Shermin's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 01 Aug 2023 18:35:43 -0700 60 Shermin's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life]]> 18775383
Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.]]> 245 William Deresiewicz 1476702713 Shermin 4 3.85 2014 Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
author: William Deresiewicz
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/07
date added: 2023/08/01
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]]> Before I Go to Sleep 9736930
So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

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

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

Welcome to Christine's life.]]> 359 S.J. Watson 0062060554 Shermin 0 to-read 3.90 2011 Before I Go to Sleep
author: S.J. Watson
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Ruby 24902492
Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, "the kind of pretty it hurt to look at," has suffered beyond imagining, so as soon as she can, she flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city--the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways of the Village--all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother. When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby Bell finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. With the terrifying realization that she might not be strong enough to fight her way back out again, Ruby struggles to survive her memories of the town's dark past. Meanwhile, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy.

Full of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage. This wondrous page-turner rushes through the red dust and gossip of Main Street, to the pit fire where men swill bootleg outside Bloom's Juke, to Celia Jennings's kitchen where a cake is being made, yolk by yolk, that Ephram will use to try to begin again with Ruby. Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of man's dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love.]]> 368 Cynthia Bond 0804188246 Shermin 0 to-read 3.58 2014 Ruby
author: Cynthia Bond
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead]]> 13588356 Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.� —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.]]> 287 Brené Brown 1592407331 Shermin 0 listening-to-audiobook 4.29 2012 Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
author: Brené Brown
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/28
shelves: listening-to-audiobook
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being]]> 22323748 408 Christiane Northrup 1401945163 Shermin 0 currently-reading 3.96 2015 Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being
author: Christiane Northrup
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/28
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Sessiz Ev 8551069
Biri tarihçi, biri devrimci, biri de zengin olmayı aklına koymuş üç torun İstanbul yakınlarındaki Cennethisar kasabasındaki evinde babaannelerini ziyaret ederler. Dedelerinin yetmiş yıl önce siyasi sürgün olarak kasabaya geldiğinde yaptırdığı bu evde bir hafta kalırlar. Bu sürede, babaannelerinin doksan yıllık anılarla yüklü geçmişi ağır ağır aralanırken, dedenin Doğu ile Batı arasındaki uçurumu bir çırpıda kapatacağını sandığı büyük bir ansiklopediyi yazışı hatırlanır. Evde sessiz gözlemleriyle kuşaklar arasında köprü kuran tanıklar, bahçe duvarlarının ötesinde ise aile ile ilgilenen tutkulu gençlerin hareketleri vardır. Orhan Pamuk'un ikinci romanı olan Sessiz Ev, yayımlandığında büyük heyecanla karşılanmış, pek çok dile çevrilmiş ve ödüller almıştı.

“Pamuk’un gençlik dönemi şaheseri...� � New York Review of Books

“Önemli sorular soran değişik bir kitap � hem klasik hem modern. Çehov’un Vişne Bahçesi’ni hatırlatıyor.� � Le Monde

“Orhan Pamuk, gerçek bir romanın işareti olan dilsel bir yoğunlukla, değişik açılar ve perspektiflerden bir olaylar dizisi kuruyor: Renkler, topografya, imgeler, zengin ayrıntılar...�
� Abidin Dino, Le Monde Diplomatique]]> 311 Orhan Pamuk 9755102159 Shermin 4 pamuk 3.75 1983 Sessiz Ev
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/22
date added: 2015/03/21
shelves: pamuk
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]]> <![CDATA[AP English Literature & Composition For Dummies]]> 2336701 384 Geraldine Woods 0470194251 Shermin 0 currently-reading 4.33 2008 AP English Literature & Composition For Dummies
author: Geraldine Woods
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/11
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Darkness Visible 249043
At the height of the London blitz, a naked child steps out of an all-consuming fire. Miraculously saved yet hideously scarred, tormented at school and at work, Matty becomes a wanderer, a seeker after some unknown redemption. Two more lost children await him: twins as exquisite as they are loveless. Toni dabbles in political violence, Sophy in sexual tyranny. As Golding weaves their destinies together, as he draws them toward a final conflagration, his book lights up both the inner and outer darknesses of our time.]]> 272 William Golding 0374525609 Shermin 0 currently-reading 3.61 1979 Darkness Visible
author: William Golding
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/11
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life]]> 22557473
In her acting career spanning more than six decades, Sophia Loren became known for her striking beauty and dramatic roles with famed costars Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, and Paul Newman. The luminous Italian movie star was the first artist to win an Oscar for a foreign language performance, after which she continued a vibrant and varied career that took her from Hollywood to Paris to Italy—and back to Hollywood. In Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow , Loren shares vivid memories of work, love, and family with winning candor.

Born in 1934 and growing up in World War II Italy, Loren’s life of glamour and success was preceded by years of poverty and hardship, when she lived in her grandparents� house with her single mother and sister, and endured near starvation. She shares how she blossomed from a toothpick-thin girl into a beautiful woman seemingly overnight, getting her start by winning a beauty pageant; and how her first Hollywood film, The Pride and the Passion , ignited a high-profile romance with Cary Grant, who would vie with her mentor, friend, frequent producer, and lover Carlo Ponti to become her husband. Loren also reveals her long-held desire to become a mother, the disappointments she suffered, the ultimate joy of having two sons, and her happiness as a mother and grandmother.

