en-US Sat, 11 Nov 2023 12:27:39 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 M.J. 5 4.00 2001
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/11/11
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]]> 24583
Unlike his brother Sid, Tom receives "lickings" from his Aunt Polly; ever the mischief-maker, would rather play hooky than attend school and often sneaks out his bedroom window at night to adventure with his friend, Huckleberry Finn ­ the town's social outcast. Tom, despite his dread of schooling, is extremely clever and would normally get away with his pranks if Sid were not such a "tattle-tale."

As punishment for skipping school to go swimming, Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence surrounding the house. In a brilliant scheme, Tom is able to con the neighborhood boys into completing the chore for him, managing to convince them of the joys of whitewashing. At school, Tom is equally as flamboyant, and attracts attention by chasing other boys, yelling, and running around. With his usual antics, Tom attempts to catch the eye of Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.

Excerpt:
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll�"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"]]> 244 Mark Twain M.J. 4 3.92 1876
author: Mark Twain
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/04/26
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]]> 6361885
When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find - or a more contemporary mystery?

Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson - his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.

The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.

Surrounded by people he doesn't know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there's another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .]]> 340 Ann Cleeves 0230014461 M.J. 4 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.94 2009
author: Ann Cleeves
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/11/19
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
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]]> 915957 This is what they told me a long time ago.
Only make contact in the event of an emergency.
Only telephone if you believe that your position has been fatally compromised.
Under no circumstances are you to approach us unless it is absolutely necessary in order to preserve the security of the operation.
This is the number.

Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious.  He also has a talent for deception.  He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center-stage in a dangerous game of espionage.


In his new line of work, Alec finds that the difference between the truth and a lie can mean the difference between life and death--and he is having trouble telling them apart.  Isolated and exposed, he must play a role in which the slightest glance or casual remark can seem heavy with unintended menace.  Caught between British and American Intelligence, Alec finds himself threatened and alone, unable to confide in even his closest friend.  His life as a spy begins to exact a terrible price, both on himself and on those around him.


Richly atmospheric and chillingly plausible, A Spy By Nature announces the arrival of British author Charles Cumming as heir apparent to masters like John le Carré and Len Deighton.  A bestseller in England, it's the gripping story of a young man driven by ruthless ambition who finds himself chasing not just success, but survival.]]> 368 Charles Cumming 0312366353 M.J. 4 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.48 2001
author: Charles Cumming
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/19
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
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]]> 16319
But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry?

The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple to solve the mystery� before tongues start to wag.

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel "The Body in the Library." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 191 Agatha Christie 157912626X M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.86 1942
author: Agatha Christie
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1942
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/19
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
review:

]]> 762806 Arkady Renko, o investigador chefe da brigada de homicídios, encarregado do caso, é brilhante, sensível, íntegro e cínico acerca de tudo, excepto no que à sua profissão diz respeito. E enfrenta agora o maior desafio da sua carreira: descobrir a verdade sobre um crime que ninguém parece interessado em desvendar, o que o força a desafiar o KGB, o FBI, a polícia nova-iorquina� e as poucas probabilidades de sair com vida de uma situação que ultrapassa o âmbito criminal.

Obra emblemática da literatura policial produzida durante a Guerra Fria, Parque Gorki é, antes de mais, um retrato fiel das idiossincrasias de uma União Soviética decadente, a braços com uma elite corrupta.
O romance foi adaptado ao cinema, em 1983, por Michael Apted, tendo William Hurt como protagonista.]]> 433 Martin Cruz Smith 0345298349 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.05 1981
author: Martin Cruz Smith
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1981
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
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]]> 386187
The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproarious black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.]]> 386 John Berendt 0679751521 M.J. 5 3.91 1994
author: John Berendt
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith M.J. 5 4.19 2010
author: Patti Smith
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 501229

   • Already a sensation in the United Kingdom, this groundbreaking treatise on choosing and preparing meat is now available in the United States for the first time.
   • Includes more than 100 recipes and more than 200 full-color photographs.
   • Thoughtfully Americanized, with complete information about assorted cuts (including illustrations), production standards, and sources for buying and learning about meats in the United States.
   • British edition has sold 150,000 copies.]]> 544 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 1580088430 M.J. 5 4.34 2004
author: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 586472
The men had it. Yeager. Conrad. Grissom. Glenn. Heroes ... the first Americans in space ... battling the Russians for control of the heavens ... putting their lives on the line.

The women had it. While Mr. Wonderful was aloft, it tore your heart out that the Hero's Wife, down on the ground, had to perform with the whole world watching ... the TV Press "What's in your heart? Do you feel with him while he's in orbit?"

The Right Stuff. It's the quality beyond bravery, beyond courage. It's men like Chuck Yeager, the greatest test pilot of all and the fastest man on earth. Pete Conrad, who almost laughed himself out of the running. Gus Grissom, who almost lost it when his capsule sank. John Glenn, the only space traveler whose apple-pie image wasn't a lie.]]> 352 Tom Wolfe 0553381350 M.J. 5 4.22 1979
author: Tom Wolfe
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1979
rating: 5
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]]> 347610 King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.

Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo—too long forgotten—onto the conscience of the West.]]> 380 Adam Hochschild 0618001905 M.J. 5 4.16 1998
author: Adam Hochschild
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 540020 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the  world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.

One  man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.]]> 358 Frederick Forsyth M.J. 5 4.27 1971
author: Frederick Forsyth
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1971
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 316496
Oscar is a young English clergyman who has broken with his past and developed a disturbing talent for gambling. A country girl of singular ambition, Lucinda moves to Sydney, driven by dreams of self-reliance and the building of an industrial Utopia. Together this unlikely pair create and are created by the spectacle of mid-nineteenth century Australia.

Peter Carey's visionary brilliance, and his capacity to delight and surprise, propel this story to its stunning conclusion.]]> 515 Peter Carey 0702229784 M.J. 4 3.75 1988
author: Peter Carey
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 820394
In The Interpretation of Murder, Jed Rubenfeld weaves the facts of Freud's visit into a riveting, atmospheric story of corruption and murder set all over turn-of-the-century New York. Drawing on case histories, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the historical details of a city on the brink of modernity, The Interpretation of Murder introduces a brilliant new storyteller, a novelist who, in the words of The New York Times, "will be no ordinary pop-cultural sensation."]]> 533 Jed Rubenfeld 0755331427 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.57 2006
author: Jed Rubenfeld
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
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]]> 1747896
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.

At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.]]> 360 Kate Summerscale 0802715354 M.J. 5 3.53 2008
author: Kate Summerscale
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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]]> 6280118
So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?

And every year that follows?
--back cover]]> 435 David Nicholls 0340896965 M.J. 4 3.86 2009
author: David Nicholls
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 M.J. 4 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 8459594 304 Gabrielle Hamilton 140006872X M.J. 0 to-read 3.76 2001
author: Gabrielle Hamilton
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 11250317
Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.]]> 352 Madeline Miller 1408816032 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.38 2011
author: Madeline Miller
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
review:

]]> 16061734
Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.

Harry finds himself suddenly playing parent to his brother’s two adolescent children, tumbling down the rabbit hole of Internet sex, dealing with aging parents who move through time like travelers on a fantastic voyage. As Harry builds a twenty-first-century family created by choice rather than biology, we become all the more aware of the ways in which our history, both personal and political, can become our destiny and either compel us to repeat our errors or be the catalyst for change.

May We Be Forgiven is an unnerving, funny tale of unexpected intimacies and of how one deeply fractured family might begin to put itself back together.]]> 480 A.M. Homes 0670025488 M.J. 0 to-read 3.67 2012
author: A.M. Homes
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13598307 New York Times bestseller, The Art of Fermentation is the most comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself home fermentation ever published. Sandor Katz presents the concepts and processes behind fermentation in ways that are simple enough to guide a reader through their first experience making sauerkraut or yogurt, and in-depth enough to provide greater understanding and insight for experienced practitioners.

While Katz expertly contextualizes fermentation in terms of biological and cultural evolution, health and nutrition, and even economics, this is primarily a compendium of practical information--how the processes work; parameters for safety; techniques for effective preservation; troubleshooting; and more.

With two-color illustrations and extended resources, this book provides essential wisdom for cooks, homesteaders, farmers, gleaners, foragers, and food lovers of any kind who want to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for arguably the oldest form of food preservation, and part of the roots of culture itself.

Readers will find detailed information on fermenting vegetables; sugars into alcohol (meads, wines, and ciders); sour tonic beverages; milk; grains and starchy tubers; beers (and other grain-based alcoholic beverages); beans; seeds; nuts; fish; meat; and eggs, as well as growing mold cultures, using fermentation in agriculture, art, and energy production, and considerations for commercial enterprises. Sandor Katz has introduced what will undoubtedly remain a classic in food literature, and is the first--and only--of its kind.]]> 528 Sandor Ellix Katz 160358286X M.J. 4 4.44 2012
author: Sandor Ellix Katz
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> 41325
But as she interviews Olive, in her cell, Roz finds flaws in the Sculptress's confession. Is she really guilty as she insists? Drawn into Olive's world of obsessional lies and love, nothing can stop Roz's pursuit of the chilling, convoluted truth. Not the tidy suburbanites who'd rather forget the murders, not a volatile ex-policeman and her own erotic response to him, not an attack on her life.

Not even the thought of what might happen if the Sculptress went free...]]> 320 Minette Walters 0330330373 M.J. 4 3.94 1993
author: Minette Walters
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 79503 360 Thomas Keller 1579652395 M.J. 4 4.22 2004
author: Thomas Keller
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 91017
From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life. Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition.]]> 408 Tom Holland 1400078970 M.J. 5 4.22 2003
author: Tom Holland
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 138685 456 C.J. Sansom 0330411969 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.05 2003
author: C.J. Sansom
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
review:

]]> 139217 522 Mario Batali 0060734922 M.J. 3 3.96 2005
author: Mario Batali
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 152723 The Zuni Café Cookbook, a book customers have been anticipating for years, chef and owner Judy Rodgers provides recipes for Zuni's most well-known dishes, ranging from the Zuni Roast Chicken to the Espresso Granita. But Zuni's appeal goes beyond recipes. Harold McGee concludes, "What makes The Zuni Café Cookbook a real treasure is the voice of Zuni's Judy Rodgers," whose book "repeatedly sheds a fresh and revealing light on ingredients and dishes, and even on the nature of cooking itself." Deborah Madison (Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) says the introduction alone "should be required reading for every person who might cook something someday."]]> 504 Judy Rodgers 0393020436 M.J. 5 4.01 2002
author: Judy Rodgers
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 76237 272 Richard Lancelyn Green 0140079076 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.42 1985
author: Richard Lancelyn Green
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
review:

]]> 148821 192 Ross King 0142000159 M.J. 4 3.89 1999
author: Ross King
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 231604 532 Kathy Reichs M.J. 3 3.89 1997
author: Kathy Reichs
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 38990 232 Alison Bechdel 0618477942 M.J. 4 4.12 2006
author: Alison Bechdel
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 55403 386 Mark Bowden 0871137380 M.J. 3 4.30 1999
author: Mark Bowden
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1999
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> 101255 On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic. Hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they're made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious. Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment.

On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the inventive culinary movement known as "molecular gastronomy." Though other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques.

Among the major themes addressed throughout this new edition are:




Traditional and modern methods of food production and their influences on food quality
The great diversity of methods by which people in different places and times have prepared the same ingredients
Tips for selecting the best ingredients and preparing them successfully
The particular substances that give foods their flavors and that give us pleasure
Our evolving knowledge of the health benefits and risks of foods
On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.]]> 896 Harold McGee 0684800012 M.J. 5 4.46 1984
author: Harold McGee
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]> 210834
Two men - a boy who grows into early manhood and an old ascetic priest, the lama - are at the center of the novel. A quest faces them both. Born in India, Kim is nevertheless white, a sahib. While he wants to play the Great Game of Imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama. His aim, as he moves chameleon-like through the two cultures, is to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.

A celebration of their friendship in a beautiful but often hostile environment, 'Kim' captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj.]]> 366 Rudyard Kipling 0140183523 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.71 1901
author: Rudyard Kipling
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1901
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/15
shelves: pleasure-and-inspiration
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]]> 192955
In "The Proud Tower", Barbara W. Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev’s Russian ballet and Stravinsky’s music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.]]> 588 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345405013 M.J. 5 4.13 1965
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1965
rating: 5
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]]> 83422 278 Barbara Vine 0452270642 M.J. 5 3.94 1986
author: Barbara Vine
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1986
rating: 5
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]]> 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.08 1966
author: Truman Capote
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 5
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]]> 102868
But it's not long before Sherlock Holmes, with Watson in tow, is working with Scotland Yard investigating the murder of two Americans whose deaths have some mysterious connection to sinister groups gathering power in both Britain and America.

Here's where it all began. 'A Study in Scarlet.' Meet Sherlock Holmes, one of the world's leading consulting detectives - fictional of course!]]> 123 Arthur Conan Doyle 1420925539 M.J. 4 4.16 1887
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1887
rating: 4
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]]> 52415
In an African convent, four nuns and a unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered--the death of the unknown woman covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two murders. Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and bird watcher, is impaled on sharpened bamboo poles in a ditch behind his secluded home, and the body of a missing florist is discovered--strangled and tied to a tree. The only clues Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a case that will test Wallander’s strength and patience, because in order to discover the reason behind these murders, he will also need to uncover the elusive connection between these deaths and the earlier unsolved murder in Africa of the fifth woman.]]> 438 Henning Mankell 1400031540 M.J. 5 4.03 1996
author: Henning Mankell
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement � a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and � like millions of readers the world round � you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]> 288 Helen Fielding 014028009X M.J. 5 3.81 1996
author: Helen Fielding
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> 41865
First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite.]]> 498 Stephenie Meyer 0316015849 M.J. 2 3.66 2005
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 2
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]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,� by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 M.J. 5 4.17 2000
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> 16243 1 A little girl disappears in the night.
2 A beautiful young office worker falls to a maniac's attack.
3 A new mother is overwhelmed by demands from her baby and husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.
Result : Startling connections and discoveries emerge. . . .]]> 389 Kate Atkinson 0316010707 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.79 2004
author: Kate Atkinson
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 M.J. 4 3.97 1997
author: Arundhati Roy
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> 10956 250 Jeffrey Eugenides 0747560595 M.J. 4 3.81 1993
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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]]> 4599 Carter Beats the Devil is a complex and illuminating story of one man's journey through a magical—and sometimes dangerous—world, where illusion is everything.]]> 483 Glen David Gold 0786886323 M.J. 5 4.09 2001
author: Glen David Gold
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> 21671
Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.]]> 416 Dennis Lehane 0060584750 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.17 2001
author: Dennis Lehane
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> 5890 Librarian note: Alternate covers can be found here and here.

'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Matthew Sweet's introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins's biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.]]> 672 Wilkie Collins M.J. 5 4.00 1859
author: Wilkie Collins
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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]]> 16707 The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon presents a hilarious and heartbreaking work—the story of the friendship between the "wonder boys"—Grady, an aging writer who has lost his way, and Crabtree, whose relentless debauchery is capsizing his career.]]> 383 Michael Chabon 3423124172 M.J. 4 3.94 1995
author: Michael Chabon
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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]]> 18999 397 John Le Carré 0743455800 M.J. 5 4.26 1979
author: John Le Carré
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1979
rating: 5
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]]> 18402
Words can bleed.

In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields—are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions into American minds will prove as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbor.

The members of the Dante Club fight to keep a sacred literary cause alive, but their plans fall apart when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only this small group of scholars realizes that the gruesome killings are modeled on the descriptions of Hell's punishments from Dante's Inferno. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club members must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and an outcast police officer named Nicholas Rey, the first black member of the Boston police department, must place their careers on the line to end the terror. Together, they discover that the source of the murders lies closer to home than they ever could have imagined.

