USA Today Book Club

Monthly choices of the USA Today book club.

	Richard North Patterson. Balance of Power President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancee, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington - the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA).
	Dennis Lehane. Mystic River When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found dead, his childhood friend Sean Devine is assigned the case. Sean's personal life begins to unravel as his investigation takes him back into a world of violence and pain he thought he'd left behind. His quest also leads him on a collision course with Marcus--a man with his own dark past--and David Boyle, a man who hides monstrous secrets beneath a bland facade.
	Adriana Trigiani. Lucia, Lucia From bestselling author Trigiani comes the story of a passionate young woman whose fateful choice changes her life forever. Set in a time of possibility for women in America, "Lucia, Lucia" is the story of a girl who risked everything for the belief that a woman could--and should--be able to have it all.
	J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter is faced with the unreliability of the government of the magical world and the impotence of the authorities at Hogwarts.
	Jon Katz. The New Work of Dogs Combines compelling personal narratives with a penetrating look at the emotional landscape of a community, and in so doing asks whether the evolution in the human/canine relationship is a good thing for both species.
	Anthony Swofford. Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles When the Marines--or "jarheads" as they call themselves--are sent to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, Swofford is there, with a 100-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. In this powerful memoir, he weaves his war experience with vivid accounts of boot camp, reflections on the mythos of the Marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family.
	Michael Cunningham. The Hours The author of "Flesh and Blood" draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.
	Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway Direct and vivid in its telling of the details of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, the novel manages ultimately to deliver much more. It is the feelings that loom behind those daily events--the social alliances, the shopkeeper's exchange, the fact of death--that give Mrs. Dalloway texture and richness.
	Jane Leavy. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy An award-winning sportswriter presents this fascinating and eye-opening biography of Dodger great Sandy Koufax, a pitcher who changed the game of baseball forever. Leavy reveals the man behind the myth, creating an unprecedented portrait of a man described by one former Dodger as the most misunderstood man in baseball. 8-page photo insert.
	Allison Pearson. I Don't Know How She Does It In a novel that is at once uproariously funny and achingly sad, Pearson captures the guilty secret lives of working women--the self-recrimination, the comic deceptions, the giddy exhaustion, and the despair.
	Mary Higgins Clark. Kitchen Privileges When her father dies in 1939, Mary's indomitable Irish mother puts a classified ad in the "Bronx Home News": "Furnished rooms! Kitchen Privileges!" Very shortly, there arrives the first in a succession of tenants who will change the lives of the Higgins family and set the young Mary on her start as a writer, while bringing them all a dose of the Christmas spirit.
	Scott Turow. Reversible Errors The bestselling author of "Burden of Proof" returns with a supercharged, exquisitely suspenseful novel about a vicious triple murder and the man condemned to die for it. Further complicating the situation is that the judge who originally found the man guilty is only recently out of prison herself, having served time for taking bribes.
	Augusten Burroughs. Running with Scissors After Burroughs was adopted by his mother's shrink at age 13, his childhood took a turn for the bizarre with electroshock machine fun and games; month-long family/patient sleep-overs on the front lawn; a physician-assisted fake suicide attempt to get excused from school forever; and a pedophile living in the barn.
	Walter Mosley. Bad Boy Brawley Brown Easy Rawlins is out of the investigation business and as far away from crime as a black man can be in 1960s Los Angeles. But living around desperate men means life gets complicated sometimes. When an old friend gets in enough trouble to ask for Easy's help, he finds he can't refuse.
	Laura Hillenbrand. Seabiscuit: An American Legend Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion. He was a rough-hewn, undersized horse with a sad little tail and knees that wouldn't straighten all the way. At a gallop, he jabbed one foreleg sideways, as if he were swatting flies. For two years, he fought his trainers and floundered at the lowest level of racing, misunderstood and mishandled, before his dormant talent was discovered by three men.
	Richard Russo. Empire Falls In this droll, unsentimental, and occasionally hilarious novel, Richard Russo tells the story of a big-hearted man who becomes the unlikely hero of a small town with a glorious past but a dubious future.