure and betrayal.The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses.In this steamy climate there's a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by disease—or by dagger. ...

FictionShip captainsPirates in fictionPiratesCaribbean Area in fiction
Starter Villain

Starter Villain

John Scalzi · 2023

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2023-10-08New York Times bestsellerAmerican literature
The Yiddish Policemen's Union

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon · 2006

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a 2007 novel by American author Michael Chabon. The novel is a detective story set in an alternative history version of the present day, based on the premise that during World War II, a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Sitka, Alaska, in 1941, and that the fledgling State of Israel was destroyed in 1948. The novel is set in Sitka, which it depicts as a large, Yiddish-speaking metropolis. The Yiddish Policemen's Union won a number o...

literary fictionhard-boiled fictionmystery & detective fictionalternative historyPopular American Fiction
Tender Is the Night

Tender Is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1933

A psychiatrist, Dick Diver, treats and eventually marries a wealthy patient, Nicole. Eventually, this marriage destroys him.

FictionPsychiatristsWealthMoral and ethical aspects of WealthFacsimiles
How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Dale Carnegie · 1936

Available for the first time ever in trade paperback, Dale Carnegie's enduring classic, the inspirational personal development guide that shows how to achieve lifelong success. One of the top-selling books of all time, "How to Win Friends & Influence People" has sold more than 15 million copies in all its editions.

SuccèsPsychologie appliquéePsychologie applique e.Applied PsychologySucce s.

Round 5

December 2022 – June 2024
The Forgotten Highlander

The Forgotten Highlander

Alistair Urquhart · 2011

An extraordinary and moving tale by an ex-POW and last surviving member of the Gordon Highlanders regiment that was captured by the Japanese in Singapore. Urquhart was taken prisoner and sent to work on the Death Railway and the notorious bridge over the River Kwai. He survived starvation, cholera and the brutality of the Japanese Imperial Army, only to be packed in the rusting hold of a 'hellship' bound for Japan. Torpedoed by an American submarine, he drifted for days, close to death. When ...

Prisoners of warGreat Britain. Army. Gordon HighlandersGreat BritainWorld War, 1939-1945British Personal narratives
Night Shift

Night Shift

Stephen King · 1960

Stephen King has brought together nineteen of his most unsettling short pieces--bizarre tales of dark doing and unthinkable acts from the twilight regions where horror and madness take on eerie, unearthly forms...where noises in the walls and shadows by the bed are always signs of something dreadful on the prowl. The settings are familiar and unsuspected--a high school, a factory, a truck stop, a laundry, a field of Nebraska corn. But in Stephen King's world any place can serve as devil's ...

euthanasiaterminal illnessvampirescrucifixesrosaries
Kololo Hill

Kololo Hill

Neema Shah · 2022

Uganda 1972. A devastating decree is issued: all Ugandan Asians must leave the country in ninety days. For Asha and Pran, married a matter of months, it means abandoning the family business. But violence is escalating in Kampala, and people are disappearing. Will they all make it to safety in Britain?

English literatureFictionHistory
River of the Gods

River of the Gods

Candice Millard · 2022

From the New York Times bestselling author, the stirring story of one of the great feats of exploration of all time. Two British men, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to find the source of the Nile. From the start the two men clashed, enduring tremendous hardships, illness, and constant setbacks.

nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction=2022-06-05New York Times bestseller
We Are Bob (We Are Legion)

We Are Bob (We Are Legion)

Dennis E. Taylor · 2016

“Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable p...

Artificial intelligenceColonizationExtinction of the human raceFictionPlanets
The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair

Graham Greene · 1951

The story of an obsessive love affair between a married woman and a young up-and-coming writer. Almost as soon as he begins the affair the writer realizes it cannot last though he still cannot stop himself from becoming jealous of the woman’s husband and cannot bring himself to end it.

FictionPsychological fictionLove storiesAdulteryWorld War, 1939-1945
AI 2041

AI 2041

Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan · 2023

"In a groundbreaking blend of science and imagination, the former president of Google China and a leading writer of speculative fiction join forces to answer an urgent question: How will artificial intelligence change our world over the next twenty years? AI will be the defining issue of the twenty-first century, but many people know little about it apart from visions of dystopian robots or flying cars. Though the term has been around for half a century, it is only now, Kai-Fu Lee argues, tha...

ScienceArtificial intelligenceFictionArtificial intelligence in literatureSCIENCE / General
The Daughter of Time

The Daughter of Time

Josephine Tey · 1951

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world’s most heinous villains—a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother’s children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England’s throne? Grant determines to fi...

Alan Grant (Fictitious character)FictionPoliceKings and rulersHistory
The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway

Amor Towles · 2021

"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick...

American literaturenyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2021-10-24New York Times bestsellerBrothersFiction
Snow Child

Snow Child

Eowyn Ivey · 2012

November, 1920. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in the Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost years before. The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the two build a snowman - or rather a snow girl - together. Next morning, all trace of her has disappeared ...

FictionAlaska Fiction History 1867-1959American fiction Women authorsHistoryFrontier and pioneer life, fiction

Round 4

June 2020 – November 2022
Killing Floor

Killing Floor

Lee Child · 1997

Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He's just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he's arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn't kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn't stand a chance of convincing anyone.

FictionPrivate investigatorsMurderDrifters
Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir · 2021

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzil...

hard science-fictionscience-fictionsci-fihard sci-finyt:hardcover-fiction=2021-05-23
Hyperion

Hyperion

Dan Simmons · 1989

In the 29th century, the Hegemony of Man comprises hundreds of planets connected by farcaster portals. The Hegemony maintains an uneasy alliance with the TechnoCore, a civilisation of AIs. Modified humans known as Ousters live in space stations between stars and are engaged in conflict with the Hegemony. Numerous "Outback" planets have no farcasters and cannot be accessed without incurring significant time dilation. One of these planets is Hyperion, home to structures known as the Time Tom...

American Science fictionHugo Award Winneraward:hugo_award=1990award:hugo_award=novelCiencia-ficcio n.
Our Country Friends

Our Country Friends

Gary Shteyngart · 2021

Eight friends, one country house, four romances, and six months in isolation. A powerful, emotionally rich novel about love, friendship, and betrayal, a book that reads like a great Russian novel, or Chekhov on the Hudson.

American literaturenyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2021-11-21New York Times bestsellerFiction, satireFiction, friendship
Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone

Daniel Woodrell · 2006

Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But, as an unsettling revelation lurks, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in...

FictionFathers and daughtersTeenage girlsFugitives from justiceProblem families
Caste

Caste

Isabel Wilkerson · 2020

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, h...

social sciencespowerrace relationssocial stratificationethnicity
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Laurie Lee · 1969

It was 1934 and a young man walked to London from the security of the Cotswolds to make his fortune. He was to live by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site. Then, knowing one Spanish phrase, he decided to see Spain. For a year he tramped through a country in which the signs of impending civil war were clearly visible. Thirty years later Laurie Lee captured the atmosphere of the Spain he saw with all the freshness and beauty of a young man's vision, creating a lyrical ...

Authors, EnglishBiographyBritishChildhood and youthDescription and travel
M.A.S.H.

M.A.S.H. *

Richard Hooker · 1941

When Radar O'Reilly, just out of high school, left Ottumwa, Iowa, and enlisted in the United States Army it was with the express purpose of making a career of the Signal Corps.

Fiction, medicalKorean war, 1950-1953, fictionMedical careKorean War, 1950-1953Fiction
The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists *

Tan Twan Eng · 2011

"On a mountain above the clouds, in the central highlands of Malaya lived the man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.” Teoh Yun Ling was seventeen years old when she first heard about him, but a war would come, and a decade would pass before she travels up to the Garden of Evening Mists to see him, in 1951. A survivor of a brutal Japanese camp, she has spent the last few years helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, she asks the gar...

GardensFictionGuerrilla warfarePrisoners of warGardeners
Q

Q

Luther Blissett · 1999

In 1517, Martin Luther nails his ninety-five theses demanding reform of the Catholic Church to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, setting off a period of upheaval, war, civil war and violence we now know as the Reformation. In this age devastated by wars of religion, a young theology student adopts the cause of the heretics and the disinherited. Across the chessboard of Europe, from the German plains to the flourishing Dutch cities and down to Venice, the gateway to the East, our hero, a 'S...

Christian hereticsFictionHeretics, ChristianReformationHistory
Orphan Train

Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 2012

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the vast age difference. The plot contains profanity and sexual abuse.

FictionWomenFemale friendshipOrphan trainsnyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2013-10-13
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

Wayne Johnston · 1998

"The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" is Newfoundland - that vast, haunting near-continent upon which the two lovers and adversaries of this novel pursue their ambitions. Joey Smallwood, sprung from almost Dickensian privation, is a scholarship boy at a private school, where his ready wit bests the formidably tart-tongued Sheilagh Fielding. Their dual fates become forever linked by an anonymous letter to a local paper critical of the school - a letter whose mysterious authorship will weigh hea...

FictionHistoryRomans, nouvellesLiteratureFiction, general

Round 3

December 2018 – April 2020
The Twenty Days of Turin

The Twenty Days of Turin

Giorgio De Maria · 2017

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one anothers personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Librarys users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating...

