Jane's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 02 Apr 2025 08:32:16 -0700 60 Jane's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Seven Days in June 55648820
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.

Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered...

With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781538719107.]]>
336 Tia Williams Jane 4 3.98 2021 Seven Days in June
author: Tia Williams
name: Jane
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
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<![CDATA[The Secret, Book & Scone Society (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #1)]]> 33632473
Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a place of healing. Strangers flock here hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. If none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked “comfort� scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That’s Nora’s special talent—prescribing the perfect novel to ease a person’s deepest pain and lighten their heaviest burden.

When a visiting businessman reaches out to Nora for guidance, she knows exactly which novels will help. But before he can keep their appointment at Miracle Books, he’s found dead on the train tracks.

Stunned, Nora forms the Secret, Book, and Scone Society, a group of damaged souls yearning to gain trust and earn redemption by helping others. To join the society, members must divulge their darkest secret—the terrible truth that brought each of them to Miracle Springs in the first place.

Determined to uncover the truth behind the businessman’s demise, the women meet in Nora’s cramped and cozy bookstore to share stories and trade support. And as they untangle a web of corruption, they also discover their own courage, purpose, and a sisterhood that will carry them through every challenge—proving it’s never too late to turn the page and start over . . .]]>
290 Ellery Adams 1496712374 Jane 0 3.64 2017 The Secret, Book & Scone Society (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #1)
author: Ellery Adams
name: Jane
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
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No Two Persons 60196684 One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.�

That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go�

Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.

Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways—and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.]]>
314 Erica Bauermeister 1250284376 Jane 0 to-read 4.02 2023 No Two Persons
author: Erica Bauermeister
name: Jane
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/09
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Sold 201114
He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy woman in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi undertakes the long journey to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt—then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi's life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother's words�"Simply to endure is to triumph"—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision—will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.]]>
268 Patricia McCormick 0786851716 Jane 0 4.23 2006 Sold
author: Patricia McCormick
name: Jane
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/13
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The Woman in the Library 56803179 In every person's story, there is something to hide...

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.

Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.]]>
292 Sulari Gentill Jane 4 3.46 2022 The Woman in the Library
author: Sulari Gentill
name: Jane
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]>
259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Jane 4 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Jane
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[A Monstrous Regiment of Women (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #2)]]> 104737 336 Laurie R. King 0006514944 Jane 3 4.03 1995 A Monstrous Regiment of Women (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #2)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Jane
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
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Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma 61685822 From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, a passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of #MeToo, and of the link between genius and monstrosity.

In this unflinching, deeply personal book that expands on her instantly viral Paris Review essay, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? Claire Dederer asks: Can we love the work of Hemingway, Polanski, Naipaul, Miles Davis, or Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? She explores the audience's relationship with artists from Woody Allen to Michael Jackson, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.]]>
257 Claire Dederer 0525655115 Jane 2 3.75 2023 Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
author: Claire Dederer
name: Jane
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 2
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The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]>
471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Jane 4 4.59 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Jane
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs, #18)]]> 199703402
The Comfort of Ghosts completes Jacqueline Winspear’s ground-breaking and internationally bestselling series.

“An outstanding historical series.”—The New York Times

“Winspear is a brilliant writer, mixing the history and the mystery with the psychology of criminals and victims.”—The Historical Novel Society

Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future.

London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.

Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.

The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War.]]>
342 Jacqueline Winspear 1641296062 Jane 4 4.26 2024 The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs, #18)
author: Jacqueline Winspear
name: Jane
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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Flatbreads Flavors 438252
In Flatbreads and Flavors they share more than sixty recipes for flatbreads of every origin and description: tortillas from Mexico, pita from the Middle East, naan from Afghanistan, chapatti from India, pizza from Italy, and French fougasse. As well within the eight regional chapters of the book, they provide 150 exuberant recipes for traditional accompaniments to the breads. These include chutneys and curries, salsas and stews, rich samplings of the Mediterranean mezze table and the Scandinavian smorgasbord, and such delectable pairings as Chinese Spicy Cumin Kebabs wrapped in Uighur nan or Lentils with Garlic, Onion, and Tomato spooned onto chapatti.

Oven-baked, grilled, fried, skillet-baked, steamed, or even baked beneath the desert sand, flatbreads are a fascinating, satisfying, and simple form that brings wholesome grains into our diet. They can be made from every grain imaginable: wheat, rye, corn, oats, millet, sorghum, teff, rice, buckwheat. They can be unleavened or leavened. They can be made so thin that they become transparent, or they can be two inches thick and sliceable.

