Local book groups are invited to select from books previously discussed at Northbrook Public Library programs. Contact the Reader Services Department at 272-6224 x350.

Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy.
The final days of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family as seen through the eyes of a boy working in their kitchen.

Monica Ali, Brick Lane.
A woman who is sent from Bangladesh to London for an arranged marriage begins to question whether she has a hand in her own destiny.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin.
The story of two sisters, one of whom died a mysterious early death. Booker Prize winner.

Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies.
A retired insurance salesman looking for a place to die heads to Brooklyn where he finds a long-lost nephew.

Pat Barker, Double Vision.
A British journalist becomes involved with the widow of a photographer who was killed in Afghanistan.

Julian Barnes, Arthur and George.
A half-Indian half-Scottish man is falsely accused of a crime and is helped by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way.
An Irishman enlists during World War I.

Douglas Bauer, The Book of Famous Iowans.
A journalist recalls the summer of 1957, when his mother had an affair that scandalized their town.

Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King.
A dissatisfied millionaire has a midlife crisis and makes a spiritual journey to Africa, where he decides his true destiny is to be a healer.

Jenna Blum, Those Who Save Us.
A history professor researching women’s roles in Nazi Germany uncovers secrets from her mother’s past.

Chris Bohjalian, Before You Know Kindness.
An animal rights activist is seriously injured with a hunting rifle, throwing two families into turmoil.

Geraldine Brooks, March.
An imagined account of the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the father from Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women.

Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders.
An English town is quarantined during the Plague, seen through the eyes of an 18-year-old maid.

Ethan Canin, Carry Me Across the Water.
An old man reflects on his escape from Nazi Germany and his service in the Pacific in WWII.

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
To raise money to get his family out of Nazi-occupied Prague, an artist creates a comic book.

Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me.
The lives of two brothers separated when one is given up for adoption intersect years later.

Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring.
A servant girl in the household of the Dutch painter Vermeer poses for one of his paintings.

J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace.
A heart-breaking story about a man and his daughter is set in Capetown and on a remote farm.

Jim Crace, Being Dead.
The story how a couple murdered on a beach came to be there and what happened after their deaths.

Justin Cronin, The Summer Guest.
A dying man makes a final visit to a fishing camp owned by a family whose lives are linked to his.

Donna Cross, Pope Joan.
In the Middle Ages, an intelligent woman disguises herself as her brother to continue her studies and eventually becomes Pope.

Michael Cunningham, The Hours.
The lives of three women are connected by Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Sijie Dai, Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress.
Two boys sent to a reeducation camp discover a cache of Western classics translated into Chinese.

Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker.
A Haitian immigrant confesses to his daughter that back home he was a prison guard skilled at torture.

Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad.
A Russian emigre with Alzheimer's struggles to prepare for her granddaughter's wedding while remembering her time as a docent at the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad.

Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark.
A boy growing up in Northern Ireland in the '40s & '50s tries to unlock the secrets haunting his family.

Louis De Bernieres, Corelli's Mandolin.
During WWII, an Italian commander falls in love with a woman who's engaged to a Greek partisan.

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss.
A retired judge in India living near the Nepal border finds his tranquil life disrupted by political unrest.

Pete Dexter, Paris Trout.
A man who kills a black girl is surprised when he is prosecuted and the town turns against him.

Anita Diamant, The Red Tent.
The story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob & Leah.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart.
Two cousins born on the day their fathers died share a special bond but family secrets tear them apart.

E. L. Doctorow, The March.
An account of Sherman's March through Georgia.

Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
A doctor delivers his wife’s twins and gives away the one with Down’s Syndrome without her knowledge.

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River.
A father takes his children on a cross-country search for his son, who escaped from prison after being charged with murder.

Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.
A priest is sent to an Ojibwa reservation in North Dakota to determine if a nun deserves sainthood.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex.
A girl’s sense of identity and belonging are changed when she learns that she is a hermaphrodite.

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides.
In suburban Michigan in the 1970s, a group of adolescent boys become obsessed with five mysterious, doomed sisters.

Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women.
The journal of a pioneer woman married to a Cheyenne man.

Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects.
A reporter goes back to her hometown to cover a murder and ends up unlocking dark family secrets.

