RS 100 - College Skills: Reading suggestions

In order to avoid an Internal Affairs investigation, Detective Wolf must hunt down the "Black Lotus Killer," a pursuit that leads to a cold case from his past.

It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove -- a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others -- who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different.

As a hit man from the time he was very young, money, women, and danger have always ruled Gideon’s life; but for the first time, the job is taking its toll. Neither Gideon nor the city of Buenos Aires has recovered from the mayhem caused during Gideon’s last job. But before the dust has settled and the bodies have been buried, Gideon calls in backup to launch his biggest act of revenge yet ... one he believes will destroy his adversary, Midnight, once and for all. Yet Midnight and his second-in-command are launching their own revenge.

Contains 47 short stories by the most well-known and respected writer from the Harlem Renaissance.

An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature.

In profiling rock and roll manager Peter Grant, Blake sheds new light on the history of Led Zeppelin and on the wider story of rock music in the 1960s and '70s. He provides new insights into Grant's early life as an actor and wrestler; the formation of Led Zeppelin; Grant's seclusion following the demise of the band; and his recovery from substance abuse.

"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era."

Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s was the pop culture capital of the world--a movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz was the ultimate factory girl, a pure product of L.A.

Beyoncé. Her name has come to be synonymous with beauty, glamour, power, creativity, love, and romance. This tribute features essays that examine how she has steadily invested the power her freedom required, as she shapes a vision of womanhood that influences young people around the world.

Profiles 10 pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad.

Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (roughly £1.6 million today) set by his friends at the Reform Club.

Translation of a neglected Russian classic into English, this title is an account of the conditions in Siberian labor camps. The characters and situations that Dostoevsky encountered in prison were so violent and extraordinary that they changed his psyche profoundly.

Santiago is a Cuban fisherman who encounters a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream and the battle for his catch becomes one of survival against a band of marauding sharks.

In this historic romance, young Elizabeth Bennet strives for love, independence and honesty in the vapid high society of 19th century England.

Emily Bronte's only novel, Wuthering Heights is the name of the farmhouse where the story unfolds. The book's core theme is the destructive effect of jealousy and vengefulness both on the jealous or vengeful individuals and on their communities.

Bluegrass musician, former journalist and editor, and now PhD in English, Mark Brumfeld has arrived at his thirties with significant debt and no steady prospects. Mark leaves New York and returns to the basement of his childhood home in the Baltimore suburbs. Desperate and humiliated, Mark begins to post a series of online video monologues that critique Baby Boomers and their powerful hold on the job market.

A novel set in India and America, for readers of Rupi Kaur, about the extraordinary bond between two girls driven apart by circumstances but relentless in their search for one another. Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them. They are poor. They are driven. And they are girls.

In Motherhood, Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti's intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all.

New York City in 2012, the sweltering summer before Hurricane Sandy hits. Kate, a young woman newly arrived from England, is staying in a Manhattan apartment while she tries to figure out her future. She has two unfortunate responsibilities during her time in America: to make regular Skype calls to her miserable boyfriend back home, and to cat-sit an indifferent feline named Joni Mitchell. The city has other plans for her.

When an impoverished school district loses its accreditation, the affluent community of Crystal Ridge has no choice but to open its school doors. This story explores the implicit biases impacting American society, and asks the ultimate question: What does it mean to be human?

Set in 1970, this is the story of the Flynn family and the devastating impact of the Vietnam War on siblings Nell and Billy Flynn. Nell excels academically and is headed to college and a career in science. Billy, a passionate artist, enlists as a pilot to fulfill his dream of flying. He is the only survivor when his helicopter is shot down. When he returns home his wounds limit his ability to sketch or even hold a pencil.

This novel chronicles a seven-month period of time when the Germans unexpectedly bombed Belfast, Northern Ireland, also known as the Belfast Blitz.

Seeking peace and safety after a hard childhood, Leah marries Judah, a strong and gentle man, and for the first time in her life believes she can rest easily. But the land is ruled by Antiochus IV, and when he issues a decree that all Jews are to conform to Syrian laws upon pain of death, devout Jews risk everything to follow the law of Moses.

After the Great War took both her beloved brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell refuses to accept being a "surplus woman," one of a generation doomed to a life of spinsterhood after the war killed so many young men.

in World War II, with the invading Germans hard on their heels, Anne frantically moves the Mona Lisa and other treasures from the Louvre again and again in an elaborate game of hide and seek.

The author writes an account of her relationship with her pit bull Rosie. Starting from the emptiness following Rosie’s death, the author launches a heartfelt and fabulist investigation into the true nature of the bond between pet and pet owner.

