Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

Ava's Man

by Rick Bragg

With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a national bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an... (more)

Chicken Soup for the Girl's Soul: Real Stories by Real Girls About Real Stuff (Chicken Soup for the Soul)

Chicken Soup for the Girl's Soul: Real Stories by Real Girls About Real Stuff (Chicken Soup for the Soul)

by Jack Canfield

From Barbies to your first bra, from holding your teddy bear to slowdancing with your first boyfriend, from knowing everyone in elementary school to trying to make new friends in middle school. . . . When dealing with these changes, it's no wonder preteen girls can freak out from time to time. Consider Chicken Soup for the Girl's Soul your survival guide! From reading the true experiences of... (more)

Harry Potter: Book 1

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

by J. K. Rowling

Readers are in for a delightful romp with this award-winning debut from a British author who dances in the footsteps of P.L. Travers and Roald Dahl. As the story opens, mysterious goings-on ruffle the self-satisfied suburban world of the Dursleys, culminating in a trio of strangers depositing the Dursleys' infant nephew Harry in a basket on their doorstep. After 11 years of disregard and neglect at the hands of... (more)

Nine Stories

by J. D. Salinger

Since the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, the works of J.D. Salinger have been acclaimed for their humor, intensity, and their lack of phoniness. A collection of short fiction, Nine Stories contains works with those qualities that make Salinger such a well-loved author.

Welcome to Temptation

by Jennifer Crusie

Sophie Dempsey is content living a quiet life filming wedding videos until an assignment brings her to Temptation, Ohio.From the moment she drives into town, she gets a bad feeling; Sophie is from the wrong side of the tracks and everything in Temptation is a little too right.And when she has a run-in with the town's unnervingly sexy mayor, Phineas Tucker, making a little movie turns out to be more than a little... (more)

Choke

by Chuck Palahniuk

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor... (more)

Kindred (Bluestreak Black Women Writers)

Kindred (Bluestreak Black Women Writers)

by Octavia E. Butler

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the classic novel that has sold over 250,000 copies Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back again and again for... (more)

Mr. Ives' Christmas

by Oscar Hijuelos

Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Mr. Ives, who was adopted from a foundling's home as a child. When we first meet him in the 1950s, Mr. Ives is very much a product of his time. He has a successful career in advertising, a wife and two children, and believes he is on his way to pursuing the typical American dream. But the dream is shattered when his son Robert, who is studying for the priesthood, is killed... (more)

A Pocket Full of Rye: A Miss Marple Mystery

A Pocket Full of Rye: A Miss Marple Mystery

by Agatha Christie

In this ingeniously plotted Christie classic, a child's nursery rhyme holds three clues to finding a cunning killer when a well-to-do household becomes infested with murder.

How the Forest Grew

by William Jaspersohn

This book could be about any forest because most forests grow the same way. First, the land is open and green. Then, the changes begin. "Careful explanation, an elegant, reverent style, and beautiful illustrations highlight this chronology of a forest's growth." -- Booklist.

Balls: A Novel

by Nanci Kincaid

Dixie's in love with Mac. Mac is in love with football. And football, as every red-blooded Southern man and woman knows, is the most jealous mistress of all....In Nanci Kincaid's stunning new novel, the rise and fall of a big-time college football coach is chronicled by the women in his life: his pretty, easily underestimated wife, his hot-tempered daughter, his God-fearing mother, and an unforgettable cast of... (more)

A Gracious Plenty: A Novel

by Sheri Reynolds

Badly burned in a household accident when she was a child, Finch Nobles grows into a courageous and feisty loner who eschews the pity of her hometown and discovers that she can hear the voices of the people buried in her father's cemetery. Finally, when she speaks to them, they answer, telling their stories in a remarkable chorus of regrets, expla-nations, and insights. A Gracious Plenty is like an... (more)

Dreaming

by Jill Barnett

Romantic Times hails Jill Barnett as "a true new star of the genre!" Unfailingly engaging and original, she now concocts another winning tale wherein a stubborn lord and a high-spirited lass are locked in a battle of wills...and on a collision course with love. Most English girls meet their heart's desire across a crowded ballroom or in a genteel parlor. Letitia Olive Hornsby finds hers when she knocks him... (more)

Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy (Practicing Professional (Mahoney), The)

Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy (Practicing Professional (Mahoney), The)

by Leslie S. Greenberg

York Univ., Canada. Discusses the process and technique of intervention directed at specific emotions. Explains how to facilitate the client's understanding of how individual emotions can inhibit or further therapy goals.

Harry Potter: Book 7

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the seventh and final of the Harry Potter novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. It chronicles the events directly following Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Cannery RowJohn Stienbeck

Cannery Row

by John Stienbeck

Walden, or Life in the Woods, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Walden, or Life in the Woods, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature.

Lives of the Twelve Caesars

by C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius, Joseph Gavorse

Covering the Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian, remains on e f the most enlightening of all Roman histories.

The Da Vinci Code

by Dan Brown

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: all time favorites

by Octavia E. Butler

by Rick Bragg

by Jack Canfield

by J. K. Rowling

by J. D. Salinger

by Jennifer Crusie

by Chuck Palahniuk

by Octavia E. Butler

by Oscar Hijuelos

by Agatha Christie

by William Jaspersohn

by Nanci Kincaid

by Sheri Reynolds

by Jill Barnett

by Leslie S. Greenberg

by J. K. Rowling

by John Stienbeck

by Henry David Thoreau

by C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius, Joseph Gavorse

by Dan Brown