en-US Mon, 17 Mar 2025 20:11:42 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 57043656 127 Timothy Snyder 1984859161 Sarah 5 4.42 2017
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
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]]> 196786045 An Unfinished Love A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.

Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.

The Goodwins� last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.]]> 466 Doris Kearns Goodwin 1982108681 Sarah 5 4.79 2024
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.79
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
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]]> 12040017
On the field, the men who play football are gladiators, titans, and every other kind of clichĂ©. But when they leave the locker room they are only men. Peter Gent’s classic novel looks at the seedy underbelly of the pro game, chronicling eight days in the life of Phil Elliott, an aging receiver for the Texas team. Running on a mixture of painkillers and cortisone as he tries to keep his fading legs strong, Elliott tries to get every ounce of pleasure out of his last days of glory, living the life of sex, drugs, and football. Adapted for the screen in 1979, this novel, written by ex-Dallas Cowboy Peter Gent, is widely considered the best football novel of all time.]]> 363 Peter Gent 1453224564 Sarah 5 3.94 1973
author: Peter Gent
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
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]]> 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Sarah 5 3.88 1993
author: Annie Proulx
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/10/31
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]]> 56098120 The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a five-year-old boy's world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the zoo, throwing all of Oklahoma City into dangerous excitement, in this evocative story of a child's confrontation with his deepest fears.

For Grady McClarty, an ever-watchful but bewildered five-year-old boy, World War II is only a troubling, ungraspable event that occurred before he was born. But he feels its effects all around him. He and his older brother Danny are fatherless, and their mother, Bethie, is still grieving for her fighter-pilot husband. Most of all, Grady sees it in his two uncles: young combat veterans determined to step into a fatherhood role for their nephews, even as they struggle with the psychological scars they carry from the war.

When the news breaks that a leopard has escaped from the Oklahoma City Zoo, the playthings and imagined fears of Grady's childhood begin to give way to real-world terrors--the still-incomprehensible threats of battle fatigue, alcoholism, grief, Jim Crow laws, and, most imminently, the dangerous cat itself. The Leopard Is Loose is a stunning encapsulation of America in the 1950s, and a moving portrait of a young boy's struggle to find his place in his family's, and his nation's, history.]]> 256 Stephen Harrigan 0525655778 Sarah 5 3.84 2022
author: Stephen Harrigan
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/01/25
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]]> 57917025 Listening Length: 13 hours and 56 minutes

Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes.

July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight.

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.]]> 14 Sarah Bird 125083662X Sarah 5 to-read 4.50 2022
author: Sarah Bird
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/08/31
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]]> 58812038 Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes.

July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads the spotlight.

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.]]> 384 Sarah Bird 125026555X Sarah 0 to-read 3.96 2022
author: Sarah Bird
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/31
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]]> 57693319
July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied―a family, a purpose, even love―waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight.

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.]]> 432 Sarah Bird 1250265541 Sarah 5 to-read 3.68 2022
author: Sarah Bird
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/08/31
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]]> 37638181
Here’s the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it.

Though born into bondage on a “miserable tobacco farmâ€� in Little Dixie, Missouri, Cathy Williams was never allowed to consider herself a slave. According to her mother, she was a captive, bound by her noble warrior blood to escape the enemy. Her means of deliverance is Union general Phillip Henry “Smash ‘em Upâ€� Sheridan, the outcast of West Point who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service. At war’s end, having tasted freedom, Cathy refuses to return to servitude and makes the monumental decision to disguise herself as a man and join the Army’s legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

Alone now in the ultimate man’s world, Cathy must fight not only for her survival and freedom, but she vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong and noble enough to win her heart. Inspired by the stunning, true story of Private Williams, this American heroine comes to vivid life in a sweeping and magnificent tale about one woman’s fight for respect and independence.]]> 399 Sarah Bird 1250193168 Sarah 0 to-read 3.97 2018
author: Sarah Bird
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/03/30
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]]> 832968 442 Steven Pressfield 0553580531 Sarah 5 4.31 1998
author: Steven Pressfield
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/28
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]]> 49116
Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkaban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts."

Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

(front flap)]]> 435 J.K. Rowling Sarah 5 4.57 1999
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/04/25
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]]> 1558623
Drawing on more than ten years of research and interviews, George Feifer recreates the drama and horror of the last engagement before the invasion of the Japanese homeland. In three appalling months during which the Japanese lost the fight but refused to surrender, the death toll mounted to 23.000 Americans, 91,000 Japanese and 150,000 Okinawan civilians-more than the losses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The book makes vividly real those tenets of Japanese culture-its emphasis on honor and it: horror of losing face which allowed this campaign to become a great human tragedy.

In its magisterial narrative of the conflict, Tennozan weaves together the personal experiences of both soldiers and civilians, from the highest-ranking officers on down. Specifically, it follows the lives of three men: Dick Whitaker, a U.S. Marine with the 6th Marine Division; Captain Tadashi Kojo, a twenty three-year-old battalion commander in Japan’s crack 22nd Regiment; and Masahide Ota, a student at Okinawa’s prestigious Normal School, now governor of the prefecture of Okinawa. But in going beyond military history to recount the fate of the astounding number of Okinawan civilians caught in the maelstrom of the war, Tennozan calls to public attention a little heralded but devastating disaster.

Tennozan is a major work of historical narrative that brings us as close to the actual experience of war as the printed page can achieve. It also highlights aspects of Japanese culture that remain of deep historical and contemporary importance. And in recreating the context in which the decision to use the atom bomb was made, it provides invaluable background for assessing one of the most fateful events of the twentieth century.]]> 622 George Feifer 0395599245 Sarah 5 4.28 1992
author: George Feifer
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/02/12
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]]> 3379248 256 Paul Lashmar 0750919701 Sarah 5 4.33 1997
author: Paul Lashmar
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/10/16
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]]> 11850872 91 Robert Hughes Sarah 5 3.74 1992
author: Robert Hughes
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/08/24
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]]> 6578593 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307454553

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.
(back cover)]]> 630 Stieg Larsson Sarah 2 4.22 2006
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2006
rating: 2
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date added: 2019/03/14
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]]> 3711 White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.]]> 448 Zadie Smith 0375703861 Sarah 4 3.80 2000
author: Zadie Smith
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 14362
]]> 290 Rudolfo Anaya 0446675369 Sarah 4 3.81 1972
author: Rudolfo Anaya
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1972
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 38273 371 Armistead Maupin 0060964049 Sarah 3 4.03 1978
author: Armistead Maupin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1978
rating: 3
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]]> 334170 Another Country is a novel of passions—sexual, racial, political, artistic—that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the late 1950s.]]> 436 James Baldwin 0679744711 Sarah 5 4.30 1962
author: James Baldwin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 4982 224 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Sarah 5 4.16 1959
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1959
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 10818853 Ìę
Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

This book is intended for mature audiences.]]> 356 E.L. James 1612130291 Sarah 1 3.68 2011
author: E.L. James
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2011
rating: 1
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]]> 7733 A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver's final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire - in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all the original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver's Travels has been interpreted since its first publication. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 306 Jonathan Swift 0141439491 Sarah 5 3.59 1726
author: Jonathan Swift
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1726
rating: 5
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]]> 823664 Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, in an expanded P.S. edition

Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in English until you've read this masterful translation.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.]]> 940 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 0060188707 Sarah 0 4.08 1615
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1615
rating: 0
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]]> 603241 A Separate Peace. A great bestseller for over thirty years - one of theÌęmost starkly moving parables ever written of the dark forces that brood over the tortured world of adolescence.]]> 196 John Knowles 0553280414 Sarah 0 3.56 1959
author: John Knowles
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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]]> 22034
Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.]]> 448 Mario Puzo Sarah 5 4.39 1969
author: Mario Puzo
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/03
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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 Sarah 5 3.43 1899
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1899
rating: 5
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]]> 52036 152 Hermann Hesse Sarah 5 4.07 1922
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1922
rating: 5
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]]> 16981 Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.

