sci fi and fantasy;

• the wheel of time (series); robert jordan
• the riddle master (harpist in the wind trilogy); patricia mckillip
• discworld (series); terry pratchett
• all books by l.e. modesitt

action, adventure and mystery

• killing floor (jack reacher series); lee child
• bourne identity; robert ludlem
• jurassic park; michael crichton
• hound of the baskervilles; arthur conan doyle
• and then there were none; agatha christie
• the count of monte cristo; alexandre dumas
• crime and punishment; fyodor dostoyevsky

gender studies;

• gender play: girls and boys in school; barrie thorne
• the beauty myth; naomi wolf
• real boys: rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood; william pollack
• reviving ophelia: saving the selves of adolescent girls; mary pipher
• feminism is for everybody: passionate politics; bell hooks
• unbearable weight: feminism, western culture, and the body; susan bordo
• bananas, beaches and bases: making feminist sense of international politics; cynthia enloe

political science;

• the things they carried; tim o'brien
• killer angels (civil war book); michael shaara
• a people's history of the united states; howard zinn
• the aquariums of pyongyang: ten years in the north korean gulag; chol-hwan kang
• escape from camp 14: one man's remarkable odessy from north korea to freedom in the west; blaine harden

biology;

• visit sunny chernobyl: and other adventures in the world's most polluted places; andrew blackwell
• the viral storm: the dawn of a new pandemic age; nathan wolfe
• how we die: reflections on life's final chapter; sherwin b. nuland
• how doctors think; jerome groopman
• extreme medicine: how exploration transformed medicine in the twentieth century; kevin fong md