PHS McLean Library Book Group "Stories From the Garden": Suggestions for Future Reads

Barbara S. 288 p.
In the summer of 1878, the Ludwig Zirkus arrives on Nordstrand in Germany, to the delight of the island’s people. But after the show, a Hundred-Year Wave roars from the Nordsee and claims three young children.

Barbara S. 256 p.
Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether

Carolyn W. 356 p.
Darkly comic novel about a woman who returns to her Florida hometown to help run a family taxidermy shop. “Very Florida, very gay and very good,” says Entertainment Weekly. On many “best book of the year” lists (Atlantic, NYTimes etc.)

Loretta 317 p
Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape.

Janet 376 p.
In 1979, as violence erupts all over Ireland, two outsiders travel to a small island off the west coast in search of their own answers, despite what it may cost the islanders.

Barbara B. 224 p.
Sequel to The Raj Quartet.

Masie 323 p.
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.

Carolyn B 272 p
A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive

Suzanne 261 p.
The gruff widower Holland has two possessions he cherishes above all others:his sprawling property of eucalyptus trees and his ravishingly beautiful daughter, Ellen.
When Ellen turns nineteen Holland makes an announcement: she may marry only the man who can correctly name the species of each of the hundreds of gum trees on his property.

Howard 308 p.
A lush exploration of roses, pleasure, and politics, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.

Barbara B. 218 p.
Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness and her doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives.

Carolyn W. 240 p.
Eight-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother Ralph spend their summers in backcountry Colorado, where their uncle Claude has a ranch. There the children encounter an nchanting new world--savage, direct, beautiful, untamed.

Loretta 305 p.
traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Barbara B. 246 p.
Giorgio Bassani's acclaimed novel of unrequited love and the plight of the Italian Jews on the brink of World War II has become a classic of modern Italian literature.

Carolyn W. 432 p.
Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards.

Carolyn W. 304 p.

Barbara S. 224 p.
Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought that ended with a vengeance the night of his birth.

Barbara S. 218 p.
Prospero, sorcerer and rightful Duke of Milan, along with his daughter Miranda, has lived on an island for many years since his position was usurped by his brother Antonio. Then, as Antonio’s ship passes near the island one day, Prospero conjures up a terrible storm…

Barbara S. 328 p.
A five-hundred-year-old legend. An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world's densest jungle.

Barbara S. 258 p. In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man’s place in the natural world.

Barbara S. 336 p.
We are all birdwatchers.Over cities and jungles and open plains, the sky is animated by the flight of birds, and their presence reminds us of the wild element of life on earth that can never be suppressed.

Barbara S. 224 p.
Halpern undertakes an enchanting study of the monarch butterfly: its awe-inspiring annual migration and the scientists and amateurs who are obsessed with this evanescent creature. Line drawings.