Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Manor, where she falls in... (more)

Legacy

by James A. Michener

As Major Norman Starr is about to appear before a congressional committee to publicly account for his covert actions, he recalls the heritage of his ancestors and the role they played in the true glory of America. Bestselling author James Michener has painted a timeless family portrait and an eloquent lesson in American history. "Michener is a master storyteller." MILWAUKEE JOURNAL

My Brother Sam Is Dead

by James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier

All his life, Tim Meeker has looked up to his brother Sam. Sam's smart and brave -- and is now a part of the American Revolution. Not everyone in town wants to be a part of the rebellion. Most are supporters of the British -- including Tim and Sam's father. With the war soon raging, Tim know he'll have to make a choice -- between the Revolutionaries and the Redcoats . . . and between his brother and his... (more)

The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

Oxmoon, the rambling old mansion on a sprawling estate in Wales, has been for generations, the dream, the downfall, and the destiny of the wealthy Godwin family. Discover how these extraordinary people were caught on life's wheel of fortune, how the family legacy of madness, murder, and doomed romance, begun with 19th century Gwyneth Godwin's scandalous affair with sheep farmer Owen Bryn-Davis, pursue all of the... (more)

Herbs and ApplesHelen Hooven Santmyer

Herbs and Apples

by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Herbs and Apples, the novel Helen Hooven Santmyer wrote at the height of her youthful creative powers, is the work that many critics have loved even more than . . . And Ladies of the Club. Laced with nostalgia as well as timeless insight into human character, Santmyer's enchanting novel is as contemporary today as the day it was written. HC: Harper & Row.

OHIO TOWN (Ohio)

by Helen Hooven Santmyer, Paul White

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

by Brian Fies

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, the long-awaited follow-up to Mom's Cancer, is a unique graphic novel that tells the story of a young boy and his relationship with his father. Spanning the period from the 1939 New York World's Fair to the last Apollo space mission in 1975, it is told through the eyes of a boy as he grows up in an era that was optimistic and ambitious, fueled by industry, engines,... (more)

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frightened orphan Mary discovers the joyful wonders of life on the Yorkshire Moors with the help of two local boys and a mysterious, abandoned garden...where all things seem possible.

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism. Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

Gemma Doyle Trilogy: Book 3

The Sweet Far Thing

by Libba Bray

IT HAS BEEN A YEAR OF CHANGE since Gemma Doyle arrived at the foreboding Spence Academy. Her mother murdered, her father a laudanum addict, Gemma has relied on an unsuspected strength and has discovered an ability to travel to an enchanted world called the realms, where dark magic runs wild. Despite certain peril, Gemma has bound the magic to herself and forged unlikely new alliances. Now, as Gemma approaches her... (more)

The Catcher in the Rye

by J. D. Salinger

Ever since it was first published in 1951, this novel has been the coming-of-age story against which all others are judged. Read and cherished by generations, the story of Holden Caulfield is truly one of America's literary treasures.

The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Noted Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli draws upon years of research to present the Fitzgerald's Jazz Age romance exactly as he intended according to the original manuscript, revisions, and corrections--with explanatory notes. Reprint.

The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record (Dover Architectural Series)

The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record (Dover Architectural Series)

by Stanley Appelbaum

Colossal spectacle preserved in 128 rare, vintage photographs with concise, fact-filled text: 200 buildings—79 of foreign governments, 38 of U.S. states; the original ferris wheel, first midway, Edison’s kinetoscope, much more. 128 black-and-white photographs. Captions. Map. Index.

The strange case of Mortimer Fenley,

by Louis Tracy

First published 1919. Author was a British journalist and prolific writer of fiction.

Wings

by Danielle Steel

From a house on the edge of her family's dusty farmland airstrip near Chicago, the child Cassie O'Malley would sneak into the night to look at the planes sitting shimmering in the moonlight. Her World War I veteran father, Pat, wanted his son to be a pilot, not his reckless, red-haired daughter. But it was Cassie who had the gift. Ever since she could remember, Cassie felt the pull of getting in a cockpit... (more)

Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess. We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house,... (more)

Howards End

by E. M. Forster

The self-interested disregard of a dying woman's bequest, an impulsive girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage between an idealist and a materialist--all intersect at a Hertfordshire estate called Howards End. The fate of this beloved country home symbolizes the future of England itself in E. M. Forster's exploration of social, economic, and philosophical trends, as exemplified by three... (more)

The Outsiders

by S. E. Hinton

When it was first published in 1967, The Outsiders defied convention with its immediate, deeply sympathetic portrayal of Ponyboy and his struggle to find a place for himself in a difficult world. Thirty years later, it speaks to teenagers as powerfully as ever. Even though its almost 2010 the teens in this book speak to us. The times were hard back in those days and to a 14 year old Ponyboy its hard to live. Him,... (more)

Place Called Freedom, A

by Ken Follett

Sentenced to a life of misery in the Scottish coal mines, twenty-one-year-old Mack McAsh hungers for escape. His only ally: beautiful high-born Lizzie Hallim, who is trapped in her own kind of hell. In 1766, from the teeming streets of London to the infernal hold of a slave ship headed for the American colonies to a sprawling Virginia plantation, two restless young people, separated by politics and position, are... (more)

Gemma Doyle Trilogy: Book 1

A Great and Terrible Beauty

by Libba Bray

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her.... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: period piece

by Charlotte Bronte

by James A. Michener

by James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier

by Susan Howatch

by Helen Hooven Santmyer

by Helen Hooven Santmyer, Paul White

by Brian Fies

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

by Arthur Miller

by Libba Bray

by J. D. Salinger

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Stanley Appelbaum

by Louis Tracy

by Danielle Steel

by Arthur Golden

by E. M. Forster

by S. E. Hinton

by Ken Follett

by Libba Bray