Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom

by Louis Sachar

Winner of 17 Children's Choice Awards nationwide, here is Louis Sachar's most beloved novel. An IRA/CBC Children's Choice

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Garnering a vast amount of attention from young people and parents, and from book buyers across the country, Smashed became a media sensation and a New York Times bestseller. Eye- opening and utterly gripping, Koren Zailckas’s story is that of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who routinely use booze as a shortcut to courage and a stand-in for good judgment. With one stiff sip... (more)

Sybil

The classic true story of a woman posessed by sixteen personalities

by Flora Rhea Schreiber

The incredible true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of child abuse who was diagnosed with the first multiple personality disorder, reveals that she played host to sixteen separate and distinct personalities before making the long journey to recovery. Reissue.

Night I Disappeared

by Julie Reece Deaver

HELD HOSTAGE BY AN INNER WORLD Something scary is happening to seventeen-year-old Jamie Tessman. Ever since she and her mother arrived in Chicago, she's been plagued by freaky mind-slips and vivid daydreams about her sort-of boyfriend, Webb. When Jamie's inner world starts taking her hostage and keeping her imprisoned for longer periods of time, she becomes terrified that she is slowly losing her mind. ... (more)

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

by Joanne Greenberg

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.

Faces in the Water

by Janet Frame

Lisa, Bright and Dark (Novel)

by John Neufeld

Lisa Shilling is 16, smart, attractive--and she is losing her mind. Some days are "light," and everything is normal; during her "dark" days, she hides deep within herself, and nothing can reach her. Her teachers ignore what is happening. Her parents deny it. Lisa's friends are the only ones who are listening--and they walk with her where adults fear to tread. This classic novel of a teenager's descent into... (more)

The Facts of Life: A Novel

by Graham Joyce

Winner of the 2003 World Fantasy Award Graham Joyce chronicles a haunting,war-torn terrain in this heartrending novel of one family's quest to begin again -- without forgetting the lives they left behind. The Facts of Life Set in Coventry, England, during and immediately after World War II, The Facts of Life revolves around the early years of Frank Arthur Vine, the illegitimate son of young, free-spirited... (more)

Le Divorce (William Abrahams Book)

by Diane Johnson, Donald Ehrman

When a pregnant Roxeanne Walker de Persand has her husband run out on her, her rough-edged sister, Isabel, comes to help her through this period as the powerful Persand family begins pushing for a divorce and control of a valuable Walker family heirloom.

Eye Contact

by Cammie McGovern

Like The Lovely Bones and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time , Cammie McGovern’s breakout novel is at once a hypnotic thriller and an affecting portrait of people as real as our next-door neighbors. In Eye Contact , two children vanish in the woods behind their elementary school. Hours later, nine-year-old Adam is found alive, the sole witness to his playmate’s murder. But because Adam... (more)

Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke

Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke

by Patty Duke

Call Me Anna is an American success story that grew out of a bizarre and desperate struggle for survival. A harrowing, ultimately triumphant story told by Patty Duke herself--wife, mother, political activist, President of The Screen Actors Guild, and at last, a happy, fulfilled woman whose miracle is her own life. (Nonfiction)

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

by Marya Hornbacher

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A... (more)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

by Phyllis Nagy

Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, Tom Ripley travels to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly like him. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil.

Ripley Under Ground (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Ripley Under Ground (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley has a lovely house in the French countryside, a beautiful and very rich wife, and an art collection worthy of a connoisseur. But this gracious life has not come easily; it is based on murder, forgery, and smuggling, and could topple at any moment.

Ripley's Game (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Ripley's Game (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

by Patricia Highsmith

Connoisseur of art, harpsichord aficionado, gardener extraordinaire, and genius of improvisational murder, the inimitable Tom Ripley finds his complacency shaken when he is scorned at a posh gala. While an ordinary psychopath might repay the insult with some mild act of retribution, what Ripley has in mind is far more subtle, and infinitely more sinister. A social slight doesn't warrant murder of course-- just a... (more)

Ripley Under Water (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Ripley Under Water (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley leads a life of luxury at his chateau in Villeperce. He passes his days gardening, practicing the piano, and enjoying the company of his lovely wife. Never mind the blood-stains in the basement. But now he has new neighbors: a vulgar and curious American couple who, Ripley fears, may discover his secrets.

Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

by Claire Fontaine

How does an honor student at one of Los Angeles's finest prep schools–a nice girl from a happy, loving home–trade school uniforms and afternoons at the mall for speedballs in the back of a truck in rural Indiana? How does her devoted mother emerge from the shock of finding that her daughter has not only disappeared but had been living a secret life for more than a year? Mother and daughter tell their parallel... (more)

Wittgenstein's Nephew: A Friendship

by Thomas Bernhard

It is 1967, in a Viennese hospital. In separate wards: the narrator named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering fom one of his periodic bouts of madness. Bernhard traces the growth of an intense friendship between two eccentric, obsessive men who share a passion for music, a strange sense of humor, brutal honesty, and a disgust for bourgeois... (more)

Unless: A Novel

by Carol Shields

Reta Winters, 44-year-old successful author of lightsummertime fiction, has always considered herself happy, even blessed. That is, until her oldest daughter Norah mysteriously drops out of college to become a panhandler on a Toronto street corner -- silent, with a sign around her neck bearing the word "Goodness".

Forrest Gump: A Novel

by Winston Groom

The life of an endearing idiot savant is marked by encounters with some of the most famous figures of the twentieth century. Reprint. Movie tie-in.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: mental health issues

by Louis Sachar

by Koren Zailckas

The classic true story of a woman posessed by sixteen personalities

by Flora Rhea Schreiber

by Julie Reece Deaver

by Joanne Greenberg

by Janet Frame

by John Neufeld

by Graham Joyce

by Diane Johnson, Donald Ehrman

by Cammie McGovern

by Patty Duke

by Marya Hornbacher

by Phyllis Nagy

by Patricia Highsmith

by Patricia Highsmith

by Patricia Highsmith

by Claire Fontaine

by Thomas Bernhard

by Carol Shields

by Winston Groom