Adult Summer Reading Program -- 2015: Staff Picks -- Heroes & Villains

Describing her own remarkable vision, the author writes in the foreword, “I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in the Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids and, in "The Penelopiad", so is Penelope herself.”

A finalist for the National Book Award, Ben Fountain’s remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.

A brilliant and faithful rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic from the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney.

In "The Aeneid, " Virgil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

"Eva Luna" is a literary triumph, a novel brimming with battles and passions, rebellions and reunions--and some of the most exquisite characters Isabel Allende has ever created.

A riveting work of historical detection revealing that the origin of one of the world's most iconic superheroes hides within it a fascinating family story--and a crucial history of twentieth-century feminism

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. Co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.

Audre Lorde was the author of "The Cancer Journals", and an icon of American womanhood, poetry, African American arts and survival.

This extraordinary best-seller is a brilliant evocation of the noted scholar's teachings on mythology.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, two rigs carrying thirteen men set out from Engine 40, Ladder 35, located on the West Side of Manhattan near Lincoln Center: twelve of them would never return. "Firehouse" takes us to the epicenter of the tragedy.

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath. Here, in this first Ripley novel, we are introduced to suave Tom Ripley, a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan.

In "I Wear the Black Hat", Klosterman questions the modern understanding of villainy. Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and imaginative hypotheticals, I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the antihero -- seemingly the only kind of hero America still creates.

Here is Nick Tosches's sprawling biography of the notorious gangster Arnold Rothstein and his times. This book is not only an elegy to old New York but an idiosyncratic history of the world as told in Tosches's inimitable style.

"Shot in the Heart" is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin.

The definitive account of Lance Armstrong's spectacular rise and fall.

In this tragedy by William Shakespeare, the heroic Moor of Venice is driven to suspicion and finally murderous rage against his true love Desdemona by the cunning and hateful Iago.

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, a novel of large beauty and power, creates a magical world out of four generations of black life in America. This is a novel that expresses, with passion, tenderness, and a magnificence of language, the mysterious primal essence of family bond and conflict, the feelings and experience of all people wanting, and striving, to be alive.

This author team, writing in an engaging, accessible style, is the first to reflect on the recent discovery of the Gospel of Judas and how that text provides insight into explaining how Jesus' followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time "Invisible Man" is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952.