Today Show Book Club

Each month the Today Show invites a best selling author to select a work written by a lesser known writer for the Today Show Book Club.

	June 2005 Nancy Pearl. More Book Lust - Chosen by Lisa Scottoline This sprightly follow-up to Book Lust includes a quirky array of recommended titles in nearly 150 eclectic categories including: highly unusual storylines, humans falling in love with animals, memoirs about complex lives, and true tales from the frontlines of parenting.
	May 2005 Joseph Boyden. Three-Day Road - Chosen by Isabel Allende It is 1919, and Niska, an Oji Cree medicine woman who is the last of her band to live alone in the wild, has received word that one of the two teenage boys she saw off to war has returned. She leaves her home in the bush of northern Ontario to retrieve him, only to discover that the one she expected is actually the other.
	April 2005 Nicole Krauss. History of Love - Chosen by Harlan Coben Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the milk counter of Starbucks. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And although he doesn't know it, that book also survived: it crossed oceans and generations, and changed lives.
	January 2005 Chris Abani. Graceland - Chosen by Walter Mosley The sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria, provides the backdrop to the story of Elvis, a teenage Elvis impersonator hoping to make his way out of the ghetto. Nuanced, lyrical, and pitch perfect, this is a remarkable story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria, where the trappings of American culture reign supreme.
	December 2004 Stephanie Kallos. Broken for You - Chosen by Sue Monk Kidd Explores the risks and rewards of human connection, and the hidden strength behind things that only seem fragile.
	November 2004 Ned Vizzini. Be More Chill - Chosen by Judy Blume Badly in need of self-confidence and a change of image, high school nerd Jeremy Heere swallows a pill-sized super computer that is supposed to help him get whatever he wants.
	October 2004 Brian Morton. A Window Across the River - Chosen by Sue Miller Isaac and Nora haven't seen each other in five years, yet when Nora phones Isaac late one night, he knows who it is before she's spoken a word. Isaac, a photographer, is relinquishing his artistic career, while Nora, a writer, is seeking to rededicate herself to hers. Fueled by their rediscovered love, Nora is soon on fire with the best work she's ever done, until she realizes that the story she's writing has turned into a fictionalized portrait of Isaac, exposing his frailties and compromises and sure to be viewed by him as a betrayal. How do we remain faithful to our calling if it estranges us from the people we love? How do we remain in love after we have seen the very worst of our loved ones? These are some of the questions explored in a novel that critics are calling "an absolute pleasure"
	September 2004 Cynthia Ozick. Heir to the Glimmering World In 1930s New York, Rose Meadows becomes the assistant to Herr Mitwisser, the patriarch of a large, chaotic household. The professor is a terrifying figure, obsessed with arcane research.  His wife, Elsa is becoming unhinged. Their 16 year old daughter, Anneliese runs the household. Rosie's place here is uncertain, and she finds her fate hanging on the arrival of James. James is the Bear Boy and is inspired by the real Christopher Robin.
	July 2004 Christopher Moore. Fluke, or, How I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn is in love -- with the salt air and sun-drenched waters off Maui ... and especially with the majestic ocean-dwelling behemoths that have been bleeping and hooting their haunting music for more than twenty million years. But just why do the humpback whales sing? That's the question that has Nate and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing any large marine mammal that crosses their path. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.
	June 2004 David Rosenfelt. Bury the Lead The hero of David Rosenfelts previous novels, Edgar-nominated Open and Shut and First Degree, Andy Carpenter returns to prove the innocence of a reporter accused of being a serial killer.
	May 2004 Edwidge Danticat. The Dew Breaker "A brilliant deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a "dew breaker" - a torturer - a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality."
	Sean Greer. The Confessions of Max Tivoli "We are each the love of someone's life." "So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max's father declares him a Nisse, a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward - on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child."
	Penelope Lively. The Photograph It opens with a snapshot: a young woman, Kath, at an unknown gathering, hands clasped with a man not her husband, their backs to the camera. Its envelope is marked DO NOT OPEN-DESTROY. But Kath's husband, Glyn, does not heed the warning. The mystery of the photograph, and of Kath herself and her recent death, propels him on a journey of discovery that sends shock waves through the lives of her family and friends.
	Matthew Sharpe. The Sleeping Father - Chosen by Susan Issacs Bernard Schwartz has lost his wife, his career, and finally, thanks to the accidental combination of two classes of antidepressants, his consciousness. He emerges from a coma to find his son Chris, the perpetual smart-ass, and his daughter Cathy, a Jewish teen turned self-martyred Catholic, stumbling headlong toward trauma-induced maturity.