The Dante Club is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante's continued grip on our imagination, and a captivating thriller that will surprise readers from beginning to end.]]> 424 Matthew Pearl 034549038X M.J. 4 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.43 2003
author: Matthew Pearl
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> 11899 The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that became a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Samuel, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.]]> 230 Michael Cunningham 0312305060 M.J. 4 3.95 1998
author: Michael Cunningham
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> 33609 ]]> 500 Anya Seton 155652532X M.J. 4 4.19 1954
author: Anya Seton
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1954
rating: 4
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]]> 24687 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.]]> 315 Alexandra Fuller M.J. 5 3.96 2001
author: Alexandra Fuller
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> 16331 288 Agatha Christie 1579126251 M.J. 5 4.07 1930
author: Agatha Christie
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1930
rating: 5
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]]> 13529 Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

From the author of the acclaimed Year of Wonders, a historical novel and love story set during a time of catastrophe, on the front lines of the American Civil War. Acclaimed author Geraldine Brooks gives us the story of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women—and conjures a world of brutality, stubborn courage and transcendent love. An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union—which is also capable of barbarism and racism—but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief.]]> 280 Geraldine Brooks M.J. 5 3.77 2005
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> 4900
A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.]]> 188 Joseph Conrad 1892295490 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.43 1899
author: Joseph Conrad
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1899
rating: 5
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]]> 31244 Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich throw their trash. When the body of John Harmon, the dust-heap’s expected heir, is found in the Thames, fortunes change hands surprisingly, raising to new heights “Noddy� Boffin, a low-born but kindly clerk who becomes “the Golden Dustman.� Charles Dickens’s last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend encompasses the great themes of his earlier works: the pretensions of the nouveaux riches, the ingenuousness of the aspiring poor, and the unfailing power of wealth to corrupt all who crave it. With its flavorful cast of characters and numerous subplots, Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens’s most complex—and satisfying—novels.]]> 801 Charles Dickens 0375761144 M.J. 5 4.08 1865
author: Charles Dickens
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1865
rating: 5
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]]> 13747
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.

At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crépes, she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. With Julia’s stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.]]> 310 Julie Powell 031610969X M.J. 4 3.74 2005
author: Julie Powell
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> 18765
I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, are among the most celebrated, as well the most gripping historical novels ever written.

Cover illustration: Brian Pike]]> 469 Robert Graves 067972477X M.J. 5 4.24 1934
author: Robert Graves
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1934
rating: 5
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]]> 3805 After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man - or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.]]> 653 Jonathan Franzen 1841156736 M.J. 5 3.83 2001
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> 930
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]> 434 Arthur Golden 0739326228 M.J. 4 4.07 1997
author: Arthur Golden
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.18 2000
author: Michael Chabon
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> 4271
Will is thirty-six but acts like a teenager. Single, child-free and still feeling cool, he reads the right magazines, goes to the right clubs and knows which trainers to wear. He's also discovered a great way to score with women at single parents' groups, full of available (and grateful) mothers, all waiting for Mr Nice Guy. That's where he meets Marcus, the oldest twelve-year-old in the world. Marcus is a bit strange: he listens to Joni Mitchell and Mozart, he looks after his Mum and he's never even owned a pair of trainers. Perhaps if Will can teach Marcus how to be a kid, Marcus can help Will grow up and they can both start to act their age.]]> 307 Nick Hornby 0140285679 M.J. 4 3.80 1998
author: Nick Hornby
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> 960
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.
Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.]]> 736 Dan Brown 1416524797 M.J. 1 3.95 2000
author: Dan Brown
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 1
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]]> 656
War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.


Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.]]> 1392 Leo Tolstoy 0192833987 M.J. 5 4.14 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1869
rating: 5
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]]> 79885
Haller is the Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car. He travels between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers � they’re all on Mickey Haller’s client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence � it’s about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it’s even about justice.

A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney’s dream, what they call a franchise case. And, as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.

Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal � this time to save his own life.]]> 404 Michael Connelly 0739465511 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.15 2005
author: Michael Connelly
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> 425029 Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you ... long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.]]> 421 Scott Turow 0446350982 M.J. 4 4.10 1987
author: Scott Turow
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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]]> 5358 Adaptation for younger readers.

Mitch McDeere is a young, intelligent and ambitious lawyer. When he gets a job with a top tax law firm in Memphis, he is delighted. But he quickly becomes suspicious after mysterious deaths, obsessive office security, and the Chicago mob figure into its operations. The situation only escalates when Mitch discovers that the firm is listening in on his phone calls and that the FBI want to speak to him. Money and power has a price � and it could be Mitch's life.

Adaptation Notes
This adaptation is a simplified text designed in association with world famous educational publishers, to provide a step-by-step approach to the joys of reading for pleasure. The series include original stories, contemporary titles based on today's best-selling media hits, and easily accessible versions of the literary classics from around the world. Each book has an introduction and extensive activity material. They are published at different levels for readers of all skill levels.

Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter

Book Details:
- Difficulty: Level 5 - Upper Intermediate (2300 words)
- Category: Contemporary
- Dialect: British English]]> 76 Robin Waterfield 0582418275 M.J. 3 4.06 1991
author: Robin Waterfield
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1991
rating: 3
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]]> 31242
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce� is an infamous lawsuit that has been in process for generations. Nobody can remember exactly how the case started but many different individuals have found their fortunes caught up in it. Esther Summerson watches as her friends and neighbours are consumed by their hopes and disappointments with the proceedings. But while the intricate puzzles of the lawsuit are being debated by lawyers, other more dramatic mysteries are unfolding that involve heartbreak, lost children, blackmail and murder.

The fog and cold that permeate Bleak House mirror a Victorian England mired in spiritual insolvency. Dickens brought all his passion, brilliance, and narrative verve to this huge novel of lives entangled in a multi-generational lawsuit—and through it, he achieved, at age 41, a stature almost Shakespearean.]]> 1017 Charles Dickens 0143037617 M.J. 5 4.01 1853
author: Charles Dickens
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1853
rating: 5
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]]> 31122 408 Dodie Smith 0312181108 M.J. 5 3.99 1948
author: Dodie Smith
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 5
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]]> 12873 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers...

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.]]> 428 Daphne du Maurier 1844080382 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.19 1938
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1938
rating: 5
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]]> 9736930
So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight.

And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.

Welcome to Christine's life.]]> 359 S.J. Watson 0062060554 M.J. 4 3.90 2011
author: S.J. Watson
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> 40024
The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology-- amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before--and will kill again before the hunt is over.

Fast-paced and gripping, infused with a historian's exactitude, The Alienist conjures up the Gilded Age and its untarnished underside: verminous tenements and opulent mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. Here is a New York during an age when questioning society's belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and mortal consequences.]]> 498 Caleb Carr 0812976142 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.06 1994
author: Caleb Carr
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> 10176 --davidsedarisbooks.com]]> 257 David Sedaris 0965904830 M.J. 5 4.12 2004
author: David Sedaris
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> 29022 The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the foundation of the empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus, to the decline into depravity and civil war under Nero, and the recovery that came with his successors. A masterpiece of anecdote, wry observation and detailed physical description, The Twelve Caesars presents us with a gallery of vividly drawn � and all too human � individuals.

Robert Graves's celebrated translation, sensitively revised by Michael Grant, captures all the wit and immediacy of Suetonius' original.]]> 363 Suetonius 0140449213 M.J. 5 4.03 121
author: Suetonius
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.03
book published: 121
rating: 5
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]]> 261243 648 Thucydides 0140440399 M.J. 5 3.90 -411
author: Thucydides
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.90
book published: -411
rating: 5
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]]> 7054123 The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler—investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work.

From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.]]> 319 Deborah Blum 1594202435 M.J. 0 to-read 4.00 2010
author: Deborah Blum
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> 4806 Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest. The "longitude problem" was the thorniest dilemma of the eighteenth century. Lacking the ability to measure longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea.

At the heart of Dava Sobel's fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and horology stands the figure of John Harrison, self-taught Yorkshire clockmaker, and his forty-year obsession with building the perfect timekeeper. Battling against the establishment, Harrison stood alone in pursuit of his solution and the ÂŁ20,000 reward offered by Parliament.]]> 184 Dava Sobel 0802714625 M.J. 4 3.97 1995
author: Dava Sobel
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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]]> 11366
In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.]]> 606 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345476093 M.J. 5 4.18 1962
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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]]> 26348
Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.

For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.

The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.

A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created--Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel--whose troubles haunt us still.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize]]> 624 Margaret MacMillan 0375760520 M.J. 5 4.11 2001
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> 209889 1040 Robert K. Massie 0345375564 M.J. 4 4.30 1992
author: Robert K. Massie
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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]]> 568236 Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.]]> 714 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345349571 M.J. 5 4.04 1978
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1978
rating: 5
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]]> 1842
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal]]> 498 Jared Diamond 0739467352 M.J. 5 4.04 1997
author: Jared Diamond
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> 1232 487 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn M.J. 4 4.26 2001
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> 28078
But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art.

The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.]]> 427 Sarah Dunant M.J. 4 3.81 2003
author: Sarah Dunant
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> 11713 320 Michael Ondaatje 0771068719 M.J. 4 3.88 1992
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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]]> 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X M.J. 4 3.94 2001
author: Ian McEwan
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> 138683 501 C.J. Sansom 0143036432 M.J. 5 4.27 2004
author: C.J. Sansom
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> 15888
We are in England in the 1660s. Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and Cromwell's short-lived republic. Oxford is the intellectual seat of the country, a place of great scientific, religious, and political ferment. A fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear the story of the death from four witnesses: an Italian physician intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; the son of an alleged Royalist traitor; a master cryptographer who has worked for both Cromwell and the king; and a renowned Oxford antiquarian. Each tells his own version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth.

With rights sold for record-breaking sums around the world, An Instance of the Fingerpost is destined to become a major international publishing event. Deserving of comparison to the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, Iain Pears's novel is an ingenious tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.]]> 704 Iain Pears 1573227951 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.93 1997
author: Iain Pears
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> 119073 552 Umberto Eco 0156001314 M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 4.13 1980
author: Umberto Eco
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> 2865
Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant—and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model.]]> 233 Tracy Chevalier 0452287022 M.J. 3 3.93 1999
author: Tracy Chevalier
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1999
rating: 3
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]]> 5043 Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
]]> 976 Ken Follett 045122213X M.J. 2 4.34 1989
author: Ken Follett
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1989
rating: 2
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]]> 1270615
Since the destruction of the Hellmouth, the Slayers-newly legion-have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt. But not everything's fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. Meanwhile, one of the "Buffy" decoy slayers is going through major pain of her own.

Buffy creator Joss Whedon brings Buffy back to Dark Horse in this direct follow-up to season seven of the smash-hit TV series. The bestselling and critically acclaimed issues 1-5 are collected here for the first time, as are their covers by Jo Chen and Georges Jeanty.]]> 136 Joss Whedon 1593078226 M.J. 4 3.95 2007
author: Joss Whedon
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 9522 76 Marjane Satrapi 2844140580 M.J. 5 4.30 2000
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> 472331 Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from award-winning author Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, presents a world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history—the U.S. won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the Cold War is in full effect.

Considered the greatest graphic novel in the history of the medium, the Hugo Award-winning story chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the superhero is dissected as an unknown assassin stalks the erstwhile heroes.]]> 416 Alan Moore 0930289234 M.J. 5 4.38 1987
author: Alan Moore
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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]]> 820480 550 C.J. Sansom 1405092726 M.J. 5 4.34 2008
author: C.J. Sansom
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X M.J. 5 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: M.J.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel M.J. 5 pleasure-and-inspiration 3.90 2009
author: Hilary Mantel
name: M.J.
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/09/26
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]]>