One night during a stage production of King Lear in Toronto, the movie star Arthur Leander collapses. At the same time, the deadly Georgia flu is spreading rapidly across the world decimating the population. This haunting and intriguing dystopia imagines life after collapse of civilization. Jumping back and forth through time, Emily St. John Mandel reveals the details Arthur’s life along with the child actor Kirsten, his former wives, his best friend, and the man who attempted to save his life on stage. A compelling look at the connections that bind us to one another, Station Eleven proves that humanity can survive against the odds.

Claudia is a very young bride living in the country with David, her architect husband. She is very dependent on her mother and plots for a way to return to the city and live closer to her. However, when tragedy strikes, Claudia has to decide whether to allow herself to be treated like a child or a woman. Dorothy Maguire and Robert Young star in Claudia as well as the continuation Claudia and David.

A five star read! Night in Shanghai tells the story of a young jazz musician who left the U.S. to pursue his career in China. Nicole Mones thoroughly researched her topic to present the history, language, and culture of pre-WWII China. The ending of the book will stir emotion in the reader because you know where those ships are going.

Listen to an interview with the author (or just read the highlights) here on NPR. Visit her website to discover more about her research and browse galleries. Join us on February 11 when the Novel Idea group will discuss the book at 7pm at the library.

What a love story – between me and this movie! I have watched Midnight in Paris more than 10 times. The music! And the scenery of Paris is outstanding!

It is the story of a young author and his fiancée in Paris, and what happens to him while lost in Paris at midnight. It is so exciting as he travels back in time to meet the creative culture of the 1920s. How many can you recognize? The characters are played exactly according to their real personalities. Hemingway (Corey Stoll) – straightforward, tough drinker; Zelda (Alison Pill) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) – as crazy as they were in real life; and Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo)… Be sure to watch the bonus ending to learn how and why Woody Allen portrayed Paris.

This acclaimed black and white road trip dramedy will warm your heart. An aging father (Bruce Dern) thinks he’s won a magazine sweepstakes. His son (Will Forte from Saturday Night Live) agrees to drive him to Nebraska to claim his prize. Don’t let the “R” language rating scare you off from the Academy Award nominated Nebraska.

American born director Jules Dassin made the French thriller Rififi after being blacklisted in Hollywood. In this masterfully suspenseful heist movie, four jewel thieves plan the perfect crime. They gather the team. They plan. They rehearse. Then they execute the perfectly choreographed theft and getaway--all in perfect silence. But one mistake draws the unwanted attention of a local crime boss and all plans go astray.

In French with English subtitles.

The story is set in London and goes back and forth between 2009 and 1849. In the modern thread, Julia inherits a house and travels from New York to London to clean out the house before selling it. The story switches to 1849, where Imogen lives in the house with her dispassionate husband. Imogen has an affair with the artist painting her portrait – a painting that still hangs in the house in 2009. Modern day Julia pieces together Imogen’s life and finds love in Nicholas, an antiques dealer who helps her with the research.

I really enjoyed That Summer and loved the switching of the characters and the years. Very entertaining – I hope that a movie is made from Lauren Willig’s novel.

Renowned London detective Sidney Grice is irascible, vain, and a genius. When he takes in a young woman as his ward, he never dreams that her humanistic approach to life will assist him in his detecting. A chance meeting with a doctor and struggling writer Arthur Conan Doyle suggests that Grice and March Middleton, his ward, will become the model for his famous detective Sherlock Holmes.

Find a copy of The Mangle Street Murders by M. R. C. Kasasian today.

I will watch any movie starring Johnny Depp, so although this one wasn’t well received, I watched it.

In The Lone Ranger, Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into the legendary Lone Ranger. In this telling, Tonto is no sidekick, but rather a full character equal to the Lone Ranger.

In a lot of ways I wasn’t disappointed. It is action-packed! And the special effects are spectacular! However, it does tend to be gruesome and violent. While this aspect is integral to the story, I doubt that it was necessary to have a villain who cut out human hearts and ate them.

Set in 1937 Nanjing, China, as the Japanese invade and pillage the city during the Sino-Japanese War, The Flowers of War is a heart wrenching but very emotional story of the evils and atrocities of war. Thrown together as a means of survival, Christian Bale, an American mortician, a group of young Chinese school girls, and a band of courtesans hide in an old Nanjing church. With nothing in common, the three groups learn to pull together as death and destruction surrounds them.

Bravery, romance, and wonderful acting from the entire cast make this Golden Globe nominated movie one not to miss.

Even though this movie is listed as a foreign film, it is primarily in English, with small portions in Mandarin.

In 2005, having somewhat of a quarter-life crisis after working as a staffer on a failed presidential campaign, former Ivy leaguer Will Baker leaves New York City and his long term girlfriend for a yearlong English graduate program at Oxford University in England. Will quickly falls into an eclectic group of friends – and in love with smart and elegant British student Sophie. As his year at Oxford progresses, Will increasingly questions his identity and his future. Charles Finch, who himself spent time at Oxford, infuses the campus with love and nostalgia, and the setting is a character in its own right. The Last Enchantments is a must for fans of the movie L'Auberge Espagnole.

When an Afrikaner policeman is murdered in a remote area of South Africa, detective Emmanual Cooper is brought in to investigate. It is 1952, and the Apartheid system has recently become the law of the land. How does an honorable policeman investigate when not all witnesses are considered equal and people of different races are only allowed to associate in very proscribed ways? What is most intriguing in this story is the application of "race laws" that overrule family relationships and human behavior. Check out Malla Nunn’s A Beautiful Place to Die; for more mysteries set in Africa, see our book list.

Jeanette MacDonald, before being paired with Nelson Eddy, made several charming musicals with Maurice Chevalier. MacDonald, as the title character, owns 52% of her homeland of Marshovia. She throws off her widow's weeds to enjoy the excitement of Paris. But what if she decides to stay in Paris? What of her 52%? Sent, for the good of the country, to woo and wed the widow is Captain Donilo, the most accomplished lady's man the country has to offer. The Merry Widow is full of delightful songs and humor.

In the Oscar-nominated Philomena, the audience follows the true story of a teenage girl forced to give her child away, now searching for him after 50 years. Judi Dench gives a heartwarming performance as she teams with a recently unemployed journalist (Steve Coogan) to find her son. These two highly mismatched characters will make you laugh, cry, and truly care about this beautifully written human interest story.

Philip Caputo sets this fascinating tale of aid workers against the background of Sudan’s civil war, where the Muslim government in the north fights the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) for control of the Christian and animist south. Acts of Faith presents multiple stories of a group of men and women who confront their own individual moral crises and fears as they work to alleviate the suffering caused by civil war in contemporary Sudan. Reporter, novelist, and nonfiction writer, Caputo has produced a compassionate and dramatic novel.