Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Adler invites you on a decadent Mediterranean cruise--where nothing is what it seems, no one is telling the truth, and murder is on the agenda… When English tycoon Sir Robert Waldo Hardwick dies mysteriously in a car accident, he leaves behind a note naming six people he suspects might have wanted him dead. Daisy Kean, and P.I. Harry Montana team up to take the... (more)

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

by Daniel M. Klein, Thomas Cathcart

Here’s a lively, hilarious, not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers. It’s Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what it’s like being stranded on a desert island with Halle... (more)

Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath

Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath

by Michael Paul Mason

Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange, from the world of brain damage. Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who coordinate care in the complicated aftermath of tragic injuries that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of the new... (more)

Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope

Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope

by Don Van Ryn

Meet Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak: one buried under the wrong name, one in a coma and being cared for by the wrong family. This shocking case of mistaken identity stunned the country and made national news. Would it destroy a family? Shatter their faith? Push two families into bitterness, resentment, and guilt? Read this unprecedented story of two traumatized families who describe their ordeal and explore the... (more)

The Lunar Men

by Jenny Uglow

In the 1760s a group of amateur experimenters met and made friends in the Midlands. Most came from humble families, all lived far from the centre of things, but they were young and their optimism was boundless: together they would change the world. Among them were the ambitious toy-maker Matthew Boulton and his partner James Watt, of steam-engine fame; the potter Josiah Wedgewood; the larger-than-life Erasmus... (more)

The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

It's America in 1962--where slavery is legal and the few surviving Jews hide anxiously under assumed names; all because twenty years earlier America lost a war and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

Discworld: Book 26

Thief of Time

by Terry Pratchett

Everybody wants more time, which is why on Discworld only the experts can manage it -- the venerable Monks of History who store it and pump it from where it's wasted, like underwater (how much time does a codfish really need?), to places like cities, where busy denizens lament, "Oh where does the time go?" While everyone always talks about slowing down, one young horologist is about to do the unthinkable. He's... (more)

Bound to Please

by Michael Dirda

A showcase of one hundred of the world's most astonishing books, Bound to Please is an extraordinary one-volume literary education. Among the most enjoyable of literary critics, Michael Dirda combines erudition with enthusiasm, a taste for the outré and the forgotten, and a playful, understated wit. Like George Orwell or Gore Vidal, Dirda delights in popular genres, such as the detective novel and the ghost... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: 2008 april

Sailing to Capri

by Elizabeth Adler