JULY 22: THREE CUPS OF TEA

The #1 New York Times bestseller.

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

Introduction. In Mr. Mortenson's Orbit
Chapter 1. Failure
Chapter 2. The Wrong Side of the River
Chapter 3. "Progress and Perfection"
Chapter 4. Self-Storage
Chapter 5. 580 Letters, One Check
Chapter 6. Rawalpindi's Rooftops at Dusk
Chapter 7. Hard Way Home
Chapter 8. Beaten by the Braldu
Chapter 9. The People Have Spoken
Chapter 10. Building Bridges
Chapter 11. Six Days
Chapter 12. Haji Ali's Lesson
Chapter 13. "A Smile Should Be More Than a Memory"
Chapter 14. Equilibrium
Chapter 15. Mortension in Motion
Chapter 16. Red Velvet Box
Chapter 17. Cherry Trees in the Sand
Chapter 18. Shrouded Figure
Chapter 19. A Village Called New York
Chapter 20. Tea with the Taliban
Chapter 21. Rumsfeld's Shoes
Chapter 22. "The Enemy Is Ignorance"
Chapter 23. Stones into Schools
Acknowledgments

"Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult quest . . . is not only a thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world."-Tom Brokaw

"An inspiring chronicle . . . this is one protagonist who clearly deserves to be called a hero."-People

"Mortenson’s mission is admirable, his conviction unassailable, his territory exotic."-The Washington Post

AWARDS:
Kiriyama Prize Nonfiction Award
Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association - Nonfiction Award
Montana Honor Book Award
Borders Bookstore Original Voices Selection
Banff Mountain Festival Book Award Finalist
Dayton Literary Prize Nonfiction Award - Runner-up
Mom's Choice Award Nominee

More info and discussion questions: http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/three_cups_of_tea.html

May 20: EXILES by ron hansen

With Exiles, Ron Hansen tells the story of a notorious shipwreck that prompted Gerard Manley Hopkins to break years of “elected silence” with an outpouring of dazzling poetry.

In December 1875 the steamship Deutschland left Bremen, bound for England and then America. On board were five young nuns who, exiled by Bismarck’s laws against Catholic religious orders, were going to begin their lives anew in Missouri. Early one morning, the ship ran aground in the Thames and more than sixty lives were lost—including those of the five nuns.

Hopkins was a Jesuit seminarian in Wales, and he was so moved by the news of the shipwreck that he wrote a grand poem about it, his first serious work since abandoning a literary career at Oxford to become a priest. He too would die young, an exile from the literary world. But as Hansen’s gorgeously written account of Hopkins’s life makes clear, he fulfilled his calling.

Combining a thrilling tragedy at sea with the seeming shipwreck of Hopkins’s own life, Exiles dramatizes the passionate inner search of religious life and makes it accessible to us in the way that only great art can.

Ron Hansen is a Catholic deacon and professor at Santa Clara University. His award-winning books include Atticus, Mariette in Ecstasy, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Listen to interview with him about the Exiles on NPR's Fresh Air (LINK)

April 22: THE LONGEST TRIP HOME: A MEMOIR by John Grogan

In his debut bestseller, Marley & Me, John Grogan showed how a dog can become an extraordinary presence in the life of one family. Now, in his highly anticipated follow-up, Grogan again works his magic, bringing us the story of what came first.

Before there was Marley, there was a gleefully mischievous boy growing up in a devout Catholic home outside Detroit in the 1960s and '70s. Despite his loving parents' best efforts, John's attempts to meet their expectations failed spectacularly. Whether it was his disastrous first confession, the use of his hobby telescope to take in the bronzed Mrs. Selahowski sunbathing next door, the purloined swigs of sacramental wine, or, as he got older, the fumbled attempts to sneak contraband past his father and score with girls beneath his mother's vigilant radar, John was figuring out that the faith and fervor that came so effortlessly to his parents somehow had eluded him.

And then one day, a strong-willed young woman named Jenny walked into his life. As their love grew, John began the painful, funny, and poignant journey into adulthood—away from his parents' orbit and into a life of his own. It would take a fateful call and the onset of illness to lead him on the final leg of his journey—the trip home again.

Filled with revelation and laugh-out-loud humor, The Longest Trip Home will capture your heart—but mostly it will make you want to reach out to those you love.

The Amazon listing (LINK) has excerpt, interview, audio, and video.

Upcoming May selection: EXILES by Ron Hansen (LINK)

March 18: THE MERMAID CHAIR

In her remarkable follow-up to the widely acclaimed The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd tells a beautiful and haunting story centered around forty-two-year-old Jessie Sullivan, a woman in quiet crisis whose return home to the island of a mermaid saint becomes a pilgrimage to self-awakening. In this powerful exploration of mid-life marriage and the intersection of the spiritual and the erotic in the feminine soul, Kidd illustrates the sacredness of belonging to oneself and the healing mercy of love and forgiveness.

In this novel Kidd takes on the darker, more complex elements of the psyche and human relationships-spiritual emptiness, infidelity, death, mental illness and euthanasia-with a steady gaze and compassion not often found in modern fiction. Above all, The Mermaid Chair is a book that embraces the sensual pull of the mermaid and the divine pull of the saint, the commitment to oneself and the commitment to a relationship-and their ability to thrive simultaneously in every woman's soul. Kidd's candid and redemptive portrayal of a woman lost in the “smallest spaces” of her life ultimately becomes both an affirmation of ordinary married love and the sacredness of always saving a part of your soul for yourself.

Link to more Info and Discussion Questions

April Book: John Grogan's The Longest Trip Home: A Memoir (Link to info and video interview)

Previous Books Discussed

Fred Singer, Spiritually Dysfunctional

Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

Julie Mars, A Month of Sundays
Charles Chaput, Render Unto Caesar
Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book
Niall Williams, John: A Novel
William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Anne Rice, The Road to Cana

Beryl Bissell, The Scent of God

Shusaku Endo, Silence

Douglas Preston, Blasphemy

Maile Meloy, Liars and Saints

Nick Arvin, Articles of War

Michael Flynn, Eifelheim

Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

Immaculee Ilibagiza, Left To Tell: Discovering God

Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Frederick Buechner, Godric

Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Française

Dean Koontz, Brother Odd

Sigrid Undset, The Axe

Morris West, The Devil's Advocate

Alice McDermott, After This

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

G.K. Cherterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

Shakespeare, The Tempest

Clare Asquith, Shadowplay

Michael O’Brien, Sophia House
Evelyn Waugh, Helena

Anne Rice, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

and The Magician’s Nephew
Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
Charlotte Bronte, Villette
Tim Powers, Declare
Peter Abelard, The History of My Misfortunes
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisted