Book Packs for Private Book Clubs - full for 2008

Bayside Library offers book packs of selected titles to private book clubs. Each pack contains 10 copies of the book, background notes and discussion questions. There are over 90 titles to choose from .

Cost: Annual subscription of $115 per group

One member of the book club must be a member of Bayside Library Service. This member is entitled to free reservations.

For more information contact Collections and Information Services Librarian, phone 9591 5914 or email baysidelibrary@bayside.vic.gov.au

Book Pack Titles

Fiction
ABU-JABER, Diane	Crescent	An Arab-American 'Chocolat': a sensual blend of food, love and longing.
ADICHIE, Chimanda Nigozi	Purple hibiscus	Love and conflict in a patriarchial Catholic family as seen through the eyes of a 14 year old Nigerian girl.
ALBOM, Mitch	Five people you meet in heaven	An original story of the afterlife and the meaning of our lives on earth.
BARKER, Pat	Border crossing	Psychological thriller which ponders the border between good and evil.
BARNES, Julian	Arthur and George	A very clever book, involving Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji.  Both characters are developed individually and merge together whilst trying to solve a series of gruesome crimes.  Throughout the book, this issue of "What is an Englishman?" is paramount and both try hard to fir the stereotype in different ways.  A clever use of fictional aspects and real life dramas make this a memorable story.
BERENDT, John	Midnight in the garden of good and evil (Film tie-in)	Set in Savannah, Georgia this book is at once a true-crime murder story and a hugely entertaining travelogue.
BRETT, Lily	You gotta have balls	Anxious Ruth and her exuberant father, a Holocaust survivor, both find passion and meaning in their lives. Meatballs feature.
BROOKS, Geraldine	Year of Wonders	Historical drama based on the true story of the village of Eyam.
BUCK, Pearl	The good earth	Classic novel written in 1931, depicting the fluctuating fortunes of a Chinese peasant family and their connection with their culture and the land.
CARVER, Raymond	Short cuts	Spare, luminous short stories about life on the margins of society; includes “So much water so close to home”.
CHEVALIER, Tracy	The girl with a pearl earring	A maid's eye view in Vermeer's 17th century Delft house makes art and history live.
CHEVALIER, Tracy	The lady and the unicorn	A vibrant story based around the creation of a series of real medieval tapestries.  Chevalier starts with a handful of facts and creates a tale of art, ambition and desire.  The book follows the stories of fictional characters in 15th century Paris and Brussels, all connected to the commissioning or production of the tapestries.
COELHO, Paulo	By the River Piedra I sat Down and Wept	Spiritual quest set in Spain.
COOK, Thomas	Red leaves	Chilling account of a family's spiral into anxiety and accusations. How far does a parent trust a child in the face of incriminating evidence?
DAY, Marele	Lambs of God	Fanciful story of nuns living in the ruins of an isolated monastery.
DE MILLE, Nelson	Word of Honour	Twenty years after atrocities are committed in Vietnam the officer in charge is facing a court martial.
DEAN, Debra	The madonnas of Leningrad	An exploration of memory.  Young Marina memorises the precious artworks which once hung on the walls of the Hermitage museum while she endures the horrors of the siege of Leningrad.  In old age, Marina suffers from Alzheimer's and is having difficulty remembering her children's faces, but the missing artworks remain vivid in her mind.
DIAMANT, Anita	Red Tent	A different perspective of womanhood set in and around Egypt.  This story explores and exposes cultural and sexual attitudes in Biblical times - and perhaps now?
DRABBLE, Margaret	Seven sisters	Perceptive coming of age story with a distinct 'Drabble touch'.
DUBUS, Andre	House of sand and fog	An Iranian immigrant in reduced circumstances and a recovering alcoholic battle over ownership of the house that means everything to both of them.
EGGERS, Dave	A heartbreaking work of staggering genius	‘Faction’ – fictionalised true story about two suddenly orphaned brothers.
FITCH, Janet	White Oleander	A daughter moving between foster homes struggles to understand her mother, an intense, charismatic and dangerous poet.
