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2011 Schedule
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January 19
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 Baking Cakes in Kigali
by Gaile Parkin
Baking Cakes in Kigali is a novel about the real meaning of reconciliation—about how, in the aftermath of tragedy, life goes on and people still manage to find reasons to celebrate. Rendered a confidant and supportive friend for her willingness to listen to her neighbors in genocide-stricken Rwanda, baker Angel Tungaraza provides decadent confections and transforming counsel to a series of troubled customers.
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February 16
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 The Girls from Ames
by Jeffrey Zaslow
A testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges—and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.
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March 16
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 Winter's Bone
by Daniel Woodrell
Reaching her sixteenth year in the harsh Ozarks while caring for her poverty-stricken family, Ree Dolly learns that they will lose their house unless her bail-skipping father can be found and made to appear at an upcoming court date.
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April 20
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 Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
by Jeanette Walls
A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy—but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit.
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May 18
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 The Soloist
by Steve Lopez
The true story of Nathaniel Ayers, a musician who became schizophrenic and homeless, and his friendship with Steve Lopez, the Los Angeles columnist who discovers and writes about him in the newspaper.
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June 15
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 The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Place in the World
by Eric Weiner
Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, this book takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Singapore benefit psychologically by having their options limited by the government? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina, so darn happy?
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July 20
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 A Pocketful of Names
by Joe Coomer
Inhabiting an island off the coast of Maine left to her by her great-uncle Arno, Hannah finds her life as a dedicated and solitary artist rudely interrupted one summer when a dog, matted with feathers and seaweed, arrives with the tide. He is only the first of a series of unexpected visitors, and is soon followed by a teenager running from an abusive father, a half sister in trouble, a mainland family, and a forlorn trapped whale.
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August 17
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 Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
by Steve Olson
Olson, a science journalist in the US, has undertaken the ambitious task of describing and defining the history of genetic ancestry worldwide, concluding that, though our awareness is always drawn to the differences, in fact humans are all related.
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September 21
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 Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by Jamie Ford
Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.
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October 19
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 Sweeping Up Glass
by Carolyn Wall
This may be the coldest winter on record in Kentucky, but that doesn't keep the elusive Hunt Club from tracking silver-faced wolves on Olivia's strip of mountain. It falls to her and Will'm to figure out why as the hunters turn their sights on them, too, in this searing and surprising debut novel.
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November 30
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 Shadow Tag
by Louise Erdrich
When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and marriage, while turning her Red Diary (hidden where Gil will find it) into a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an eerily gripping read.
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December 21
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 Getting to Happy
by Terry McMillan
A sequel to Waiting to Exhale picks up fifteen years later to find Savannah contemplating divorce, Bernadine succumbing to painkiller addiction after a second husband's swindle, Robin falling into shopaholism, and Gloria confronting profound change after a fateful event.
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