The author views her unplanned pregnancy as a project, researching and planning. She envisions a natural birth and a year of wholesome breast feeding. But things do not go as she expects.

Traces the funk music legend’s rise from a 1950s barbershop quartet to an influential multigenre artist, discussing his pivotal artistic and business achievements with Parliament-Funkadelic.

A memoir by the counterculture legend discusses how he formed one of the most successful comedy duos of all time, became a representative of the recreational drug movement, forged a successful solo career, and amassed a collection of renowned Chicano art.

A memoir by a former British National Heath Service employee and single parent describes her battles with early onset Alzheimer's, the management techniques she has developed to maintain her independence, and her efforts to make sense of her shifting world.

The town of Grimstad used to be a place people came from but were never headed to. Now it’s the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals Grimstad’s new deputy sheriff Cassie Dewell has ever encountered.

Matt Brady is trying to get out of both his native borough and his dead-end job writing for a weekly newspaper. When he’s sent to cover yet another fatal shooting, he’s as surprised as the detectives to find out he knows the corpse. As Matt digs beyond what the police say about the murder, he discovers that what seemed like the story that could finally get him out of the Bronx only sucks him in deeper, until his own life is on the line.

Set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970, Tucker returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything.

Betty Rhyzyk, Brooklyn’s toughest female police detective, relocates to rough-and-tumble Dallas, Texas, where she must contend with a group of unruly subordinates, a persistent stalker, a formidable criminal organization, and an unsupportive girlfriend.

A remorseless serial killer leaves no trace of his crimes, and Kinsey Millhone must prove her case against the killer before she becomes his next victim.

Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin.

Farside, the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. Scientists have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some 30 light-years away. Is the planet truly Earth-like? Building the Farside observatory is a complex, dangerous task. Builders must work in spacesuits and use robotic machines as much as possible. What they find stuns everyone, and humanity will never be the same.

Dr. Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. But when his creation demonstrates monstrous strength, speed, and - most disquietingly - intelligence, Silas' scientific curiosity gives way to sheer terror.

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

In a modern Britain where magic users control wealth, politics--and you--an uprising has been crushed. In its aftermath, two families will determine the country's fate.

The head coach of the Syracuse University basketball team recounts his fifty-year career as a player, assistant, and head coach at the school, with an inside account of Syracuse’s 2013-2014 season.

Mariano Rivera tells his story for the first time: the championships, the bosses (including the Boss), the rivalries, the struggles of being a Latino baseball player in the United States, and of maintaining Christian values in professional athletics.

When future NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still a high school basketball prospect from New York City named Lew Alcindor, he accepted a scholarship from UCLA largely on the strength of Coach John Wooden’s reputation as a winner. It marked the beginning of an enduring friendship.

On November 23, 1968, near the end of a turbulent and memorable year, there was a football game that would also prove turbulent and memorable: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. Both teams entered undefeated and, technically at least, came out undefeated.

From an award-winning sports journalist comes this mix of memoir and reportage that tracks college ball through 14 key games, with an Afterword about the first ever College Football Playoff.

A collection of newspaper stories by award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard--including "Dirty John," the basis for the hit podcast and the upcoming Bravo series.

After gaining unparalleled access to the homicide unit in Prince George’s County, which borders Washington, D.C., Wilber begins shadowing the detectives. After a quiet couple of months, suddenly every detective in the squad is working to solve one shooting and stabbing after another. In particular, the entire unit becomes obsessed with a case involving an honor student attacked by a gunman who kicked down the door to her house and murdered her in her bed.

Beginning in December 1884, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the emerging city of Austin, Texas, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. Before it was over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders. Along the way, the murders would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin."

In 1998, Rowe was working as a stringer for the New York Times in Poughkeepsie, when police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the home that Kendall Francois shared with his parents and sister. Rowe wanted to understand how a man could abduct and strangle eight women and how a family could live for two years, seemingly unaware, in a house with the victims’ rotting corpses.

In London in the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were arrested for matricide. Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. The judge sentenced him to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Shockingly, Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert.

Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them.

Eighteen-year-old Kristina is determined to manage her crystal meth addiction in order to take care of her newborn son, but when the pull of the drug becomes too strong, her greatest fears are quickly realized.

Starr Carter moves between the poor neighborhood where she lives and the suburban prep school she attends. That uneasy balance is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and a drug lord try to intimidate Starr. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night?

Seventeen-year-old Cassie, who has a natural ability to read people, joins an elite group of criminal profilers at the FBI in order to help solve cold cases.

In 2095, gifted teens known as Remnants have been chosen and trained to act as humanity’s last hope to rectify the horrors that are now part of everyday life. But the Sons of Sheol are determined to stop them.