Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France

Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France

by Kristin Espinasse

Imagine a former French major getting vocabulary tips from her young children! That was the experience of Kristin Espinasse, an American who fell in love with a Frenchman and moved to his country to marry him and start a family. When her children began speaking the language, she found herself falling in love with it all over again. To relate the stories of her sometimes bumpy, often comic, and always poignant... (more)

Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires

Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires

by Abraham, Wayne W. Dyer, Esther Hicks

Ask and It Is Given, by Esther and Jerry Hicks, which presents the teachings of the nonphysical entity Abraham, will help you learn how to manifest your desires so that you’re living the joyous and fulfilling life you deserve. As you read, you’ll come to understand how your relationships, health issues, finances, career concerns, and more are influenced by the Universal laws that govern your time/space... (more)

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

by Leonard Mlodinow

In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality... (more)

In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

by Sarah Dunant

My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment. Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan , Sarah Dunant’s epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sack of Rome... (more)

Freddy and Fredericka

by Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin’s legions of devoted readers cherish his timeless novels and short stories, which are uplifting in their conviction of the goodness and resilience of the human spirit. Freddy and Fredericka —a brilliantly refashioned fairy tale and a magnificently funny farce—only seems like a radical departure of form, for behind the laughter, Helprin speaks of leaps of faith and second chances, courage and... (more)

My Name Is Red (Vintage International)

by Orhan Pamuk, Erdag? M. Go?knar

At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers. The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of... (more)

El Sastre De Panama/the Tailor of Panama

El Sastre De Panama/the Tailor of Panama

by John Le Carre

Harry Pendel, tailor and spy, decides to take matters into his own hands by deceiving everyone and masterminding a scheme so brilliant that his life careens into a deadly game of politics and deception, in a humorous and fast-paced thriller. Reprint. NYT. "

The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny. All children mythologize their birth ...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist. The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish... (more)

Pinkerton's Sister

by Pete Rushforth

Trapped in a suffocating life of convention and party chatter, Alice Pinkerton has turned to the liberating worlds she finds in literature. Like a character from one of her favorite novels, Alice holds a biting, eccentric, but expansive view of life; she wears only white, has a stutter, and knows her peers call her a madwoman in the attic. Various period cures-hydrotherapy, hypnotherapy, electrotherapy, a... (more)

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

by Gordon Dahlquist

With translation rights sold in twenty-five countries, Gordon Dahlquist’s spectacular and extraordinary debut novel was one of the most-talked-about acquisitions of 2005. Now this monumental Victorian thriller is destined to be the publishing sensation of 2006. It began with a simple note: a letter of rejection from Miss Temple’s fiancé, written on crisp Ministry paper and delivered on her maid’s silver tray. But... (more)

Drop City

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels California commune devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to relocate to the last frontier—the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska—in the ultimate expression of going back to the land. Armed with the spirit of adventure and naïve optimism, the inhabitants of "Drop City" arrive in the wilderness of Alaska only to find their utopia already populated by... (more)

The Birth Partner, Second Edition

by Penny Simkin

The Birth Partner is the definitive guide for preparing to help a woman through childbirth and the essential manual to have on hand during the event. This fully revised and updated edition includes information on techniques and devices for easing labor pain, epidural anesthesia and other types of medication, tests and treatments of the fetus and newborn, vaginal birth after cesarean, and much more.

Zamonia: Book 1

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear

by John Brownjohn, Walter Moers

"A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen and a half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest," says the narrator of Walter Moers’s epic adventure. "What about the Minipirates? What about the Hobgoblins, the Spiderwitch, the Babbling Billows, the Troglotroll, the Mountain Maggot…Mine is a tale of mortal danger and eternal love, of hair’s breadth, last-minute escapes." Welcome to the... (more)

Adverbs: A Novel

by Daniel Handler

Can Joe help it if he falls in love with people who don't make him happy? And what about Helena—she's in love, but somehow this isn't enough. Shouldn't it be? And if it isn't enough, does this mean she's not really in love? It certainly seems to be spoiling the love she's in. And let's say there's a volcano underneath the city—doesn't that make things more urgent? Does urgency mean that you should keep the person... (more)

Burning Bright

by Tracy Chevalier

The wonderful new novel from the much loved author of 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' and 'Falling Angels'. Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier's new novel 'Burning Bright' sparkles with drama. London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a... (more)

The Widow of the South

by Robert Hicks

Reminiscent of Cold Mountain and Enemy Women, this is a gripping novel based on the incredible true story of a woman whose life was changed forever by the Civil War.In 1894 Carrie McGavock is an old woman, an old woman who has only her former slave to keep her company...along with the almost 1,500 soldiers buried in her backyard. Years ago, rather than let someone plow over the field where these young men had been... (more)

Calm, Cool & Adjusted (Spa Girls Collection)

Calm, Cool & Adjusted (Spa Girls Collection)

by Kristin Billerbeck

Best friends since Johnny Depp wore scissors for hands, "The Spa Girls" live very separate lives, but stay in touch with routine visits to California's Spa Del Mar. The third novel in the Spa Girls Series™ focuses on Silicon Valley chiropractor Poppy Clayton, who is as calm, cool and adjusted as they come…Or is she? Known for her bad fashion sense, a love for all things natural, and the inability to get a second... (more)

Monsieur Eek

by David Ives

Nothing ever happens in MacOongafoondsen (population 21) ... . . . that is, until a mysterious ship washes up on the town's beach. The lone survivor is a small, hairy figure the townspeople take for a Frenchman. While thirteen-year-old Emmaline Perth and her best friend, Flurp, the Town Fool, welcome Monsieur Eek, the rest of the town is a little uncertain of the stranger. In fact, Shmink the Bailiff thinks... (more)

Evensong (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Gail Godwin

To read Gail Godwin is to touch the very core of human experience. With inimitable grace and aching emotional precision, Godwin probes our own complexities in characters whose lives oscillate between success and struggle, stoic resolve and quixotic temptation, bitter disappointment and small, sacred joys. Now with Evensong, she again translates our everyday existence into soul-touching truths as she brings to... (more)

Rasputin's Daughter

by Robert Alexander

From the author of the national bestseller The Kitchen Boy comes a gripping historical novel about imperial Russia’s most notorious figure Called "brilliant" by USA Today , Robert Alexander’s historical novel The Kitchen Boy swept readers back to the doomed world of the Romanovs. His latest masterpiece once again conjures those turbulent days in a fictional drama of extraordinary depth and... (more)

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