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Waiting to Exhale

By Terry McMillan

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"... a wise, earthy story of a friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while 'waiting to exhale,' waiting for that man who will take their breath away."

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The Kite Runner

By Khaled Hosseini

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Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

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Of Mice and Men

By John Steinbeck

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Tells a story about the strange relationship of two migrant workers, who are able to realize their dreams of an easy life until one of them succumbs to his weakness for soft, helpless creatures and strangles the farmer's wife. Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him.
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

By Fannie Flagg

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"Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s; of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women - of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth - who back in the '30s ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present - for Evelyn and for us - will never be quite the same again...."
(Audiobook summary)

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Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

By Rebecca Wells

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When Siddalee Walker, oldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, Ya-Ya extraordinaire, is interviewed in the New York Times about a hit play she's directed, her mother gets described as a "tap-dancing child abuser." Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda. Devastated, Sidda begs forgiveness, and postpones her upcoming wedding. All looks bleak until the Ya-Yas step in and convince Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of their girlhood mementos, called "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."

Check out the film starring Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, and Ashley Judd.

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A Year in Provence

By Peter Mayle

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They had been there often as tourists. They had cherished the dream of someday living all year under the Provencal sun. And suddenly it happened. Here is the month-by-month account of the charms and frustrations that Peter Mayle and his wife -- and their two large dogs -- experience their first year in the remote country of the Luberon restoring a two-centuries-old stone farmhouse that they bought on sight. From coping in January with the first mistral, which comes howling down from the Rhone Valley and wreaks havoc with the pipes, to dealing as the months go by with the disarming promises and procrastination of the local masons and plumbers, Peter Mayle delights us with his strategies for survival.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

By Harper Lee

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Two children in a small southern town in the 1930s are thrust into an adult world of racial bigotry and hatred when their lawyer father defends a black man charged with raping a white girl. The book has been challenged and banned from several school libraries over the years.

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The Call of the Wild

By Jack London

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This book tells the story of the magnificent dog Buck, who is a loyal pet until cruel men make him a pawn in their search for the gold of the Klondike. Brutally treated, Buck finds the blood of his wolf ancestors rising within him and breaks free to roam the Alaskan wilderness as leader of a ferocious pack. Banned in three European countries in the '20's and '30's, it is now required reading in many U.S. schools.

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

By Mark Twain

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The bad boy of riverboating days on the Mississippi has a great time living like a pirate, witnesses a murder, gets a fortune, and attends his own funeral.

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Silas Marner

By George Eliot

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After suffering betrayal and rejection, Silas Marner leaves his community to settle in a strange place. There the lonely weaver becomes obsessed with accumulating money, until one day a little golden-haired orphan girl wanders into his home... Set at the beginning of the industrial revolution, Silas Marner weaves a telling social commentary into an inspiring tale of love and redemption. Banned in Anaheim, CA in 1978.

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