Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on... (more)

His Dark Materials: Book 2

The Subtle Knife

by Philip Pullman

Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted underworld—Cittàgazze, where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. But she is not without allies: 12-year-old Will Parry, fleeing for his life after taking another’s, has also stumbled into this strange new realm. On a perilous journey from world to world, Lyra and Will discover an object of devastating power. And... (more)

A Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.

The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald, Kurt Wafner

The optimism of the early sixties, infused with the excitement of the space race and the menace of the Cold War, is filtered through the rich imagination of high-spirited, eight-year-old Madeleine, who welcomes her family's posting to a quiet Air Force base near the Canadian border. Secure in the love of her beautiful mother, she is unaware that her father, Jack, is caught up in a web of secrets. When a very local... (more)

Ruin Creek

by David Payne

In Ruin Creek , David Payne revisits North Carolina's Madden family. Jimmy Madden, a fiercely independent high school basketball star with big dreams for his future, sees them dim one Fourth of July when his debutante girlfriend May Tilley tells him she is pregnant. Twelve years later, Jimmy grudgingly endures the workaday drudgery of his father-in-law's tobacco warehouse; May, equally dissatisfied, wonders... (more)

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The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini