The
Invention of Wings: A Novel
Written by: Sue Monk Kidd
Length: 13 hrs and
46 mins
Summary: From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees
comes a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women. Sue Monk Kidd
presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire
to have a voice in the
world. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century
Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her
within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known
from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is
hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
Imperial
Life in the Emerald City
Written by: Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
Summary: The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv
Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American
occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task
of reconstructing Iraq is in the hands of 20-somethings chosen for their
Republican Party loyalty. They pursue irrelevant neoconservative solutions and
pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring
electricity, angering the locals and fueling the insurgency.
Divergent,
Book 1
Written by: Veronica Roth
Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
Summary: In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into
five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue -
Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity
(the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every
year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote
the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her
family and being who she really is - she can't have both. So she makes a choice
that surprises everyone, including herself.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
Written by: Robert M. Gates
Length: 25 hrs and
42 mins
Summary: From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid,
vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the
White House, he thought he'd long left Washington politics behind: After
working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council,
he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he
was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the
fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
Sycamore Row
Written by: John Grisham
Length:
20 hrs and 50 mins
Summary: Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts
no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new,
handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid,
and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made
Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years
earlier. The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would
Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and
painkillers affected his ability to think clearly?
