Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

One of today's most celebrated novelists returns with a novel about family and political loyalties at the end of the Cold War. Writing a memoir of his parents-in-law, Jeremy relates the strange events that brought June and Bernard Tremaine together and set them apart. McEwan is the author of The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series)

Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series)

by Stephen Brookfield

1999 Critics' Choice Selection of the American Educational Studies Association In this guide to planning, conducting, and evaluating lively discussions, authors Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill offer a variety of practical ideas, tools, and techniques for creating democratic classrooms. They suggest exercises to get discussion started, strategies for maintaining its momentum, ways to elicit a diversity... (more)

Arabian Nights and Days

by Naguib Mahfouz, Denys Johnson-Davies

Seventeen interlinked tales by the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature follow such themes as betrayal, intrigue, obsessive love, social injustice, reincarnations, and wrongs righted or made worse. Reprint. K.

Night Trilogy: Book 1

Night

by Elie Wiesel

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night , a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers... (more)

Romeo and Juliet

by William Shakespeare

Each edition includes: Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play Scene-by-scene plot summaries A key to famous lines and phrases An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play Illustrations from the Folger... (more)

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism. Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

Jesus: An Interview Across Time

by Andrew G. Hodges

A provocative fictional interview with Jesus by a skilled contemporary interviewer. An unparalleled look into the daily life, formative events, and personal feelings of Jesus, the man. Engaging and explosively revealing. It's like meeting Jesus again for the first time. In the format of a twenty-first century interview, the author asks Jesus the kinds of questions most of us have wondered-"Why do you think God... (more)

I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS

by Livia Bitton-Jackson

The author was 13 when the Nazis took Hungary. In intimate and excruciating detail, Livia Bitton-Jackson describes how her young life was transformed by her experiences, from suspension from school to surviving the horrors of Auschwitz.

Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?

Our intuition tells us that we, our conscious selves, cause our own voluntary acts. Yet scientists have long questioned this; Thomas Huxley, for example, in 1874 compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of a locomotive. New experimental evidence (most notable, work by Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner) has brought the causal status of human behavior back to the forefront of... (more)

Nice and the Good

by Iris Murdoch

A novel originally published in 1968, revolving around a happily married couple and telling of a violent death, blackmail, suspected espionage, Black Arts, stress and terror, over which love conquers all.

Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery: A Novel (Literature of the Middle East)

Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery: A Novel (Literature of the Middle East)

by Baha?? T?a?hir

This brief, beautifically crafted novel introduces one of the finest contemporary Arab novelists to English-speaking audiences. In it, Bahaa' Taher, one of a group of Egyptian writersincluding the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouznoted for their revealing portraits of Egyptian life and society, tells the dramatic story of a young Muslim who, when his life is threatened, finds sanctuary in a... (more)

The Big Talk: Talking to Your Child about Sex and Dating

The Big Talk: Talking to Your Child about Sex and Dating

by Laurie Langford

A very accessible, step-by-step guide that provides simple yet meaningful ways to discuss this crucial subject. Makes talking about sex easy and opens lines of important communications between parents and children. Bravo!" —Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Ph.D. author of Children of Character: Leading Your Children to Ethical Choices in Everyday Life. "Comprehensive, dignified, conscientious, and nurturing...Very... (more)

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and ArchitectureDennis Sharp

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture

by Dennis Sharp

The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead is the name now given to a collection of religious and magical texts known to the ancient Egyptians as The Chapters of Coming-forth by Day. Their principal aim was to secure for the deceased a satisfactory afterlife and to give him the power to leave his tomb when necessary. Copies of The Book of the Dead written on papyrus rolls were placed in the tombs of important Egyptians, each roll... (more)

Please, no zits! and other short stories for LDS youth

Please, no zits! and other short stories for LDS youth

by Anne Bradshaw

Please, No Zits is a collection of fast moving short stories set in America, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The book also contains a map, and a glossary of several words used in these countries. It has been described as a fun read that motivates without preaching. Also recommended for Family Home Evenings, and other teaching situations.

Extra Credit

by Andrew Clements

It isn't that Abby Carson can't do her schoolwork, it's just that she doesn't like doing it. And that means she's pretty much failing sixth grade. When a warning letter is sent home, Abby realizes that all her slacking off could cause her to be held back -- for real! Unless she wants to repeat the sixth grade, she'll have to meet some specific conditions, including taking on an extra-credit project: find a pen pal... (more)

Dictionary of Maqiao

by Shaogong Han

From the daring imagination of one of China’s greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originality–the story of a young man “displaced” to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold invention–and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark... (more)

The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Trusting Relationships

The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Trusting Relationships

by Hill Harper

In his first book for adults, New York Times bestselling author Hill Harper invites you to join the Conversation: an honest dialogue about the breakdown of African-American relationships. For generations African Americans have turned to their families in times of need Â– but now, this proud and strong legacy is in peril. Black men and women have stopped communicating effectively and it threatens the very... (more)

The Rings of Saturn

by Winfried Georg Sebald

"Ostensibly a record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia," as Robert McCrum in the London Observer noted, The Rings of Saturn "is also a brilliantly allusive study of England's imperial past and the nature of decline and fall, of loss and decay. . . . The Rings of Saturn is exhilaratingly, you might say hypnotically, readable. . . . It is hard to imagine a stranger or more compelling work." The Rings... (more)

Pale Fire

by Vladimir Nabokov

A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.

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Black Dogs: A Novel

by Ian McEwan