Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

No Great Mischief: A Novel (Vintage International)

No Great Mischief: A Novel (Vintage International)

by Alistair MacLeod

Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief , the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it. Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some... (more)

Call Me by Your Name: A Novel

by Andre Aciman

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their... (more)

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

The hilarious and tragic story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who feels passion only for the young "nymphet" Dolores Haze, whom he renames Lolita.

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".

The Feast of Love

by Charles Baxter

From "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune), here is a superb new novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people. The Feast of Love is just that -- a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out... (more)

The Scent of God: A Memoir

by Beryl Singleton Bissell

When Beryl Bissell entered a cloistered convent in New Jersey, she believed that God had called her to this way of life. At first blissfully happy, within a year she became prey to obsessive compulsions. Her vocation at risk, she overcame these disorders, and persevered for another ten years until returning home to Puerto Rico to care for her ailing father. Thrust into this sensual environment, she was... (more)

Light Years

by James Salter

This exquisite, resonant novel is a brilliant portrait of marriage by a contemporary American master. Even as he lingers over the lustrous surface of Viri and Nedra's marriage, James Salter makes us see the cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will in time mar it beyond repair. "An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time."

Power of One

by Bryce Courtenay

In this magical novel, an irresistible boy tells the story of his survival and coming of age against the background of South Africa during and just after World War II.

Traveling Light

by Katrina Kittle

"I kept a big notebook in my file cabinet crammed with little pieces of paper, postcards, and letters my brother sent to me from college and his travels. "Today I picked a postcard from Grenoble, France, and copied it onto the chalkboard. 'Travel light and you can sing in the robber's face' "Travel light. My father had told us that was the secret to life. I hadn't understood it. At one time I thought he... (more)

The Florist's Daughter

by Patricia Hampl

During the long farewell of her mother’s dying, Patricia Hampl revisits her Midwestern girlhood. Daughter of a debonair Czech father, whose floral work gave him entrŽe into St. Paul society, and a distrustful Irishwoman with an uncanny ability to tell a tale, Hampl remained, primarily and passionately, a daughter well into adulthood. She traces the arc of faithfulness and struggle that comes with that role from... (more)

Matter Is Life, The

by J. California Cooper

A fourth collection of stories by the award-winning author.

Crow Lake: A Novel

by Mary Lawson

Luke, Matt, Kate and Bo Morrison are born in an Ontario farming community of only a few families, so isolated that “the road led only south.” There is little work, marriage choices are few, and the winter cold seeps into the bones of all who dare to live there. In the Morrisons’ hard-working, Presbyterian house, the Eleventh Commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Emote.” But as descendants of a great-grandmother who... (more)

Shantaram : A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

Once the Shore: Stories

by Paul Yoon

"So persuasive are Yoon's powers of invention that I went searching for his Solla Island somewhere off the mainland of South Korea — not realizing that it exists only in this breathtaking collection of eight interlinked stories...Yoon's writing results in a fully formed, deftly executed debut. The lost lives, while heartbreaking, prove illuminating in Yoon's made-up world, so convincing and real. To read... (more)

A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics)

A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics)

by J. L. Carr

In J.L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter's extraordinary depiction of the... (more)

Bear (Nonpareil books)

by Marian Engel

a mousy, timid librarian is summoned to a remote Canadian island to inventory the estate of Colonel Cary, who, she learns soon enough, had a number of secrets. But the most surprising and enduring secret is a pet bear. In thirty pages, the reticent librarian meets the not so reticent bear and wonders if it would be good company. It is good company indeed. Intimate company. Shocking company.

Delivering Doctor Amelia: The Story of a Gifted Young Obstetrician's Error and the Psychologist Who Helped Her

Delivering Doctor Amelia: The Story of a Gifted Young Obstetrician's Error and the Psychologist Who Helped Her

by Dan Shapiro

“Voices are a soul’s signature,” says psychologist Dan Shapiro, who in his daily practice hears plenty of them. For all his expertise, he admits he’s still terrified that “someone will keep something from me, and when they tell me the truth, I’ll be useless.” Treating other physicians has become one of Shapiro’s specialties. When the obstetrician Amelia Sorvino seeks his help—distraught that her own medical... (more)

An Uncommon Friendship: From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust

An Uncommon Friendship: From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust

by Bernat Rosner

Two men, who meet and become good friends after enjoying successful adult lives in California, have experienced childhoods so tragically opposed that the two men must decide whether to talk about them or not. In 1944, 13-year-old Fritz was almost old enough to join the Hitler Youth in his German village of Kleinheubach. That same year in Tab, Hungary, 12-year-old Bernie was loaded onto a train with the rest of the... (more)

The Secret of Lost Things: A Novel

by Sheridan Hay

A missing manuscript A young woman's voyage of discovery And the curious bookshop where it all begins... In this charming novel about the eccentricities and passions of booksellers and collectors, a captivating young Australian woman takes a job at a vast, chaotic emporium of used and rare books in New York City and finds herself caught up in the search for a lost Melville manuscript. Eighteen years old and... (more)

Private Altars: A Novel

by Katherine Mosby

In this "stunningly lyrical" ( Time ) novel, Katherine Mosby weaves a haunting story of a woman trapped in the wrong place and time. "She's not crazy, she's just educated," is how she is described. Abandoned by her husband, the outspoken Vienna Daniels is forced to make a life for herself and her children in a small West Virginia town that neither understands nor accepts her... "A beautiful first novel."-- Larry... (more)

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Tags: poetic expressions of human feeling