Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust

Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

"Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,' " observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death in 1940. "My books meet no needs except my own, their circulation is practically private and I'm lucky to be published." Yet today, West is widely recognized as a prophetic writer whose dark and comic vision of a society obsessed with mass- produced fantasies foretold much of what... (more)

Casino Royale

by Ian Fleming

In the first of Ian Fleming's tales of 007, Bond finds himself on a mission to neutralize lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called "le Chiffre."

Sentimental Education (Penguin Classics)

Sentimental Education (Penguin Classics)

by Gustave Flaubert

Based on Flaubert’s own youthful passion for an older woman, Sentimental Education was described by its author as "the moral history of the men of my generation." It follows the amorous adventures of Frederic Moreau, a law student who, returning home to Normandy from Paris, notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a... (more)

A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Oz

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this bestselling and critically acclaimed new work by "one of Israel's most gifted and prolific authors" (Helen Epstein, The Forward) is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small... (more)

The French Lieutenant's Woman

by John Fowles

Well-known as an international bestseller and award-winning film, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles is magnificent entertainment. This virtuoso reading by Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons is storytelling at its best. Fowles' intricate portrait of Victorian relationships and love, brought to life by Irons' artistry, will haunt you long after the story ends. 2 cassettes.

Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

by Levi, Carlo, Carlo Levi

It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, that Carlo Levi—a doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of letters—was confined as a political prisoner because of his opposition to Italy’s Fascist government at the start of the Ethiopian war in 1935. While there, Levi reflected on the harsh landscape and its inhabitants, peasants who lived the same lives their ancestors had, constantly fearing black magic... (more)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

by Phyllis Nagy

Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, Tom Ripley travels to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly like him. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil.

Pippi Longstocking (Seafarer Book)

by Astrid Lindgren

Tommy and his sister Annika have a new neighbor, and her name is Pippi Longstocking. She has crazy red pigtails, no parents to tell her what to do, a horse that lives on her porch, and a flair for the outrageous that seems to lead to one adventure after another!

Annie John

by Jamaica Kincaid

The author of a prize-winning collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, presents her first novel, about a girl growing up in Antigua and her ambivalent but inescapable relationship with her mother. Reprint. NYT.

Call It Sleep

by Henry Roth

'One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American.' -Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did thisnovel receive the recognition it deserves-and still... (more)

Burger's Daughter

by Nadine Gordimer

In South Africa, where Blacks and whites are caught in the winds of change, a young woman tries to uphold the radical heritage she received from her martyred parents while carving out a sense of self.

Excellent Women (Penguin Classics)

by Barbara Pym

Excellent Women is one of Barbara Pym’s richest and most amusing high comedies. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those "excellent women," the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and... (more)

Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

by Joseph Heller

The phrase Catch-22 has entered the language since this classic was published in 1961. The title, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on... (more)

The Swimming-pool Library

by Alan Hollinghurst

Easily one of <1988's> most important debuts...A buoyant, smart, irrepressibly sexy book...that has the heft and resonance of a classic modernist novel, the sprawl and surprise of an intimate memoir." -- Village Voice Literary Supplement A literary sensation and bestseller both in England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of... (more)

Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

by John Cleland

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, also known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland. Written in 1748 while Cleland was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered the first modern "erotic novel" in English, and has become a byword for the battle of censorship of erotica. The book concerns a poor country girl of 15 who is forced by poverty to leave her village home and go to town. There, she is tricked into... (more)

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life -- and the monster that became his legacy. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's... (more)

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

Seven thought-provoking stories employ charm and humor to examine relations between the sexes from a feminist perspective. In addition to the title story, an 1892 classic that recounts a woman’s descent into madness, this collection includes "Cottagette," "Turned," "Mr. Peebles’ Heart," and more.

RebeccaDapne Du Maurier

Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

Of Human Bondage

by W. Somerset Maugham

This classic novel tells the story of Philip Carey, an orphan with a club foot who is raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Yearning for adventure, Philip eventually leaves home to pursue a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to study medicine, he meets the alluring but unfeeling Mildred, beginning a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life. "Here is a novel of the utmost... (more)

The Old Man and the Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

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