Horror talesHysteria (Social psychology)PrivacyFearFiction
Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon

David Grann · 2017

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying und...

Case studiesUnited States. Federal Bureau of InvestigationOsage IndiansMurderHISTORY
Severance

Severance

Ling Ma · 2018

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease oper...

EpidemicsFictionFiction, satireFiction, dystopianNew york (n.y.), fiction
The Coroner's Lunch

The Coroner's Lunch

Colin Cotterill · 2004

The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill"A wonderfully fresh and exotic mystery."—The New York Times Book ReviewDr. Siri Paiboun, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent 72-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. And he doesn't mind incurring the wrath of the Party hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side.W...

MysteryPhysiciansDetective and mystery storiesDoctor Paiboun, Siri (Fictitious character)Physicians in fiction
40 Autumns

40 Autumns

Nina Willner · 2016

In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family, of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Cold warGermany, social life and customsFamilyBiographyWomen
Desperadoes

Desperadoes

Ron Hansen · 1979

At age 65, Emmett Dalton, the sole survivor of the infamous Dalton gang makes a living by selling his outrageous adventure stories to Hollywood. Desperadoes details his memories of the murders, bootlegging and thievery he and his posse committed.

FictionOutlawsWest (u.s.), fictionFiction, westernsFiction, historical, general
Artemis

Artemis

Andy Weir · 2017

**JASMINE BASHARA** never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich. Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity's first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she's owed for a long time. So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can't say no. Sure, it requires her to graduate from sm...

FictionScience fictionSmugglingConspiraciesFiction, science fiction, hard science fiction
Last Man in Tower

Last Man in Tower

Aravind Adiga · 2011

Every building tells a story, but in the jungles of Mumbai, one building - and one man- stand on the borderline between India's past and its future. Ask any Bombaywallah about Vishram Society - Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society - and you will be told that it has been pucca for some fifty years despite its location under the flight path and border of slums. But Bombay has changed in half a century - not least its name - and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving...

Apartment dwellersApartment housesReal estate developersSocial conflictFiction
The Rotters' Club

The Rotters' Club

Jonathan Coe · 2001

Jonathan Coe's widely acclaimed novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the be...

FictionTeenage boysMale friendshipLiteratureLarge type books
Devil May Care

Devil May Care

Sebastian Faulks · 2000

An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the desolate outskirts of Paris. This seemingly isolated event leads to the recall of Agent 007 from his sabbatical in Rome and his return to the world of intrigue and danger where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and ille...

FictionJames Bond (Fictitious character)Thrillernyt:hardcover-fiction=2008-06-15New York Times bestseller
Less

Less

Andrew Sean Greer · 2017

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.

Voyages and travelsAuthorsGay menFictionHumour

Round 2

January 2017 – November 2018
White Rose Black Forest

White Rose Black Forest

Eoin Dempsey · 2018

December 1943. In the years before the rise of Hitler, the Gerber family's summer cottage was filled with laughter. Now, as deep drifts of snow blanket the Black Forest, German dissenter Franka Gerber is alone and hopeless. Fervor and brutality have swept through her homeland, taking away both her father and her brother and leaving her with no reason to live. That is, until she discovers an unconscious airman lying in the snow wearing a Luftwaffe uniform, his parachute flapping in the wind. U...

Weisse Rose (Resistance group)Resistance to GovernmentImpostors and impostureGermany. Geheime StaatspolizeiFiction
Disgrace

Disgrace

J.M. Coetzee · 2010

At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless, shunned by his friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife. He retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding, where a brief visit becomes an extended stay as he tries to find meaning from the one remaining relationship. David attempts to relate to Lucy and to a society with new racial complexities are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that s...

abortioneuthanasiaanimal sheltersagoraphobiaDomestic fiction
The Undoing Project

The Undoing Project

Michael Lewis · 2016

Examines the history of behavioral economics, discussing the theory of Israeli psychologists who wrote the original studies undoing assumptions about the decision-making process and the influence it has had on evidence-based regulation.

NeurosciencesPSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & CognitionStatistical decisionCognitive neuroscienceSCIENCE / Cognitive Science
The Fixer

The Fixer

Bernard Malamud · 1901

In Tsarist Russia, Yakov is accused of a ritual murder he did not commit.

FictionTrials (Murder)JewsAntisemitismFalse testimony
In the Miso Soup

In the Miso Soup

Ryu Murakami · 2003

It is just before New Year's. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Frank's behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isn't until later, however, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an America...