	Alice Blanchard. The Breathtaker - Chosen by Jacquelyn Mitchard A howling funnel of destruction screams across the prairie and slams into the sleepy town of Promise, Oklahoma. As the mammoth twister splinters homes, shreds crops, and tosses cars through the air, only three of the town's terrified residents know that an even more malevolent force has come to torment them - and they will not live to tell anyone.
	Edward P. Jones. The Known World Henry Townsend, a black farmer, boot maker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor - William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation - as well as of his own slaves.   After he dies, while things begin to fall apart both at his plantation they also begin to fall apart in the known world.
	Shirley Hazzard. The Great Fire The year is 1947. The great fire of the Second World War has convulsed Europe and Asia. Arriving in Occupied Japan to record the effects of the tomb at Hiroshima, Aldred Leith, an acclaimed hero of the conflict, meets brother and sister, Benedict and Helen Driscoll. The young people capture Leith's sympathy; indeed, he finds himself struggling with his attraction to this girl whose feelings are as intense as his own and from whom he will soon be fatefully parted.
	Audrey Niffenegger. The Time Traveler's Wife The love story of Henry and Claire whose lives are punctuated by Henry's disappearance to different points in time--sometimes even back to visit Claire as a young woman. When Henry meets Claire, he is twenty-eight, and she is twenty. He's a hip, handsome librarian; she is an art student with Botticelli hair. Henry has never met Claire before; Claire has known Henry since she was six...
	Alison McGhee. Shadow Baby Eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth about her missing father and grandfather and her dead twin sister. When she begins interviewing her elderly neighbor, Mr. Kominsky, she invents versions of his past and makes up lives for the people missing from her own shadowy history.
	Mark Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Chosen by Dave Barry Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
	Carolyn Parkhurst. The Dogs of Babel - Chosen by Anna Quindlen A poignant and beautiful debut novel explores a man's quest to unravel the mystery of his wife's death with the help of the only witness--their Rhodesian ridgeback, Lorelei.
	ZZ Packer. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - Chosen by John Updike Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong.
	Billy Collins. Nine Horses - Chosen by James Patterson This is poet Billy Collins first collection of new poems in four years, and it follows on the heels of the runaway success of "Sailing Alone Around the Room."
	Sandra Cisneros. Caramelo - Chosen by Louise Erdrich An extraordinary new novel from the author of "The House on Mango Street" is a multigenerational story of a Mexican-American family whose myriad voices create a dazzling weave of passion, poignancy, and the stuff of life.
	Alexander McCall Smith. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Combining a wonderfully satisfying reimagination of the mystery with a classic novel of Africa in the tradition of Isak Dinesen, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency tells the story of Precious Ramotswe, a delightfully cunning and a profoundly moral woman who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives."
	Mary Lawson. Crow Lake - Chosen by Mary Higgins Clark For the farming Pye family of northern Ontario, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur offstage. In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control.
	Kevin Baker. Paradise Alley - Chosen by Frank McCourt Three Irish immigrant women become trapped together in New York City during the Draft Riots of the Civil War. "Paradise Alley" is a story of the intersection of the Irish- and African-American experiences in the crucible of 19th century New York--a story of race and hatred, love and war, of risk and dauntless courage.
	Alan Bennett. The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van - Chosen by Helen Fielding Featuring a new Introduction by the author, this unique paperback contains Bennett's autobiographical sketch, "The Lady in the Van, " and his acclaimed story, "The Clothes They Stood Up In, " which "The Washington Post" called "an absolutely delicious, near perfect little book."
	Michael Datcher. Raising Fences - Chosen by Terry McMillan Through his own riveting story, Datcher offers a view of young black men who long for loving, stable marriages, fatherhood, and homes in safe neighborhoods. He also writes of his desires and those of other black men to escape a cycle that deprives children of what they need most and creates empty shells of grown men.
	Haven Kimmel. A Girl Named Zippy - Chosen by Elizabeth Berg When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period -- people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
	Adam Haslett. You Are Not a Stranger Here - Chosen by Jonathan Franzen. Carrying the reader into the lives of people confronting the concerns of both classic literature and contemporary life, the nine stories of this collection are written with an arresting combination of finely wrought prose and strong feeling.
	Stephen L. Carter. The Emperor of Ocean Park - Chosen by John Grisham. Set in the privileged world of New York-Washington-Martha's Vineyard upper-crust African-American society and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school, Carter tells the story of a complex family with a single seductive and dangerous link to the shadow lands of crime.