Ruth Passweg Dunkle's  Favorites (for the moment):

 Barbara Kingsolver  "the Poisonwood Bible", anything by Ruth Rendell (also her other self Barbara Vine), all of Jane Austen

 

Wini Cook Bowen's Favorites

 anything by Tony Hillerman; Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond; Something About Swans - essays by Madeleine Doran (mostly on nature, literature, art and human emotion); A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold; anything by Annie Proulx


Karen Heiman Jacobson's Favorites: 

Kingsolver’s THE POISONWOOD BIBLE,  THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeanette Walls,   most anything by Sinclair Lewis- MAIN STREET, ARROWSMITH, and until I got tired  of her writing style, Patricia Cornwall mysteries.  The one about her theory of Jack the Ripper is interesting too- PORTRAIT OF A KILLER.


Margie Merkin's Elsberg's Favorites:

Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America by Theodora Kroeber - I read the story of Ishi many years ago, and it's never left me.  The wife of the UC Berkely anthropologist who turned Ishi into the centerpiece of a museum exhibition, Kroeber treats Ishi's--and his tribe's--tragic saga with powerful sensitivity and respect.
 
I love biographies and two favorites are Personal History by Washington Post heir and president, Katherine Graham, and Barbara Jordan by Mary Beth Rogers.  Both life stories are fascinating, and Jordan's speeches about America's promise are stunning.
 
I rarely read fiction but just roared through Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen in three sittings, finishing it at about 3 am