A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo
by Jill Twiss | 
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett | 
A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini | 
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck | 
A Prayer For Owen Meany
by John Irving | 
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer | 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey | 
The Great Alone
by Kristin Hannah | 
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut | 
The Art of Racing in the Rain
by Garth Stein | 
Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurty | 
Small Great Things
by Jodi Picoult | 
The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd | 
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson |
The Kite Runner: Graphic Novel
by Khaled Hosseini | 
Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut |
Where the Forest Meets the Stars
by Glendy Vanderah |
When We Believed in Mermaids
by Barbara O'Neal | 
The Guardians
by John Grisham | 
The Total Money Makeover
by Dave Ramsey |
At the age of nineteen, saxophone prodigy Latif James-Pearson boards a bus to Manhattan to find his aging idol, the great Albert Van Horn. The centers of Latif's universe soon become a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days practicing intensely, and the downtown club where Van Horn's group performs and Latif hides in the shadows, listening. There, he begins a complex affair with an older white painter named Mona, and starts working for Say Brother, a charismatic drug dealer. But as Latif's frustrations with his playing mount, and the demands of balancing artistry, hustling, and love push him toward crisis, he is forced to confront his music, his past, and himself. A virtuosic story told with lyrical intensity, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American literature.