Half the Sky Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn guide us through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there and how a little help can transform their lives. A Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery escaped and built a thriving retail business that supports her family. An Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. Through these stories, the authors help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part It is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

As Sauron’s dark forces spread out from Mordor through the lands of Middle-earth, the fellowship forged to destroy the One Ring of Power is broken. Most of the fellowship’s survivors race toward Isengard, where the growing strength of the renegade wizard Sauron threatens to leave a lush land in desolation.  With huge armies building in preparation for the first great battles of the War of the Ring, the hobbits Merry and Pippin discover some unexpected allies.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

“Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.” so begins the story of Lily Casey Smith.  Jeannette Walls’s no nonsense, resourceful and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town-riding five hundred miles on her pony alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car, (I loved cares even more than I loved horses. They didn’t need to be fed if they weren’t working, and they didn’t leave big piles of manure all over the place”) and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette’s memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in “The Glass Castle“.

(Taken from covers)