As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief. Suspenseful and sardonic, narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, Invisible Man is one of the most audacious and dazzling novels of our century.]]> 581 Ralph Ellison Sarah 0 3.91 1952
author: Ralph Ellison
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> 4473 637 John Irving 0552135399 Sarah 4 4.24 1989
author: John Irving
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1989
rating: 4
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Sarah 4 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 4
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]]> 570179 275 Toni Morrison 0452280621 Sarah 5 3.94 1987
author: Toni Morrison
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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]]> 19288043 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 Sarah 4 4.22 2012
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 226722 --back cover]]> 495 Jean M. Auel Sarah 5 3.94 1980
author: Jean M. Auel
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
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 Sarah 0 3.66 2005
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 2623
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

This edition includes the original, discarded ending, Dickens's brief working notes, and the serial instalments and chapter divisions in different editions. It also uses the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 544 Charles Dickens 0192833596 Sarah 0 3.78 1861
author: Charles Dickens
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1861
rating: 0
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]]> 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Sarah 0 4.13 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> 1852 The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.]]> 172 Jack London Sarah 0 3.89 1903
author: Jack London
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1903
rating: 0
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]]> 6324090 96 Lewis Carroll Sarah 0 4.05 1865
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1865
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 526270 The dinosaur is back on earth—alive, now, in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park.

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.

Until something goes wrong...

In 'Jurassic Park', Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller. The story, told with an almost documentary verisimilitude, is an account of the attempt, through a hair-raising twenty-four hours on a remote jungle island, to avert a global emergency—a crisis triggered by today's headlong rush (virtually unchecked by any government or scientific watchdogs) to commercialize genetic engineering.

Michael Crichton (1942â€�2008) makes a brilliant and captivating use of the unique amalgam of suspense and informed science (this time paleontology, biotechnology, and chaos theory) that he originated in 'The Andromeda Strain' (1969). Of all his superb scientific thrillers—all of them best-sellersâ€�'Jurassic Park' is in every way the strongest. It is certain to be his most widely read, talked about, and unreservedly enjoyed novel to date.]]> 400 Michael Crichton 0394588169 Sarah 0 4.18 1990
author: Michael Crichton
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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]]> 968 The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, and The da Vinci Code

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.

The Da Vinci Code heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller utterly unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion.]]> 489 Dan Brown Sarah 0 3.92 2003
author: Dan Brown
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]> 480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Sarah 0 4.21 2011
author: Ernest Cline
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 157993
Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.]]> 96 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 0152023984 Sarah 0 4.32 1943
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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]]> 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Sarah 0 3.89 1847
author: Emily Brontë
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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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, ÌęI 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 lookedÌęthroughÌęthem 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 Sarah 0 3.92 1876
author: Mark Twain
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
rating: 0
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]]> 17899948 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.]]> 449 Daphne du Maurier 0316323705 Sarah 0 4.28 1938
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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]]> 11486
Then her husband's lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled into her world and gave Celie the courage to ask for more - to laugh, to play, and finally - to love.]]> 295 Alice Walker Sarah 0 4.22 1982
author: Alice Walker
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]> 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Sarah 0 3.81 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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]]> 231804 The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.

Librarian note: This record is for one of the three editions published with different covers and with ISBN 0-140-38572-X / 978-0-14-038572-4. The records are for the 1988 cover (this record), the 1995 cover, and the 2008 cover which is also the current in-print cover.]]> 208 S.E. Hinton 0670532576 Sarah 0 4.13 1967
author: S.E. Hinton
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Sarah 0 4.06 1939
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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]]> 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 Sarah 0 4.12 1993
author: Lois Lowry
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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]]> 24178 Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, is a classic of children's literature that is "just about perfect." This high-quality paperback features vibrant illustrations colorized by Rosemary Wells!

Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter.

E. B. White's Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. This edition contains newly color illustrations by Garth Williams, the acclaimed illustrator of E. B. White's Stuart Little and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, among many other books.]]> 184 E.B. White 0064410935 Sarah 0 4.20 1952
author: E.B. White
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Sarah 0 4.14 1847
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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]]> 3 309 J.K. Rowling 0439554934 Sarah 0 to-read 4.47 1997
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Sarah 0 4.38 2005
author: Markus Zusak
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 33 One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

From Sauron's fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings to him, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.

When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.

The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.]]> 1216 J.R.R. Tolkien 0618640150 Sarah 0 4.52 1955
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Sarah 0 4.25 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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]]> 846540
Commemorating the 50th anniversary of one of our all-time best-selling titles. With a new foreword, each story has been lovingly revised and reset, and all the sparkling illustrations appear in color for the very first time. With so many enchanting stories to choose from, young readers will have a delightful time deciding which is their very favorite.

