Simsbury Public Library, Simsbury, CT

Oprah's First Book Club Selections

The Deep End of the Ocean - Jacqueline Mitchard The disappearance of her three-year-old son Ben threatens to drive a wedge between Beth Cappadora and her husband, Pat, and transforms her older son into a troubled delinquent, until one day nine years later when Ben comes back into their lives.

Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison Macon Dead, Jr., called Milkman, son of the richest Negro in town, moves from childhood into early manhood, searching, among the disparate, mysterious members of his family, for his life and reality.

The Book Of Ruth - Jane Hamilton The black sheep of her troubled family, Ruth struggles to keep the peace between her mother, her young son, and her slightly off-the-wall husband and to put the pieces back together when a heated situation boils over.

She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb Overweight and sensitive Dolores Price grows from painful childhood, through excruciating adolescence, to lonely adulthood, experiencing the heartache of being a misfit in a confusing world.

Stones from the River - Ursula Hegi Follows Trudi Montag, a dwarf who serves as her town's librarian, unofficial historian, and recorder of the secret stories of her people, in a novel that charts the course of German history in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Rapture of Canaan - Sheri Reynolds Ninah Huff, the teenage granddaughter of the founder of an isolated religious community, causes controversy when she is discovered to be pregnant with what she claims is a holy child.

The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou The African American author describes her move to New York from California, her growing involvement in the literary movement of the city, and her relationship with her son, Guy.

Songs in Ordinary Time - Mary McGarry Morris A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man.

A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines In 1948 Louisiana, a young teacher is asked to impart some of his own pride and learning to a young Black man awaiting execution, only to come face to face with his own cynicism and hopelessness.

Ellen Foster */ A Virtuous Woman* - Kaye Gibbons** After the death of her mother, an eleven-year-old girl finds that life with her father is too dangerous and tries to find a new home. / A young widower looks back on his memories of his wife and their life together.

The Meanest Thing to Say, The Treasure Hunt, The Best Way to Play - Bill Cosby When a new boy in class tries to get the other students to play a game that involves saying the meanest things possible to one another, Little Bill shows him a better way to make friends. / One rainy day while his father listens to his old records, his mother polishes a silver platter, and his brother enjoys his baseball card collection, Little Bill discovers his own treasure, a talent for storytelling. / Little Bill and his friends, avid fans of the television show "Space Explorers," clamor to get the video game version, but they find that they have more fun using their imagination while playing outside.

Paradise - Toni Morrison The authr captures the dreams, memories, conflicts, and complex interior lives of the citizens of a small, all-black town as four young women are brutally attacked in a convent near the town during the 1970s.

Here on Earth - Alice Hoffman A middle-aged woman, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, returns to her small Massachusetts hometown for the funeral of the housekeeper who raised her and finds herself thrust into the lives of the people she left behind.

Black and Blue - Anna Quindlen After her passionate marriage deteriorates into a violent nightmare, Fran Benedetto is forced to start a new life, complete with a new identity.

Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from the impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York to be with her mother. There she gains a legacy of shame that can only be healed by returning to Haiti and the woman who first reared her.

I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation.

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day - Pearl Cleage After more than a decade of living the high life, Ava Johnson returns home to the quiet northern Michigan community in which she grew up with a dark secret, but Ava cannot turn her back on friends and family who need her.

Midwives: A Novel - Chris Bohjalian In the winter of 1981, trapped by unpassable roads, midwife Sibyl Danforth makes a life-altering decision when she performs an emergency cesarean section on a woman she fears has died of a stroke.

Where the Heart Is - Billie Letts Pregnant, overweight, and convinced about her inherent bad luck, Novalee Nation hopes for a new life in a new state. Her boyfriend dumps her along the way in Oklahoma, where she finds her spirit renewed.

Jewel - Bret Lott A mother fights for the dignity of her youngest daughter against the backdrop of a pure and simple way of life in the backwoods of Mississippi in 1943.

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink & Carol Brown Janeway At the age of fifteen, Michael Berg falls in love with a woman who disappears. While observing a trial as a law student years later, he is shocked to discover the same woman as the defendant in a horrible crime.

The Pilot's Wife - Anita Shreve When her husband, a pilot, dies in an airplane crash off the Irish coast, Kathryn Lyons finds herself in the media spotlight as rumors abound of her husband's shocking secret past.

White Oleander - Janet Fitch The struggle to build an authentic identity lies at the heart of Astrid's life as a foster child in Los Angeles after her poet mother, who has kept Astrid isolated from the world, is imprisoned for murder.

