The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan

Two men who have very little in common are thrown together by crime and punishment in the Montana penal system. Valentine Milimaki is a young Copper County sheriff assigned to guard psychopathic serial killer, John Gload, an old man finally caught after years of criminal activity.  They are able to make a connection despite their very great differences. Both grew up essentially motherless on hardscrabble Montana farms. Both love their wives but have trouble with their relationships. And neither one can sleep. Gload was a ruthless killer who robbed and mutilated his victims to cover up his crimes. He had been a careful killer, so although he began his life of crime as a young teen, he was not caught until he reached his seventies. After Gload’s arrest, Milimaki must sit guard outside of Gload’s cell, listening to him chain smoke and talk about his past, all the while worrying about his wife, who seems about to leave him. Other deputies try to interfere with their odd relationship, believing the deputy to be too soft to handle a killer. They don’t realize that Gload can still be just as dangerous in prison as he was out of it.   In The Ploughmen, Kim Zupan has written, in a spare style, a thriller and an evocative description of Montana’s landscape as well as its rural inhabitants.

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

Jess Thomas is a single mom, raising not only her math whiz daughter Tanzie, but her makeup wearing, bullied stepson Nicky. Oh, not to mention there's also the family's beloved, slobbery, often lazy dog Norman that Jess has to worry about. Life hasn't been easy for Jess since her husband Marty left two years ago. Since then, she's been working like crazy cleaning houses and bartending just to make ends meet. With money being tight and Jess needing to find a way to get Tanzie to the math Olympiad in the hopes of getting her into a great school, Jess winds up doing something she never thought she'd see herself doing.

Ed Nicholls is the head of a software development firm. Money has never been scarce for Ed, so much so that he owns a beachfront home in England (where Jess just so happens to be his cleaner), a flat in London, and far too many cars to count. Things are going well for Ed until he's investigated for insider trading. With his family constantly on his case to visit his dying father, Ed can't begin to bare letting them down with the news of the insider trading scandal.

In One Plus One, as only Jojo Moyes can do, Jess and Ed's stories end up being wound together with wit, charm, and romance. After a strange occurrence on the side of the road, Jess, Ed, Tanzie, Nicky, and even, slobbering Norman wind up spending lots of time together in the car in an attempt to get Tanzie to the math Olympiad on time. Disagreeing on eating out, renting hotel rooms, and pretty much anything else money related, Jess and Ed realize that although they come from completely different worlds, there's a spark that just can't be quelled. When things go awry, will Jess and Ed's love last?

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

Lula Ann Bridewell’s problems began at birth when her blue-black skin shocked and horrified her light-skinned parents. Ultimately her father deserted the family and her mother, while providing basic care, could hardly bear to touch or even look at her. Lula Ann survived her tough childhood and grew into a strikingly beautiful woman whose black skin and eyes were her most admired features. Renaming herself Bride, she became a successful business woman. However, personal happiness still eluded her. She remained estranged from her mother. Her efforts to make amends for a childhood offense ended in pain and violence. Her closest friend was after her job. And most painfully, her true love, Booker, disappeared from her life, giving her only the mysterious explanation of, “You not the woman I want.” However, Bride does not give up so easily. Using the slightest of clues, she traces the whereabouts of someone, Q. Olive, who might know where Booker is. On a road trip to find Q. Olive (and perhaps Booker), Bride runs into some trouble and, consequently, meets some salt-of-the-earth people who assist her on her journey. God Help the Child by Nobel Prize winning author, Toni Morrison, pits violence and the wide-spread damage of child abuse against the resilience and decency of human beings.

Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

It takes a very talented writer with a light touch to write a comic novel based on an actual tragedy. J.G. Farrell was such a writer and his Booker Award-winning book, The Siege of Krishnapur gives a witty account of a mutiny staged against a British garrison by sepoys (native soldiers).  In mid-nineteenth century India, the fictional Krishnapur, an outpost of the British East India Company, is cut off for months from supplies of food, medicine and other commodities by a native revolt. Eventually disease and starvation cause great suffering and many deaths.  Within the walls of the garrison, Farrell creates a microcosm of all that is admirable and despicable in Victorian society. The British react to this attack in the best way they know—stoically maintaining their British way of life. Hence, they keep class stratification strictly in place throughout the siege, particularly in the division of food, clothing and shelter, and even in the process of burying their dead. And there are many dead, so many bodies awaiting burial that the vultures become too fat to fly. The story revolves around several main characters, well-known Victorian types—stern paternal figures, beautiful self-absorbed daughters and wives and even a fallen woman. There are men of business who cannot agree on the management of the crisis; men of the cloth who cannot agree on the spiritual decisions that must be made; and men of science, who cannot agree on the treatment of cholera and  other diseases and injuries.  They are all forced to struggle for survival in the small, poorly stocked garrison and their hide-bound sense of superiority does not serve them well.  

Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

After its army captured Burma from the British during World War II, Japan identified a need for an overland route in order to safely supply its troops. For this purpose, the army’s High Command decided that a railroad line through Burma was necessary. It was to be built with limited plans, primitive tools, slave labor, impossible orders and unfailing devotion to the emperor. Many of the laborers were Australian prisoners-of-war who had surrendered at the fall of Singapore.  In Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan tells the story of some of these Australians. Dorrigo Evans was a doctor who tried his best to protect his men from the worst cruelties of the Japanese deprivations. But the men who were forced to work on this railroad, surviving on starvation rations, without proper tools, without adequate clothing, shelter, rest and medicine, could not be protected. They died by the thousands. Every man was missed but one unnecessary death seemed to affect this tightly-knit group more than any other—that of Sergeant Darky Gardiner, a man of inner strength, a steady demeanor and common sense. After the war, Gardiner’s death haunted the survivors, both war hero Evans and the rank-and-file enlisted men as they struggled to put the horrors of the war behind them. In this Man Booker Prize winning book, Flanagan writes moving depictions of men suffering from hunger, exhaustion and disease. He creates characters the reader comes to deeply care about. Perhaps this is because the book is dedicated to Prisoner san byaku san ju go (335), his own father.