Social life and customsTour guides (Persons)Serial murderersSex-oriented businessesFiction
Elmet

Elmet

Fiona Mozley · 2017

"Cathy and Daniel live in the remote woods of Yorkshire with their gentle brute of a father, a former enforcer who now wants only to be left alone to raise his children. But when a powerful landowner shows up on their doorstep, a chain of violent events is set in motion"--

Violence againstFather and childFamiliesBrothers and sistersFiction
A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles · 2016

A Gentleman in Moscow is a 2016 novel by Amor Towles. It is his second novel, published five years after his New York Times best seller, Rules of Civility (2011).

historical fictionliterary fictionpolitical fictionAristocracy (Social class)Home detention
The Art of Travel

The Art of Travel

Alain de Botton · 2002

Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.

ArtistsAuthorsJourneysLandscape in artPhilosophy
Ready Player One

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline · 2008

In the year 2044. reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts *really* feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines--puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players ...

Regression (Civilization)UtopiasVirtual realityFictionPuzzles
The Revenant

The Revenant

Michael Punke · 2002

A story of survival on the American frontier chronicles the exploits of fur trapper Hugh Glass, who is attacked by a grizzly bear and left for dead by his fellow trappers, but survives and treks through the wilderness to seek justice.

RevengeFictionWilderness survivalTrappersFiction, biographical

Round 1

June 2015 – December 2016
Fight Club

Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk · 1996

A man who struggles with insomnia meets a colorful extremist, and they create a secret organization together. Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work ...

FictionMillennialismYoung menScience fictionopen_syllabus_project
The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead · 2000

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they a...

FICTION / African American / GeneralHistoryUnderground RailroadFictionFugitive slaves
His Bloody Project

His Bloody Project

Graeme Macrae Burnet · 2015

The year is 1869. After a brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands, a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae is arrested for the crime. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but the police and the courts must decide what drove him to murder the local village constable. And why did he kill his other two victims? Was he insane? Or was this the act of a man in possession of his senses? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand betw...

MurderersMurderTrials (Murder)FICTION / Thrillers / HistoricalFICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical
Dead Wake

Dead Wake

Erik Larson · 2015

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospe...

World War (1914-1918) fast (OCoLC)fst01180746World War, 1914-1918Government policyGermanLusitania (Steamship)
From Russia with Love

From Russia with Love

Ian Fleming · 1957

James Bond is marked for death by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Ian Fleming’s masterful spy thriller, and the novel that President John F. Kennedy named one of his favourite books of all time. SMERSH stands for ‘Death to Spies’ and there’s no secret agent they’d like to disgrace and destroy more than 007, James Bond. But ensnaring the British Secret Service’s most lethal operative will require a lure so tempting even he can’t resist. Enter Tatiana Romanova, a ravishing Ru...

BritishFictionFiction in EnglishIntelligence officersIntelligence service
The Fishermen

The Fishermen

Chigozie Obioma · 2015

Four middle-class Nigerian brothers,Ikenna,,Boja, Obembe and Benjamin, decide to go fishing in a river. They do this without their mother's knowledge, carefully hiding away their fishing kit when they come home. Their career lasts six weeks before they are discovered by a neighbor, who tells their mother. One day at the river they meet the local oddball, Abulu,who has the power of prophecy, and who predicts that Ikenna, the eldest, will be killed by one of his brothers: by a "fisherman". It i...

Brothers, fictionNigeria, fictionFiction, generalFiction, family life, generalFiction, coming of age
A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan

Scott B. Smith · 1993

Hank Mitchell thought he lived an ordinary, ordered life. But on one chilly afternoon, Hank, his brother Jacob, and Jacob's unsavory pal Lou, make a discovery that offers a chance for a life filled with riches beyond their wildest dreams. And in a fateful moment, Hank lays a plan to claim that life ... and the horrific crumbling of his ordered world begins ...

BrothersFictionGuiltLarcenyMoral and ethical aspects of Wealth
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times

Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times

Thomas Hauser · 1991

A portrait of Ali's life and career, from his childhood in Louisville, his triumphs and tragedies, to the life he leads today.

Boxers (Sports)BiographyAli, muhammad, 1942-2016
American Gods

American Gods

Neil Gaiman · 2001

American Gods (2001) is a fantasy novel by British author Neil Gaiman. The novel is a blend of Americana, fantasy, and various strands of ancient and modern mythology, all centering on the mysterious and taciturn Shadow.

science fictionfantasy fictionAmericanafantasymythology
City of Thieves

City of Thieves

David Benioff · 2008

From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime. 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 us...

War FictionHistorical FictionFictionGrandparent and childHistory
The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman

Flann O'Brien · 1971

The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that th...

Flann O'Brien (1911-1966)

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