From trying times to triumphant ones, this scintillating autobiography paints a multi-dimensional portrait of the woman behind the celebrity, beginning each chapter with a letter, photograph, or object that prompts her memories. In Loren’s own words, this is a collection of “unpublished memories, curious anecdotes, tiny secrets told, all of which spring from a box found by chance, a precious treasure trove filled with emotions, experiences, adventures.� Her wise and candid voice speaks from the pages with riveting detail and sharp humor. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow is as elegant, entrancing, and memorable as Sophia Loren herself.]]> 352 Sophia Loren 1476797420 Shermin 3 3.65 2014 Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life
author: Sophia Loren
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/11
date added: 2015/01/11
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]]> Thinking, Fast and Slow 11468377 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.]]> 499 Daniel Kahneman 0374275637 Shermin 5 4.17 2011 Thinking, Fast and Slow
author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2015/01/07
date added: 2015/01/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace]]> 22299380 The New York Times bestseller from the author of Help, Thanks, Wow, Hallelujah Anyway and Almost Everything, Lamott's long-awaited collection of new and selected essays on hope, joy, and grace

Anne Lamott writes about faith, family, and community in essays that are both wise and irreverent. It’s an approach that has become her trademark. Now in Small Victories, Lamott offers a new message of hope that celebrates the triumph of light over the darkness in our lives. Our victories over hardship and pain may seem small, she writes, but they change us—our perceptions, our perspectives, and our lives. Lamott writes of forgiveness, restoration, and transformation, how we can turn toward love even in the most hopeless situations, how we find the joy in getting lost and our amazement in finally being found.

Profound and hilarious, honest and unexpected, the stories in Small Victories are proof that the human spirit is irrepressible.]]> 286 Anne Lamott 1594486298 Shermin 0 currently-reading 3.86 2014 Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace
author: Anne Lamott
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/01
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Shermin 5 3.88 2013 The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Strange New Things]]> 20697435
It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter's teachings—his Bible is their "book of strange new things." But Peter is rattled when Bea's letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea's faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter.

Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.]]> 500 Michel Faber 055341884X Shermin 0 currently-reading 3.65 2014 The Book of Strange New Things
author: Michel Faber
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Sharp Objects 66559
Sent to investigate the disappearance of two little girls, Camille finds herself reluctantly installed in the family mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and a precocious thirteen-year-old half-sister she barely knows. Haunted by a family tragedy, troubled by the disquieting grip her young sister has on the town, Camille struggles with a familiar need to be accepted.

But as clues turn into dead ends, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims and realises: she will have to unravel the puzzle of her own past if she's to survive this homecoming.]]> 254 Gillian Flynn 0307341542 Shermin 4 to-read 3.89 2006 Sharp Objects
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/07/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Son 19101283 Sonny Lofthus is a strangely charismatic and complacent young man. Sonny's been in prison for a dozen years, nearly half his life. The inmates who seek out his uncanny abilities to soothe leave his cell feeling absolved. They don t know or care that Sonny has a serious heroin habit or where or how he gets his uninterrupted supply of the drug. Or that he's serving time for other peoples crimes.
Sonny took the first steps toward addiction when his father took his own life rather than face exposure as a corrupt cop. Now Sonny is the seemingly malleable center of a whole infrastructure of corruption: prison staff, police, lawyers, a desperate priest all of them focused on keeping him high and in jail. And all of them under the thumb of the Twin, Oslo's crime overlord. As long as Sonny gets his dope, he's happy to play the criminal and the prison's in-house savior.
But when he learns a stunning, long-hidden secret concerning his father, he makes a brilliantly executed escape from prison and from the person he d let himself become and begins hunting down those responsible for the crimes against him . . . The darkly looming question is: Who will get to him first the criminals or the cops?]]> 407 Jo Nesbø 0385351372 Shermin 0 currently-reading 4.06 2014 The Son
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/06
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Walking: A Novel 17075197 273 Laleh Khadivi 1608194396 Shermin 0 to-read 4.00 2013 The Walking: A Novel
author: Laleh Khadivi
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity]]> 126985 All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a dazzling exploration of modern consciousness. In this unparalleled book, Marshall Berman takes account of the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world and the impact of modernism on art, literature and architecture. This new edition contains an updated preface addressing the critical role the onset of modernism played in popular democratic upheavals in the late 1920s.]]> 400 Marshall Berman Shermin 0 to-read 4.30 1982 All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity
author: Marshall Berman
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Consolations of Philosophy]]> 23419 The Consolations of Philosophy takes the discipline of logic and the mind back to its roots. Drawing inspiration from six of the finest minds in history - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he addresses lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety and conformity. De Botton's book led one critic to call philosophy 'the new rock and roll'.]]> 265 Alain de Botton Shermin 0 to-read 4.04 2000 The Consolations of Philosophy
author: Alain de Botton
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Concealed in Death (In Death, #38)]]> 18079757 The incomparable J. D. Robb presents the latest moving and suspenseful novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Eve Dallas series.

Leading the demolition of a long-empty New York building that once housed a makeshift shelter for troubled teenagers, Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband uncovers two skeletons wrapped in plastic. And by the time Eve’s done with the crime scene, there are twelve murders to be solved.

The victims are all young girls. A tattooed tough girl who dealt in illegal drugs. The runaway daughter of a pair of well-to-do doctors. They all had their stories. And they all lost their chance for a better life.

