Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Donna Tartt

Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond... (more)

Case Histories: A Novel

by Kate Atkinson

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack. Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie... (more)

Possession: A Romance (Vintage International)

Possession: A Romance (Vintage International)

by A. S. Byatt

Actual Book Cover May Vary -- There are two covers available and orders are filled at random. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets became a huge bookseller favorite, and then on to national bestellerdom.

Possession A. S.. Byatt

by A S BYATT

The Drowning Tree: A Novel

by Carol Goodman

Artfully imagined, intricately detailed, eerily poignant: these are the outstanding features of Carol Goodman’s literary thrillers. She is part novelist, part craftsman—and The Drowning Tree is her newest masterpiece. Juno McKay intended to avoid the nearby campus of her alma mater during her fifteenth reunion weekend, but she just can’t turn down the chance to see her longtime friend, Christine Webb, speak at... (more)

The Lake of Dead Languages: A Novel

by Carol Goodman

In the evocative tradition of Donna Tartt’s first novel, The Secret History , comes this accomplished debut of youthful innocence drowned by dark sins. Twenty years ago, Jane Hudson left the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks after a terrible tragedy. Now she has returned to the placid, isolated shores of the lakeside school as a Latin teacher, recently separated and hoping to make a fresh start... (more)

The Ghost Orchid: A Novel

by Carol Goodman

In her enthralling novels of literary suspense, Carol Goodman writes stories that resonate with emotion set in lush landscapes that entice the senses. Now, with The Ghost Orchid, a narrative that seamlessly weaves together the past and the present, Goodman creates her most lyrical and haunting work to date. For more than one hundred years, creative souls have traveled to Upstate New York to work under the... (more)

The Savage Garden

by Mark Mills

From the author of the acclaimed national bestseller Amagansett comes an even more remarkable novel set in the Tuscan hills: the story of two murders, four hundred years apart-and the ties that bind them together. Adam Banting, a somewhat aimless young scholar at Cambridge University, is called to his professor's office one afternoon and assigned a special summer project: to write a scholarly monograph about... (more)

The Book of Air and Shadows

by Michael Gruber

A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death . . . A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries . . . An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth . . . The Washington Post called Michael Gruber's previous work "a miracle of intelligent fiction and among the essential novels of recent years." Now comes his most intellectually provocative and compulsively readable... (more)

The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers (Penguin Classics)

The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers (Penguin Classics)

by Henry James

In these two chilling stories, Henry James shows himself to be a master of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension. The Turn of the Screw tells of a young governess sent to a country home to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care. Obsession of a... (more)

The Bookman's Wake (Cliff Janeway Novels (Paperback))

The Bookman's Wake (Cliff Janeway Novels (Paperback))

by John Dunning

Denver cop-turned-bookdealer Cliff Janeway is lured by an enterprising fellow ex-policeman into going to Seattle to bring back a fugitive wanted for assault, burglary, and the possible theft of a priceless edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." The bail jumper turns out to be a vulnerable young woman calling herself Eleanor Rigby, who is also a gifted book finder. Janeway is intrigued by the woman -- and by... (more)

Gentlemen and Players : A Novel

by Joanne Harris

Gentlemen AND Players Audere, agere, auferre. To dare, to strive, to conquer. For generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than thirty years. But this year the wind of unwelcome change is blowing, and Straitley is finally contemplating... (more)

The Historian

by Elizabeth Kostova

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

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Barcelona, 1945—A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind , by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax’s other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has... (more)

Death of a Writer: A Novel

by Michael Collins

For Robert Pendleton, a professor clinging to tenure and living in the shambles of his once-bright literary career, death seems to be the only remaining option. But his suicide attempt fails, halted at the last moment by the intervention of Adi Wiltshire, a graduate student battling her own demons of failure and thwarted ambition. During Pendleton’s long convalescence, Adi discovers a novel hidden in his basement:... (more)

The Sonnet Lover: A Novel

by Carol Goodman

For how thy memory has lingered on– In spite of cruelest winter’s drear and howl– By inner mirror seen; I’ve dwelled upon, I must confess, my treachery most foul. Did Shakespeare pen a series of passionate sonnets, unknown to modern scholarship, ardently praising a mysterious dark-haired beauty? This tantalizing question is raised in a letter to literature professor Rose Asher. But the letter’s author, Rose’s... (more)

Amagansett

by Mark Mills

When a first-generation Basque fisherman pulls in the body of a beautiful young woman, his close-knit Long Island community will be irrevocably changed. As sweeping and haunting as its backdrop, Amagansett is an unforgettable evocation of life's epic forces.

Seduction of Water (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Seduction of Water (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Carol Goodman

Iris Greenfeder, ABD (All But Dissertation), feels the “buts” are taking over her life: all but published, all but a professor, all but married. Yet the sudden impulse to write a story about her mother, Katherine Morrissey, leads to a shot at literary success. The piece recounts an eerie Irish fairy tale her mother used to tell her at bedtime—and nestled inside it is the sad story of her death. It captures the... (more)

The River King

by Alice Hoffman

For more than a century, the small town of Haddan, Massachusetts, has been divided, as if by a line drawn down the center of Main Street, separating those born and bred in the village from those who attend the prestigious Haddan School. But one October night the two worlds are thrust together due to an inexplicable death, and the town's divided history is revealed in all its complexity. The lives of everyone... (more)

The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny. All children mythologize their birth ...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist. The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: literary mystery

by Donna Tartt

by Kate Atkinson

by A. S. Byatt

by A S BYATT

by Carol Goodman

by Carol Goodman

by Carol Goodman

by Mark Mills

by Michael Gruber

by Henry James

by John Dunning

by Joanne Harris

by Elizabeth Kostova

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

by Michael Collins

by Carol Goodman

by Mark Mills

by Carol Goodman

by Alice Hoffman

by Diane Setterfield