Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert... (more)

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later,... (more)

Tell No One

by Harlan Coben

For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day for the past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened. The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. The night his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive. Everyone tells him it’s time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer,... (more)

Southern Vampire Mysteries: Book 2

Living Dead in Dallas

by Charlaine Harris

When a vampire asks Sookie Stackhouse to use her telepathic skills to find another missing vampire, she agrees under one condition: the bloodsuckers must promise to let the humans go unharmed.

Women of the Otherworld: Book 1

Bitten

by Kelley Armstrong

Elena Michaels is the world's only female werewolf. And she's tired of it. Tired of a life spent hiding and protecting, a life where her most important job is hunting down rogue werewolves. Tired of a world that not only accepts the worst in her— her temper, her violence—but requires it. Worst of all, she realizes she's growing content with that life, with being that person. So she left the Pack and returned... (more)

Southern Vampire Mysteries: Book 3

Club Dead

by Charlaine Harris

Sookie's boyfriend has been very distant-in another state, distant. Now she's off to Mississippi to mingle with the underworld at Club Dead-a little haunt where the vampire elite go to chill out. But when she finally finds Bill-caught in an act of betrayal-she's not sure whether to save him...or sharpen some stakes.

Morganville Vampires: Book 1

Glass Houses

by Rachel Caine

From the author of the popular Weather Warden series. Welcome to Morganville, Texas. Just don't stay out after dark. College freshman Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation, where the popular girls never let her forget just where she ranks in the school's social scene: somewhere less than zero. When Claire heads off-campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not... (more)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and... (more)

Persuasion

by Jane Austen

Austen's last novel is the crowning achievement of her matchless career. Her heroine, Anne Elliot, a woman of integrity, breeding and great depth of emotion, stands in stark contrast to the brutality and hypocrisy of Regency England. Includes a new Introduction by Margaret Drabble, famed novelist and editor of The Oxford Companion to the English Language.

My Sister's Keeper

A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness. Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her... (more)

Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to... (more)

Harry Potter: Book 1

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

by J. K. Rowling

Say you've spent the first 10 years of your life sleeping under the stairs of a family who loathes you. Then, in an absurd, magical twist of fate you find yourself surrounded by wizards, a caged snowy owl, a phoenix-feather wand and jellybeans that come in every flavour, including strawberry, curry, grass and sardine. Not only that, but you discover that you are a wizard yourself! This is exactly what happens to... (more)

Three Cups of Tea

One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations... One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and... (more)

Stephanie Plum: Book 1

One for the Money

by Janet Evanovich

Read the Dynamite Blockbuster that Started It All! Welcome to Trenton, New Jersey, home to wiseguys, average Joes, and Stephanie Plum, who sports a big attitude and even bigger money problems (since losing her job as a lingerie buyer for a department store). Stephanie needs cash--fast--but times are tough, and soon she's forced to turn to the last resort of the truly desperate: family. Stephanie lands a gig at... (more)

The Pillars of the Earth: Book 1

The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett

A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett's historical masterpiece. Abridged edition read by John Lee

Southern Vampire Mysteries: Book 1

Dead Until Dark

by Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out.... Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea. A fun, fast, funny, and wonderfully intriguing blend of vampire and mystery that's hard to put down, and should not be missed. (Susan Sizemore) Praise for Charlaine Harris: ... (more)

The Choice

by Nicholas Sparks

Set amid the austere beauty of the North Carolina coast, Nicholas Sparks tells the story of Travis Parker, a small-town veterinarian who's perfectly content with the active and exciting life he leads. Since he uses his spare time bungee jumping and swimming with the dolphins, he can't shake the belief that a woman would simply slow him down. That is, until Gabby Holland enters his life. Gabby, Travis's new... (more)

Promise Not to Tell

by Jennifer McMahon

Forty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl named Tori is murdered—a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del—shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"—was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found... (more)

The Uglies: Book 4

Extras

by Scott Westerfeld

Fame It's a few years after rebel Tally Youngblood took down the uglies/pretties/specials regime. Without those strict roles and rules, the world is in a complete cultural renaissance. "Tech-heads" flaunt their latest gadgets, "kickers" spread gossip and trends, and "surge monkeys" are hooked on extreme plastic surgery. And it's all monitored on a bazillion different cameras. The world is like a gigantic game of... (more)

The Abstinence Teacher

by Tom Perrotta

“Some people enjoy it.” That was all Ruth had said. Even now, when she’d had months to come to terms with the fallout from this remark, she still marveled at the power of those four words, which she’d uttered without premeditation and without any sense of treading on forbidden ground. (p. 11) Thanks to an off-hand remark made during a class discussion of oral sex, sex-ed teacher Ruth Ramsey finds herself a... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Browse Subjects: read in 2008

Top Books

One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

by Elizabeth Gilbert

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Harlan Coben

by Charlaine Harris

by Kelley Armstrong

by Charlaine Harris

by Rachel Caine

by Mark Haddon

by Jane Austen

A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

by Haruki Murakami

by J. K. Rowling

One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations... One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

by Janet Evanovich

by Ken Follett

by Charlaine Harris

by Nicholas Sparks

by Jennifer McMahon

by Scott Westerfeld

by Tom Perrotta