Reflections Book Group 1995/96
Explore the 1995/96 Reflections Book Group reading list—discover timeless literary gems and thought-provoking titles from this curated collection of 1995 books.
Book
Second Nature
by Alice Hoffman
A suburban woman discovers her own wild spirit in this “suspenseful...dark, romantic meditation on what it means to be human”(The New Yorker) from the bestselling author of The Rules of Magic. Robin Moore, coping with a divorce and a troubled teen-aged son, impulsively rescues a strange man from a psychiatric ward—a beautiful, uncivilized innocent who has been raised in the wilderness and possesses no more sophistication than a child. But when she brings him home to her perfectly ordered neighborhood, the events that follow cause Robin to question her wisdom and doubt her own heart—and, ultimately, to change all of her ideas about love and humanity. “Her richest and wisest, as well as her boldest, novel to date.”—The New York Times Book Review
Item Not Found
ID: 0060929995
(Type: books)
Book
The Celestine Prophecy
by James Redfield
THE #1 BESTSELLING INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON - NOW WITH A NEW PREFACE You have never read a book like this before--a book that comes along once in a lifetime to change lives forever. In the rain forests of Peru, an ancient manuscript has been discovered. Within its pages are 9 key insights into life itself -- insights each human being is predicted to grasp sequentially; one insight, then another, as we move toward a completely spiritual culture on Earth. Drawing on ancient wisdom, it tells you how to make connections among the events happening in your life right now and lets you see what is going to happen to you in the years to come. The story it tells is a gripping one of adventure and discovery, but it is also a guidebook that has the power to crystallize your perceptions of why you are where you are in life and to direct your steps with a new energy and optimism as you head into tomorrow. Praise for The Celestine Prophecy "A gripping adventure story filled with intrigue, suspense, and spiritual revelations." - Commonwealth Journal "A spiritual classic...a book to read and reread, to cherish, and to give to friends." - Joan Borysenko, PhD, author of Fire in the Soul "In his inimitable style of great storytelling, Redfield opens us up to a world of insight, inspiration, synchronicity, and power." - Deepak Chopra
Book
The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields
An aged woman discovers herself as she reflects upon her life in the 20th century.
Book
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners—one of the most popular novels of all time—that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the “most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author’s works,” and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as “irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.”
Book
A Room with a View
by E.M. Forster
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson—who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist—Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England, she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion. The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster’s colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen, and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room with a View is one of E. M. Forster’s earliest and most celebrated works.
Item Not Found
ID: 0679740244
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0552995878
(Type: books)
Book
This boy's life
by Tobias Wolff
Wolff's account of his boyhood and the process of growing up includes paper routes, whiskey, scouting, fistfights, friendship, and betrayal in 1950s America.
Book
The Hundred Secret Senses
by Amy Tan
Chinese-American Olivia Laguni has a battle of wills with her half-sister and lifelong nemesis, Kwan Li, whose haunting predictions and implementation of the secret senses link their family's struggles to the challenges of their ancestors. Reprint.
Book
Reviving Ophelia
by Mary Bray Pipher
Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before? According to Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist who has treated girls for more than twenty years, we live in a look-obsessed, media-saturated, "girl-poisoning" culture. Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence--from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school--cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which, ultimately, destroys their self-esteem. Yet girls often blame themselves or their families for this "problem with no name" instead of looking at the world around them. Here, for the first time, are girls' unmuted voices from the front lines of adolescence, personal and painfully honest. By laying bare their harsh day-to-day reality, Reviving Ophelia issues a call to arms and offers parents compassion, strength, and strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost sense of self.
Book
Witches' Bane
by Susan Wittig Albert
Herb shop owner China Bayles is shocked when Halloween hijinks take a gruesome turn... In a small Texas town, what starts as a little festive Halloween fun ends in a brutal murder. And lawyer-turned-herbalist China Bayles is even more shocked when her friend Ruby, a New Age expert in tarot and astrology, becomes the prime suspect after a minister accuses her of witchcraft. Now it’s up to China to unmask the real killer...
Book
Snow Falling on Cedars
by David Guterson
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/Faulkner Award Winner • A gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric masterpiece of courtroom suspense—one that leaves us shaken and changed. "Haunting .... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper." —Los Angeles Times San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries—memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.
Book
The Sportswriter
by Richard Ford
In this “powerful” blockbuster of a novel (The New York Times), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day introduces his most beloved character, failed novelist turned sportswriter Frank Bascombe, during an Easter weekend, as he moves through the great losses of his life. As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people—men, mostly—who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford's moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring.
Book
In the Lake of the Woods
by Tim O'Brien
A Vietnam veteran investigates the death of his wife while being accused of her murder.
Item Not Found
ID: 0060959622
(Type: books)
Book
Stones from the River
by Ursula Hegi
From the acclaimed author of Floating in My Mother’s Palm and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times). Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar. Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.