A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

This book is everything the title says it is. If you have never had an interest for math, science, geology or history, etc. you never had Bill Bryson for a teacher/professor. --Linda 

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marques

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than fifty years. In the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying love to the beautiful Fermina Daza, whom he lost to Dr. Juvenal Urbino so many years before, García Márquez has created a vividly absorbing fictional world, as lush and dazzling as a dream and as real and immediate as our own deepest longings. -- Heather

Three by Ted Dekker

Which is worse?  Murder or gossip?  Murder kills the body and is an apparent evil.  Yet consider gossip:  Reputations, friendships, and possibly  self-esteem can be slaughtered while the person does not seriously consider his/her own actions as evil.  If minor sins are no less evil than the greater sins, perhaps the gossipers are murderers after all?  Ted Dekker wrestles with these questions amidst his twisting, turning plot, creating a thriller that not only challenges your beliefs, but leaves you guessing right until the end.  --Edwina 

The Fault Tree by Louise Ure

Blind auto mechanic, Cadence Moran, is run down by a car. She initially thinks she's the victim of road rage or just a very poor driver. The fact is she is the one and only witness to a murder. The killer thinks Cadence has seen the getaway car. This is a real page-turner that is also full of humanity.  --Ana 

The Uncommon reader, a novella by Alan Bennet

When her Corgis stray into a bookmobile parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book.  One book leads to another, and soon Her Majesty finds her mind turning from matters of state towards the joys of reading.  A quick read, filled with sly humor and disarming grace. --Pam Howard, Library Board member  

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

 Based on the extraordinary final lecture by Carnegie Mellon University professor Pausch, given after he discovered he had pancreatic cancer, this moving book goes beyond the now-famous lecture to inspire readers to live each day with purpose and joy.-- Elena