Then Eve discovers a connection between the victims and someone she knows. And she grows even more determined to reveal the secrets of the place that was called The Sanctuary—and the evil concealed in one human heart.
]]> 416 J.D. Robb 039916443X Shermin 0 currently-reading 4.24 2014 Concealed in Death (In Death, #38)
author: J.D. Robb
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/09
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Shermin 0 to-read 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth]]> 17568801 No god but God comes a fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth.

Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.� The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal.

Within decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God.

Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry—a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.

Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret; and ultimately the seditious “King of the Jews� whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime. Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity.

Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion.]]> 296 Reza Aslan 140006922X Shermin 4 3.83 2013 Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
author: Reza Aslan
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/01/28
date added: 2014/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants]]> 15751404 The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell has explored the ways we understand and change our world. Now he looks at the complex and surprising ways the weak can defeat the strong, the small can match up against the giant, and how our goals (often culturally determined) can make a huge difference in our ultimate sense of success. Drawing upon examples from the world of business, sports, culture, cutting-edge psychology, and an array of unforgettable characters around the world, David and Goliath is in many ways the most practical and provocative book Malcolm Gladwell has ever written.]]> 305 Malcolm Gladwell 0316204366 Shermin 5 3.97 2013 David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/28
date added: 2014/01/28
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]]> Where'd You Go, Bernadette 13526165
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.]]> 330 Maria Semple 0316204277 Shermin 5 3.87 2012 Where'd You Go, Bernadette
author: Maria Semple
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/28
date added: 2014/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shift: How I Finally Lost Weight and Discovered a Happier Life]]> 17384972
Good Morning America contributor Tory Johnson is all about helping women make great things happen. And after a lifetime of obesity, of failing at fad diets and sporadic health programs, Tory was ready to make great things happen for herself -- making the shift by recognizing that it was time to lose weight once and for all, and do it her way. In twelve months, she lost more than 60 pounds, and for the first time shares what she learned, what she ate and how she changed in The Shift : How I Finally Lost Weight and Discovered a Happier Life , her most personal book yet.

In this updated trade paperback edition, Tory Johnson adds a look back at the amazing response her Shift has brought from thousands of people across the country, shares additional lessons learned in the year following the book's publication, and includes the stories of "Shifters" -- readers so inspired by her book they have made their own life-changing Shifts.]]> 256 Tory Johnson 1401324924 Shermin 4 3.41 2013 The Shift: How I Finally Lost Weight and Discovered a Happier Life
author: Tory Johnson
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/01/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair]]> 18079659 “Lamott’s …most insightful book yet,پٳoffers plenty of her characteristic witty wisdom…this slim, readable volume [is] a lens on life, widening and narrowing, encouraging each reader to reflect on what it is, after all, that really matters.”�People

What do we do when life lurches out of balance? How can we reconnect to one other and to what’s sustaining, when evil and catastrophe seem inescapable?

These questions lie at the heart of Stitches, Lamott’s profound follow-up to her New York Times–bٲԲ Help, Thanks, Wow. In this book Lamott explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped shreds of our emotional and spiritual fabric and sewing them back together, one stitch at a time.

It’s in these stitches that the quilt of life begins, and embedded in them are strength, warmth, humor, and humanity.
ձ> 112 Anne Lamott 1594632588 Shermin 4 currently-reading 3.84 2013 Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair
author: Anne Lamott
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/12/28
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Bellman & Black 17571907
Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters William’s life, his fortunes begin to turn—and the terrible and unforeseen consequences of his past indiscretion take root. In a desperate bid to save the only precious thing he has left, he enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner. Together, they found a decidedly macabre business.

And Bellman & Black is born.]]> 328 Diane Setterfield 147671195X Shermin 0 to-read 3.14 2013 Bellman & Black
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Corrections 3805 After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man - or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.]]> 653 Jonathan Franzen 1841156736 Shermin 0 currently-reading 3.83 2001 The Corrections
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/11/16
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Zahra's Paradise 10261761
Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone. What’s keeping his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of his mother, who refuses to surrender her son to fate, and the tenacity of his brother, a blogger, who fuses tradition and technology to explore and explode the void in which Mehdi has vanished.

Zahra’s Paradise weaves together fiction and real people and events. As the world witnessed the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections, through YouTube videos, on Twitter, and in blogs, this story came into being. The global response to this gripping tale has been passionate—an echo of the global outcry during the political upheaval of the summer of 2009.
Zahra’s Paradise is a first on the internet, a first for graphic novels, and a first in the history of political dissidence. Zahra’s Paradise is being serialized online at zahrasparadise.com.
Zahra’s Paradise is a Publishers WeeklyBest Comics title for 2011.
]]> 272 Amir Khalil 1596436425 Shermin 4 4.04 2010 Zahra's Paradise
author: Amir Khalil
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/16
date added: 2013/11/16
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Special Topics in Calamity Physics]]> 3483
Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer.]]> 514 Marisha Pessl 067003777X Shermin 5 currently-reading 3.72 2006 Special Topics in Calamity Physics
author: Marisha Pessl
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines]]> 16248046
When Shohreh Aghdashloo was growing up in Teheran, stardom was a distant dream, especially since her parents had more practical plans for their daughter�

When revolution swept Iran in 1978, the Ayatollah Khomeini’s religious regime brought stifling restrictions on women and art. Shohreh Aghdashloo seized the moment and boldly left her husband for Europe and eventually, America, a vastly different culture.

