The Little Friend
by Donna Tartt | 
I Am Charlotte Simmons
by Tom Wolfe | 
Dreaming of Babylon
by Richard Brautigan | 
The Delta Star
by Joseph Wambaugh | 
The Drowning People
by Richard Mason | 
Lily White
by Susan Isaacs | 
The Golden Child
by Penelope Fitzgerald | 
The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
by Michael Chabon | 
The End of Everything
by Megan Abbott | 
The Fourth Hand
by John Irving | 
The Paperchase
by Marcel Theroux |
Detective
by Arthur Hailey | 
Old School
by Tobias Wolff | 
Tough Guys Don't Dance
by Norman Mailer |
Dark Tribute
by Iris Johansen | 
The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield | 
I Am Watching You
by Teresa Driscoll | 
Plain Truth
by Jodi Picoult | 
Leaving Time
by Jodi Picoult | 
Midwives
by Chris Bohjalian |
Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge - and is quite the cineaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the elite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah's friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide - or misguide - her.