Honolulu by Alan Brennert
Recommended by Laurie, Fiction Readers Advisor 
An intelligent, headstrong Korean girl (named “Regret” for her parents’ disappointment that she was not born a boy) secretly learns to read and then submits a glamour shot of herself to a matchmaker in the hope of continuing in America the education she is denied at home. When she reaches Hawaii to marry the man who had selected her from her photograph, the education she receives isn’t what she had hoped for...more

The reason for God:  Belief in an age of skepticism  by Timothy Keller
Recommended by Michelle, Head of Technical Services

While the title of the book may be a bit of a turn off for the non-philosophical thinker, it is remarkably readable and enjoyable.  In his book Keller provides a brief introduction to the arguments for Christianity, as well as an explanation of the philosophical and theological answers to many of the questions that the 
skeptic most often makes...More

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Recommended by Laurie, Fiction Readers Advisor 
Nearing 40, Portia Nathan figures she should be happy with her successful career as an admissions officer at Princeton , a nice house  in Princeton , and a long-term relationship with  Mark, Princeton ’s English department...More

Blame by Michele Huneven
Recommended by Laurie, Fiction Readers Advisor 
Patsy MacLemoore is a smart, functioning alcoholic -- a professor at Hallen College in  Altadena , California -- known for loud, lascivious behavior at faculty parties and for missing the occasional class after a night of drinking and pills...More

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie  by Alan Bradley
Recommended by Laurie, Fiction Readers Advisor 
This is an old-fashioned-styled mystery with a charming young heroine, Flavia De Luce, an eleven-year-old chemist and would-be poisoner. The body of a stranger is found in the cucumber patch of the big, old country house Flavia shares with a distant father and her two irritating older sisters, outside the English village of Bishop ’s Lacey...More

The Local News  by Miriam Gershow
Recommended by Laurie, Fiction Readers Advisor 
What is it like for the family left behind after a child vanishes and a police investigation turns up nothing? This subject has been explored in other novels (e.g. Every Visible Thing by Lisa Carey, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacqueline Mitchard, and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold) but this first novel by Miriam Gershow delves equally well into the guilt, grief, and horror felt by the family and friends of Lydia Pasternak’s older brother...More