Overall Top 10 (by votes)

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1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett: A spirited debut that explores the Civil Rights movement through the relationships between a young white woman and two black maids.
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2. Water for Elephants  by Sara Gruen: An elderly man reflects on his younger years as the veterinarian for a travelling circus during the Great Depression, and the many relationships he formed with man and beast alike.
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3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present.
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4. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: Walls recounts her harrowing, nomadic childhood as the daughter of eccentric parents struggling with substance abuse and often flouting the law.
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5. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: Gilbert chronicles the end of her marriage and her year abroad in search of happiness, perspective, spirituality and love across Italy, India and Indonesia.
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6. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: A novel told in letters between an author and a resident of the small, British island of Guernsey detailing the German occupation of the island, and its aftermath.
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7. The Secret Life of Bees    by Sue Monk Kidd: A teenager embarks on a quest to learn more about the mother she hardly knew, navigating the tumultuous racial landscape of the South during the 1960s.
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8. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay: A compelling portrait of France under occupation during World War II, revealing the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode even in today’s society.
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9. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See: Two women form a lifelong friendship that is thrust into peril against 19th-century China’s rigid caste system and treatment of women.
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10. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant: A rich interpretation of the little-known Bible story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, and the life of ancient womanhood.
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