Shohreh Aghdashloo writes poignantly about her struggles as an outsider in a new culture—as a woman, a Muslim, and a Persian—adapting to a new land and a new language, and shares behind-the-scenes stories about what it’s really like to be an actress in Hollywood. The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines includes original color photographs from the author.]]> 288 Shohreh Aghdashloo 006200980X Shermin 2 3.56 2013 The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines
author: Shohreh Aghdashloo
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2013/07/16
date added: 2013/07/16
shelves:
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An easy read,entertaining at times,yet lacked that in-depth look into characters and the events described in the book.Maybe that was her intention though to avoid a more thorough look into her life.So try to borrow it from your ocal library rather than purchasing it.
]]> <![CDATA[A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor: Selected Poems (Lannan Literary Selections)]]> 1890365 A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor presents a selection of poems from two book-length sequences which, when combined, create a unified discussion of the conundrum of human desire. Al-Massri deftly, and with coy generosity, reveals the lion in the lamb and the lamb in the lion. These poems mix submissive and rebellious energy to reveal men and women who are at once crushingly naïve and stunningly resilient.]]> 114 Maram Al-Massri 1556592647 Shermin 0 to-read 4.17 2004 A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor: Selected Poems (Lannan Literary Selections)
author: Maram Al-Massri
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/07/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport, #23)]]> 16158527
Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man’s disappearance, then—very troublingly—to the Minneapolis police department, then—most troublingly of all—to a woman who could give Machiavelli lessons. She has very definite ideas about the way the world should work, and the money, ruthlessness, and sheer will to make it happen.

No matter who gets in the way.]]> 406 John Sandford 0399159312 Shermin 3 4.14 2012 Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport, #23)
author: John Sandford
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/07/06
date added: 2013/07/06
shelves:
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]]> The First Rule of Swimming 15790880
Magdalena does not panic when she learns that her younger sister has disappeared. A free-spirit, Jadranka has always been prone to mysterious absences. But when weeks pass with no word, Magdalena leaves the isolated Croatian island where their family has always lived and sets off to New York to find her sister. Her search begins to unspool the dark history of their family, reaching back three generations to a country torn by war.

A haunting and sure-footed debut by an award-winning writer, The First Rule of Swimming explores the legacy of betrayal and loss in a place where beauty is fused inextricably with hardship, and where individuals are forced to make wrenching choices as they are swept up in the tides of history.]]> 336 Courtney Angela Brkic 0316217387 Shermin 0 to-read 3.55 2013 The First Rule of Swimming
author: Courtney Angela Brkic
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/06/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Looking for Alaska 99561 Before. Miles “Pudge� Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps� even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .
After. Nothing is ever the same.]]> 221 John Green 1435249151 Shermin 4 3.97 2005 Looking for Alaska
author: John Green
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/01
date added: 2013/06/01
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story]]> 8854815
“The pleasure of this book is watching the match: the staggeringly inventive human mind slamming its fantastic conjectures over the net, the universe coolly returning every serve.... Holt traffics in wonder, a word whose dual meanings—the absence of answers; the experience of awe—strike me as profoundly related. His book is not utilitarian. You can’t profit from it, at least not in the narrow sense.... And yet it does what real science writing should: It helps us feel the fullness of the problem.� (Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine)

" Jim Holt leaves us with the question Stephen Hawking once asked but couldn't answer, ‘Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?’� (Ron Rosenbaum, Slate )]]> 279 Jim Holt 0871404095 Shermin 3 3.80 2011 Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
author: Jim Holt
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2013/06/01
date added: 2013/06/01
shelves:
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]]> Woes of the True Policeman 13538742 Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño’s last, unfinished novel.

The novel follows Óscar Amalfitano—an exiled Chilean university professor and widower—through the maze of his revolutionary past, his relationship with his teenage daughter, Rosa, his passion for a former student, and his retreat from scandal in Barcelona.

Forced to leave Barcelona for Santa Teresa, a Mexican city close to the U.S. border where women are being killed in unprecedented numbers, Amalfitano soon begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings. Meanwhile, Rosa, Amalfitano’s daughter, engages in her own epistolary romance with a basketball player from Barcelona, while still trying to cope with her mother’s early death and her father’s secrets. After finding Castillo in bed with her father, Rosa is forced to confront her own crisis. What follows is an intimate police investigation of Amalfitano that involves a series of dark twists, culminating in a finale full of euphoria and heartbreak.

Featuring characters and stories from his other books, Woes of the True Policeman invites the reader more than ever into the world of Roberto Bolaño. It is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense, yet darkly humorous. Exploring the roots of memory and the limits of art, Woes of the True Policeman marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.]]> 256 Roberto Bolaño 0374266743 Shermin 0 to-read 3.63 2011 Woes of the True Policeman
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/04/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Cloud Atlas 49628
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .

Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 Shermin 0 4.02 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2013/04/24
date added: 2013/04/24
shelves:
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]]> Indiscretion 15719899
Harry and Madeleine Winslow have been blessed with talent, money, and charm. Harry is a National Book Award–winning author on the cusp of greatness. Madeleine is a woman of sublime beauty and grace whose elemental goodness and serenity belie a privileged upbringing. Bonded by deep devotion, they share a love that is both envied and admired. The Winslows play host to a coterie of close friends and acolytes eager to bask in their golden radiance, whether they are in their bucolic East Hampton cottage, abroad in Rome thanks to Harry's writing grant, or in their comfortable Manhattan brownstone.

