|
Holub, Josef
An Innocent Soldier
A sixteen-year-old farmhand is tricked into fighting in the Napoleonic Wars by the farmer for whom he works, who secretly substitutes him for the farmer's own son. 231 p. 2005
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Aboulela, Leila
Minaret
Twenty years ago, Najwa, then at university in Khartoum, would never have imagined that one day she would be a maid. But a coup forces the young woman and her family into political exile in London. Soon orphaned, she finds solace and companionship within the Muslim community. Then Najwa meets Tamer, the intense, lonely younger brother of her employer. They find a common bond in faith and slowly, silently, begin to fall in love.
276 p. 2005
Adult Fiction Book
|
|
Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart
The novel concerns the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion in Umofia--a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbo ethnic group. It also focuses on his three wives, his children (mainly his oldest son Nwoye and his favorite daughter Ezinma), and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on his traditional Igbo (archaically "Ibo") community during an unspecified time period in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
148 p. 1996
Adult Fiction Book
|
|
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Purple Hibiscus : a Novel
From the outside, fifteen-year-old Kambili has the perfect life. Yet things are less than perfect in her wealthy Nigerian home. But everything changes once Kambili and Jaja visit Aunty Ifeoma outside the city. For the first time they experience freedom from their papa. Jaja learns to garden and work with his hands, and Kambili secretly falls in love with a young, charismatic priest. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, tension within the family escalates.
307 p. 2003
Adult Fiction Book
|
|
Allende, Isabel
City of the Beasts
When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his individualistic grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid Beast in the Amazon River Valley, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world of magic realism as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians.
406 p. 2002
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Amir
Zahra's Paradise
Mehdi is a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone. What's keeping his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of his mother, who refuses to surrender her son to fate, and the tenacity of his brother, a blogger, who fuses tradition and technology to explore and explode the void in which Mehdi has vanished.
255 p. 2011
Adult Graphic Novel
|
|
Bondoux, Anne-Laure
A Time of Miracles
In the early 1990s, a boy with a mysterious past and the woman who cares for him endure a five-year journey across the war-torn Caucasus and Europe, weathering hardships and welcoming unforgettable encounters with other refugees searching for a better life.
180 p. 2010
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Colfer, Eoin
Airman
In the late nineteenth century, when Conor Broekhart discovers a conspiracy to overthrow the king, he is branded a traitor, imprisoned, and forced to mine for diamonds under brutal conditions while he plans a daring escape from Little Saltee prison by way of a flying machine that he must design, build, and, hardest of all, trust to carry him to safety.
412 p. 2008
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Compestine, Ying Chang
Revolution is Not a Dinner Party : a Novel
Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed bourgeois, and people of laughter.
248 p. 2007
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Dau, John Bul
God Grew Tired of Us
Just 13 when he was driven from his village and separated from his family in the raging civil war in southern Sudan, John Bul Dau spent years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, until he came to the U.S. as one of 4,000 Lost Boys of Sudan. He's funny about the culture shock in America and honest about his years in the camp. Although appreciative of this country and the chance for work and college, he never denies his connections to Africa.
287 p. 2007
Adult Nonfiction Book
|
|
Dowd, Siobhan
Bog Child
In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.
321 p. 2008
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Funke, Cornelia Caroline
Reckless
Jacob and Will Reckless have looked out for each other ever since their father disappeared, but when Jacob discovers a magical mirror that transports him to a warring world populated by witches, giants, and ogres, he keeps it to himself until Will follows him one day, with dire consequences.
394 p. 2010
Children's Fiction Book
|
|
Guene, Faiza
Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow
Doria is a fifteen-year-old Muslim French girl living in the infamous Paradise projects of suburban Paris and suffering all the usual problems: an overworked mother, an absent father, an inability to understand boys. Disarmingly funny and fresh, Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is a hopeful, wise, and intimate portrait of Arab immigrant life.
179 p. 2006
Adult Fiction Book
|
|
Hartnett, Sonya
Surrender
As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finnigan.
248 p. 2006
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Hirsi Ali, Ayaan
Infidel
In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West.
353 p. 2007
Adult Nonfiction Book
|
|
|
Holub, Josef
An Innocent Soldier
A sixteen-year-old farmhand is tricked into fighting in the Napoleonic Wars by the farmer for whom he works, who secretly substitutes him for the farmer's own son.
231 p. 2005
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Ihimaera, Witi Tame
Whale Rider
As her beloved grandfather, chief of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, struggles to lead in difficult times and to find a male successor, young Kahu is developing a mysterious relationship with whales, particularly the ancient bull whale whose legendary rider was their ancestor.
152 p. 2003
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Jiang, Ji-li
Red Scarf Girl : a Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
Ji-li Jiang recounts her experiences as a young girl growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution.
285 p. 1997
Children's Nonfiction Book
|
|
Jinks, Catherine
The Reformed Vampire Support Group
Fifteen-year-old vampire Nina has been stuck for fifty-one years in a boring support group for vampires, and nothing exciting has ever happened to them--until one of them is murdered and the others must try to solve the crime.
362 p. 2009
Teen Fiction Book
|
|
Khouri, Norma
Honor Lost : Love and Death in Modern-day Jordan
This shocking and dramatic novel recounts a powerful love story that ends in an appalling tragedy, and also attempts to bring to the world's attention the continuing practice of honor killing in Jordan -- an ancient tradition that encourages the murder of women considered to have dishonored their families.
211 p. 2003
Adult Nonfiction Book
|
|
Kim, Tong-hwa
The Color of Earth
Ehwa grows up helping her widowed mother run the local tavern, watching as their customers--both neighbors and strangers--look down on her mother for her single lifestyle. Their social status isolates Ehwa and her mother from the rest of the people in their quiet country village. But as she grows older and sees her mother fall in love again, Ehwa slowly begins to open up to the possibility of love in her life.
319 p. 2009
Teen Fiction Book
|
Print this list
Email this list
