West Bend Community Memorial Library
 Marley and Me by John
Grogan - John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. Then
they brought home Marley, a wiggly yellow furball of a puppy. Life would
never be the same. Marley grew into a barreling, ninety-seven-pound
streamroller of a Labrador retriever. He crashed through screen doors,
gouged through drywall, and stole women's undergarments. Obedience school
did no good - Marley was expelled. But just as Marley joyfully refused any
limits on his behavior, his love and loyalty were boundless, too. Marley
remained a model of devotion, even when his family was at its wit's end.
Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms. |
 Julie and Romeo by
Jeanne Ray - A deliciously funny novel of love found (finally!) and love
threatened (inevitably) by the families who claim to love us best. Romeo
Cacciamani and Julie Roseman are rival florists in Boston, whose families
have hated each other for as long as anyone can remember (what they can't
remember is why). When these two vital, lonely people see each other across
a crowded lobby at a small business owners' seminar, an intense attraction
blooms that neither tries to squelch. They're not sure what fate has in
store for them, but they're not about to let something as silly as a
generations-long feud stand in the way of finding out. That is, not until
Romeo's octogenarian mother, Julie's meddling ex-husband, and a cast of
grown Cacciamani and Roseman children begin to intervene with a passionate
hatred that matches their newly found love, stroke for stroke. Think
Montagues and Capulets, think wise and witty and thoroughly modern. Julie
and Romeo is a love story for the ages. |
 Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd - Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her
harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one
devastating, blurred memory - the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily
was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted,
and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her "stand-in
mother."" "When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily
knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only
direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina -
a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by
her mother." "There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black
beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the
calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and
honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong,
wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a
story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most. |
 The Red Dress by Sarah
Harrison - Its a dress in a million... - Hand-made in sleek, scarlet
satin, its a dress for seduction. Its journey begins with Carolyn, who plans
to wear it at her silver wedding party to remind Oliver that hes the
luckiest man he knows. But by the time Carolyn collects it from the
seamstress her world has been shaken. She opts instead for the safety of
black, and gives the red dress to a friend... So the dress journey
continues; the repository of hopes, dreams, fantasies and aspirations. |
 Thursdays At Eight
by Debbie Macomber - In
this uplifting tale, four women are bound together through their
experiences, triumphs, and tragedies. The one thing that brings them
together and allows them to escape life's hardships is their weekly
meeting--Thursdays at eight. |
 Until the
Real Thing Comes Along by Elizabeth Berg -
What do you do when your life isn't
living up to your dreams? When the man you love is unavailable, and yet you
long for a family, a home? What is the cost of compromising until the real
thing comes along? Reading Elizabeth Berg is like having a friend sit down
and talk with you about the deepest truths and most perplexing issues in
life, and in this exquisite new novel the bestselling author of Talk Before
Sleep and The Pull of the Moon once again gives us superb fiction about a
passionate woman who solves life's problems in a way that is far from
traditional, but close to the wise dictums of the heart. Patty Ann Murphy
says she's "Ms. Runner-Up" in life. Rarely the bridesmaid, never mind the
bride, Patty sells houses for a living (well, she's sold one house so far),
longs to be married and have a family, but is irresistibly drawn to the
wrong man. Ethan seems perfect for Patty--handsome, generous, and
sensitive--but he's hopelessly unavailable. Patty's frustration leads her to
feelings she doesn't admire--jealousy of her beautiful best friend, Elaine,
for instance, about whom she says, "Find me one woman who doesn't withhold
just a bit from another woman who looks like that." She's also worried about
her mother, with whom she's very close but who is beginning to act
strangely. Patty longs more and more for the consolation of loving and being
loved, but for the moment feels she must content herself with waiting--until
she can wait no more. |
 Cape Light by Thomas
Kincade - Nestled in
New England stands the picturesque little village of Cape Light, a seaside
hamlet where folks still enjoy a strong sense of community, and everybody
knows everybody's business. But the many inhabitants of Cape Light have
their share of hidden dreams, desires, and doubts as well. Like Mayor Emily
Warwick, whose secret from the past just arrived in town, and her sister,
Jessica, who has forgone her own ambitions to care for their ailing mother.
Or Reverend Ben, who counsels and consoles an entire town while coming to
grips with his own private sorrows, and Charlie, the owner of the local
diner whose no-nonsense talk and political aspirations make him the center
of controversy. They are friends and neighbors, doers and dreamers. They are
the people who laugh and love and build their lives together in the town of
Cape Light -and their story will capture your heart. |
 Where Shadows Go
by Eugenia Price -
America's first lady of storytelling takes up where her best-selling Bright Captivity left off, recreating life on a nineteenth-century
plantation in the vivid, dramatic second volume of The Georgia Trilogy. |
 The Homecoming by Marion Chesney -
Lizzie, the youngest of the six
haughty Beverley girls, has seen each of her sisters nearly marry for
Mannerling, not for love. All were obsessed with regaining the exquisite
seventeenth-century ancestral mansion that had been gambled away by their
now-deceased father, Sir Beverley. In the end each girl followed true love
and forgot about Mannerling. Lizzie, however, has always been different from
her sisters. Red-haired and saucy, she has never cared about Mannerling - or
marriage, for that matter. Unfortunately, her mother, Lady Beverley, knows
that Lizzie is her last chance if she ever hopes to preside over Mannerling
again. But Lizzie would rather die an old maid than marry for anything but
love. And how could she ever love Mannerling's new owner, the stuffy and
rude Duke of Severnshire? Suddenly it seems that no one, including the duke,
is what he seems, and for the first time canny Lizzie is at a loss for
words. Still, is a homecoming really what she wants? |
 Timepiece by Richard Paul Evans -
"Of all, clockmakers and
morticians should bear the keenest sense of priority-their lives daily spent
in observance of the unflagging procession of time... and the end thereof."
