Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an... (more)

Death of a Macho Man (Hamish Macbeth Mysteries (Paperback))

Death of a Macho Man (Hamish Macbeth Mysteries (Paperback))

by M. C. Beaton

Hamish Macbeth, the local constable of the Scottish village of Lochdubh, returns in the twelfth mystery in the popular series, struggling to clear his name when he himself becomes a suspect in the murder of a local ruffian. Reprint. PW. "

Earth's Children: Book 1

The Clan of the Cave Bear

by Jean M. Auel

When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the... (more)

A Northern Light

by Jennifer Donnelly

Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder. Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the... (more)

Castle: Book 1

Howl's Moving Castle

by Diana Wynne Jones

In the land of Ingary, such things as spells, invisible cloaks, and seven-league boots were everyday things. The Witch of the Waste was another matter. After fifty years of quiet, it was rumored that the Witch was about to terrorize the country again. So when a moving black castle, blowing dark smoke from its four thin turrets, appeared on the horizon, everyone thought it was the Witch. The castle, however,... (more)

A Stranger in the Mirror

by Sidney Sheldon

The undisputed master of compelling, sexy novels does it again in this scalding story of an egomaniacal Hollywood superstar, a ravishing, disillusioned ingenue, and the ruthless love that binds them together, body and soul. Ties-in to ABC's two-hour movie A Stranger in the Mirror. Year-long PR campaign commemorates Sheldon's 50th year in the entertainment business. Reissue.

Lost Boy Lost Girl: A Novel

by Peter Straub

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son- fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill-vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother's suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned... (more)

The Sunflower : A Novel

by Richard Paul Evans

The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Martin Clark

In this masterful debut, Martin Clark proves to be the heir apparent of great Southern raconteurs and the envy of more seasoned novelists as he takes us on a frantic tour of the modern south. Hung over, beaten by the unforgiving sun, bitter at his estranged wife, and dreading the day’s docket of petty criminal cases, Judge Evers Wheeling is in need of something on the morning he's accosted by Ruth Esther... (more)

Green Darkness

by Anya Seton

This unforgettable story of undying love combines mysticism, suspense, mystery, and romance into a web of good and evil that stretches from 16th-century England to the present day. Richard Marsdon marries a young American woman named Celia, brings her to live at his English estate, and all seems to be going well. But now Richard has become withdrawn, and Celia is constantly haunted by a vague dread. When she... (more)

Sophie Pitt-Turnbull Discovers America (Reading Together)

Sophie Pitt-Turnbull Discovers America (Reading Together)

by Dyan Sheldon

"Sheldon has lots of fun with mutual stereotypes and prejudices, not only about nationality but also about race and class. . . . Hilarious." — BOOKLIST The summer her mother announces that they won’t be taking their usual holiday in France, sixteen-year-old Sophie Pitt-Turnbull is aghast — so much so that when Mummy’s old art-school chum in New York suggests they trade daughters for the summer, Sophie feels her... (more)

Morvern Callar

by Alan Warner

A leading voice of a group of Scottish writers influenced by the Beats presents his first novel, a shocking look into the life of a working-class Scottish girl who turns to drugs and rock music to find meaning in her world.

Halo Parade (Harpur & Iles Mysteries (Paperback))

Halo Parade (Harpur & Iles Mysteries (Paperback))

by Bill James

First time in U.S. paperback, the third in Bill James's "standout," "witty," "well above the ordinary" series (starred reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist). When Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur places young policeman Ray Street undercover in a vicious drug gang, the entire department knows the risks. If Street is found out, he will take his place in "the halo parade." Then the killing of a... (more)

An Irish Country Doctor

by Patrick Taylor

Barry Laverty, M.B., can barely find the village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there, but already he knows that there is nowhere he would rather live than in the emerald hills and dales of Northern Ireland. The proud owner of a spanking-new medical degree and little else in the way of worldly possessions, Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant... (more)

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn’t have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn’t have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn’t have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps... (more)

Housewrights

by Art Corriveau

Set in a small Vermont town in the early decades of the twentieth century, Housewrights tells the story of Lily Willard, the town librarian, and her relationship with Oren and Ian Pritchard, housewrights who roam New England building houses for others though they themselves are homeless. Lily first meets the twins when they are children, and the boys arrive with their father to build Lily's family a new... (more)

In Our Strange Gardens

by Michel Quint, Barbara Bray

Michel has a story to tell. It's about his father, an exquisitely common man whose very ordinariness is a source of grave embarrassment for the boy. It's also the story told to him by his uncle, who shared a family secret with the child in the flickering black and white images of a Sunday matinee. Years before, in the bitter years of World War II, during the Nazi occupation of France, two brothers found... (more)

The Conjuror's Bird

by Martin Davies

Made in the U.S.A.

by Billie Letts

The bestselling author of WHERE THE HEART IS returns with a heartrending tale of two children in search of a place to call home. Lutie McFee's history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota with her... (more)

The Shadow Year: A Novel

by Jeffrey Ford

In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world,... (more)

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by Jhumpa Lahiri