Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives -- even destroy them. Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family... (more)

What Dreams May Come

by Richard Matheson

The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the Oscar-winning movie! What happens to us after we die? Chris Nielsen had no idea, until an unexpected accident cut his life short, separating him from his beloved wife, Annie. Now Chris must discover the true nature of life after death. But even Heaven is not complete without Annie, and when tragedy threatens to divide them forever, Chris risks his very soul to... (more)

Body and Soul

by Frank Conroy

In the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world. The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name." Against a backdrop that pulses with sound and rhythm, Body & Soul brilliantly evokes the life of a child... (more)

The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

In this eagerly awaited new novel, Lionel Shriver, the Orange Prize-winning author of the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin , delivers an imaginative and entertaining look at the implications, large and small, of whom we choose to love. Using a playful parallel-universe structure, The Post-Birthday World follows one woman's future as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different... (more)

Sleeping with Schubert: A Novel

by Bonnie Marson

It seems that the legendary composer Franz Schubert is alive—well, sort of—in the twenty-first century: His soul has taken up residence in the body of Brooklyn lawyer Liza Durbin. Even more astonishing, so has his prodigious gift. A mediocre pianist at best as a child, Liza can suddenly pound out concertos and compose masterly music out of the blue. But how can a brilliant male Austrian composer from the... (more)

Making History

by Stephen Fry

What if hitler had never been born? In Stephen Fry's most seriously ambitious novel to date, he creates a futuristic fantasy that becomes a thriller with a funny streak. Tackling one of history's darkest episodes, he poses the question: What if Hitler had never been born? An unquestionable improvement, no doubt. Michael Young, an earnest young history graduate student, has just finished his dissertation, an... (more)

Mercy

by Jodi Picoult

Police chief of a small Massachusetts town, Cameron McDonald makes the toughest arrest of his life when his own cousin Jamie comes to him and confesses outright that he has killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy. Now, a heated murder trial plunges the town into upheaval, and drives a wedge into a contented marriage: Cameron, aiding the prosecution in their case against Jamie, is suddenly at odds with his... (more)

Between the Bridge and the River

by Craig Ferguson

Bawdy, joyous, messy, hysterically funny, and guaranteed to offend regardless of religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or profession Between the Bridge and the River is the debut novel by Craig Ferguson, host of CBS's The Late Late Show . Two childhood friends from Scotland and two illegitimate half-brothers from the American South suffer and enjoy all manner of bizarre experiences which, as it... (more)

Exile: A Novel

by Richard Patterson

David Wolfe is a successful American lawyer being primed for a run for Congress. But when the phone rings and he hears the voice of Hana Arif—the Palestinian woman with whom he had a secret affair in law school—he begins a completely unexpected journey. The next day, the prime minister of Israel is assassinated by a suicide bomber while visiting San Francisco. Soon, Hana is accused of being the mastermind behind... (more)

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an... (more)

Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West

Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West

by Jeffery Paine

The colorful tale of the successful flowering of an obscure, ancient Eastern sect in the modern world. In a single generation, Tibetan Buddhism developed from the faith of a remote mountain people, associated with bizarre, almost medieval, superstitions, to perhaps the most rapidly growing and celebrity-studded religion in the West. Disaffected with other religious traditions yet searching for meaning,... (more)

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

by Lydia Millet

Oppenheimer's first full day at the motel was devoted to television. He located the remote on the bedside table, where it sat beside the enigmatic telephone with its sheet of intricate numeric instructions, and eventually by pressing the button marked power discovered its function. -from OH PURE AND RADIANT HEART In Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, the three dead geniuses who invented the atomic bomb-Robert... (more)

The Razor's Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their... (more)

Bangkok 8: A Novel (Vintage)

by John Burdett

A thriller with attitude to spare, Bangkok 8 is a sexy, razor-edged, often darkly hilarious novel set in one of the world’s most exotic cities. Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner,... (more)

Bangkok Tattoo (Vintage)

by John Burdett

Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police returns in his riveting and smokily atmospheric new thriller. A farang–a foreigner–has been murdered, his body horribly mutilated, at the Bangkok brothel co-owned by Sonchai’s mother and his boss. The dead man was a CIA agent. To make matters worse, the apparent culprit is sweet-natured Chanya, the brothel’s top earner and a woman whom the devoutly Buddhist... (more)

Bangkok Haunts

by John Burdett

Sonchai Jitpleecheep—the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo —returns in this blistering new novel. Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok’s District 8, but nothing like the video he’s just been sent anonymously: “Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species. I am watching one right now.” He’s watching... (more)

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

by A. J. Jacobs

33,000 PAGES 44 MILLION WORDS 10 BILLION YEARS OF HISTORY 1 OBSESSED MAN Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all... (more)

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

by Melissa Bank

Hailed by critics as the debut of a major literary voice, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing dazzled and delighted readers and topped bestseller lists nationwide. Now, in anticipation of her upcoming new work of fiction, The Wonder Spot , Penguin is publishing Melissa Bank’s bestseller in a mass-market format to reach an even wider audience. Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, The Girls’... (more)

Blinding Light: A Novel

by Paul Theroux

Slade Steadman's lone opus, published twenty years ago, was Trespassing, a cult classic about his travels through dozens of countries without benefit of passport. With his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Ava in tow, Steadman sets out for Ecuador’s jungle in search of a rare hallucinogenic drug and the cure for his writer’s block. Amid a gang of thrill-seeking tourists, he finds his drug and his inspiration but is beset... (more)

Being There

by Jerzy Kosinski

A modern classic now available from Grove Press, Being There is one of the most popular and significant works from a writer of international stature. It is the story of Chauncey Gardiner - Chance, an enigmatic but distinguished man who emerges from nowhere to become an heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon, a presidential policy adviser, and a media icon. Truly "a man without qualities," Chance's... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: fabulous reads

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

by Richard Matheson

by Frank Conroy

by Lionel Shriver

by Bonnie Marson

by Stephen Fry

by Jodi Picoult

by Craig Ferguson

by Richard Patterson

by Khaled Hosseini

by Jeffery Paine

by Lydia Millet

by W. Somerset Maugham

by John Burdett

by John Burdett

by John Burdett

by A. J. Jacobs

by Melissa Bank

by Paul Theroux

by Jerzy Kosinski