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India.
Tensions arise in India when an Englishwoman accuses a respected Indian man of attacking her.

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters.
Over the course of a weekend, a Brooklyn couple's seemingly perfect life begins to disintegrate.

Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain.
A Confederate soldier leaves the hospital before his wound is healed begins a long journey home.

Cristina Garcia, The Aguero Sisters.
Two estranged Cuban sisters are reluctantly reunited to learn the truth about their parentage.

Julia Glass, Three Junes.
Three fateful summers in the lives of a family.

Myla Goldberg, Bee Season.
A girl ignored by her family becomes the focus of her father's attention when she wins spelling bees.

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha.
A girl from a Japanese fishing village is trained to be a geisha.

Allegra Goodman, Kaaterskill Falls.
Three Orthodox families at a summer resort are tugged between religious tradition and the secular world.

Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup.
A wealthy South African woman has an affair with an Arab man who’s an illegal alien.

Graham Greene, The Quiet American.
In French-controlled Vietnam, a journalist meets a newly arrived American with ideas of his own.

Alice Greenway, White Ghost Girls.
Two American sisters living in Hong Kong while their father covers the Vietnam War become involved in a tragic event that changes their lives.

Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl.
The story of Mary, sister of Anne Boleyn.

Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants.
After his parents’ deaths, a man drops out of veterinary school and joins a traveling circus during the Depression.

Romesh Gunesekera, Reef.
A chef in Sri Lanka focused on pleasing his master’s palate doesn’t notice the growing political turmoil.

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
An autistic boy discovers his neighbor's dog dead in the yard and decides to find out who killed it.

Joanne Harris, Chocolat.
In a French village, a woman and her daughter open a shop filled with tempting chocolates during Lent.

Joanne Harris, Gentlemen and Players.
A teacher at a British boys' school tries to find the source of a series of malicious incidents.

Kent Haruf, Plainsong.
A diverse group of people with personal troubles unite to form a family in a small town.

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire.
After World War II, young people in wartorn regions must learn from the past and reinvent their lives.

Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River.
A German librarian who is set apart because of her small stature observes the rise of Nazism.

Tess Holthe, When the Elephants Dance.
While the U.S. and Japan fight for control of the Philippines, a family hide in their basement and tell tales to take their minds off their fear.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner.
A successful writer returns to his homeland of Afghanistan to rescue the son of his childhood friend whom he once betrayed.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
A group of children are raised in isolation at an elite boarding school in the English countryside, unaware of their true purpose in life.

P.D. James, Children of Men.
In the near future, society is on the verge of collapse after humankind becomes infertile.

Paulette Jiles, Enemy Women.
A girl accused of being a Confederate spy for trying to rescue her father is sent to a women’s prison.

Ha Jin, Waiting.
For 18 years, a doctor tries to divorce his peasant wife so he can marry his city-bred girlfriend.

Ha Jin, War Trash.
A Chinese clerk becomes a POW during the Korean War and finds that his English skills put him in the center of a power struggle between the Communist and Nationalist prisoners.

Edward Jones, The Known World.
A former slave acquires a small plantation and buys slaves of his own, but as rumors of slave rebellions spread things begin to fall apart.

Ward Just, Forgetfulness.
A man who has worked for the CIA thinks his wife's murder may have been an act of vengeance.

Stephanie Kallos, Broken for You.
An elderly woman with a mansion full of antiques takes in a young woman in search of her wayward boyfriend.

Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There?
A woman goes home to Ireland to recover from injuries but soon wants to return to New York where she and her husband built a life together.

Yasmina Khadra, The Attack.
An Israeli-Arab surgeon learns his wife is suspected of being a suicide bomber.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees.
A girl takes refuge with three sisters who may hold the key to the fate of the her mother.

Dave King, The Ha-Ha.
A Vietnam vet mute due to a head injury forms a bond with a boy left in his care by an ex-girlfriend.

Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees.
A woman who leaves home and heads west finds her life changed by an abandoned 3-year-old girl.

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible.
A domineering missionary takes his family to Africa where they must cope with the climate and culture.

Jim Kokoris, The Rich Part of Life.
A man wins the lottery and is besieged by scam artists and family members who want a share.

Nicole Krauss, A History of Love.
The lives of a man who wrote a long-lost book and a girl named after one of the characters are intertwined.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake.
A first-generation American whose Indian parents named him after the Russian writer Gogol feels burdened by his heritage and his unusual name.

Michael Lavigne, Not Me.
A man caring for his father who has Alzheimer’s discovers a secret in his father's journals.

Mary Lawson, Crow Lake.
A boy must abandon his plans for college to care for his siblings after their parents are killed.

Norman Lebrecht, The Song of Names.
A man searches for a violinist he knew as a boy who disappeared on the eve of his debut.

Chang-rae Lee, Aloft.
A retired man finds escape in flying a plane, but he must return to earth to deal with family problems.

Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life.
An Asian-American man is burdened by his past.

Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn.
A Brooklyn P.I. with Tourette's Syndrome investigates the murder of his mentor.

Andrea Levy, Small Island.
In postwar England, a woman takes in Jamaican borders, but her husband is not pleased when he returns home.

Penelope Lively, The Photograph.
A man finds a photo that exposes his late wife's affair.

Sandor Marai, Embers.
Two men reunite after 40 years and explore the circumstances of their separation.

Yann Martel, The Life of Pi.
A boy is trapped on a lifeboat with a hungry tiger.

Daniel Mason, The Piano Tuner.
An Englishman is sent to Burma to tune the piano of an eccentric and charismatic British commander.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
A father and son travel down a road to the sea in a post-apocalyptic world.

Alice McDermott, Charming Billy.
At an Irish-American wake, stories and memories about the dead man cause feelings to resurface.

Ian McEwan, Atonement.
A girl makes an accusation with terrible consequences for her family.

Ian McEwan, Saturday.
A minor accident threatens to derail the life of a complacent London neurosurgeon.

Claire Messud, The Emperor's Children.
Three college friends in New York find their lives haven’t turned out as they hoped.

Susan Minot, Evening.
A woman on her deathbed recalls a summer weekend years ago when she found and lost the love of her life.

Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary.
A free-spirited convert to Judaism is blamed for changes in an Orthodox community.

David Mitchell, Black Swan Green.
A 13-year-old English boy copes with a speech impediment and the unraveling of his family.

Bharati Mukherjee, Desirable Daughters.
Family ties come back to haunt an Indian woman in the US who divorced the man her father chose for her.

Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince.
An author with writer’s block tries to escape his predatory friends and relatives.

Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise.
A disparate group of Parisians struggle to survive during the Nazi occupation.

Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife.
A woman falls in love with a time traveler who is periodically and uncontrollably swept back and forth through time.

Edna O'Brien, The Light of Evening.
A woman in the hospital awaits the arrival of her estranged daughter from abroad.

Tim O'Brien, In the Lake of the Woods.
After losing an election because of revelations about his actions in Vietnam, a man retreats to a cabin in the woods where his wife disappears.

Chris Offutt, The Good Brother.
A man tries to avoid avenging his brother's murder but he is haunted by his past.

Linda Olsson, Astrid and Veronika.
A writer rents a house in a small Swedish town and befriends a reclusive old woman.

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine.
A Japanese-American family is taken to an internment camp when the father is charged with conspiracy.

Orhan Pamuk, Snow.
An exiled poet returns to his Turkish hometown where ethnic and religious tensions rise during a blizzard.

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto.
A soprano and a Japanese businessman are taken hostage by a group of guerillas in Latin America.

Tom Perrotta, Little Children.
Suburban lives are thrown into upheaval by hidden secrets and the arrival of a child molester in the neighborhood.

Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper.
A 13-year-old girl who was conceived as a donor for her sister who has leukemia hires a lawyer when a kidney is required of her.

Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing.
A Jewish emigre scientist and an African-American singer fall in love in 1939 and they and their children experience the changes in the U.S. through the Civil Rights era and beyond.

Reynolds Price, Kate Vaiden.
A woman haunted by the murder-suicide of her parents seeks the child she gave up as a teenager.

Naomi Ragen, The Covenant.
When her son-in-law and grandchild vanish, a woman calls on friends she made a pact with in Auschwitz.