FORSTER, Margaret	Shadow Baby	Bitter-sweet study of mother-daughter relationships.
FRAZIER, Charles	Cold Mountain	A soldeir’s physical, spiritual and emotional journal home from the American Civil War.
GAARDNER, Jostein	The orange girl	A boy finds a letter written just before his father died and a story: The orange girl. His father has set him a puzzle from beyond the grave. Magical and enchanting.
GEE, Maurice	In my father's den	Set in 1970s New Zealand, a disaffected teacher is forced to confront his troubled past when a favourite student disappears.
GOLDSWORTHY, Peter	Three dog night	Entangled relationships between three doctors set in Adelaide and the South Australian desert.
GREENE, Graham	The quiet American	Classic story of confusion and conflict set in Indo-China.
GREENWOOD, Kerry	Heavenly pleasures	The lanes of Melbourne's CBD are the setting for the gumshoe adventures of dumpling-shaped baker Corinna Chapman.
HAM, Rosalie	The dressmaker	Gothic parody - " a feral seachange' - set in country Victoria.
HAMID, Mohsin	The reluctant fundamentalist	A compelling tale involving a young Pakistani man, Changez, who meets an American in a Lahore cafe.  The story unfolds telling of his life in the West, meeting Erica, working with the monetary elite and his movement away from his roots.  9/11 is a pivot that has far reaching consequences for Changez and the world.  The ending is compelling and shocking yet strangely understandable.
HELLER, Joseph	Catch-22	Satirical story about war.
IRVING, John	A Prayer for Owen Meany	An unusual boy growing up in the US during the 1950s believes he is an instrument of God.
JINKS, Catherine	The gentleman's garden	In the early 1800s Dorothea accompanies her officer husband to his posting in the colony of New South Wales.  Endeavouring to make sense of her new and difficult life, she begins to cultivate a garden.  As she finds new strength she finds her values diverging from those of her husband.
KEYES, Marian	Rachel’s Holiday	‘Chick lit’ – a humorous account of a young woman battles with drugs and alcohol.
KINGSOLVER, Barbara	Prodigal Summer	Examines the lives of three women against the lush background of rural Virginia.
KNOX, Malcom	A private man	A study of the male psyche: a dying doctor’s strange behaviour affects his three adult sons.
LEHANE, Dennis	Mystic River	Gutsy psycho-thriller.
LEWYCKA, Monica	A short history fo tractors in Ukranian	Set in today's England - funny, witty & sad story of Ukrainian migrants. Not really about tractors.
LIVELY, Penelope	The photograph	Seductive tale of what can happen when you look too closely into the past.
LONDON, Joan	Gilgamesh	An epic tale of Edith, a teenager who, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, takes her baby from rural Western Australia to London, and Armenia to find the baby's father.
MAAS, Sharon	Speech of angels	A moving story set in India, German and Britain of a musical child star, and the pleasures and pitfalls of adopting across cultures.
McCALL SMITH, Alexander	No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency	Light-hearted stories of crime solving in Botswana.
McEWAN, Ian	Atonement	Multi-layered study of guilt and its consequences.
McLARTY, Larry	The memory of running : a novel	An epic, hilarious, poignant story:  an unlikely hero cycles across USA to find redemption.
MANKELL, Henning	Before the frost	Police procedural set in southern Sweden.
MARCHETTA, Melina	Looking for Alibrandi (Film tie-in)	Coming of age story about an Italian girl living in Sydney.
MARTEL, Yann	Life of Pi	Highly original Booker Prize winner focuses on 16 year old Pi's experiences after being stranded on a life-raft with four zoo animals.  When they finally reach shore only Pi and one animal remain, and the authorities force Pi to offer an alternative version of the story of the voyage, after not accepting his first account.
MASON, Daniel	The piano tuner	It is 1886 and piano tuner Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the War Office - he must leave his wife, and his life in London, to travel to Burma to tune a rare Erard grand piano.  The piano belongs to an enigmatic British officer whose unorthodox methods are attracting suspicion.