One weekend at the start of the summer season, Harry and Maddy, who are in their early forties, meet Claire and cannot help but be enchanted by her winsome youth, quiet intelligence, and disarming naivete. Drawn by the Winslows' inscrutable magnetism, Claire eagerly falls into their welcoming orbit. But over the course of the summer, her reverence transforms into a dangerous desire. By Labor Day, it is no longer enough to remain one of their hangers-on.

A story of love, lust, deception, and betrayal as seen through the omniscient eyes of Maddy's childhood friend Walter, a narrator akin to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, Indiscretion is a juicy, richly textured novel filled with fascinating, true-to-life characters—an irresistibly sensual page-turner that explores having it all and the consequences of wanting more.]]> 388 Charles Dubow 0062201050 Shermin 2 3.63 2012 Indiscretion
author: Charles Dubow
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2013/04/01
date added: 2013/04/01
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Peaches for Father Francis (Chocolat, #3)]]> 13588138 The tantalizing sequel to the blockbuster New York Times bestseller Chocolat

Even before it was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, Joanne Harris’s Chocolat entranced readers with its mix of hedonism, whimsy, and, of course, chocolate. Now, at last, Chocolat’s heroine returns to the beautiful French village of Lansquenet in another, equally beguiling tale.

When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to return to Lansquenet, where she once owned a chocolate shop and learned the meaning of home. But returning to one’s past can be a dangerous pursuit, and Vianne and her daughters find the beautiful French village changed in unexpected ways: women veiled in black, the scent of spices in the air, and—facing the church—a minaret. Most surprising of all, her old nemesis, Francis Reynaud, desperately needs her help. Can Vianne work her magic once again?]]> 453 Joanne Harris 0670026360 Shermin 0 to-read 3.95 2012 Peaches for Father Francis (Chocolat, #3)
author: Joanne Harris
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/04/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Fault in Our Stars 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green Shermin 4 Still,the pain and metamorphosis brought by cancer is so real.As a person who has lost a loved one to cancer,I could relate to every word said by main characters who both were cancer kids.When Augutus points to an empty space next to laundry basket and when Haze says she doesn't see anything he says,"it is the last shred of my dignity.",and I burst into tears,because I KNEW every word in that tiny sentence was real.Terminal cancer rips one off of all human dignity,and only love of the people around keeps him/her going courageously...
This book is close to my heart and John Green has become my new favorite writer with an authentic style.]]> 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars
author: John Green
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/03/24
date added: 2013/03/25
shelves:
review:
I like John Green.His simple,stark,prose doesn't necessitate any complicated phrases or words,which can convey deep thoughts and messages.No flaunting words to show his superior mentality.I like it in writer.Now comes this book with great style ,and I wish I could tell this about the plot,which at times was marred by oversentimentalism ...or maybe it has been written for readers younger than me who think otherwise!Some parts reminded me of the movie "Love Story",real love show up when fatality is looming above.
Still,the pain and metamorphosis brought by cancer is so real.As a person who has lost a loved one to cancer,I could relate to every word said by main characters who both were cancer kids.When Augutus points to an empty space next to laundry basket and when Haze says she doesn't see anything he says,"it is the last shred of my dignity.",and I burst into tears,because I KNEW every word in that tiny sentence was real.Terminal cancer rips one off of all human dignity,and only love of the people around keeps him/her going courageously...
This book is close to my heart and John Green has become my new favorite writer with an authentic style.
]]> <![CDATA[Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion]]> 12576334
Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them � because they're packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, Alain (a non-believer himself) proposes that we should look to religions for insights into, among other concerns, how to:

- build a sense of community

- make our relationships last

- overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy

- escape the twenty-four hour media

- go travelling

- get more out of art, architecture and music

- and create new businesses designed to address our emotional needs.

For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing lots of peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.]]> 320 Alain de Botton 0241144779 Shermin 3 3.66 2011 Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
author: Alain de Botton
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2013/03/23
date added: 2013/03/23
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Speaking from Among the Bones (Flavia de Luce, #5)]]> 13642963 From award-winning author Alan Bradley comes the next cozy British mystery starring intrepid young sleuth Flavia de Luce, hailed by USA Today as “one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.�

Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters� diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.]]> 378 Alan Bradley 0385344031 Shermin 5 4.15 2013 Speaking from Among the Bones (Flavia de Luce, #5)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/03/23
date added: 2013/03/23
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife]]> 15851746
Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.

Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.

Alexander’s story is not a fantasy. Before he underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.

This story would be remarkable no matter who it happened to. That it happened to Dr. Alexander makes it revolutionary. No scientist or person of faith will be able to ignore it. Reading it will change your life.]]> 196 Eben Alexander 1451695195 Shermin 3 3.69 2012 Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
author: Eben Alexander
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/27
date added: 2013/01/27
shelves:
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]]> The Language of Flowers 10032672
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.]]> 323 Vanessa Diffenbaugh 034552554X Shermin 0 to-read 4.09 2011 The Language of Flowers
author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]> 43369 307 Christopher Hitchens 0446579807 Shermin 5 3.94 2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2012/12/31
date added: 2012/12/31
shelves:
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]]> Sweet Tooth 13562049 In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan's first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction.

