Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.

Bel Canto

by Ann Patchett

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gunwielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening... (more)

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Published in 1934, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year. "It's amazing how excellent much of it is," Ernest Hemingway said to Maxwell Perkins. "I will say now," John O'Hara wrote Fitzgerald, "Tender Is the Night is in the early stages of being my favorite book, even more than This Side of Paradise." And Archibald MacLeish exclaimed: "Great God, Scott...You are a fine... (more)

Housekeeping

by Marilynne Robinson

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train... (more)

The Autumn of the Patriarch

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One of Gabriel García Márquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power. From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best and the worst of human nature. Gabriel García Márquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly... (more)

Of Love And Other Demons

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sierva Mari+a7a, the neglected child of a rich plantation family, is locked in a convent because she is believed to be possessed by demons, and there she falls in love with the priest sent to exorcise her. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

Winter Hours

by Mary Oliver

From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, her most personal book yet "What good company Mary Oliver is!" the Los Angeles Times has remarked. And never more so than in this extraordinary and engaging gathering of nine essays, accompanied by a brief selection of new prose poems and poems. (One of the essays has been chosen as among the best of the year by THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1998,... (more)

American primitive: Poems

by Mary Oliver

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974-1977

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974-1977

by Adrienne Cecile Rich

This collection of poems from 1974 to 1977 is written by one of America's most successful and most moving modern poets. By the author of An Atlas of the Difficult World. Reprint.

Pleasure: Poems

by Gary Young

With subtlety and a big heart, Young pokes around a subject that is seldom written about with the same care and attention to detail as the darker themes of death and pain—pleasure. In No Other Life, Young examined the scary, unstoppable forces from which we seek shelter. In Pleasure, he doesn’t ignore them, but rather turns his gaze on those moments of huddled comfort, and finds joy in his children’s raw... (more)

What Do We Know: Poems

by Mary Oliver

A new collection of poems by the best-selling author of The Leaf and the Cloud . For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may only now be discovering her work, What Do We Know will be a revelation and, in the words of Stanley Kunitz, "a blessing." These forty poems--of observing, of searching, of pausing, of astonishment, of giving thanks--embrace... (more)

New and Selected Poems : Volume One

by Mary Oliver

Strikingly redesigned to accompany the publication of New and Selected Poems, Volume Two Praise for the poetry of Mary Oliver: "One of the astonishing aspects of Oliver"s work is the consistency of tone over this long period. What changes is an increased focus on nature and an increased precision with language that has made her one of our very best poets . . . There is no complaint in Ms. Oliver"s poetry, no... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: best prose

The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Written on the Body

by Jeanette Winterson

Bel Canto

by Ann Patchett

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Housekeeping

by Marilynne Robinson

The Autumn of the Patriarch

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Of Love And Other Demons

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Winter Hours

by Mary Oliver

American primitive: Poems

by Mary Oliver

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974-1977

by Adrienne Cecile Rich

Pleasure: Poems

by Gary Young

What Do We Know: Poems

by Mary Oliver

New and Selected Poems : Volume One

by Mary Oliver