Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Until the phone calls came at three o'clock on a November morning, the Golds and their neighbors, the Hartes, had been inseparable. It was no surprise to anyone when their teenage children, Chris and Emily, began showing signs that their relationship was moving beyond that of lifelong friends. But now seventeen-year-old Emily is dead&#8212shot with a gun her beloved and devoted Chris pilfered from his father's... (more)

Ordinary People

by Judith Guest

Describes a youth's breakdown and recovery and how it affects his family.

The 158-Pound Marriage (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

The 158-Pound Marriage (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by John Irving

The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp ; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions... (more)

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and... (more)

Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

The best advice for the mother of the groom? Keep your mouth shut and wear beige! “It’s bad enough when two mothers plan an event as fraught as a wedding, but what happens when the ex-husband’s new girlfriend elbows her way in? Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige adds the mother of the groom to literature’s rich collection of long-suffering women. When Seidel’s heroine refuses to suffer in silence, the results... (more)

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

A Novel

by Kim Edwards

Kim Edwards’s stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He... (more)

Cost: A Novel

by Roxana Robinson

THE LUMINOUS AND GRIPPING NEW NOVEL FROM “ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS” (JONATHAN YARDLEY, THE WASHINGTON POST ) When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimer’s. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia’s son... (more)

Study Series: Book 3

Fire Study

by Maria V. Snyder

The apprenticeship is over— now the real test has begun. When word that Yelena is a Soulfinder—able to capture and release souls—spreads like wildfire, people grow uneasy. Already Yelena's unusual abilities and past have set her apart. As the Council debates Yelena's fate, she receives a disturbing message: a plot is rising against her homeland, led by a murderous sorcerer she has defeated before.… Honor sets... (more)

Disquiet

by Julia Leigh

Olivia arrives at her mother’s chateau in rural France (the first time in more than a decade) with her two young children in tow. Soon the family is joined by Olivia’s brother Marcus and his wife Sophie—but this reunion is far from joyful. After years of desperately wanting a baby, Sophie has just given birth to a stillborn child, and she is struggling to overcome her devastation. Meanwhile, Olivia wrestles with... (more)

She's Not There : A Life in Two Genders

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny. She’s Not There is the story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret; above all, it is a love story. By turns funny and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the remarkable territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the... (more)

Five Quarters of the Orange

by Joanne Harris

In her bestselling and critically acclaimed novel Chocolat, Joanne Harris told a lush story of the conflicts between pleasure and repression. Now she delivers her most complex and sophisticated work yet, an unforgettable tale of mothers and daughters, of the past and the present, of resisting and succumbing -- an extraordinary work of fiction lined with darkness and fierce joy. When Framboise Simon returns to a... (more)

Five Little Peppers And How They Grew

by Margaret Sidney

This juvenile classic, first published in 1881, tells the story of the widowed Mrs. Pepper and her five children: Ben, Polly, David, Joel, and Phronsie. Fondly remembered as a story that reveals the true value of family, it is the first in a series of books about the residents of the Little Brown House.

A Delicate Balance: a Play

by Edward Albee

Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play--winner of the 1996 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play--is now available in a trade paperback edition. A dark comedy about unfulfilled lives, broken promises, and family jealousies, A Delicate Balance has just been revived to triumphant acclaim at Lincoln Center's Plymouth Theatre in New York City.

The Ditchdigger's Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story

The Ditchdigger's Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story

by Yvonne S. Thornton, Dr Yvonne S Thornton

As leader, Edan Mirav must protect his people from the enemies who wish to destroy them. Despite his extraordinary abilities, Edan has not been able to locate his double - the one person who could make him whole and help him control his remarkable power to age himself with a simple thought. With her, he can grow even stronger. Without her, he is doomed to an uncertain fate. Just when he's about to abandon all... (more)

Traitor King

by Todd Mitchell

Darren and Jackie Mannahan thought they lived in an ordinarily unhappy family, where some things were never discussed. But an unexpected, shadowy visitor suddenly propels them into a mystery they didn't even know existed -- the mystery of where exactly their family came from, and why it's now in ruins. After tracking down many clues and signs, Darren and Jackie discover an alternate world where their family used... (more)

The Almost Moon

by Alice Sebold

A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable new novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky. For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined.... (more)

Violet Bing and the Grand House

by Jennifer Paros

In the tradition of literary classics like The Secret Garden comes this irresistible story about a girl who doesn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. Violet Bing has even said "no" to the family vacation, so she is sent to stay with her great-aunt Astrid instead. As usual, Violet is determined to dislike everything about her stay. But with the help of a stray dog, a new friend, and an old diary, Violet... (more)

A Crooked Kind of Perfect

by Linda Urban

Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience's applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she'll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ... (more)

Eugenie Grandet

by Honoré de Balzac

'Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?' This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned... (more)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely... (more)

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Tags: family dynamics

by Jodi Picoult