Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Black Girl in Paris

by Shay Youngblood

In her critically acclaimed new novel, Shay Youngblood chronicles the Parisian odyssey of a young African- American woman retracing the footsteps of the literary legends who inspired her.

Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa

A mesmerizing novel of love and nostalgia set in the vast spaces of contemporary East Africa. Romantic, often resonantly ironic, moving and wise, Rules of the Wild transports us to a landscape of unsurpassed beauty even as it gives us a sharp-eyed portrait of a closely knit tribe of cultural outsiders: the expatriates living in Kenya today. Challenged by race, by class, and by a longing for home, here are... (more)

Innocence

by Kathleen Tessaro

From Kathleen Tessaro, author of the acclaimed international bestseller Elegance , comes a poignant, funny, and utterly remarkable story of real life, real love, and fantasy -- and the changes they put you through. Following a dream can lead to unexpected places. . . . It is 1986, and eighteen-year-old aspiring actress Evie leaves Eden, Ohio, to study theater in London, England. Almost immediately she falls in... (more)

The Invisible Circus: A Novel

by Jennifer Egan

The high ideals and inevitable compromises of the 1960s form the background to this acclaimed novel by Jennifer Egan.Phoebe O'Connor, eighteen years old in the summer of 1978, is too young to know the 1960s, but old enough to feel the anxiety of their influence.She is obsessed by the memory of her charismatic older sister, Faith, a flower child who died in Italy in 1970.Searching for the truth about Faith's death... (more)

Le Divorce (William Abrahams Book)

by Diane Johnson, Donald Ehrman

When a pregnant Roxeanne Walker de Persand has her husband run out on her, her rough-edged sister, Isabel, comes to help her through this period as the powerful Persand family begins pushing for a divorce and control of a valuable Walker family heirloom.

Lost Hearts in Italy: A Novel

by Andrea Lee

The Italian phrase Mai due senza tre–“never two without three”–forms the basis of Andrea Lee’s spellbinding novel of betrayal. Sophisticated and richly told, Lost Hearts in Italy reveals a trio caught in the grip of desire, deception, and remorse. When Mira Ward, an American, relocates to Rome with her husband, Nick, she looks forward to a time of exploration and awakening. Young, beautiful, and in love, Mira... (more)

Sarah Phillips

by Andrea Lee

This novel, in the words of its title character, is set in "the hermetic world of the old-fashioned black bourgeoisie--a group largely unknown to other Americans, which has carried on with cautious pomp for years in eastern cities and suburbs, using its considerable funds to attempt poignant imitations of high society, acting with genuine gallantry in the struggle for civil rights, and finally producing... (more)

Lost and Found: A Novel

by Carolyn Parkhurst

New from the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Dogs of Babel, seven unlikely couples scour the globe searching for love, treasure, fame, family--and themselves--in an astonishing new novel. Seven oddly matched pairs--a mother and daughter, two business partners, two flight attendants, a born-again Christian couple, two former child stars, and other unlikely couples--are thrown together to compete in... (more)

Night of the Radishes: A Novel

by Sandra Benitez

Annie Rush has it all. A loving husband, adoring sons, an interesting job. But tragedy haunts her. Her identical twin sister died in a horrifying farm accident when the girls were nine years old, and in the wake of the grief and guilt that followed, her older brother left home for good. The death of her mother prompts Annie to seek her brother and revisit her long-lost past. Her search takes her to Oaxaca, where... (more)

HILL TOWNS

by Ann Rivers Siddons

A single event in her childhood irrevocably marked Catherine Gaillard -- and made it impossible for her to leave her cloistered mountaintop town in Tennessee for the next thirty years. But her devotion to her husband, Joe, and her desire to forever put the incident behind her propel Cat on a life-changing trip to Italy. Making their way across the countryside of Tuscany with two other couples, Cat and Joe soon... (more)

Passport Diaries: A Novel

by Tamara T. Gregory

Kia Carson, a Los Angeles district attorney with beauty, brains, taste, and style, is about to turn thirty-five. There's just one problem with her picture-perfect life -- she's not got one eligible man in sight. Well, thank God she has her career . . . at least until she gets suspended from her job. To regain her sense of purpose, she plans a restorative girl's night out -- all the way to Europe. In this fresh... (more)

Casa Rossa

by Francesca Marciano

A crumbling farmhouse in Puglia, Casa Rossa was bought by Alina Strada’s grandfather at a time when no one else wanted it. Now busy preparing it for sale, Alina endeavors to recover the memories it still harbors—in particular of three women whose passions indelibly shaped her family’s dark past. There’s grandmother Renee, whose love of novelty won over everything else. Alina’s mother, Alba, whose marriage to a... (more)

A Vaudeville of Devils

by Robert Girardi

From the acclaimed author of Madeleine's Ghost and Vaporetto 13 comes a mesmerizing collection of seven novellas and stories that explore, through the lives of a variety of extraordinary and ordinary characters, our many moral quandaries. Meet Hans Otto Graebner as he lingers in the beach resort of Ostend, on the North Sea. Soon this haggard SS officer will be dispatched to perform the menial but necessary... (more)

Vaporetto 13

by Robert Girardi

The Pirate's Daughter

by Robert Girardi

It began with a chance meeting and led to a date at a small French restaurant in a city by the sea. She ordered expensive wine. He paid the bill. She spoke of the sea. He was haunted by her green eyes and copper-colored skin. Then, in a matter of weeks, the woman named Cricket Page would lead Wilson Lander away from the moorings of his familiar life, away from his relationship with a successful businesswoman... (more)

Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography

Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography

by Marita Golden

In her classic memoir, distinguished author, television executive, and activist Marita Golden beautifully recounts an astounding journey to Africa and back. Marita Golden was raised in Washington, D.C., by a mother who was a cleaning woman and a father who was taxi-driver. For all their struggles, with life and each other, her parents instilled her with spirit and aspirations. Swept up in the heady Black Power... (more)

Right of Thirst: A Novel (P.S.)

by Frank Huyler

Shattered by his wife's death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he's come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn. This haunting, resonant tour de... (more)

Interesting Women: Stories

by Andrea Lee

American brio confronts European sophistication in these critically acclaimed stories of seduction and self-discovery by New Yorker writer Andrea Lee. In vivid prose shot through with mordant irony, Lee offers the reader a rare combination: sensual evocation of the moment and profound insight into the underlying struggles of gender, race, and class that shape relationships worldwide.

Guided Tours of Hell: Novellas

by Francine Prose

The less-than-innocents abroad in these short novels are Americans in Europe, involved in what turn out to be pleasure tours of hell: shocking, bewildering trips that change forever their ideas about history, reality, politics, sex -- their entire lives. In the title novella, a third-rate American playwright named Landau attends a literary conference in Prague, where an organized group excursion to a former... (more)

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: americans abroad

by Shay Youngblood

by Francesca Marciano

by Kathleen Tessaro

by Jennifer Egan

by Diane Johnson, Donald Ehrman

by Andrea Lee

by Andrea Lee

by Carolyn Parkhurst

by Sandra Benitez

by Ann Rivers Siddons

by Tamara T. Gregory

by Francesca Marciano

by Robert Girardi

by Robert Girardi

by Robert Girardi

by Marita Golden

by Frank Huyler

by Andrea Lee

by Francine Prose

by Barbara Kingsolver