Cambridge student Serena Frome's beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England's legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named "Sweet Tooth."

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.

Once again, Ian McEwan's mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.]]> 320 Ian McEwan Shermin 4 3.41 2012 Sweet Tooth
author: Ian McEwan
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/31
date added: 2012/12/31
shelves:
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]]> Gone Girl 8442457 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?]]> 399 Gillian Flynn Shermin 3 3.93 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/12/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)]]> 6449551
Chaos is coming, old son.

With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. As families prepare to head back to the city and children say goodbye to summer, a stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets buried in the wilderness.
No one admits to knowing the murdered man, but as secrets are revealed, chaos begins to close in on the beloved bistro owner, Olivier. How did he make such a spectacular success of his business? What past did he leave behind and why has he buried himself in this tiny village? And why does every lead in the investigation find its way back to him?

As Olivier grows more frantic, a trail of clues and treasures� from first editions of Charlotte’s Web and Jane Eyre to a spider web with the word “WOE� woven in it—lead the Chief Inspector deep into the woods and across the continent in search of the truth, and finally back to Three Pines as the little village braces for the truth and the final, brutal telling.
]]> 372 Louise Penny Shermin 4 4.19 2009 The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)
author: Louise Penny
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/22
date added: 2012/12/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories]]> 9142881
No matter the situation in which her characters find themselves--an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, a lifetime of memories unearthed by an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, the deathbed secret of a young girl's forbidden forest tryst with the tsar, the danger that befalls a wealthy couple's child in a European inn of misfits--Edith Pearlman conveys their experience with wit and aplomb, with relentless but clear-eyed optimism, and with a supple prose that reminds us, sentence by sentence, page by page, of the gifts our greatest verbal innovators can bestow.

Binocular Vision reveals a true American original, a master of the story, showing us, with her classic sensibility and lasting artistry, the cruelties, the longings, and the rituals that connect human beings across space and time.

Introduction by Ann Patchett.]]> 373 Edith Pearlman 0982338295 Shermin 4 3.94 2011 Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories
author: Edith Pearlman
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/22
date added: 2012/12/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 13507212 9780805090031)

Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England.

When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?]]> 412 Hilary Mantel Shermin 4 4.26 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/15
date added: 2012/12/15
shelves:
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]]> Harry Lipkin, Private Eye 12965103
Harry Lipkin is a tough-talking, soft-chewing, rough-around-the-edges, slow-around-the-corners private investigator who carries a .38 along with a spare set of dentures. Harry specializes in the sort of cases that cops can't be bothered with, but knows where to find good chopped liver for a fair price. He might not be the best P.I. in Miami, but at 87, he's certainly the oldest.

His latest client, Mrs. Norma Weinberger, has a problem. Someone in her home is stealing sentimental trinkets and the occasional priceless jewel from her; someone she employs, trusts, cares for, and treats like family. With the stakes so low and blood pressure that's a little too high, Harry Lipkin must figure out whodunit before the thief strikes again.

Sure to appeal to fans of Alexander McCall Smith, Harry Lipkin, Private Eye is sharp, funny and irresistible.]]> 224 Barry Fantoni 0385536100 Shermin 3 3.05 2012 Harry Lipkin, Private Eye
author: Barry Fantoni
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/12/10
date added: 2012/12/10
shelves:
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I liked the stark writing style,what was inadequate was the brilliant twist needed in a good mystery.The ending was somehow predictable and the characters were first introduced well but discarded halfway.It could be a much better book if it was more worked on.Still,it was a fun read.
]]> Sky of Red Poppies 9307359 308 Zohreh Ghahremani 0984571604 Shermin 3 3.92 2010 Sky of Red Poppies
author: Zohreh Ghahremani
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2012/12/06
date added: 2012/12/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing]]> 15699869
In 1995, while not working on some project I should have been working on, I began to feel rotten about myself. But then I noticed something. On the whole, I had a reputation as a person who got a lot done and made a reasonable contribution. . . . A paradox. Rather than getting to work on my important projects, I began to think about this conundrum. I realized that I was what I call a structured procrastinator: a person who gets a lot done by not doing other things.

Celebrating a nearly universal character flaw, The Art of Procrastination is a wise, charming, compulsively readable book—really, a tongue-in-cheek argument of ideas. Perry offers ingenious strategies, like the defensive to-do list (�1. Learn Chinese . . .�) and task triage. He discusses the double-edged relationship between the computer and procrastination—on the one hand, it allows the procrastinator to fire off a letter or paper at the last possible minute; on the other, it’s a dangerous time suck (Perry counters this by never surfing until he’s already hungry for lunch). Or what may be procrastination’s greatest gift: the chance to accomplish surprising, wonderful things by not sticking to a rigid schedule. For example, Perry wrote this book by avoiding the work he was supposed to be doing—grading papers and evaluating dissertation ideas. How lucky for us.]]> 112 John R. Perry Shermin 3 3.64 2012 The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing
author: John R. Perry
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Death and the Maiden (Liebermann Papers, #6)]]> 13414905 384 Frank Tallis 0812983343 Shermin 4 3.93 2011 Death and the Maiden (Liebermann Papers, #6)
author: Frank Tallis
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> Mortality 13529055 Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for "Vanity Fair," he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis.

Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this account of his affliction, he describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of mortality.]]> 104 Christopher Hitchens 1455502758 Shermin 4 4.09 2012 Mortality
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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Painful to read for all the people like me,who have lost a loved one by cancer.Yet,I liked his courageous encounter with his cancer,pain,and ...faith.
]]> The Elegance of the Hedgehog 2967752
We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.]]> 325 Muriel Barbery 1933372605 Shermin 5 3.76 2006 The Elegance of the Hedgehog
author: Muriel Barbery
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 12262741 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State � and she would do it alone.

Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.]]> 336 Cheryl Strayed 0307592731 Shermin 5 4.06 2012 Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Cheryl Strayed
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2012/10/01
date added: 2012/10/17
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Just finished reading Cheryl Strayed's "Wild".What blazing honesty!No need to make readers fall in love with her...a trait seldom found in a female writer,who is ,naturally,measured more harshly than her mail counterparts when it comes to morality.She not only captivated me with her courageous hike along the Pacific Crest Trail ,she proved that when one stops trying to justify her acts to get others`approval , it is when she leaves the most attractive trace to follow!
]]> The Night Circus 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Shermin 0 to-read 4.00 2011 The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> Telegraph Avenue 10756240
When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.

An intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own, Telegraph Avenue is the great American novel we've been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet.]]> 465 Michael Chabon 0061493341 Shermin 0 to-read 3.38 2012 Telegraph Avenue
author: Michael Chabon
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average rating: 3.38
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Shermin 4 4.18 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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]]> شاهزاده و گدا 2098099 364 Mark Twain 9648155461 Shermin 5 3.57 1881 شاهزاده و گدا
author: Mark Twain
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1881
rating: 5
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]]> The Sense of an Ending 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 Shermin 5 3.73 2011 The Sense of an Ending
author: Julian Barnes
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> Daughter of Fortune 16527
As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. A society of single men and prostitutes among whom Eliza moves--with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chien--California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive Joaquín gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom.]]> 432 Isabel Allende 0061120251 Shermin 4 3.93 1998 Daughter of Fortune
author: Isabel Allende
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Shermin 5 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins Shermin 4 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
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average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)]]> 5060378 Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses...]]> 503 Stieg Larsson 0307269981 Shermin 5 4.25 2006 The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Persepolis. The story of a childhood (Persepolis, #1)]]> 9516
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.]]> 153 Marjane Satrapi 037571457X Shermin 4 4.27 2003 Persepolis. The story of a childhood (Persepolis, #1)
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[World Without End (Kingsbridge, #2)]]> 5064 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death.]]> 1237 Ken Follett Shermin 4 4.30 2007 World Without End (Kingsbridge, #2)
author: Ken Follett
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> Suite Française 43944 The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed.

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis—she'd begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky's literary masterpiece

The first part, "A Storm in June," opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, "Dolce," we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.

Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation—at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate, and fiercely ironic—of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.]]> 431 Irène Némirovsky 1400096278 Shermin 5 3.83 2004 Suite Française
author: Irène Némirovsky
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> The Cove 11807189
Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe - just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin.

Then it happens - a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel's heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known.

But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything - and danger is closer than they know. Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic fervor flourishes thanks to the likes of Chauncey Feith, an ambitious young army recruiter who stokes fear and outrage throughout the county. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love may not be enough to protect them.

This lyrical, heart-rending tale, as mesmerizing as its award-winning predecessor Serena, shows once again this masterful novelist at the height of his powers.]]> 255 Ron Rash Shermin 5 3.68 2012 The Cove
author: Ron Rash
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> Rebecca 12873 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

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

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.]]> 428 Daphne du Maurier 1844080382 Shermin 5 4.19 1938 Rebecca
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1938
rating: 5
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]]> The Day of the Jackal 540020 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

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

One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive noteven his employers know his name. And as theminutes count down to the final act of execution, itseems that there is no power on earth that can stopthe Jackal.]]> 358 Frederick Forsyth Shermin 4 4.27 1971 The Day of the Jackal
author: Frederick Forsyth
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1971
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Shermin 4 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
author: Ken Kesey
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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]]> The Alchemist 865 197 Paulo Coelho 0061122416 Shermin 4 3.85 1988 The Alchemist
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Shermin 5 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Shermin 2 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 2
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]]> Freedom 7905092
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
(jacket)]]> 562 Jonathan Franzen 0374158460 Shermin 4 3.78 2010 Freedom
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> Catch-22 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 Shermin 5 3.99 1961 Catch-22
author: Joseph Heller
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 5
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]]> امین 129197 382 Masoud Behnoud 964598940X Shermin 4 3.71 1998 امین
author: Masoud Behnoud
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> Il cavaliere inesistente 174465 126 Italo Calvino 8804370866 Shermin 5 3.84 1959 Il cavaliere inesistente
author: Italo Calvino
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1959
rating: 5
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]]> سه کتاب 144832 319 Zoya Pirzad 9643058557 Shermin 4 3.40 2001 سه کتاب
author: Zoya Pirzad
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> مدیر مدرسه 58255 137 Jalal Al-e Ahmad 9645509564 Shermin 3 3.47 1958 مدیر مدرسه
author: Jalal Al-e Ahmad
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1958
rating: 3
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]]> The Catcher in the Rye 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 Shermin 5 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
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average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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]]> To Kill a Mockingbird 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 Shermin 5 4.25 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
author: Harper Lee
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 5
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]]> The Thin Man 80616 The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.]]> 201 Dashiell Hammett 0679722637 Shermin 4 3.92 1934 The Thin Man
author: Dashiell Hammett
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1934
rating: 4
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]]> The Historian 10692
Late one night in 1972, as a 16-year-old girl, she discovers a mysterious book and a sheaf of letters in her father's library—a discovery that will have dreadful and far-reaching consequences, and will send her on a journey of mind-boggling danger. While seeking clues to the secrets of her father's past and her mother's puzzling disappearance, she follows a trail from London to Istanbul to Budapest and beyond, and learns that the letters in her possession provide a link to one of the world's darkest and most intoxicating figures. Generation after generation, the legend of Dracula has enticed and eluded both historians and opportunists alike. Now a young girl undertakes the same search that ended in the death and defilement of so many others—in an attempt to save her father from an unspeakable fate.
(Fall 2005 Selection)]]> 704 Elizabeth Kostova 0751537284 Shermin 3 3.78 2005 The Historian
author: Elizabeth Kostova
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> Eye of the Needle 92364 One enemy spy knows the secret to the Allies' greatest deception, a brilliant aristocrat and ruthless assassin -- code name: "The Needle" -- who holds the key to ultimate Nazi victory.