Mother of Pearl - Melinda Haynes In a small Mississippi town during the late 1950s, Even Grade, a twenty-eight-year-old black man who grew up as an orphan, and Valuable Korner, the teenage white daughter of the local prostitute, search for love, family, and commitment as their lives intersect with that of Joody Two Sun, a seer who becomes Even's lover.

Tara Road - Maeve Binchy Thanks to a chance phone call, Ria from Dublin and Marilyn from New England switch houses for the summer with extraordinary results. They are drawn into lifestyles vastly different than their own.

River, Cross My Heart - Breena Clarke After the drowning death of their daughter in the Potomac River, a family leaves their rural North Carolina world in search of a better life among friends and relatives in Georgetown. They grapple with their loss and struggle to move forward.

Vinegar Hill - A. Manette Ansay Ellen Grier returns with her husband and children to their midwestern Catholic hometown to live with her narrow-minded in-laws. While coping with the family's eccentricity she confronts a hidden secret festering in her husband's past.

A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton While under the care of Alice Goodwin, a neighbor's child drowns in the Goodwins' pond, a devastating accident that has profound repercussions for the entire Goodwin family.

Gap Creek - Robert Morgan During their first year of marriage, Julie and Hank move to Gap Creek, South Carolina, where a flood that nearly kills them tests the endurance of their relationship.

Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende Raised in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile, after being abandoned as a baby, a pregnant Eliza follows her lover, Joaquin Andieta, to California at the height of the Gold Rush and finds adventure and adversity on her road to independence and love.

Back Roads - Tawni O'Dell With his mother in jail for killing his abusive father, nineteen-year-old Harley Altmyer cares for his three sisters in a small Pennsylvania coal town. Despite his responsibilities, he is still a teenage boy and lusts after the mother of two who live down the road.

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison Relates the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old Black girl growing up in an America that values blue-eyed blondes, and the tragedy that results from her longing to be accepted.

While I Was Gone - Sue Miller Having moved on with her life after a friend was brutally murdered, Jo Becker is now married with a grown family. When an old housemate moves into the neighborhood, Jo rekindles a relationship that takes her back to the past and threatens her future.

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary--Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters--begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives transformed over the course of three decades.

Open House - Elizabeth Berg Struggling to come to terms with her husband's abandonment, Samantha sets out to reconstruct a new life for herself and her eleven-year-old son, despite financial hardship, and to rediscover her own identity.

Drowning Ruth - Christina Schwarz Worn out from nursing soldiers at a Milwaukee hospital and struggling to recover from a traumatic love affair, Amanda Starkey returns to her family's rural Wisconsin farm to stay with her beloved sister, Mattie, and young niece, Ruth.

House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus, III When a former colonel of the Iranian Air Force and his family purchase a small California home at auction, they are faced with a great conflict as the former owner and her police officer boyfriend fight to get it back at any cost.

We Were the Mulvaneys - Joyce Carol Oates The Mulvaneys, at first a close and very lucky family, drift apart over the years, until the youngest son, Judd, discovers the secret of their downfall and sets out to help reunite the family.

Icy Sparks - Gwyn Hyman Rubio After years of living in a children's asylum for having spontaneous jerks and spasms, Icy returns home and is quickly befriended by Miss Emily, who cares for her and teaches her the ways of life.

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail - Malika Oufkir The daughter of a former aide to the king of Morocco, who was executed after a failed assassination attempt on the ruler, describes how she, her five siblings, and her mother were imprisoned in a desert penal colony for twenty years.

Cane River - Lalita Tademy Follows four generations of African American women from slavery to the early twentieth century as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisiana.

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen Enid Lambert begins to worry about her husband when he begins to withdraw and lose himself in negativity and depression as he faces Parkinson's disease.

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry In India during the mid-1970s, after a "state of internal emergency" is declared, four very different people--a widowed seamstress, a student, and a man and his nephew who have fled their village's caste violence--find their lives becoming inextricably intertwined.

Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald Spanning five generations and moving from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, to the bleak landscape of World War I, and to the emerging jazz scene in New York City, this epic tale tells the story of four sisters.

Sula - Toni Morrison - The intense friendship shared by two African American women raised in an Ohio town changes when one of them leaves to roam the countryside and returns ten years later. * This is the last monthly title for the Book Club, titles will now appear on an irregular basis.

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