Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

by Gabriel García Márquez

A New York Times Notable Book On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this... (more)

The Border Trilogy: Book 3

Cities of the Plain

by Cormac McCarthy

In this magnificent novel, the National Book Award-winning author of "All the Pretty Horses" fashions a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier. The setting is New Mexico in 1952, where ranch hands John Grady Cole and Billy Parham become ensnared in events resonating with the violence and inevitability of classic tragedy.

Tropic of Cancer

by Henry Miller

Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller's masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for 27 years after its publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American cesorship standards permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller's famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young... (more)

Taxi Driver (Faber Reel Classics S.)

by Paul Schrader

A loner, Travis Bickle takes up driving a taxi in search of an escape from his sleeplessness and his disgust with the corruption he finds around him. His pent-up rage, fuelled by his doomed relationship with the political campaign worker Betsy, leads to an inevitable descent into psychosis and violence. This volume also contains an extended interview between Schrader and Martin Scorsese in which they discuss... (more)

Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl

by Belle de Jour

Belle de Jour is the nom de plume of a high-class call girl working in London.This is her story. From debating the literary merits of the works of Martin Amis with naked clients, entering a hotel with two whips strapped to the lining of her coat, and juggling her love-life with her professional one, Belle's no-holds-barred account of her experiences as a prostitute is frank, funny and completely compelling. Since... (more)

The Measure of a Lady

by Deeanne Gist

Rachel van Buren arrives in Gold Rush San Francisco with two wishes: to protect her younger siblings and to return east as soon as possible. Both goals prove more difficult than she could imagine as her brother and sister are lured by the city's dangerous freedom and a missionary-turned-gambler stakes a claim on her heart. Rachel won't give up without a fight though, and soon all will learn an eloquent but... (more)

Water Ghosts: A Novel

by Shawna Yang Ryan

A mesmerizing story of a community of Chinese immigrants in a small California town in 1928, weaving history and mythology around the lives of the townspeople and the ghosts who haunt them Locke, CA, 1928— Three bedraggled Chinese women suddenly appear out of the mist one afternoon in a small Chinese farming town on the Sacramento River, and their arrival throws the community into confusion. Two of the women are... (more)

Tom Jones

by Henry Fielding

Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels. It is certainly the funniest. Tom Jones, the hero of the book, is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire. Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women.... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: whores