High School Summer Reading List

Books on the High School Summer Reading List for Trumbull students.

Updated June 13, 2024
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Half of a yellow sun
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Paper Book
THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 'WINNER OF WINNERS' CHOSEN AS SERVICE95 BOOK CLUB'S BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR AUGUST 2023 This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people...
The house of the spirits : a novel
Allende, Isabel
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild...
Beartown /
Backman, Fredrik,
Paper Book
Now an HBO Original Series "You'll love this engrossing novel." --People Named a Best Book of the Year by LibraryReads, BookBrowse, and Goodreads From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of...
Circle of friends
Binchy, Maeve
CD
Big, generous-hearted Benny and the elfin Eve Malone have been best friends growing up in sleepy Knockglen. Their one thought is to get to Dublin, to university and to freedom ...On their first day at University College, Dublin, the inseparable pair are thrown together with fellow students Nan Mahon...
The Da Vinci code /
Brown, Dan,
Paper Book
#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER * While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. "Blockbuster perfection.... A...
The luminaries
Catton, Eleanor
Paper Book
The 2013 Man Booker winner and 2014 ABIA International Book of the Year - now in celestial new livery.
Everything inside : stories
Danticat, Edwidge
Paper Book
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love. AUGUST 2020 REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER OF...
The red tent
Diamant, Anita
Paper Book
In this modern classic interpretation of the biblical story of Dinah, Anita Diamant imagines the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of The Red Tent, a New York Times bestseller and the basis of the A&E/Lifetime mini-series. Twentieth Anniversary...
Killers of the Flower Moon the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, "one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."--New...
Homegoing
Gyasi, Yaa
Paper Book
A BBC Top 100 Novels that Shaped Our World Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to...
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Haddon, Mark.
Paper Book
OVER TEN MILLION COPIES SOLD The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about...
Human acts : a novel
Kang, Han
Paper Book
Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter...
A thousand splendid suns /
Hosseini, Khaled.
Paper Book
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family,...
The code breaker :
Isaacson, Walter.
Paper Book
A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a "compelling" (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna...
Klara and the sun /
Ishiguro, Kazuo,
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is "an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a...

The National English Honor Society has chosen Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro as the common reader texts for 2024-2025.

Then she was gone /
Jewell, Lisa.
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestselling AuthorA LibraryReads PickTen years after her teenage daughter disappears, a woman crosses paths with a charming single father whose young child feels eerily familiar. The unanswered questions she's tried so hard to put to rest begin to haunt Laurel anew. Did Ellie really...
Henna artist /
Joshi, Alka.
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK "Captivated me from the first chapter to the final page."--Reese Witherspoon Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman's struggle...
Milk and honey /
Kaur, Rupi.
Paper Book
The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness...
Gamer girls :
Kenney, Mary.
Paper Book
Women have always made video games, from the 1960s and the first-of-its-kind, projector-based Sumerian Game to the blockbuster Uncharted games that defined the early 2000s. Women have been behind the writing, design, scores, and engines that power one of the most influential...
The secret life of bees
Kidd, Sue Monk
Paper Book
· A QUEEN'S READING ROOM PICK 2023 · OVER 125 WEEKS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST · MADE INTO AN AWARD-WINNING MOVE STARRING QUEEN LATIFAH, DAKOTA FANNING, ALICIA KEYS, SOPHIE OKONEDO AND JENNIFER HUDSON · AN ACCLAIMED...

From the St. Joseph High School Summer Reading List.

Annie John
Kincaid, Jamaica
Paper Book
A haunting and tragicomic tale of the end of childhood, Annie John is told with Jamaica Kincaid's trademark candour and complexity, and is a true coming-of-age classic. An adored only child growing up in Antigua, Annie has until recently lived a peaceful and content...
Shoe dog : a memoir by the creator of Nike
Knight, Philip H.
Paper Book
'A refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like ... It's an amazing tale' Bill Gates 'The best book I read last year was Shoe Dog, by Nike's Phil Knight. Phil is a very wise, intelligent and competitive fellow...
Hidden figures : The untold story of the African American women who helped win the space race
Shetterly, Margot Lee
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory history essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in...
The beekeeper of Aleppo
Lefteri, Christy
Paper Book
The International Number One Bestseller, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Kite Runner.
The high mountains of Portugal /
Martel, Yann.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Fifteen years after The Life of Pi, Yann Martel is taking us on another long journey. Fans of his Man Booker Prize-winning novel will recognize familiar themes from that seafaring phenomenon, but the itinerary in this imaginative new book is entirely...
The color of water : a black man's tribute to his white mother
McBride, James
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird: The modern classic that spent more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list and that Oprah.com calls one of the best memoirs of a generation....

From the St. Joseph High School Summer Reading List.

A train in winter :
Moorehead, Caroline
Paper Book
In January 1943, 230 women of the French Resistance were sent to the death camps by the Nazis who had invaded and occupied their country. This is their story, told in full for the first time--a searing and unforgettable chronicle of terror, courage, defiance, survival, and the power of friendship...
Things I learned from falling
Nelson, Claire
Paper Book
Humble pi : when math goes wrong in the real world
Parker, Matt (Mathematician)
Paper Book
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AN ADAM SAVAGE BOOK CLUB PICK The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, "When am I ever going to use this in the real world?"  "Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining,...
The god of small things
Roy, Arundhati.
Paper Book
Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, this is the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel who try to craft a childhood for themselves amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory.
The shadow of the wind
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos
Paper Book
Snow flower and the secret fan /
See, Lisa.
Audiobook
The Rosie project
Simsion, Graeme
Paper Book
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a...
The art of war
Sunzi
Paper Book
A new translation of the ancient Chinese military classic that is widely admired by military and business strategists-with an introduction that provides sweeping historical context, and notes featuring contemporary commentary on Sun Tzu's wisdom over the centuries. For more than...
Drive your plow over the bones of the dead
Tokarczuk, Olga
Paper Book
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead takes place in a remote Polish village, where Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, she becomes involved in the...
First they killed my father : [a daughter of Cambodia remembers]
Ung, Loung
Paper Book
"A riveting memoir. . . an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore." -- San Francisco Chronicle From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a...
Sing, unburied, sing /
Ward, Jesmyn.
Paper Book
*WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION *A TIME MAGAZINE BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 OF 2017 *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize *Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal *Finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize...

The National English Honor Society has chosen Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro as the common reader texts for 2024-2025.

Educated
Westover, Tara.
Paper Book
THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER A BETWEEN THE COVERS PICK Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES,...
I am Malala :
Yousafzai, Malala,
Paper Book
A MEMOIR BY THE YOUNGEST RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE As seen on Netflix with David Letterman "I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday." When the Taliban took control of the Swat...

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