Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself. In his critically... (more)

The Invention of Morel

by Adolfo Bioy Casares

The Island of Doctor Moreau inspired this 1940 novella. Set on a mysterious island, The Invention of Morel is a story of suspense and exploration as well as an unlikely romance, where every detail is both crystal clear and deeply mysterious. Susan Jill Levine's revision of Ruth Simm's translation offers a new experience of an uncanny work of genius.

The Leopard (Everyman's Library Classics)

The Leopard (Everyman's Library Classics)

by Di lampedus, Archibald Colquhoun

A classic of modern fiction. Set in the 1860s, THE LEOPARD is the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution.

In the Place of Fallen Leaves

by Tim Pears

This overwhelmingly hot summer everything seems to be slowing down in the tiny Devon village where Alison lives, as if the sun is pouring hot glue over it. 'This idn't nothin',' says Alison's grandmother, recalling a drought when the earth swallowed lambs, and the summer after the war when people got electric shocks off each other. But Alison knows her grandmother's memory is lying: this is far worse. She feels... (more)

Away: A Novel

by Jane Urquhart

In this entrancing novel about the power of fate and memory, Esther O'Malley Robertson looks back over her lifetime and reflects on her Irish lineage. "Vividly drawn and richly textured . . . an enchanting and highly imaginative work that lights up the dark, haunted corners of the human psyche without diminishing their mystery."--New York Newsday.

To Know a Woman (Harvest in Translation)

To Know a Woman (Harvest in Translation)

by Amos Oz, Nicholas De Lange

As an Israeli secret service agent, Yoel Ravid’s ability to sense the truth made him invaluable. Now widowed and retired, he lives with his mother, his mother-in-law, his daughter, and the haunting memory of his wife. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Of Human Bondage

by W. Somerset Maugham

Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic book tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns... (more)

Quarantine

by Jim Crace

Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker finalist: a controversial novel of faith and mystery about a group of desert travellers and their encounter with Jesus Quarantine is Jim Crace's imaginative and powerful retelling of Christ's fabled 40-day fast in the desert. In Crace's account, Jesus travels to a cluster of arid caves where he crosses paths with a small group of exiles who are on a... (more)

THE GROUP

by Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel portrays the lives, and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates. "The group" meet in New York following commencement to attend the wedding of one of their members¾and reconvene seven years later at her funeral. The woman are complicated, compelling, vivid, and, above all, determined not to become stuffy and frightened like "Mother and Dad" but to lead fulfilling, emancipated... (more)

Anna of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

Husfrue. (English)

by Sigrid Undset

Part two is the story of Kristin's fifteen years of troubled married life on the great estate of Husaby.

Corelli's Mandolin : A Novel

by Louis De Bernieres

Extravagant, inventive, emotionally sweeping, this rich and lyrical, heartbreaking and hilarious novel has been widely hailed as a classic. Set on the peaceful island of Cephallonia, just as the horrors of World World II reach its remote shores, Corelli's Mandolin is "an exuberant mixture of history and romance, written with a wit that is incandescent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review.

My Dream of You

by Nuala O'Faolain

From one of Ireland's most talented journalists, an extraordinary fiction debut, compelling, colourful and romantic. Kathleen is a 49-year-old travel writer, an Irishwoman based in London who has not been back to Ireland since she was twenty. Her home is her office, her family and friends a few close colleagues. She has not experienced passion since she was young. When, over the course of a few weeks, the props of... (more)

Tender Is the Night (Twentieth Century Classics)

Tender Is the Night (Twentieth Century Classics)

by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Though he remains one of the most popular and widely studied of American twentieth-century authors, Fitzgerald is under represented on audiobook. Here, we present the only unabridged recording available of one of his major novels. When the young and naive Rosemary Hoyt comes to the French Riviera in the 1920s, she is bedazzled by the glamorous lifestyles of Dick and Nicole Diver and their high-society set. Yet,... (more)

by Kent Haruf

Set in Colorado in the 1980s, "Plainsong" tells the story of various Holt residents. There's teenager Victoria Roubideaux, pregnant and homeless, taken in by two ageing, shy and somewhat taciturn cattle-farming brothers - and the changes wrought in all their lives as a result. Then there's high-school teacher and single-father, Tom Gutherie, who has two sons, Ike and Bobby, and a second chance at romance in the... (more)

More Die Of Heartbreak

by Saul Bellow

Kenneth Trachtenberg, the witty and eccentric narrator of More Die of Heartbreak , has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described "plant visionary." While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to... (more)

Empire of the Sun : a novel

by J. G. Ballard

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches... (more)

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl," Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction’s finest and most intense narratives, Edith... (more)

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frightened orphan Mary discovers the joyful wonders of life on the Yorkshire Moors with the help of two local boys and a mysterious, abandoned garden...where all things seem possible.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: 20c novel

The Tie That Binds

by Kent Haruf

The Invention of Morel

by Adolfo Bioy Casares

The Leopard (Everyman's Library Classics)

by Di lampedus, Archibald Colquhoun

In the Place of Fallen Leaves

by Tim Pears

Away: A Novel

by Jane Urquhart

To Know a Woman (Harvest in Translation)

by Amos Oz, Nicholas De Lange

Of Human Bondage

by W. Somerset Maugham

Quarantine

by Jim Crace

THE GROUP

by Mary McCarthy

Anna of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

Husfrue. (English)

by Sigrid Undset

Corelli's Mandolin : A Novel

by Louis De Bernieres

My Dream of You

by Nuala O'Faolain

Tender Is the Night (Twentieth Century Classics)

by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

by Kent Haruf

More Die Of Heartbreak

by Saul Bellow

Empire of the Sun : a novel

by J. G. Ballard

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

by Sebastian Faulks