Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

More than thirty years ago, a classic was born. A searing novel of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones-and became the definitive novel of the virile, violent subculture that remains steeped in intrigue, in controversy, and in our collective consciousness.

In Cold BloodTruman Capote

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Capote's riveting re-creation of events surrounding the 1959 murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, covers the subsequent police investigation and the capture, trial, and execution of the two young murderers. 2 cassettes.

The Millennium Trilogy: Book 1

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

A sensation across Europe—millions of copies sold...

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is the penetrating study of a man who commits murder, convinced of the murder's justice, but suffering mentally nonetheless. It was first published in 1866 in twelve monthly installments of The Russian Messenger, a prestigous publication and an outlet for Tolstoy and Turgenev.

The Millennium Trilogy: Book 2

The Girl Who Played with Fire

by Stieg Larsson

Already, a nimbus of legend surrounds the story: In late 2004, Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson delivered to his publisher three finished manuscripts -- the opening salvos in a rumored 10-part suspense narrative. Like a latter-day Sjöwall-Wahlöö, the husband-and-wife detective novelists whose Martin Beck decology (1965-75) engaged Olof Palme-era political unrest, Larsson sought to explore and explode the moral... (more)

Monster

by Walter Dean Myers

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER. FADE IN: INTERIOR COURT. A guard sits at a desk behind Steve. Kathy O'Brien, Steve's lawyer, is all business as she talks to Steve. O'BRIEN Let me make sure you understand... (more)

And Then There Were None

by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None is the signature novel of Agatha Christie, the most popular work of the world's bestselling novelist. It is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense that has been a fixture in popular literature since it was originally published in 1939. First there were ten-a curious assortment of strangers summoned to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to... (more)

Hannibal Lecter: Book 2

The Silence of the Lambs

by Thomas Harris

A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname-Buffalo Bill-is stalking women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter-Hannibal the Cannibal-who is... (more)

Holes

by Louis Sachar

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to... (more)

Flush

by Carl Hiaasen

You know it’s going to be a rough summer when you spend Father’s Day visiting your dad in the local lockup. Noah’s dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor–which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can’t prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out... (more)

No Country for Old Men

by Cormac McCarthy

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed Border Trilogy . The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When... (more)

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and... (more)

The Devil in the White CityErik Larson

The Devil in the White City

Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

by Erik Larson

True Crime, Chicago World's Fair

Hannibal Lecter: Book 1

Red Dragon

by Thomas Harris

Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic - the lethal components of a deadly formula driving a psychopath in the grip of an unimaginable delusion; a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes; a tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families, and calls himself...The Red Dragon. Special agent Will Graham has been assigned to similar cases before,... (more)

To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this story - a black man charged with raping a white girl in the Deep South of the 1930s. To Kill a Mockingbird has become a staple of American literature and has been made into a feature-length film of the same name.

Stephanie Plum: Book 1

One for the Money

by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is so smart, so honest, and so funny that her narrative charm could drive a documentary on termites. But this tough gal from New Jersey, an unemployed discount lingerie buyer, has a much more interesting story to tell: She has to say that her Miata has been repossessed and that she's so poor at the moment that she just drank her last bottle of beer for breakfast. She has to say that... (more)

Digital Fortress

by Dan Brown

Before the multi-million, runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code , Dan Brown set his razor-sharp research and storytelling skills on the most powerful intelligence organization on earth--the National Security Agency (NSA), an ultra-secret, multibillion-dollar agency many times more powerful than the CIA. When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls... (more)

Case Histories: A Novel

by Kate Atkinson

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack. Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie... (more)

The Alienist

by Caleb Carr

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels. The newly... (more)

Dexter: Book 1

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

by Jeff Lindsay

Meet Dexter, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing . . . a monster who cringes at the site of blood . . . a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likable: he only kills bad people . Dexter Morgan isn’t exactly the kind of man you’d bring home to Mom. Though he’s playful and has a wonderfully ironic sense of humor, Dexter’s one character flaw (his proclivity for murder) can be off-putting. But at... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: crime

by Mario Puzo

by Truman Capote

by Stieg Larsson

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

by Stieg Larsson

by Walter Dean Myers

by Agatha Christie

by Thomas Harris

by Louis Sachar

by Carl Hiaasen

by Cormac McCarthy

by Alice Sebold

Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

by Erik Larson

by Thomas Harris

by Harper Lee

by Janet Evanovich

by Dan Brown

by Kate Atkinson

by Caleb Carr

by Jeff Lindsay