Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Historian

by Elizabeth Kostova

THE HISTORIAN A Novel by Elizabeth Kostova. Stated 1st Edition. Hardcover in dust jacket. Little, Brown & Co. 2005.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a... (more)

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

by Diane Ackerman

A true story—as powerful as Schindler's List —in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark... (more)

Strawberry Fields: A Novel

by Marina Lewycka

From the author of the international bestseller A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian comes a tender and hilarious novel about a crew of migrant workers from three continents who are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across all of England in pursuit of their various dreams of a better future. Somewhere in the heart of the green and pleasant land called England is a valley filled... (more)

The Bridge of Sighs: A Novel

by Olen Steinhauer

In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-WWII Eastern European city. It's August, 1948, three years after the Russians "liberated" this small nation from German Occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital's rubble-strewn streets, and the ideals of the Revolution are but memories. Twenty-two-year-old Detective Emil Brod, an... (more)

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures–from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories–in a wonderful new novel... (more)

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

by Marina Lewycka, Marina Lewycka, Marina Lewycka

"An amusing, astonishing debut . . . about how a family learns to let go of the past and live and love in the present." — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution With this wise, tender, and deeply funny novel, Marina Lewycka takes her place alongside Zadie Smith and Monica Ali as a writer who can capture the unchanging verities of family. When an elderly and newly widowed Ukrainian immigrant announces his... (more)

God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew, John L. Sherrill, Elizabeth Sherrill

As a boy he dreamed of being a spy undercover behind enemy lines. As a man he found himself undercover for God. Brother Andrew was his name and for decades his life story, recounted in God's Smuggler, has awed and inspired millions. The bestseller tells of the young Dutch factory worker's incredible efforts to transport Bibles across closed borders-and the miraculous ways in which God provided for him every step... (more)

Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times

Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times

by Radu R Florescu, Raymond McNally

With the phenomenal success of Elizabeth Kostova+s critically acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestseller, The Historian, there is a renewed interest in the true story of Dracula. Originally published in 1990, Dracula, Prince of Many Faces still stands as the definitive biography of Vlad Dracula of Romania.Dracula, Prince of Many Faces reveals the extraordinary life and times of the infamous Vlad Dracula of Romania... (more)

Russia under the Old Regime: Second Edition (Penguin History)

Russia under the Old Regime: Second Edition (Penguin History)

by Richard Pipes

Harvard Professor of Russian History Richard Pipes traces the evolution of the Russian state from the ninth century to the 1800s. Pipes analyzes the political behavior of the principal social groupingspeasantry, nobility, middle class, and clergyand their failure to stand up to the increasing absolutism of the czar. This is considered by many to be the definitive book about Russian society before the revolution. 3... (more)

The Fig Eater: A Novel

by Jody Shields

Penzler Pick, May 2000: It is 1910 Vienna, and a woman's body has been found in the Volksgarten. She is Dora--Freud's famous patient. The Inspector (whose name we never learn) is painstakingly trying to put together the circumstances of her death with the help of the principles outlined in the 1901 book System der Kriminalistik, the first tome to attempt a psychological approach to understanding crime. The... (more)

Nowhere Man

by Aleksandar Hemon

A native of Sarajevo, where he spends his adolescence trying to become Bosnia’s answer to John Lennon, Jozef Pronek comes to the United States in 1992—just in time to watch war break out in his country, but too early to be a genuine refugee. Indeed, Jozef’s typical answer to inquiries about his origins and ethnicity is, “I am complicated.” And so he proves to be—not just to himself, but to the revolving series... (more)

Bury Me Standing, the Gypsies & Their Journey

Bury Me Standing, the Gypsies & Their Journey

by Isabel Fonseca

Isabel Fonseca describes the four years she spent with Gypsies from Albania to Poland, listening to their stories, deciphering their taboos, and befriending their matriarchs, activists, and child prostitutes. A masterful work of personal reportage, this volume is also a vibrant portrait of a mysterious people and an essential document of a disappearing culture. 50 photos.

How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed

How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed

by Slavenka Drakulic

Hailed by feminists as one of the most important contributions to women's studies in the last decade, this gripping, beautifully written account describes the daily struggles of women under the Marxist regime in the former republic of Yugoslavia.

Ciocoii vechi si noi (Arcade)Nicolae Filimon

Ciocoii vechi si noi (Arcade)

by Nicolae Filimon

Text: Romanian

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

by J. Kevin Sheehan

A Leader Becomes a Leader opens with a window on history: Henry David Thoreau riding a borrowed horse and wagon into the woods around Concord, Massachusetts to Walden Pond in 1845. There, he writes a classic work that has a powerful effect on the lives and philosophies of seminal leaders in the next century as diverse as Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Thoreau believed that a... (more)

The City & the City

by China Mieville

New York Times bestselling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other–real or imagined. When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and... (more)

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber : A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber : A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts

by Julian Rubinstein

Part Pink Panther, part Unbearable Lightness of Being, part Slap Shot, this uproariously funny, exuberantly praised book tells the story of Attila Ambrus, a professional hockey goalkeeper (possibly the worst in the sports history), gravedigger, roulette addict, whiskey drinker (with a fondness for women in leopard-skin hot pants), and native of Transylvania who became Hungarys celebrated gentlemen thief, the most... (more)

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

by Tadeusz Borowski

Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with... (more)

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Tags: eastern europe