Tunstall Summer Renaissance Reading

By Chris Kyle

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Leach

American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal

Sniper in U.S. Military History

Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL, recounts his life and military experiences, discusses his record for the most career sniper kills in United States military history and the bounty placed on his head by Iraqi insurgents, provides an eye-witness account of war in Iraq, shares the strains of war on his marriage and family, and honors his fellow soldiers.

Author interview

By Matthew Mather

Faculty sponsor:

Mr. Craig

The Atopia Chronicles In the near future, to escape the crush and clutter of a packed and polluted Earth, the world’s elite flock to Atopia, an enormous corporate-owned artificial island in the Pacific Ocean. It is there that Dr. Patricia Killiam rushes to perfect the ultimate in virtual reality: a program to save the ravaged Earth from mankind’s insatiable appetite for natural resources. Author interview

By Matthew Quick

Faculty sopnsor: Dr. Affronti

Boy 21 Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player on his high school's varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their apparent differences.

Book trailer

By Mark Slouka

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Warsaw

Brewster The year is 1968. Sixteen-year-old Jon Mosher and his friends, Ray Cappicciano and Karen Dorsey, form a tight friendship in which they find in each other everything they lack at home, and plot to leave the dead-end town of Brewster with tragic consequences.

NY Times Book Review

By Isaac Asimov

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Bain

The Caves of Steel

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. This novel chronicles the beginning of the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together in a society where the relationship between earthmen and spacers is strained at best and murderous at worst.

Book review

By Pat Conroy

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Hobbs

The Death of Santini Conroy’s great success as a writer has always been intimately linked with the exploration of his family history. While the publication of The Great Santini brought Pat much acclaim, the rift it caused with his father brought even more attention. This book chronicles the author's efforts to reconcile with his harsh fighter pilot father, recounting how at the end of his father's life, he defended the author from his critics while helping to heal family estrangements.

Author interview

By Ray Bradbury

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Oberdorfer

Fahrenheit 451

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, firemen start fires. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. But when circumstances change his outlook, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

Movie trailer (1966)

By Michael Lewis

Faculty sponsor:

Mr. Acra

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Argues that post-crisis Wall Street continues to be controlled by large banks and explains how a small, diverse group of Wall Street men have banded together to reform the financial markets. The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that.

Author interview

By Dava Sobel

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Connor

Galileo’s Daughter

Galileo's daughter Virginia, a cloistered nun, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength through his trial and persecution. Drawing upon the remarkable surviving letters that Virginia wrote to her father, this is a fascinating history of Medici-era Italy, a mesmerizing account of Galileo's discoveries and his trial by Church authorities, and a touching portrayal of a father-daughter relationship.

NY Times Book Review

By Steven Pressfield

Faculty sponsor:

Mr. Duffy

Gates of Fire

A young man chooses to join the Spartan army, and just as he grows accustomed to his new way of life he is forced to fight in the battle of Thermopylae where all of his fellow soldiers are killed, and he is the only man left to carry on the Spartan traditions.

NY Times Book Review

By Roger Hobbs

Faulty sponsor: Mr. Feakins

Ghostman

When a robbery of an Atlantic City casino goes horribly wrong, its orchestrator is forced to call in a favor from a master criminal known only as "Jack." Jack is forced to test the limits of his considerable skills in order to protect his anonymity from a closely pursuing FBI. Book

trailer/promo

By Donna Tartt

Faculty sponsor: Dr. Kidd

The Goldfinch

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

Author interview

By Mary Ann Shaffer &

Annie Barrows

Faculty sponsor:

Ms. Rankin

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Juliet Ashton, a thirty-year-old author, writes to her publisher expressing her desire to stop covering the aftermath of WWII, but Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams invites neighbors to write to Juliet with their stories, which puts her off at first but eventually helps her find inspiration for her next book, and her life. Author interview

By Henrik Ibsen

Faculty Sponsor: Ms. Holmes

Hedda Gabler

One of Henrik Ibsen's greatest dramas, this is the story of its title character, Hedda, a self-centered manipulative woman who has grown tired of her marriage. To escape her boredom she begins to meddle in the lives of others with truly tragic results.

