Book Chat June 17: Desert (and Dessert?)

An unassuming scientist takes an unbelievable adventure in the Middle East in this “extraordinary” novel—the inspiration for the major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor (The Guardian).
 
Dr. Alfred Jones lives a quiet, predictable life. He works as a civil servant for the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence in London; his wife, Mary, is a determined, no-nonsense financier; he has simple routines...

"From the two-time NBCC Finalist, a fiercely imaginative novel about a family's summer road trip across America--a journey that, with breathtaking imagery, spare lyricism, and profound humanity, probes the nature of justice and equality in America today. A mother and father set out with their kids from New York to Arizona. In their used Volvo--and with their ten-year-old son trying out his new Polaroid camera--the family is heading for the Apacheria:...

Ferraris' novel, set in Saudi Arabia, features desert guide Nayir al-Sharqi, who is hired by wealthy friends to find their missing daughter. When the girl turns up dead, apparently drowned in a flash flood in the desert, Nayir suspects that all is not as it seems. And as he looks into her death, he develops an uncomfortable partnership with a female technician at the local coroner's office.

Retired heart surgeon Ben Givens, diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, decides to take one last hunting trip in the Columbia Basin of central Washington where he plans to end his life, but the people he meets and the situations he faces along the way cause him to change his mind.

"Sci-Fi's favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is. And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good." The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about...

"The inspiring story of a young Armenian's harrowing escape from genocide and of his granddaughter's quest to retrace his steps. Growing up, Dawn MacKeen heard fragments of her grandfather Stepan's story, of how he was swept up in the deadly mass deportation of Armenians during World War I and of how he miraculously managed to escape. Longing for a fuller picture of Stepan's life--and the lost home her family fled--Dawn travels alone to Turkey and...

Set in an exotic Eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz. In this captivating work of fantasy from the author of Midnight’s Children and The Enchantress of Florence, Haroun sets out on an adventure to restore the poisoned source of the sea of stories....

The Booker Prize-winning novel, now a critically acclaimed major motion picture, starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Kristin Scott Thomas. With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by...

"Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn...

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.