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea.
In this imagined account of the "madwoman in the attic" from Jane Eyre, a young Creole woman is taken from her island home to marry an Englishman.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead.
An elderly preacher writes a letter to his son filled with reflections on life and stories of their family history dating back to the Civil War.

Philip Roth, The Plot Against America.
In an alternate America, Charles Lindbergh beats FDR for the Presidency in 1940, profoundly affecting the lives of American Jews.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind.
In postwar Barcelona, a boy receives a book from a library of forgotten works and soon learns that someone is out to destroy every copy in existence.

Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow.
A Jesuit is the sole survivor of humanity’s tragic first encounter with extraterrestrial life.

Richard Russo, Empire Falls.
In a New England town abandoned by industry, a man observes the townspeople in the local grill.

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz.
An orphan who came to England in 1939 and was raised by a minister has no memory of his past.

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones.
A 14-year-old girl who is murdered is able to observe and touch the lives of those she left behind.

Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.
Two girls in 19th century China become best friends and keep in touch through a secret form of writing known only to women.

Carol Shields, Unless.
A writer tries to learn why her daughter suddenly dropped out of college and began begging on the street.

Anita Shreve, Light on Snow.
The discovery of an abandoned baby has a deep effect on a girl who lost her mother.

Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin.
A mother tries to understand why her son went on a killing spree at his school.

Zadie Smith, On Beauty.
The son of a liberal, mixed race couple gets involved with the daughter of a conservative professor.

Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
The story of an unorthodox teacher and her special—and ultimately dangerous—relationship with her students.

Manil Suri, Death of Vishnu.
In a Bombay apartment building, a dying man’s mind drifts through his memories while his neighbors bicker around him.

Graham Swift, Last Orders.
On a trip to a seaside town to scatter the ashes of their late friend, four men reminisce about their past.

Jeff Talarigo, The Pearl Diver.
A Japanese girl with leprosy is exiled to an island.

Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter.
A woman with Alzheimer’s writes down the story of her early life in China so that her daughter will know the truth.

William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault.
A woman in Ireland spends her life longing for forgiveness when an impulsive childhood act tears her family apart.

Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden.
A Chinese man with tuberculosis goes to his family’s summer home in Japan, where a gardener teaches him about life.

Thrity Umrigar, The Space between Us.
A wealthy housewife and her servant in Bombay come from different backgrounds but find a common bond.

Luis Alberto Urrea, Hummingbird's Daughter.
A Mexican girl called a saint by the people is accused of being a heretic andrebel by the Church and government.

Susan Vreeland, Girl in Hyacinth Blue.
The story of a Vermeer painting passed from owner to owner throughout the years.

Amanda Eyre Ward, Sleep Toward Heaven.
The lives of a death row inmate, the widow of one of her victims, and a prison doctor intersect.

Wendy Wasserstein, Elements of Style.
Upper East Side New Yorkers adapt post 9/11.

Katharine Weber, The Music Lesson.
A literary thriller about a passionate love affair, a stolen painting, and a violent splinter group of the IRA.

Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen.
An amateur chemist who runs a photography studio eventually ends up involved in the development of the atomic bomb.

Michelle Wildgen, You're Not You.
An aimless, self-absorbed college student takes a job as a caregiver to a woman with ALS.

Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
After an ecological catastrophe causes infertility, a group of scientists experiment with cloning to perpetuate humankind.

Amy Willentz, Martyrs’ Crossing.
An explosive chain of events begins when a dying Palestinian boy is not allowed past a military checkpoint to a hospital.

Tim Winton, The Riders.
When his wife seemingly abandons him, a man and his daughter travel through Europe searching for her.

Monica Wood, Any Bitter Thing.
After a near-fatal accident, a woman thinks she received a visitation from the uncle who raised her until a tragedy tore them apart.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.
A woman reflects on her life as she prepares for a party.

Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road.
A couple in 1950s suburban Connecticut become disillusioned with their lives.

A.B. Yehoshua, A Woman of Jerusalem.
When a Slavic immigrant to Israel is killed in a terrorist attack, a co-worker is assigned to take her body back to her homeland.