Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
by Oliver Sacks

In Musicophilia, Sacks investigates the medical effects—positive and negative—of listening to music. He does so in a manner somewhere between scholarly and weird, using amazing stories to validate his theories and illustrate how important music appreciation can be. Whether talking about a disabled man who has memorized 2,000 operas or children whose ability to learn Mandarin Chinese has given them perfect pitch, Sacks offers tales that will fascinate any music lover.
Read More... | Request a copy »

White Oleander
by Janet Fitch

When a woman murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life, her daughter must navigate a new reality--that of a series of foster homes, each its own universe, each with its own limits and dangers.
Read More... | Request a copy »

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers

One of the most mesmerizing memoirs of the literary season: a wrenching, hilarious, and stylistically groundbreaking story of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother.
Read More... | Request a copy »

Atonement
by Ian McEwan

In this rich novel by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Amsterdam, a young girl unwittingly tells a tale that turns her family upside down. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, this is a profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.
Read More... | Request a copy »

Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer

A writer journeys to the farmlands of eastern Europe to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Passionate and marked by an indelible humanity, "Everything Is Illuminated" mines the black holes of history and is ultimately a story about searching for people and places that no longer exist. Read More... | Request a copy »

In the Woods
by Tana French

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Read More...

Featured this week on LITE 99.9 and MIX 107.7.
» Request a copy today or subscribe to the Book of the Week email newsletter.

Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan

The story told in Nancy Horan's anticipated debut, Loving Frank, is familiar to many who have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright: He left his wife, who would not grant him a divorce, for another married woman. After running away together to Europe in 1909, they returned to live in Wisconsin at Taliesin, the house that Frank built for her. Now, after all these years, we have the story from the perspective of that married woman, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Read More...

Featured this week on LITE 99.9 and MIX 107.7.
» Request a copy today or subscribe to the Book of the Week email newsletter.

Charms for the Easy Life
by Kaye Gibbons

A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts. Read More...

Featured this week on LITE 99.9 and MIX 107.7.
» Request a copy today or subscribe to the Book of the Week email newsletter.