Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The author of Picture Perfect "explores the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood" (New York Times Book Review). Paige's mother left when she was five. When Paige becomes a mother herself, she is overwhelmed by the demands. Unable to forget her past, Paige struggles with the difficulties of marriage and motherhood.

On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and from the celebrated author of White Teeth comes another bestselling masterwork Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle , this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, ... (more)

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

ABOUTBOOK: From the moment Ruby Lennox announces her own conception ("I exist!"), it is clear that she is a narrator who will leave no stone unturned in her account of family life above a pet shop in England. Not content simply to describe her own circumstances, Ruby investigates the lives of the women in family both past and present, from her great-grandmother's affair with a French photographer to her mother's... (more)

I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel

by Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe, the master social novelist of our time, the spot-on chronicler of all things contemporary and cultural, presents a sensational new novel about life, love, and learning--or the lack of it--amid today's American colleges. Our story unfolds at fictional Dupont University: those Olympian halls of scholarship housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with... (more)

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

by Jon McGregor

Risky in conception, hip and yet soulful, this is a prose poem of a novel -- intense, lyrical, and highly evocative -- with a mystery at its center, which keeps the reader in suspense until the final page. In a tour de force that could be described as Altmanesque, we are invited into the private lives of the residents of a quiet urban street in England over the course of a single day. In delicate, intricately... (more)

A Place Where the Sea Remembers (Scribner's Paperback Fiction)

A Place Where the Sea Remembers (Scribner's Paperback Fiction)

by Sandra Benitez

Winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Fiction Winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction Member of the National Writer's Voice Project Finalist Los Angeles Times Book Award In A Place Where the Sea Remembers , Sandra Benitez invites us into a mesmerizing world filled with, love and betrayal, tragedy and hope. This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the... (more)

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel

by Ken Kalfus

Joyce and Marshall each think the other is killed on September 11—and must swallow their disappointment when the other arrives home. As their bitter divorce is further complicated by anthrax scares, suicide bombs, and foreign wars, they suffer, in ways unexpectedly personal and increasingly ludicrous, the many strange ravages of our time. In this astonishing black comedy, Kalfus suggests how our nation’s public... (more)

You Remind Me of Me: A Novel

by Dan Chaon

With his critically acclaimed Among the Missing and Fitting Ends , award-winning author Dan Chaon proved himself a master of the short story form. He is a writer, observes the Chicago Tribune , who can “convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so.” Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel. You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents:... (more)

Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

Set in the Vermont countryside, Water Witches is a tale of the clash between progress and tradition, science and magic. In the midst of a nightmarish New England drought, cynical ski industry lobbyist Scottie Winston is trying to get a large ski resort the permits it needs to tap already beleaguered rivers for snow. His wife, his little girl, and his sister-in-law -- dowsers or "water witches" all -- hope to... (more)

Budding Prospects: A Pastoral (Contemporary American Fiction)

Budding Prospects: A Pastoral (Contemporary American Fiction)

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

A comic novel which satirises our eternal quest for money, and our habits of addiction.

A False Sense of Well Being (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

A False Sense of Well Being (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Jeanne Braselton

WINNER OF THE GEORGIA AUTHOR OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR FIRST NOVEL “Braselton’s confident first novel is <a> depiction of love on the rocks in the New South that combines small town charm with major league angst. . . . A down-home Proustian recherché search . . . <An> entertaining, rueful account of an apparently ‘normal’ marriage.” –Los Angeles Times “Simply extraordinary. <This novel> has... (more)

The Sweet Hereafter

by Russell Banks

In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do you blame?

Bitter Grounds: A Novel

by Sandra Benitez

ABOUTBOOK: In 1932 El Salvador, Elena de Contreras and her husband Ernesto live the luxurious life of the very wealthy: regular trips to Europe and the United States, vast amounts of property, several gorgeous homes. In sharp contrast to their privileged existence, however, are the lives of the coffee workers they employ, who know only the hardships of back-breaking labor and low wages. Mercedes Prieto, a Pipil... (more)

Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of Marie Fermoyle, a lonely and vulnerable divorce+a7e, her three children, and dangerous con-man Omar Duvall. By the author of A Dangerous Woman. Reprint.

The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic WesternRichard Brautigan

The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western

by Richard Brautigan

Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

by Stephanie Hemphill

On a bleak February day in 1963 a young American poet died by her own hand, and passed into a myth that has since imprinted itself on the hearts and minds of millions. She was and is Sylvia Plath and Your Own , Sylvia is a portrait of her life, told in poems. With photos and an extensive list of facts and sources to round out the reading experience, Your Own, Sylvia is a great curriculum companion to Plath's... (more)

The abortion: An historical romance 1966

The abortion: An historical romance 1966

by Richard Brautigan

A reclusive young man works in a San Francisco library for unpublishable books. Life's losers, an astonishing number of whom seem to be writers, can bring their manuscripts to the library, where they will be welcomed, registered and shelved. They will not be read, but they will be cherished. In comes Vida, with her manuscript. Her book is about her gorgeous body, in which she feels uncomfortable. The librarian... (more)

The Reader

by Bernhard Schlink, Carol Brown Janeway

Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany. When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When... (more)

Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

Years have passed since Grace was locked up, at the age of 16, for the murders of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper/lover Nancy Montgomery. Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. Should Dr Simon Jordan, an expert on amnesia, wake the part of Grace's mind which lies dormant?

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies? Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births,... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: contemporary literary fiction

by Jodi Picoult

by Zadie Smith

by Kate Atkinson

by Tom Wolfe

by Jon McGregor

by Sandra Benitez

by Ken Kalfus

by Dan Chaon

by Chris Bohjalian

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

by Jeanne Braselton

by Russell Banks

by Sandra Benitez

by Mary McGarry Morris

by Richard Brautigan

by Stephanie Hemphill

by Richard Brautigan

by Bernhard Schlink, Carol Brown Janeway

by Margaret Atwood

by Margaret Atwood