The staff at the Highlands Ranch Library (9292 Ridgeline Blvd.) suggests the following books:

Adult Fiction

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrota

A divorced mother of two, Ruth Ramsey is the sex education teacher at the local high school. After telling a student that "oral sex can be enjoyable," Ruth ignites a local firestorm and must publicly apologize. She also must now teach the new abstinence curriculum, a curriculum successfully spearheaded by the town's growing evangelical church, The Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth. Further complicating matters is her daughter's new soccer coach, Tim Mason, a former druggie musician/born-again Christian (and member of The Tabernacle) who leads the team in prayer after winning a game. In spite of their differences, Ruth and Tim are inexorably drawn to one another. Fans of Richard Russo and Anne Tyler will enjoy this complicated and satisfying novel. - Theda Brinckerhoff

Young Adult

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron

Eighteen-year-old James is a brilliant and troubled young man who thinks an escape to a mid-century house in middle America will cure his ennui and discontented feelings about life in general. He is an obsessive linguist who beautifully sums up to his therapist his word usage compulsion and his false representation to a friend in an online posting in this way: "They're both about the correct or proper way to do something. There is a correct and proper way to use words and there is a correct and proper way to behave with other people. And I behaved improperly with John and feel bad, so I compensate by obsessing with language, which is easier to control than behavior." There are so many wonderful sentences and paragraphs in this beautiful, melancholy book, and such amazing word play between James and all the characters - his therapist, his mother and sister, and even with his prescient and compassionate grandmother. Like Holden Caulfield, James is wandering through the perilous landscape of adolescence, hampered by his examination of the human psyche and his lack of emotional padding. As he makes his way through this sizzling summer week in Manhattan he, with the abstract help of his family, comes to realize that life will never be simple, or explained in simple terms, but we march along nonetheless, doing the best we can. -- Laura Stone Johnson

For more information about Douglas County Libraries, call 303-791-READ or visit DouglasCountyLibraries.org.