Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who
has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a
seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills
him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in
the afterlife where he learns that heaven is not a destination, it's a
place where your life is explained to you by five people.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Road traces the journey of a father and his son as
they walk alone after a great fire has consumed the nation and left
everything in ashes.
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction story collection by
Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing
from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseni
A Thousand
Splendid Suns is a breathtaking
story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years
-- from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban
rebuilding -- that puts theviolence, fear, hope and faith of this country
in intimate, human terms.
Feed, M.T. Anderson
Titus and his teenaged friends all have
transmitters implanted in their heads, which is as normal as going to
the moon or Mars on vacation. The "feed" tell people everything they
need to know-there's no need to read or write. Titus proves a believably
flawed hero, and ultimately the novel's greatest strength lies in his
denial of, and uncomfortable awakening to, the truth.
Hot Zone, Richard Preston
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the
central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of
Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days ninety percent of its
victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists
is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus.
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony
Burgess
Set in a dismal dystopia, it is the
first-person account of a juvenile delinquent who undergoes
psychological rehabilitation for his aberrant behavior. The novel
satirizes extreme political systems that are based on opposing models of
the perfect society.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishemel Beah
Beah tells a riveting story: how at the age of
twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered
unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he�d been picked up by the
government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was
capable of truly terrible acts.
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Centering on the infamous firebombing of
Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic
journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we
are afraid to know.
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
A young Spanish shepherd seeking his destiny
travels to Egypt where he learns many lessons, particularly from a wise
old alchemist. The real alchemy here, however, is the transmuting of
youthful idealism into mature wisdom.
The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood
In this 1985 dystopian novel, Canadian author Margaret
Atwood presents social critique through her portrayal of the daily life
of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead (a barren,
post-nuclear-war North America). Atwood
depicts an ultra-conservative future, with stringent restraints imposed
upon women, including a harshly delineated caste system.
