From the back cover: Margaret Lea, a bookseller's daughter whose own past is a mystery, is contacted by Vida Winter, a venerated author renowned for her secrecy. Vida has always been reclusive, publishing popular "autobiographies" that are anything but the truth. Now, Vida is nearing death, and she wants to tell her last tale—the notoriously missing 13th tale—before her time … [Read more...] about The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield: A-
General Fiction
A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks: D
From the back cover: Class of '59 high school senior Landon Carter spends his time trying to stay out of trouble in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina. The last person he'd ever fall for is quiet Jamie Sullivan, the Baptist minister's daughter. But when he waits too long to get a date for the homecoming dance, she's the only one left to ask. While his friends make … [Read more...] about A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks: D
Light in August by William Faulkner: B
From the back cover: Light in August is one of the most brilliantly conceived, cleanly structured, and efficiently expressed novels in the Faulkner canon. With the timing, climax, and resolution of a great symphony, Faulkner's seventh novel is a eulogy to the outsider: Lena Grove, a guileless pregnant woman who walks from Alabama to Mississippi in search of the father of her … [Read more...] about Light in August by William Faulkner: B
A Separate Peace by John Knowles: B
From the back cover: Set in an exclusive boys' school in the summer of '42, A Separate Peace offers a quietly told story of the relationship between two boys. Under the surface though, violent thoughts and feelings lurk, mirroring events in the outside world. It is these deeper levels of meaning that have made the novel an enduring classic of American literature. Through … [Read more...] about A Separate Peace by John Knowles: B
To Kill a Mockinbird by Harper Lee: A+
From the back cover: Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. This regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as … [Read more...] about To Kill a Mockinbird by Harper Lee: A+