Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut. Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she... (more)

Twenty Boy Summer

by Sarah Ockler

"Don't worry, Anna. I'll tell her, okay? Just let me think about the best way to do it." "Okay." "Promise me? Promise you won't say anything?" "Don't worry." I laughed. "It's our secret, right?" According to her best friend Frankie, twenty days in Zanzibar Bay is the perfect opportunity to have a summer fling, and if they meet one boy ever day, there's a pretty good chance Anna will find her first... (more)

The Year of Pleasures: A Novel

by Elizabeth Berg

In this rich and deeply satisfying novel by the beloved author of The Art of Mending , and Open House , a resilient woman embarks upon an unforgettable journey of adventure, self-discovery, and renewal. Betta Nolan moves to a small town after the death of her husband to try to begin anew. Pursuing a dream of a different kind of life, she is determined to find pleasure in her simply daily routines. Among those... (more)

Cry, the Beloved Country

by Alan Paton

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if... (more)

Broken for You

by Stephanie Kallos

National best seller and Today show Book Club selection, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect. Stephanie Kallos's debut novel is a work of infinite charm, wit and heart. It is also a glorious homage to the beauty of broken things. When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a... (more)

The Dogs of Babel

by Carolyn Parkhurst

In Paul's fantastic and even perilous search for the truth about his wife's death, he abandons his everyday life to embark on a series of experiments designed to teach his dog Lorelei to communicate. Could she really give him the answers he is looking for?

Death Be Not Proud (Perennial Classics)

by John Gunther

Johnny Gunther was only seventeen years old when he died of a brain tumor. During the months of his illness, everyone near him was unforgettably impressed by his level-headed courage, his wit and quiet friendliness, and, above all, his unfaltering patience through times of despair. This deeply moving book is a father's memoir of a brave, intelligent, and spirited boy.

Remembering Raquel

by Vivian Vande Velde

Fifteen-year-old Raquel Falcone is, as one of her classmates puts it, the kind of kid who has a tendency to be invisible. That is until the night she's hit by a car and killed while walking home from the movies. In brief, moving chapters, we hear about Raquel from her classmates, her best friend, her family--and the woman who was driving the car that struck her. The loss of this seemingly invisible... (more)

Love, Aubrey

by Suzanne M. LaFleur

"I had everything I needed to run a household: a house, food, and a new family. From now on it would just be me and Sammy–the two of us, and no one else." A tragic accident has turned eleven-year-old Aubrey’s world upside down. Starting a new life all alone, Aubrey has everything she thinks she needs: SpaghettiOs and Sammy, her new pet fish. She cannot talk about what happened to her. Writing letters is the... (more)

Cuando a la gente buena le pasan cosas malas (Vintage Espanol)

Cuando a la gente buena le pasan cosas malas (Vintage Espanol)

by Harold S. Kushner

When Harold Kushner’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease and that he would only live until his early teens, he was faced with one of life’s most difficult questions: Why, God? Years later, Rabbi Kushner wrote this straightforward, elegant contemplation of the doubts and fears that arise when tragedy strikes. Kushner shares his wisdom as a rabbi, a parent, a reader, and a human being.... (more)

Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression

Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression

by Brooke Shields

In her bestselling memoir, now in paperback, Brooke Shields shares with the world her deeply personal experience with postpartum depression When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter to the world, her joyful expectations were quickly followed by something unexpected -- a crippling depression. In what is sure to strike a chord with the millions of women who suffer from depression after childbirth,... (more)

Charming Billy

by Alice McDermott

Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered at a small Bronx bar. They have come to comfort his widow and to eulogize one of the last great romantics, trading tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and unfathomable sorrow. As they linger on into this extraordinary night, their voices form Billy's tragic story and their mourning becomes a gentle homage to all the lives in their small community fractured by... (more)

Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent

Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent

by Anthony Rapp

Anthony Rapp had a special feeling about Jonathan Larson's rock musical Rent as early as his first audition, which won him a starring role as the video artist Mark Cohen. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent opened to thunderous acclaim off-Broadway -- but even as friends and family were celebrating the show's first success, they were also mourning Jonathan Larson's sudden death from an aortic aneurysm. And when... (more)

Prophecy of the Sisters: Book 1

Prophecy of the Sisters

by Michelle Zink

An ancient prophecy divides two sisters- One good... One evil... Who will prevail? Twin sisters Lia and Alice Milthorpe have just become orphans. They have also become enemies. As they discover their roles in a prophecy that has turned generations of sisters against each other, the girls find themselves entangled in a mystery that involves a tattoo-like mark, their parents' deaths, a boy, a book,... (more)

The Memory of Running

by Ron McLarty

Every decade seems to produce a novel that captures the public’s imagination with a story that sweeps readers up and takes them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride. Ron McLarty’s The Memory of Running is this decade’s novel. By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson "Smithy" Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy’s life becomes completely unhinged... (more)

Last Orders

by Graham Swift

Swift's first novel since his highly acclaimed Ever After is a subtle yet piercing story about the ways in which friendship and love are shaped by the past and by fate. At its center is a group of men, friends since the Second World War, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack, and their favorite pub. When one of the group dies, the survivors are compelled to take stock.

River, Cross My Heart (Oprah's Book Club)

River, Cross My Heart (Oprah's Book Club)

by Breena Clarke

A remarkable new writer makes her debut--with a novel of tragedy and triumph in the life of an African American family in Georgetown, circa 1925. Eight-year-old Clara Bynum is dead, drowned in the Potomac River in the shadow of an apparently haunted rock outcropping known locally as the Three Sisters. In scenes alive with emotional truth, River, Cross My Heart weighs the effect of Claras absence on the... (more)

The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage--and a life, in good times and bad--that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a... (more)

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies

by Mick Cochrane

For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself. Molly doesn’t want to be seen as “Miss Difficulty Overcome”; she wants to make herself known to the kids at school for something other than her father’s death. So she decides to join the baseball team. The boys’ baseball team.... (more)

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Tags: grieving

by Christina Schwarz