Top 10 Los Gatos Library Fiction Books

1. The Help, Kathryn Stockett

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women—black and white, mothers and daughters—view one another.

2. Cutting for Stone, A. Verghese

Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.

3. Faithful Place, Tana French

Detective Frank Mackey finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind twenty-two years ago when the suitcase belonging to his first love, Rosie Daly, shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place. The hotly anticipated third novel of the Dublin murder squad.

4. One Day, David Nicholls

Dexter and Emma try to maintain the connection they shared on the eve of their college graduation with letters or meetings every year on the day they met, but conflicting personalities, careers, and misconceptions hinder their efforts.

5. Worth Dying For, Lee Child

In the corn country of Nebraska, ex-police officer Jack Reacher runs afoul of the local Duncan clan--and its criminal connections--when he investigates a decades-old, unsolved case of a missing child.

6. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich Gogolʹ

Nikolai Gogol, an early 19th century Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist, created some of the most important works of world literature and is considered the father of modern Russian realism. Gogol satirized the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire through the scrupulous and scathing realism of his writing, which would ultimately lead to his exile. Among some of his finest works are his short stories. Together in this collection are collected some of the best of these stories.

7. Room, Emma Donoghue

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

8. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson

Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?

9. Don't Blink, James Patterson

The good: New York's Lombardo's Steak House is famous for three reasons, the menu, the clientele, and now, the gruesome murder of an infamous mob lawyer. Effortlessly, the assassin slips through the police's fingers, and his absence sparks a blaze of accusations about who ordered the hit.

10. The Catcher in The Rye, Jerome David J.D. Salinger

In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.

—Compiled by Los Gatos librarian Henry Bankhead