Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents. Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his... (more)

The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

It has been twelve years since a dark, murderous figure stalked the alleys and courts of Whitechapel. And yet, in the summer of 1900, East London is still poor, still brutal, still a shadow city to its western twin. Among the reformers is an idealistic young woman named India Selwyn-Jones, recently graduated from medical school. With the help of her influential fiance--Freddie Lytton, an up-and-coming Liberal... (more)

The Sister

by Poppy Adams

“This lyrical and haunting story of two sisters, their troubling past, and the terrible secrets they each want buried will stay with you long after you close the book.” —Harlan Coben “ The Sister is a taut, tense tale of the ties that bind—sometimes a little too tightly.” —Karin Slaughter From her lookout in the crumbling mansion that was her childhood home, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister to... (more)

Outcasts United: A Story of Hope, Conflict, and Transformation on the Playing Fields of a Small American Town

Outcasts United: A Story of Hope, Conflict, and Transformation on the Playing Fields of a Small American Town

by Warren St. John

The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world’s war zones—from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston’s streets were filled with women wearing... (more)

A Thousand Veils

by D. J. Murphy

When Fatima Shihabi, an Iraqi poet and journalist, learns she is marked for death by Saddam Hussein's secret police, she flees Iraq, evading Saddam's helicopters hunting her in the desert, only to discover that no other country will grant her asylum. Her flight from Saddam's vengeance, and the extraordinary efforts of Charles Sherman, a Wall Street lawyer, to save her life, is the subject of this gripping novel,... (more)

The Aviary Gate: A Novel

by Katie Hickman

A lush, ancient tale of treacherous secrets, forbidden love, and murder in an Ottoman palace. Elizabeth Staveley sits in the Bodleian library, holding in her trembling hands a fragment of ancient paper. It is the key to a story that has been locked away for four centuries—the story of a British sea captain’s daughter held captive in the sultan’s harem. Constantinople, 1599. There are rumors and strange stirrings... (more)

Emotionless Souls

by David S. Grant

Disaffected tourists idle through the streets and bars of Paris and Dublin. Office workers suspect each other of stealing cocaine at the Christmas party. Human Resource officers interview the stripper they frequent for a position in the firm (or at least they think it's that stripper). Pickpockets get pick-pocketed. Nobodies stage emergencies to save the day. Mediocre porn stars murder their co-stars to... (more)

F.H.M. Murray: First Biography of a Forgotten Pioneer for Civil Justice

F.H.M. Murray: First Biography of a Forgotten Pioneer for Civil Justice

by Anita Hackley-Lambert, Gaelyn Whitley Keith

From the earliest silent films made by pioneering American filmmakers to the multimillion-dollar blockbusters of today, the movie industry of America has always had a home: Hollywood. But how did Hollywood itself get started? Who were the driving forces behind its creation and development - the visionaries and kingmakers who built the infrastructure of a worldwide industry but only received a fraction of the... (more)

2027, New Madrid, Missouri

by Arlington Nuetzel

Eight years after the Louisiana Purchase, the western frontier of the United States extended only to the Mississippi River. There in the soggy inhospitable Delta of today’s Missouri Bootheel, hardscrabble pioneers suddenly found themselves fighting for their lives against horrendous odds. The Great New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12 left death and unimaginable destruction in their wake. Nuetzel chronicles the... (more)

Alive in Necropolis

by Doug Dorst

A fresh, imaginative debut novel about a young police officer in northern California struggling to keep the peace—and maintain a grip on reality—in a town where the dead outnumber the living. Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime cemetery for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation... (more)

Olive Kitteridge

A Novel in Stories

by Elizabeth Strout

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels... (more)

Playing With the Grown-ups: A Novel

by Sophie Dahl

For Kitty, growing up at Hay House amongst bluebell woods and doting relations is heaven. But for her mother, the restless Marina, a bohemian beauty who paints and weeps with alacrity, this comfortable domesticity cannot provide the novelty and excitement she craves. Marina is utterly beguiling, but more often than not Kitty can only gaze on her antics with awe and toe-curling trepidation. When Swami-ji, Marina’s... (more)

The Believers

by Zoe Heller

When radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to reexamine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joels children will soon have to come to terms with this discovery themselves, but for the meantime, they are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts. Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, has found herself... (more)

The Pink Room

by Mark Laflamme

The world's leading physicist attempts to use the science of string theory to bring his daughter back from the dead. Government agents and a bestselling author race to find out if he was succesful. A novel by award winning Maine journalist Mark LaFlamme.

FBI Kelly Jones Thriller: Book 1

The Tunnels (Kelly Jones Novels)

by Michelle Gagnon

An old, abandoned tunnel system beneath the prestigious New England college becomes the gruesome stalking ground of a serial killer . . . The crime scenes are both grim and otherworldly. The bodies of two female students are found mutilated and oddly positioned in the dark labyrinth beneath the school -- haunting symbols painted on the walls above them. In her decade tracking serial killers, FBI special... (more)

Firefly Lane

by Kristin Hannah

From the New York Times bestselling author of On Mystic Lake comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty,... (more)

The House at Riverton

by Kate Morton

The House at Riverton is a gorgeous debut novel set in England between the wars. It is the story of an aristocratic family, a house, a mysterious death and a way of life that vanished forever, told in flashback by a woman who witnessed it all and kept a secret for decades. Grace Bradley went to work at Riverton House as a servant when she was just a girl, before the First World War. For years her life was... (more)

Beautiful Moments of Joy and Peace

by Connie Arnold

The inspiration for this collection of poetry comes from the beauty found in nature, people, music and all of life. These poems are overflowing with joy and express an inner peace that can be found in spite of difficulties and adversity. Connie Arnold has experienced the variety of the beauty of God’s creation in different places during her life, having lived in Texas, Louisiana, Nebraska and, currently, in North... (more)

Vacation

by Jeremy C. Shipp

It's time for blueblood Bernard Johnson to leave his boring life behind and go on The Vacation, a yearlong corporate-sponsored odyssey. But instead of seeing the world, Bernard is captured by terrorists, becomes a key figure in secret drug wars, and, worse, doesn't once miss his secure American Dream.

The Spirit of the Place

by Samuel Shem

A new novel from the author of The House of God Samuel Shema??s classic novel about medical internship, The House of God, is required reading in medical schools throughout the world and is celebrated for its authentic description of medical training and practice, for its Rabelaisian comedy, and for its humanism and vision. His new novel, and most ambitious work yet, The Spirit of the Place, tells the story of an... (more)

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by Hannah Tinti