Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and... (more)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter: Book 5

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

by J. K. Rowling

I say to you all, once again--in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. So spoke Albus Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter’s fourth year at Hogwarts. But as Harry enters his fifth... (more)

Thursday Next: Book 3

The Well of Lost Plots

by Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde has done it again in this genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through Western literature, resourceful literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished... (more)

The Fortress of Solitude: A Novel

by Jonathan Lethem

The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It’s a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows the knitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates an overwhelmingly rich and... (more)

Vernon God Little

by D. B. C. Pierre

Fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little is in trouble, and it has something to do with the recent massacre of 16 students at his high school. Soon, the quirky backwater of Martirio, barbecue capital of Texas, is flooded with wannabe CNN hacks, eager for a scapegoat.

Odd Thomas: Book 1

Odd Thomas

by Dean Koontz

Odd Thomas is a thriller novel by writer Dean Koontz, published in 2003. The novel derives its title from the protagonist, a twenty-year-old short-order cook named Odd Thomas. The book, which was well received and applauded by critics, went on to become a New York Times Bestseller.

Lost Boy Lost Girl: A Novel

by Peter Straub

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son- fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill-vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother's suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned... (more)

BLACKBOX: A Novel in 840 Chapters

by Nick Walker

Cross a road, take a train, or get on an airplane and you put your life in the hands of a stranger -- every bit as screwed up, every bit as fallible and as human as you are. Then the person turns out not to be a stranger at all, and suddenly it's much worse. In America and Britain and the sky in between, an apparently disparate group of people is connected, whether intimately or by chance, to the tragic death of... (more)

Mr. Timothy: A Novel (P.S.)

by Louis Bayard

It's the Christmas season, and Mr. Timothy Cratchit, not the pious child the world thought he was, has just buried his father. He's also struggling to bury his past as a cripple and shed his financial ties to his benevolent "Uncle" Ebenezer by losing himself in the thick of London's underbelly. He boards at a brothel in exchange for teaching the mistress how to read and spends his nights dredging the Thames for... (more)

Black Box

by Frank X. Walker

Black Box features 68 new personal and autobiographical poems from Frank X Walker, the acclaimed author of Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000) and Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, University Press of Kentucky, 2003). A founding member of the Affrilachian poets and a Cave Canem Fellow, Walker explores themes of social justice, family, identity and place in his poetry.... (more)

Eleven Karens: A Novel

by Peter Lefcourt

Not since Flaubert's L'éducation sentimentale has a novel so vividly described man's helplessness in the face of woman. In this tale of sexual education, the narrator recounts his experiences with eleven fascinating women -- all of whom happen to be named Karen. In an attempt to explain this statistical anomaly, he takes us on a journey that begins in the fifth grade when he is the groom at his own shotgun... (more)

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Tags: best of 2003