Only one person stands in his way: a lonely Englishwoman on an isolated island, who is beginning to love the killer who has mysteriously entered her life.

All will come to a terrifying conclusion in Ken Follett's unsurpassed and unforgettable masterwork of suspense, intrigue, and the dangerous machinations of the human heart.

]]> 368 Ken Follett 006074815X Shermin 5 4.19 1978 Eye of the Needle
author: Ken Follett
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1978
rating: 5
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]]> The Firm 5358 Adaptation for younger readers.

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

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

Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter

Book Details:
- Difficulty: Level 5 - Upper Intermediate (2300 words)
- Category: Contemporary
- Dialect: British English]]> 76 Robin Waterfield 0582418275 Shermin 5 4.06 1991 The Firm
author: Robin Waterfield
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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]]> The Name of the Rose 119073 552 Umberto Eco 0156001314 Shermin 5 4.13 1980 The Name of the Rose
author: Umberto Eco
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> The Lovely Bones 12232938
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.]]> 372 Alice Sebold 0316166685 Shermin 3 3.87 2002 The Lovely Bones
author: Alice Sebold
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 3
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]]> The Thirteenth Tale 40440
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.]]> 406 Diane Setterfield 0743298020 Shermin 5 3.96 2006 The Thirteenth Tale
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1)]]> 16331 288 Agatha Christie 1579126251 Shermin 5 4.07 1930 Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1930
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Shermin 5 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> The Woman in White 5890 Librarian note: Alternate covers can be found here and here.

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

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

Matthew Sweet's introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins's biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.]]> 672 Wilkie Collins Shermin 5 4.00 1859 The Woman in White
author: Wilkie Collins
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie]]> 824318 362 Dick Riley 0804467250 Shermin 5 4.32 1979 The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie
author: Dick Riley
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1979
rating: 5
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]]> Absent in the Spring 140345
Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her�

Famous for her ingenious crime books and plays, Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.]]> 190 Mary Westmacott 0006499473 Shermin 0 to-read 4.18 1944 Absent in the Spring
author: Mary Westmacott
name: Shermin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1944
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man in the Brown Suit (Colonel Race, #1)]]> 209194 Pretty, young Anne came to London looking for adventure. In fact, adventure comes looking for her—and finds her immediately at Hyde Park Corner tube station. Anne is present on the platform when a thin man, reeking of mothballs, loses his balance and is electrocuted on the rails.


The Scotland Yard verdict is accidental death. But Anne is not satisfied. After all, who was the man in the brown suit who examined the body? And why did he race off, leaving a cryptic message behind: "17-122 Kilmorden Castle"?


Twisty, clever, and intriguing, The Man in the Brown Suit showcases Agatha Christie once again at her very best.

]]> 381 Agatha Christie 0007151667 Shermin 4 3.97 1924 The Man in the Brown Suit (Colonel Race, #1)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1924
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #1)]]> 7061 235 Alexander McCall Smith 1400034779 Shermin 4 3.81 1998 The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #1)
author: Alexander McCall Smith
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)]]> 6218281
For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”]]> 374 Alan Bradley 0385342306 Shermin 5 3.81 2009 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot, #1)]]> 16343
A refugee of the Great War, Poirot has settled in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactor, the elderly Emily Inglethorp. When Emily is poisoned and the authorities are baffled, Poirot puts his prodigious sleuthing skills to work. Suspects are plentiful, including the victim’s much younger husband, her resentful stepsons, her longtime hired companion, a young family friend working as a nurse, and a London specialist on poisons who just happens to be visiting the nearby village.

All of them have secrets they are desperate to keep, but none can outwit Poirot as he navigates the ingenious red herrings and plot twists that contribute to Agatha Christie's well-deserved reputation as the queen of mystery.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. Poirot also appears, in this period, in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel and short story has its own entry on ŷ.]]> 121 Agatha Christie 0646418432 Shermin 5 3.99 1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot, #1)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Shermin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1920
rating: 5
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]]>