Wednesday, September 22, 2010 7pm: Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel–an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics–their passion for the same woman–that will tear them apart.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 7pm: The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 7pm: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons-as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Previous Books Read

Winter/Spring 2010:

Wednesday, January 27th 7pm -	The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Wednesday, February 24 7pm -	Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
Wednesday, March 31 7pm -	Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Wednesday, April 21 7pm,	Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
Wednesday, May 26 7pm -	Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Winter/Spring 2009 Schedule:

January 28:	Suite Francaise by Louise Nemirovsky
February 25:	Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
March 25:	Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
April 22:	What is the What by Dave Eggers
May 27:	Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo

Fall 2009 Schedule:

Wednesday, September 30:	The Lemon Tree: an Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
Wednesday, October 28:	People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Wednesday, December 2:	Oliver Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout