Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pie ces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects piety, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery. By the time he... (more)

Beautiful Children: A Novel

by Charles Bock

One Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn’t come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son’s room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy’s father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy. As the... (more)

Wanted

by Mark Millar

What if everything in your life was out of your hands and those around you propelled your fate? Your girlfriend left you for your best friend; your boss gave your job to someone better. What if then, after all this, someone gave you back total control? What if he revealed you were the next in line to join a secret society of super-villains that controlled the entire planet? Mark Millar and J.G. Jones provide a... (more)

Hollywood

by Charles Bukowski

Hank and his wife, Sarah, agree to write a screenplay, and encounter the strange world of the movie industry.

Kiss Me, Judas

by Will Christopher Baer

Have you ever loved someone who’s mortally wounded you? Phineas Poe, disgraced cop and morphine addict, has just been released from a psych ward when he meets a beautiful woman named Jude in a hotel bar. Red dress, black hair, body like a knife. He takes her back to his room and wakes the next morning in a bathtub full of blood and ice, missing a kidney. Dragging himself from a hospital bed, Phineas discovers... (more)

Speak

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to... (more)

Dirty White Boys

by Stephen Hunter

They busted out of McAlester State Penitentiary--three escaped convicts going to ground in a world unprepared for anything like them.... Lamar Pye is prince of the Dirty White Boys. With a lion in his soul, he roars--for he is the meanest, deadliest animal on the loose.... Odell is Lamar's cousin, a hulking manchild with unfeeling eyes. He lives for daddy Lamar. Surely he will die for him.... Richard's... (more)

The Scar

by China Mieville

A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station , this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves,... (more)

Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

She's had no education, and you can't call what her father's been trying to give her "love." So at seventeen, Fay Jones leaves home, carrying a purse with half a pack of cigarettes and two dollar bills. She's headed for the bright lights and big times of Biloxi, and even she knows she needs help getting there. But help's not hard to come by when you look like Fay. There's a highway patrolman who gives her a... (more)

Glass

by Ellen Hopkins

Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it's all the same: a monster. And once it's got hold of you, this monster will never let you go. Kristina thinks she can control it. Now with a baby to care for, she's determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is too strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grips. She needs the monster to keep... (more)

My Booky Wook

A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up

by Russell Brand

Russell Brand learned early on to make a joke of fear and failure. From a troubled childhood in industrial Essex, England, to his descent into addictions to alcohol, drugs, and sex in the seamy underbelly of London, Brand has seen his share of both and miraculously lived to tell the tale. In My Booky Wook he leads readers on a rollicking journey through his disastrous school career, his infamous antics on MTV,... (more)

Homeboyz

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

When Teddy Anderson's little sister Tina is gunned down randomly in a drive-by shooting, the gangstas who rule the streets in the Anderson family's rapidly deteriorating neighborhood dismiss the incident as just another case of RP, RT-wrong place, wrong time. According to gangsta logic, Tina doesn't even count as a statistic. Teddy's family is devastated. Mrs. Anderson sinks into deep depression while Pops... (more)

Beat the Reaper: A Novel

by Josh Bazell

Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan's worst hospital, with a talent for medicine, a shift from hell, and a past he'd prefer to keep hidden. Whether it's a blocked circumflex artery or a plan to land a massive malpractice suit, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwna is a hitman for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close... (more)

A Feast of Snakes.

by Harry Crews

From the acclaimed author of such novels as "Blood and Grits" and "Childhood" comes a wildly weird and breathtakingly original visit to the rural South that reveals the exotic subculture that erupts in all its glory at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Mystic, Georgia. "No number of adjectives in the thesaurus can do full justice to the dazzlingly bizarre nature of Crews' creations".--"Washington Post Book World".

Dark Places: A Novel

by Gillian Flynn

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben... (more)

My Booky Wook

by Russell Brand

In 2006 Russell Brand exploded onto the international comedy scene. He has been named Time Out’s Comedian of the Year, Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards, and Most Stylish Man at GQ’s Men. His UK stand-up tour was sold out and his BBC Radio 6 show became a cult phenomenon, the second most popular podcast of the year. Before the fame, however, Russell’s life was anything but glamorous. His father left when... (more)

What Happened

by Peter Johnson

Grade 9 Up—An account of an accident unfolds slowly, in lyrical prose, from the voice of an unnamed narrator. As one of four boys in a car that runs down a pedestrian late one snowy night after a party, the 16-year-old makes observations that are erratic and clouded, not only by his own drunkenness, but also by the troubled teen's somewhat skewed view of the world. The driver, Duane, an arrogant rich kid, is a... (more)

Columbine

by David Cullen

On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma-City style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence-irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine." When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we... (more)

Between the Assassinations

by Aravind Adiga

Welcome to Kittur, India. It's on India's southwestern coast, bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Kaliamma River to the south and east. It's blessed with rich soil and scenic beauty, and it's been around for centuries. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary... (more)

8 Ball Chicks

by Gini Sikes

Dismissed by the police as mere adjuncts to or gofers for male gangs, girl gang members are in fact often as emotionally closed off and dangerous as their male counterparts. Carrying razor blades in their mouths and guns in their jackets for defense, they initiate drive-by shootings, carry out car jackings, stomp outsiders who stumble onto or dare to enter the neighborhood, viciously retaliate against other gangs... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: gritty

by James Frey

by Charles Bock

by Mark Millar

by Charles Bukowski

by Will Christopher Baer

by Laurie Halse Anderson

by Stephen Hunter

by China Mieville

by Larry Brown

by Ellen Hopkins

A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up

by Russell Brand

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

by Josh Bazell

by Harry Crews

by Gillian Flynn

by Russell Brand

by Peter Johnson

by David Cullen

by Aravind Adiga

by Gini Sikes