Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

by John Berendt

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction.... (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)

Thursday Next: Book 2

Lost in a Good Book

by Jasper Fforde

The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with Jasper Fforde’s magnificent second adventure starring the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next. When Landen, the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of Jurisfiction—the police force inside... (more)

The River Wife: A Novel

by Jonis Agee

From acclaimed novelist Jonis Agee, whom The New York Times Book Review called “a gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the American landscape,” The River Wife is a sweeping, panoramic story that ranges from the New Madrid earthquake of 1811 through the Civil War to the bootlegging days of the 1930s. When the earthquake brings Annie Lark’s Missouri house down on top of her, she finds herself... (more)

These is My Words

by Nancy E. Turner

In a compelling fiction debut, Nancy E. Turner's unforgettable These Is My Words melds the sweeping adventures and dramatic landscapes of Lonesome Dove with the heartfelt emotional saga of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. Inspired by the author's original family memoirs, this absorbing story introduces us to the questing, indomitable Sarah Prine, one of the most memorable women ever to survive and... (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)

Robert Langdon: Book 1

Angels & Demons

by Dan Brown

An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target. World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati.... (more)

Deception Point

by Dan Brown

A shocking scientific discovery. A conspiracy of staggering brilliance. A thriller unlike any you've ever read.... When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory -- a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White... (more)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaping slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious. Though some of the situations in Huckleberry Finn are... (more)

Slaughterhouse-Five

Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death

by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simulta

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic... (more)

Middlesex: A Novel

by Jeffrey Eugenides

A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides --the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl. In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that... (more)

A Confederacy of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole

A popular Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy follows the adventures of New Orlean's lower denizens of the French Quarter.

You Slay Me (Aisling Grey, Guardian Novels)

Aisling Grey, Guardian: Book 1

You Slay Me (Aisling Grey, Guardian Novels)

by Katie MacAlister

Aisling Grey is a courier enjoying a free, work-related trip to Paris when she learns she's a Guardian. That's a keeper of the Gates of Hell, for those who don't know. She finds this out from Drake Vireo, who's scrumptiously sexy-at least in his human form. Now Drake has stolen the package Aisling was sent to deliver, and she must track him down, get the package, and try to resist the passion boiling inside her.

Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a country estate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalf of a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.

Merde: Book 1

A Year in the Merde

by Stephen Clarke

Based on Stephen Clarke’s own experiences and with names changed to “avoid embarrassment, possible legal action, and to prevent the author’s legs being broken by someone in a Yves Saint Laurent suit,” A Year in the Merde provides perfect entertainment for Francophiles and Francophobes alike.

Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal

Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal

by Ian Christe

In this first-ever atlas of the heavy metal phenomenon, Ian Christe delivers a bird's-eye view of this dark and forbidden music. The ultimate headbanger history, Sound of the Beast reveals tales of concert hysteria, courtroom drama, and musical triumph with: Interviews with Black Sabbath, Metallica, Morbid Angel, Megadeth, Twisted Sister, Kiss, Slipknot, and many others Genre boxes explaining black... (more)

Saint George and the Dragon

by Edmund Spenser, Margaret Hodges

Retells the segment from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, in which George, the Red Cross Knight, slays the dreadful dragon that has been terrorizing the countryside for years and brings peace and joy to the land.

The Interpretation of Murder: A Novel

by Jed Rubenfeld

In this ingenious, suspenseful historical thriller, Sigmund Freud is drawn into the mind of a sadistic killer who is savagely attacking Manhattan’s wealthiest heiresses Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s only visit to America, The Interpretation of Murder is an intricate tale of murder and the mind’s most dangerous mysteries. It unfurls on a sweltering August evening in 1909 as Freud disembarks from the steamship... (more)

Jennifer Scales: Book 1

Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace

by Anthony Alongi, MaryJanice Davidson

She knew that growing up would mean changing. But Jennifer wasn't prepared for the blue scales or the claws, since no one had told her that she came from a bloodline of weredragons. Her greatest challenge? Protecting herself from her family's ancient enemies and preparing herself for fierce battles. And that's a lot to expect of a girl just coming into her own.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: play book tag

by John Berendt

by Libba Bray

by Jasper Fforde

by Jonis Agee

by Nancy E. Turner

by Diane Setterfield

by Dan Brown

by Dan Brown

by Mark Twain

Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death

by Kurt Vonnegut

by Barbara Kingsolver

by Jeffrey Eugenides

by John Kennedy Toole

by Katie MacAlister

by Sarah Waters

by Stephen Clarke

by Ian Christe

by Edmund Spenser, Margaret Hodges

by Jed Rubenfeld

by Anthony Alongi, MaryJanice Davidson