MEAD, Juliette	Healing Flynn	A trauma therapist heals and is healed by, through her relationship with war photographer Flynn, recently returned from rwanda.
MILLS, Kyle	Smoke screen	Tongue-in-cheek political thriller where the Tobacco giants take on the anti-smoking lobby.
MISTRY, Rohinton	A fine balance	India in the 1970s. Characters from different social and religious backgrounds face turbulent times.
MOORE, Brian	Lies of Silence	IRA thriller set in Belfast.
MOYES, Jojo	The peacock emporium	Suzanna Peacock's "emporium" is part florist, part curio shop and part coffee shop where the town's oddballs congregate and the stories flow.
OLSSON, Linda	Let me sing you gentle love songs	Set in Sweden and New Zealand – follows an unusual friendship between a young writer and an elderly reclusive neighbour, both suffering from loss.
ORWELL, George	1984	Written in 1949, shows a future with Big Brother in control and the Ministry of Truth defining reality: still relevant.
PATCHETT, Ann	Bel Canto	A moving, and at times very funny novel about a group of hostages captured at an international gathering in a South American country.  The hostages include a famous opera singer and her greatest fan, a Japanese tycoon.  The tycoon's sympathetic translator plays a key role in the subsequent relationships between so many nationalities closeted together, doing more to promote foreign relations than the original function would have.
PEJU, Pierre	The girl from Chartreuse	A bookseller accidentally runs over a small girl - a French novel of childhood, loneliness, loss, guilt, literature and understanding of our differences.
PHILLIPS, Caryl	A distant shore	The changing face of England seen through the eyes of two dissimilar neighbours.
PICOULT, Jodi	Plain Truth	A big city lawyer defends a young Amish girl accused of murder.
PROULX, E. Annie	That old ace in the hole	Storytelling evoking Texan panhandle characters and landscape.
RADISH, Kris	Annie Freeman's fabulous travellign funeral	Annie Freeman last request is that her five closest female friends give her a travelling funeral – they embark on a road trip with a difference.
SAMARTIN, Cecilia	Ghost heart	Set in Castro's Cuba, this is a novel of homeland and exile, love, loyalty, politics, migrants and refugees.
SIMONS, Paulina	The girl in Times Square	A stunning and contemporary love story and mystery set in bustling New York City.
SMITH, Dodie	I capture the castle	Eccentric family struggling to survive in a decaying castle in 1930s England.
SWARUP, Vikas	Q and A	Teenage winner of an Indian TV game show describes how his life's experiences enabled him to know the answers, win the show and land up in jail as a fraud.
TEMBY, Susan	Bread with seven crusts	In 1943 Giuseppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is posted to a small rural Western Australian wheat belt company.  The Nash family take him in, but their gradual acceptance of him has its limits when he becomes attracted to his host's sister.
TOIBIN, Colm	Heather blazing	An Irish High Court judge reflects on his life.
THOMAS, Rosie	Sun at midnight	Antarctica through a geologist's eyes as she struggles to cope with human and environmental elements: love in the extremes!
TREMAIN, Rose	The Way I Found Her	A young boy struggles to make sense of an adult world during a visit to Paris.
TYLER, Anne	Ladder of years	40 year-old Delia walks out on her family in Baltimore and finds a new life: poignantly funny.
VARGAS - LLOSA, Mario	Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter	Light-hearted and irreverent, tells the story of a young law student's love affair with his older, divorced "Aunt" Julia.
VICKERS, Sally	Miss Garnet's angel	Self-discovery and redemption set in contemporary Venice.
VINE, Barbara	The blood doctor	Blood ties and haemophilia feature in a thrilling mix of fact and fiction about an eminent English physician in the nineteenth century.
WALTERS, Minette	The Breaker	Psychological thriller set in southern England.
WOOLFE, Sue	The secret cure	The human face of science entwined with the intensity of love.
WRIGHT, Alexis	Carpentaria	An epic set in the Gulf country of north western Queensland.  The novel teems with extraordinary characters, figures of such intense imagining, they stand like giants in this storm swept world.
ZAFON, Carlos Ruiz	The shadow of the wind	Bookish intrigue set in Barcelona in the 1950s.