This classic book has had 51 reprints and sold over 175,000 copies since it was first released in 1953. Other titles in our growing series of Asian Children's Favorite Stories include Favorite Children's Stories from China and Tibet, Balinese Children's Favorite Stories and Filipino Children's Favorite Stories.]]> 112 Florence Sakade 0804834490 Sarah 5 4.14 1953
author: Florence Sakade
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1953
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/12/26
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]]> 19195283 This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.]]> 240 Ivan E. Coyote Sarah 0 4.19 2012
author: Ivan E. Coyote
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2017/11/07
date added: 2017/11/07
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]]> 30255942 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s mysterious and iconic painting Christina’s World.

"Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden."

To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.

As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.

Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.]]> 352 Christina Baker Kline 0062356283 Sarah 5 ]]> 3.81 2017
author: Christina Baker Kline
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/03/18
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“A vivid and continuous dream,â€� that is what John Gardner held up as the novelist’s ideal and that is what Kline has created in her tour de force “A Piece of the World.â€� Every bit as mesmerizing as the painting that inspired it, we are transported into Christina’s gorgeously-rendered world and inhabited by the fascinatingly-complex woman at its center. I can’t wait to discuss this sumptuous book with my book club!

]]> 417065 416 Jack Kerouac 067006355X Sarah 5 4.19 1957
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1957
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/01/12
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]]> 49130
And in his case, different can be deadly.
--jacket flap]]> 734 J.K. Rowling Sarah 5 4.57 2000
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/01/06
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]]> 5291539
Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into a complex and atmospheric novel.]]> 590 Stieg Larsson 0307454541 Sarah 3 4.07 2005
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/05/20
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]]> 37819 The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy Sarah 5 3.85 1997
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/04/10
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]]> 18490557 In this gripping, emotionally charged novel, a tragedy in Texas changes the course of three lives

On an oppressively hot Monday in August of 1966, a student and former marine named Charles Whitman hauled a footlocker of guns to the top of the University of Texas tower and began firing on pedestrians below. Before it was over, sixteen people had been killed and thirty-two wounded. It was the first mass shooting of civilians on a campus in American history.

Monday, Monday follows three students caught up in the massacre: Shelly, who leaves her math class and walks directly into the path of the bullets, and two cousins, Wyatt and Jack, who heroically rush from their classrooms to help the victims. On this searing day, a relationship begins that will eventually entangle these three young people in a forbidden love affair, an illicit pregnancy, and a vow of secrecy that will span forty years. Reunited decades after the tragedy, they will be forced to confront the event that changed their lives and that has silently and persistently ruled the lives of their children.With electrifying storytelling and the powerful sense of destiny found in Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, and with the epic sweep of Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, Elizabeth Crook's Monday, Monday explores the ways in which we sustain ourselves and one another when the unthinkable happens. At its core, it is the story of a woman determined to make peace with herself, with the people she loves, and with a history that will not let her go. A humane treatment of a national tragedy, it marks a generous and thrilling new direction for a gifted American writer.]]> 352 Elizabeth Crook 0374228825 Sarah 0 to-read 3.66 2014
author: Elizabeth Crook
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/03/25
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]]> 22138421 Migratory Animals centers on a protagonist who finds herself torn between love and duty

When Flannery, a young scientist, is forced to return to Austin from five years of research in Nigeria, she becomes torn between her two homes. Having left behind her loving fiancé without knowing when she can return, Flan learns that her sister, Molly, has begun to show signs of the crippling genetic disease that slowly killed their mother.

As their close-knit circle of friends struggles with Molly’s diagnosis, Flannery must grapple with what her future will hold: an ambitious life of love and the pursuit of scientific discovery in West Africa, or the pull of a life surrounded by old friends, the comfort of an old flame, family obligations, and the home she’s always known. But she is not the only one wrestling with uncertainty. Since their college days, each of her friends has faced unexpected challenges that make them reevaluate the lives they’d always planned for themselves.

A mesmerizing debut from an exciting young writer, Migratory Animals is a moving, thought-provoking novel, told from shifting viewpoints, about the meaning of home and what we owe each other—and ourselves.]]> 320 Mary Helen Specht 0062346032 Sarah 5 3.35 2014
author: Mary Helen Specht
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/01/21
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]]> 220858 Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.

At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In "War and Peace" (1868-9), Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and fate - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.]]> 1444 Leo Tolstoy 0140444173 Sarah 5 4.27 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1869
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/10/10
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]]> 18404382
In her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love.

Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luz’s older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister’s death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the “Smokinawans,â€� the “waste cases,â€� who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato aren’t enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life.

In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girlsâ€� high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army’s horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister.

On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most un brat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well.

Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time.]]> 317 Sarah Bird 0385350112 Sarah 5 to-read 4.01 2014
author: Sarah Bird
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/07/28
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]]> 69940 ALONE

Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single-engine plane in which he is flying crashes. Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a tattered Windbreaker and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present—and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart since his parent's divorce. But now Brian has no time for anger, self-pity, or despair—it will take all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive.]]> 186 Gary Paulsen 1416936475 Sarah 5 3.89 1987
author: Gary Paulsen
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/07/09
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]]> 19708611 330 Laura Hein Sarah 5 5.00 2003
author: Laura Hein
name: Sarah
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/28
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]]> 70509 Absurdistan and meet outsize Misha Vainberg, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, lover of large portions of food and drink, lover and inept performer of rap music, and lover of a South Bronx Latina whom he longs to rejoin in New York City, if only the American INS will grant him a visa. But it won't, because Misha's late Beloved Papa whacked an Oklahoma businessman of some prominence. Misha is paying the price of exile from his adopted American homeland. He's stuck in Russia, dreaming of his beloved Rouenna and the Oz of NYC.

Salvation may lie in the tiny, oil-rich nation of Absurdistan, where a crooked consular officer will sell Misha a Belgian passport. But after a civil war breaks out between two competing ethnic groups and a local warlord installs hapless Misha as Minister of Multicultural Affairs, our hero soon finds himself covered in oil, fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if a normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century.

Populated by curvaceous brown-eyed beauties, circumcision-happy Hasidic Jews, a loyal manservant who never stops serving, and scheming oil execs from a certain American company whose name rhymes with Malliburton, Absurdistan is a strange, oddly true-to-life look at how we live now, from a writer who should know.]]> 333 Gary Shteyngart 0812971671 Sarah 4 3.32 2006
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 17857652
Born Igor Shteyngart in Leningrad during the twilight of the Soviet Union, the curious, diminutive, asthmatic boy grew up with a persistent sense of yearning—for food, for acceptance, for words—desires that would follow him into adulthood. At five, Igor decided to become a writer, and his grandmother paid him a slice of cheese for every page he produced. He wroteÌęLenin and His Magical Goose,Ìęhis first novel.

In the late 1970s, world events changed Igor’s life. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev made a deal: exchange tankers of grain for the safe passage of Soviet Jews to America—a country Igor viewed as the enemy. Along the way, Igor became Gary so that he would suffer one or two fewer beatings from other kids. Coming to the United States from the Soviet Union was equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of pure Technicolor.

Shteyngart’s loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer or at least a “conscientious toilerâ€� on Wall Street, something their distracted son was simply not cut out to do. Fusing English and Russian, his mother created the term Failurchka—Little Failure—which she applied to her son. With love. Mostly.

As a result, Shteyngart operated on a theory that he would fail at everything he tried. At being a writer, at being a boyfriend, and, most important, at being a worthwhile human being.

Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him. And somebody to lend him sixty-nine cents for a McDonald’s hamburger.

Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart’s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.]]> 368 Gary Shteyngart 0679643753 Sarah 5 3.65 2014
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> 7334201 The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart has risen to the top of the fiction world. Now, in his hilarious and heartfelt new novel, he envisions a deliciously dark tale of America’s dysfunctional coming years—and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.

In a very near future—oh, let’s say next Tuesday—a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don’t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world’s last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn’t it? Lenny’s from a different century—he totally loves books (or “printed, bound media artifacts,â€� as they’re now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.

After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our “ancient dorkâ€� effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny’s new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York’s Central Park, the city’s streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He’s going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect’s “hotnessâ€� and “sustainabilityâ€� with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being.

Wildly funny, rich, and humane, Super Sad True Love Story is a knockout novel by a young master, a book in which falling in love just may redeem a planet falling apart.
Ìę]]> 331 Gary Shteyngart 1400066409 Sarah 5 3.45 2010
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> 1615795
Contributions Matt Allen, Linda Isako Angst, Asato Eiko, Gerald Figal, Aaron Gerow, Laura Hein, Michael Molasky, Steve Rabson, James E. Roberson, Mark Selden, and Julia Yonetani.]]> 352 Laura Hein 0742518663 Sarah 5 4.08 2003
author: Laura Hein
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/17
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]]> 2117738 300 Steve Rabson 0939512777 Sarah 5 5.00 1998
author: Steve Rabson
name: Sarah
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/17
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]]> 13798434
Although much has been written on Okinawan emigration abroad, this is the first book in English to consider the Okinawan diaspora in Japan. It is based on a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, including interviews conducted by the author in the greater Osaka area over a two-year period. The work begins with the experiences of women who worked in Osaka’s spinning factories in the early twentieth century, covers the years of the Pacific War and the prolonged U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, and finally treats the period following Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Throughout, it examines the impact of government and corporate policies, along with popular attitudes, for a compelling account of the Okinawan diaspora in the context of contemporary Japan’s struggle to acknowledge its multiethnic society.

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan will find a ready audience among students of contemporary Japanese history and East Asian societies, as well as general readers interested in Okinawans and other minorities living in Japan.]]> 328 Steve Rabson 0824835344 Sarah 5 4.75 2011
author: Steve Rabson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/17
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]]> 1514694 376 Steve Rabson 0824823001 Sarah 5 4.28 2000
author: Steve Rabson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/17
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]]> 18296120
Part memoir, part philosophical and spiritual inquiry, Living with a Wild God brings an older woman's wry and erudite perspective to a young girl's uninhibited musings on the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. Ehrenreich's most personal book ever will spark a lively and heated conversation about religion and spirituality, science and morality, and the "meaning of life."

Certain to be a classic, Living with a Wild God combines intellectual rigor with a frank account of the inexplicable, in Ehrenreich's singular voice, to produce a true literary achievement.]]> 237 Barbara Ehrenreich 145550176X Sarah 5 3.34 2014
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> 297673
Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.]]> 335 Junot DĂ­az 1594489580 Sarah 4 3.89 2007
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.â€�

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 Sarah 4 3.88 1937
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 4
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]]> 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Sarah 4 4.28 1813
author: Jane Austen
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 4
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]]> 45794
Veteran homicide detective Rocco Klein's passion for the job gave way long ago. His beat is a rough New Jersey neighborhood where the drug murders blur together, until the day Victor Dunham � a twenty-year-old with a steady job and a clean record � confesses to a shooting outside a fast-food joint. It doesn't take long for Rocco's attention to turn to Victor's brother, a street-corner crack dealer named Strike who seems a more likely suspect for the crime.

At once an intense mystery, and a revealing study of two men on opposite sides of an unwinnable war, Clockers is a stunningly well-rendered chronicle of modern life on the streets.]]> 608 Richard Price 0747562733 Sarah 4 4.09 1992
author: Richard Price
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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]]> 28001
E. Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes is a masterpiece of storytelling that spans a century and a continent. Proulx brings the immigrant experience in America to life through the eyes of the descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Africans, Irish-Scots, Franco-Canadians and many others, all linked by their successive ownership of a simple green accordion. The music they make is their last link with the past—voice for their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance. Proulx’s prodigious knowledge, unforgettable characters and radiant language make Accordion Crimes a stunning novel, exhilarating in its scope and originality.]]> 432 Annie Proulx 0684831546 Sarah 5 3.63 1996
author: Annie Proulx
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> 9439303 576 Keith Richards 0297854399 Sarah 4 3.88 2010
author: Keith Richards
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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A fun, breezy read. makes you think that it IS possible to be too rich and too skinny. AND too stoned.
]]> 14050 537 Audrey Niffenegger 0965818675 Sarah 4 3.90 2003
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Sarah 5 3.86 1859
author: Charles Dickens
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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]]> 1213981
Sered shows that the villages social ethos is characterized by easy-going interpersonal relations, an absence of firm rules and hierarchies, and a belief that the village and its inhabitants are naturally healthy. Particularly interesting is her discovery that gender is a minimal category villagers do not adapt any sort of ideology that proclaims that men and women are inherently different from one another. Villagers do explain that because farmland is scarce in Okinawa, men have been compelled to go to the dangerous ocean and to foreign countries to seek their livelihoods. Women, in contrast, have remained present in their healthy and pleasant village, working on their farms and engaging in constant rounds of intra- and interfamilial socializing. Priestesses, who do not exert power in the sense that religious leaders in many other societies do, can be seen as the epitome of presence . By praying and eating at myriad rituals, priestesses make immediate and tangible the benevolent
presence of kami-sama (divinity).