-David Parkin's Diary. January 3, 1901. So begins Timepiece, the
unforgettable story of hope and the source of the wisdom MaryAnne Parkin
shared with Richard in The Christmas Box. With the help of David Parkin's
diary, Richard discovers the mystery of the timepiece and the significance
of MaryAnne's request. “Nineteen
years previous, only eleven days before her death, MaryAnne Parkin had
bequeathed a beautiful rose-gold timepiece to my keeping.
"The day before you give Jenna away," she had said, her voice
trembling as she handed me the heirloom, "give this to her for the gift." I
was puzzled by her choice of words. "Her wedding gift?" I asked. She looked
at me sadly, then forced a fragile smile. "You will know what I mean." |
 Five People
you Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom -
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, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One
by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit
their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his
"meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal
question: "Why was I here?" |
 Cupid and Diana by
Christina Bartolomeo -
Diana Campanella has been feeling a little panicky lately - and with good
reason. Her vintage clothing store is on the verge of going bust and her
engagement to her lawyer fiancée has lasted longer than most people's
marriages. What's a girl to do? Struggling to make ends meet while keeping
the peace in her boisterous family, Diana feels caught between one sister
who makes her living as a lingerie model and another who is a devout
Catholic housewife. But just when all seems lost, hope arrives in the form
of a rumpled New York lawyer named Harry - a soul mate whose generous supply
of warmth and compassion more than make up for his shortage of designer
duds. Now Diana has to make a choice between the blueblood fiancée who
promises the security she desperately craves and the sappy dark horse who
always manages to make her laugh. |
 The Treachery of Time by Anna Gilbert -
One early morning just before the
Great War, a young girl is found abandoned, barely alive, in a small English
village. Daniel is the boy who saves her, and his childhood companion,
Esther, the only witness to the evil-looking man who most likely abandoned
her. The girl refuses to utter a single word about where she came from or
who she is, and when a traveler volunteers to deliver her to an orphanage,
she slips away from his cart, never to be seen again. As teenagers, Daniel
and Esther fall in love and plan to marry. Little do they dream that the
abandoned child will resurface in their lives - or that the events of that
seemingly innocent summer morning will keep coming back to haunt them. |
 At Home in Mitford
by Jan Karon - It's easy to
feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the
village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet, Father Tim,
the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa
who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins
wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a
mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's sixty years old. Suddenly,
Father Tim gets more than he bargained for. And readers get a rich comedy
about ordinary people and their ordinary lives. |
 The Copper Beach by
Mauve Binchy - In the Irish
town of Schancarrig, the young people carve their initials--and those of
their loves-into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not
even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind
Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all
the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it
seems. |
 Rookery Blues by Jon Hassler -
Rookery, Minnesota, is about as far north as you can go and still be in the
United States, and Rookery State College is an academic backwater if ever
there was one. The campus is populated by students seeking draft deferments
during the height of the Vietnam War and misfit teachers who can't get a job
anywhere else. Even so, some of the faculty at Rookery State long for a
meeting of the minds, the companionship of soulmates. |
 A Prayer for Owen
Meany by John Irving -
Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he
is God's instrument; he is. This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen
Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character. |
 Nobody's Fool by
Richard Russo - In his
slyly funny and moving new novel, the author of The Risk Pool follows the
unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat, upstate New York town--and in
the lives of the unluckiest of its citizens. |
 Time and Again
by Jack Finney - "Sleep.