Non-Fiction
ARMSTRONG, Lance	It’s not about the bike	Autobiography of the champion American cyclist.
AYANOGLU, Byron	The taste of honey	A Greek island odyssey, combining travel, food, lifestyle crisis and humour.
BAKER, Mark Raphael	The Fiftieth Gate	Melbourne writer trawls his parents’ memories of the Holocaust.
BELL, Gail	Poison principle	True murder mystery exposing the author's grandfather.
BURKE, Janine	The heart garden : Sunday Reed and Heide	A captivating biography of Sunday Reed, the woman behind Australian modernist art.  Her passion for the arts, love of food and affinity for nature and gardening created a lush and alluring world which captivated and inspired everyone who gathered there.
BURROUGHS, Augusten	Running with scissors	The author’s outrageous childhood in the care of a neurotic psychiatrist.
DE FEDE, Jim	The day the world came to town: 9/11 in Gander Newfoundland	When 38 jetliners bound for the US were diverted on September 11, this small Newfoundland community opened their homes and hearts to strangers.
DIRIE, Waris	Desert Flower	Autobiography of Somali model.
FUNDER, Anna	Stasiland	Revisits the East German secret police and the effect they had on millions of life.
GARNER, Helen	The first stone	Examines the sexual harassment case brought against the Master of Ormond College (University of Melbourne) in 1991.
GARNER, Helen	Joe Cinque's consolation	Explores the murder of engineer Joe Cinque by his lover, law student Anu Singh, in Canberra in 1997.
GEORGE, Don (ed)	The kindness of strangers	Travel anthology. Despite global diversiveness and distrust, the unexpected kindness of strangers has touched these well-known travellers.
HERRERA, Hayden	Frida : a biography of Frida Kahlo	In Frida, art historian hayden Herrera vividly portrays a woman of strength, talent, humour and endurance.  This book illuminates and amplifies Frida Kahlo's life story, her importance as an artist, and her ultimate triumph over tragedy.
LANCHESTER, John	Family romance : a memoir	A story about love and Ireland, and fearing the strength of your own feelings; about family ties and the flight from family, and the deep human need to keep secrets.
LI, Cunxin	Mao's last dancer	Inspiring story of a young dancer's journey from rural China to principal of the Australian ballet.
LINDSAY, Hilarie	The washerwoman's dream: the extraordinary life of Winifred Steger 1882-1981	Biography of one of Australia's forgotten writers.
RICKARD, Ann	Not another book about Italy	An irreverent tour around Italy.
ROSE, Peter	The Rose boys	Family biography of Collingwood footballers and the accident that changed their lives.
RUDDICK, James	Death at the priory: love, sex and murder in Victorian England	Cause celebre Victorian murder case where the principle suspect escaped conviction, but the reputations of all concerned were left bruised.
SETH, Vikram	From Heaven Lake	Follows an overland trek from China to India
SIMON, Rachel	Riding the bus with my sister : a true life journey	An insightful story of the disabled Beth and her busy journalist sister Rachel.  Beth's every day is absorbed by riding on buses and she extracts a promise from her sister to accompany her for a year to experience this very different lifestyle.  it starts as a chore for Rachel but ends up a delightful, often sad, life changing experience.
SOBEL, Dava	Galileo's daughter	Uses the letters of his eldest daughter to follow Galileo's work and conflict with the church
VAN RAAY, Carla	God's call-girl: a memoir	Autobiography of a victim of child abuse, who had twelve years as a convent sister, then a career as a sex worker.