Through in-depth examination of this unique and little-studied society, Sered offers a glimpse of a religious paradigm radically different from the male-dominated religious ideologies found in many other cultures.]]> 320 Susan Starr Sered 0195124871 Sarah 5 3.88 1999
author: Susan Starr Sered
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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]]> 7260188 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]> 390 Suzanne Collins 0439023513 Sarah 4 4.10 2010
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> 86655
Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results. And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.]]> 240 Jennifer Egan 1400043921 Sarah 4 3.47 2006
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 3288096 Will Pepper, a straight-talking Texan, survive a confirmation battle in the Senate? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? And even if she can make it to the Supreme Court, how will she get along with her eight highly skeptical colleagues, including a floundering Chief Justice who, after legalizing gay marriage, learns that his wife has left him for another woman. Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule.]]> 285 Christopher Buckley 0446579823 Sarah 3 3.64 2008
author: Christopher Buckley
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2008
rating: 3
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]]> 1281469 -- Louis Gottschalk Prize "Stafford's books is ... full of intriguing, even intoxicating, ideas. For anyone involved with images it opens unexplored avenues of thought, forcing one to question traditional assumptions about both images and text".
-- Helene Roberts, Visual Resources

In this erudite and profusely illustrated history of perception, Barbara Stafford explores a remarkable set of body metaphors deriving from both aesthetic and medical practices that were developed during the enlightenment for making visible the unseeable aspects of the world. While she focuses on these metaphors as a reflection of the changing attitudes toward the human body during the period of birth of the modern world, she also presents a strong argument for our need to recognize the occurrence of a profound revolution -- a radical shift from a text-based to a visually centered culture.

Co-recipient of the 1992 Louis Gottschalk Prize, The American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies]]> 587 Barbara Maria Stafford 0262691655 Sarah 4 4.38 1991
author: Barbara Maria Stafford
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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]]> 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Sarah 5 3.53 1851
author: Herman Melville
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 5
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]]> 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Sarah 4 3.64 2006
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 1381 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.

This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

--

Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.]]> 541 Homer 0143039954 Sarah 5 3.79 -700
author: Homer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.79
book published: -700
rating: 5
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]]> 16160499
Two days later, he finds himself outside a subway station half-naked and robbed of all his possessions.

Trapped in a city whose language he doesn't speak, without a passport or anyone to turn to, Rudy is plunged into a world of hunger and homelessness. Yet, fighting off the ravages of slow starvation proves far easier than the struggle to maintain his own decency and humanity when he is forced to befriend a hostile thug who holds the only key to Rudy's escape.

Unconditionally realistic, Mad Days of Me: Escaping Barcelona explores the conflicted ideology of youth and society's indifference to suffering in a harrowing tale of survival. This is a story of perseverance. A story of anguish, dignity, madness, and redemption.]]> 221 Henry Martin 1478362162 Sarah 4 3.84 2007
author: Henry Martin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 32542 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780385338608

Before The Firm and The Pelican Brief made him a superstar, John Grisham wrote this riveting story of retribution and justice. In this searing courtroom drama, best-selling author John Grisham probes the savage depths of racial violence, as he delivers a compelling tale of uncertain justice in a small southern town, Clanton, Mississippi.

The life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. That is, until her black father acquires an assault rifle and takes matters into his hands.

For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life, and then his own.]]> 738 John Grisham Sarah 3 4.11 1989
author: John Grisham
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1989
rating: 3
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]]> 24280 1463 Victor Hugo 0451525264 Sarah 5 4.19 1862
author: Victor Hugo
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1862
rating: 5
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]]> 333112 336 Alice Hoffman 0425166848 Sarah 5 3.25 1980
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> 34
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkeness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit.

In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.
--back cover]]> 398 J.R.R. Tolkien 0618346252 Sarah 5 4.36 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1954
rating: 5
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]]> 11
Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!]]> 216 Douglas Adams Sarah 4 4.21 1979
author: Douglas Adams
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1979
rating: 4
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]]> 29579 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 244 Isaac Asimov 0553803719 Sarah 4 4.18 1951
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 4
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]]>