And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone
from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as
automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no
dictionary. You have never heard the name Richard Nixon." Did illustrator Si
Morley really step out of his twentieth-century apartment one night -- right
into the winter of 1882? The U.S. Government believed it, especially when Si
returned with a portfolio of brand-new sketches and tintype photos of a
world that no longer existed -- or did it? |
 Wobegon Boy by
Garrison Keillor - John
Tollefson, the son of Byron and Mary of Lake Wobegon, leaves Minnesota for
upstate New York, to manage a public radio station at a college for
academically challenged children of financially gifted parents. Free from
the Dark Lutherans of his hometown, he makes a pleasant bachelor life for
himself in New York. He buys a new house and paints it a deep gold. He has a
bright idea for a restaurant specializing in fresh produce. He falls in love
with a historian named Alida Freeman. He is presented with public radio's
coveted Wally Award. In the midst of plenty, it occurs to John that his life
lacks nobility and grace. A consumer of fine food and wine and giver of good
parties, he yet has no coherent life story. Compared to his
great-grandfather John Tollefson, who finagled his way over from Norway, he
feels rootless, restless, joined in no struggle, with nothing at stake. The
only true magnificence in his life is Alida, who eludes his courtship and
gives him an impassioned speech about the pleasures of living alone. Folded
into the romance of John and Alida is the checkered saga of his ancestors -
dour butcher, a playboy publisher, a medicine-show politician, Siamese-twin
ballplayers, a Texas Pentacostalist, and a bank embezzler - and Lake Wobegon
itself, with its bachelor farmers, its stout-hearted burghers and
housewives, its simple code: Cheer up, Make yourself useful, Mind your
manners, and Avoid self-pity. A useful code, as John discovers in his
pursuit of magnificence, especially as the going gets tougher. |
 How to Make an
American Quilt by Whitney Otto -
An extraordinary and moving reading
experience, this story is an exploration of women of yesterday and today,
who join together in a uniquely female experience. As they gather year after
year, their stories, their wisdom, and their lives form the pattern from
which they draw warmth and comfort. |
 Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher -
As this absorbing saga of a modern
English family opens, 64-year-old Penelope Keeling is returning to her
country house following a heart attack, and her three adult children have
varying reactions to the news. The narrative is actually a series of deftly
interwoven vignettes that shift back and forth in time; each chapter centers
on one of the principal players in the family's history. The unifying thread
is an oil painting entitled ``The Shell Seekers,'' done by Penelope's
father. |
 Beaches
by Iris R. Dart - A
touching story of the friendship between two very different women. Cee Cee
Bloom, with her loud mouth, loud personality and flaming red hair, is
determined to become a Hollywood star. Bertie White, delicate and
conservative, hopes for a loving husband and family. They meet as children
in 1951 in Atlantic City, and, as pen pals, keep in touch with each other.
Their reunions through the years always occur at or near the beach, whether
in Sarasota, Malibu or Hawaii. Their story jumps back and forth between past
and present. Cee Cee and Bertie are genuine, and readers will like them and
understand why they are friends. |
 The Notebook by
Nicholas Sparks - Set amid
the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins
with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World
War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former
glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen
years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet
unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live
with only memories...until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him
once more. Allie Nelson, twenty-nine, is now engaged to another man, but
realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the
passage of time. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous
relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to
ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to
confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can
shape. Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just
the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something
different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait
of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect
us all. |
 Ladder of Years
by Anne Tyler -
BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING
FAMILY VACATION, declares the headline. Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead is
last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing nothing more than a
bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked
inside. To her husband and three almost-grown children, she has vanished
without trace or reason. But for Delia, who feels like a tiny gnat buzzing
around her family's edges, "walking away from it all" is not a premeditated
act but an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting, and unimagined
life. |
 Christy by Catherine Marshall
- At nineteen, Christy Huddleston left home to teach school in the
Smokies -- coming to know and care for the wild mountain people, with their
fierce pride, terrible poverty, dark superstitions...and their yearning for
beauty and truth. But in these primitive surroundings, Christy's faith would be
severely tested by the unique strengths and needs of two remarkable young men --
and challenged by a heart torn between desire...and love. |
 The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch -
Nicholas Darrow is a fortyish priest
of the Church of England who is movie-star handsome, charismatic, and adored
by his parishioners. He stays in London during the week and spends weekends
in the country with his wife, Rosalind, and their children. The book begins
with the story of Alice, an obese, ungainly woman with a Cordon Bleu degree
and a dying aunt. After Nick and Francie, a "befriender," help Alice through
the death, she becomes the rectory's cook, feeding gourmet meals to Nick and
his colleagues Lewis and Stacy. Over time, Francie becomes increasingly
malevolent, Nick and Rosalind separate, another character dies, and yet
another goes insane. |
 A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson -
In a fragile world on the brink of
World War II, lovely young Englishwoman Ellen Carr takes a job as a
housemother at an unorthodox boarding school in Vienna that specializes in
music, drama, and dance. Ellen simply wants to cook beautiful food in the
homeland of her surrogate grandmother, who had enchanted her with stories of
growing up in the countryside of Austria. What she finds when she reaches
the Hallendorf School in Vienna is a world that is magically unconventional
- and completely out of control. The children are delightful, but wild; the
teachers are beleaguered and at their wits' end; and the buildings are a
shambles. In short, the whole place is in desperate need of Ellen's
attention. Ellen seems to have been born to nurture all of Hallendorf; soon
everyone from Leon the lonely young musical prodigy to harassed headmaster
Mr. Bennet to Marek the mysterious groundsman depends on Ellen for - well,
everything. And in providing all of them with whatever they need, especially
Marek, for whom she develops a special attachment, Ellen is happier than
she's ever been... |
| Authors to Try |
| Fanny Flagg |
| Kaye Gibbons |
| Nicolas Sparks |
| Richard Paul Evans |
| Catherine Cookson |
| Eugenia Price |
| Elizabeth Adler |
| Maeve Binchy |
| Eileen Goudge |
Updated
October 27, 2008
West Bend Community Memorial
Library
630 Poplar Street - West Bend Wisconsin 53095 - 262.335.5151
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