Preview from Writers Theater

in Chicago

By Jack Finney

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Newman

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Filmy spores fall from space over San Francisco, and the city blossoms with beautiful new flora. People take the flowers home and as they sleep, the plants creep over them, devouring their bodies and stealing their identities. Movie trailer

By Peter Fretwell & Taylor B. Kiland

Faculty sponsor: Mr. McMahon

Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton

Why were the American POWs imprisoned at the "Hanoi Hilton" so resilient in captivity and so successful in their subsequent careers? This book presents six principles practiced within the POW organizational culture that can be used to develop high-performance teams everywhere.

Book trailer

By Conor Grennan

Faculty sponsor:

Ms. Gorsline

Little Princes

Describes how the author's three-month service as a volunteer at the Little Princes Orphanage in war-torn Nepal became a commitment for advocacy and reform when he discovered that many of his young charges were not orphans but victims rescued from human traffickers.

Author discusses the book

By Andy Weir

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Englert

The Martian

Stranded on Mars by a dust storm that compromised his space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, astronaut Mark Watney struggles to survive in spite of minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that test his ingenuity in unique ways.

Book trailer

By Ernest Hemingway

Faculty sponsor:

Dr. Naujoks

A Moveable Feast

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

NY Times Book Review

By Ernest Hemingway

Faculty sponsor:

Mr. Blythe

The Old Man and the Sea

It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic. NY Times Book

Review

By David Nichols

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Glascock

One Day It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.

Author interview

By Christina Baker Kline

Faulty sponsor:

Ms. Brinkley

Orphan Train

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past.

NPR Interview with the author

By Gillian Butler and Freda McManus

Faculty sponsor:

Dr. Hudgins

Psychology: A Very Short Introduction

A short introduction to psychology, explaining what it is and how it should be studied, and discussing perception, learning and memory, thinking, reasoning and communicating, motivation and emotion, individual differences, and other related topics.

Book summary

By Charles Todd

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Mann

A Question of Honor

While tending to the wounded on the battlefields of France during World War I, Bess Crawford discovers that an officer who killed five people in India and England is still alive, and, setting out to clear her father's name, instead makes a horrific discovery that changes everything.

Author’s website

By Susan Cain

Faculty sponsor:

Ms. Hollowell

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World

That Can't Stop Talking

Explores the role introverts play in a world that is geared towards those who enjoy communicating with others and offers practical suggestions at how introverts can make sure their message is heard.

Author’s website

By Matthew B. Crawford

Faculty sponsor:

Mr. Tom Duquette

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

A philosopher and mechanic extolls the virtues of manual labor, describing how the satisfactions and challenges of creating with one's own hands promotes a sense of connection to life that office work suppresses.

Author speaking

By Jodi Picoult

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Mays

The Storyteller

Becoming friends with Josef Weber, an old man who is particularly loved in her community, Sage Singer is shocked when one day he asks her to kill him and reveals why he deserves to die, causing her to question her beliefs.

Author interview

By Carol Rifka Brunt

Faculty sponsor:

Ms. Bowles

Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, fourteen-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship. Book trailer

By Tom McNeal

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Hume

To be Sung Underwater

Judith Whitman always believed in the kind of love that "picks you up in Akron and sets you down in Rio." Long ago, she once experienced that love. Twenty years later, Judith's marriage is hazy with secrets. In her hand is what may be the phone number for the man who believed she meant it when she said she loved him. If she called, what would he say?

Book trailer

By Charles Portis

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Peccie

True Grit

In 1870s Arkansas, fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross persuades U.S. Marshal "Rooster" Cogburn to ride into Indian Territory and help her capture the gang of outlaws who murdered her father.

Book trailer

By Pat Conroy

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Wetmore

The Water is Wide

The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence–unless, somehow, they can learn a new life. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher. Here is Conroy’s extraordinary memoir–the true story of a man who gave a year of his life to an island and the new life its people gave him.

Book trailer

By Maria Semple

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Valentine

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled, and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her. Author’s book

trailer

By Claire Messud

Faculty sponsor: Ms. Scott

The Woman Upstairs

Relegated to the status of schoolteacher and friendly neighbor after abandoning her dreams of becoming an artist, Nora advocates on behalf of a charismatic Lebanese student and is drawn into the child's family until his artist mother's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.

Book trailer

By Dave Eggers

Faculty sponsor: Mr. Goldberg

Zeitoun

Describes how Abdulrahman Zeitoun remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, his subsequent efforts to help other victims, his disappearance a week later, and the effect of these events on his wife Kathy and their children.

Book trailer