But Flatbreads and Flavors is not only a book about the original life-sustaining food served around the world since time began, it is also a book about people and places, with vivid images and shared experiences captured in brief prose essays and in Alford and Duguid's own acclaimed photographs. Redolent with the tastes and aromas of the world's hearths, it maps a course through cultures old and intriguing. With clear and patient recipes and special sections defining techniques, ingredients, and equipment, Flatbreads and Flavors makes accessible to the novice and experienced baker alike the simple and satisfying bread baker's art.

Flatbreads and Flavors has 8 maps and 16 pages of full-color photographs of breads and their accompaniments. It is a Main Selection of HomeStyle Books a division of Book-of-the-Month Club.]]>
464 Jeffrey Alford 0688114113 Jane 4 4.27 1995 Flatbreads  Flavors
author: Jeffrey Alford
name: Jane
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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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 Jane 4 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars
author: John Green
name: Jane
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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The English Patient 11713 320 Michael Ondaatje 0771068719 Jane 4 3.88 1992 The English Patient
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Jane
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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The Dutch House 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]>
337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Jane 5 4.08 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Jane
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)]]> 40909452 In this breathtaking novel, rich in history and adventure, #1 New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon continues the story of Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser that started with the now-classic novel Outlander and continued in Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager. Once again spanning continents and centuries, Gabaldon has created a work of sheer brilliance.

What if you knew someone you loved was going to die? What if you thought you could save them? How much would you risk to try?

Claire Randall has gone to find Jamie Fraser, the man she loved more than life, and has left half her heart behind with their daughter, Brianna. Claire gave up Jamie to save Brianna, and now Bree has sent her mother back to the Scottish warrior who was willing to give his life to save them both. But a chilling discovery in the pages of history suggests that Jamie and Claire's story doesn't have a happy ending.

Brianna dares a terrifying leap into the unknown in search of her mother and the father she has never met, risking her own future to try to change history . . . and to save their lives. But as Brianna plunges into an uncharted wilderness, a heartbreaking encounter may strand her forever in the past . . . or root her in the place she should be, where her heart and soul belong.]]>
928 Diana Gabaldon 0525618732 Jane 4 4.35 1996 Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4)
author: Diana Gabaldon
name: Jane
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander #2)]]> 23590502 THE SECOND NOVEL IN THE BESTSELLING OUTLANDER SERIES - now a major new TV series.

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to the majesty of Scotland's mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones, about a love that transcends the boundaries of time, and about James Fraser, a warrior whose gallantry once drew the young Claire from the security of her century to the dangers of his.

Now a legacy of blood and desire will test her beautiful daughter as Claire's spellbinding journey continues in the intrigue-ridden court of Charles Edward Stuart, in a race to thwart a doomed uprising, and in a desperate fight to save both the child and the man she loves.]]>
963 Diana Gabaldon 1784750905 Jane 4 4.29 1992 Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander #2)
author: Diana Gabaldon
name: Jane
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Jane 4 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Jane
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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Contact 61666 semblent à présent impatients d'établir le contact : ils nous surveillent depuis longtemps, et le moment est peut-être venu pour eux de nous juger...]]> 580 Carl Sagan 2266079999 Jane 4 4.14 1985 Contact
author: Carl Sagan
name: Jane
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)]]> 11235712
She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.]]>
390 Marissa Meyer 0312641893 Jane 4 4.14 2012 Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)
author: Marissa Meyer
name: Jane
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World]]> 13839 297 Michael Pollan 0375760393 Jane 5 4.06 2001 The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
author: Michael Pollan
name: Jane
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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Binti (Binti, #1) 25667918 For the first time in hardcover, the winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award!

With a new foreword by N. K. Jemisin

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself -- but first she has to make it there, alive.

The Binti Series
Book 1: Binti
Book 2: Binti: Home
Book 3: Binti: The Night Masquerade]]>
96 Nnedi Okorafor 0765384469 Jane 4 3.81 2015 Binti (Binti, #1)
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Jane
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #15)]]> 44034500 Catastrophic spring flooding, blistering attacks in the media, and a mysterious disappearance greet Chief Inspector Armand Gamache as he returns to the Sûreté du Québec in the latest novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny.

It's Gamache's first day back as head of the homicide department, a job he temporarily shares with his previous second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Floodwaters are rising across the province. In the middle of the turmoil, a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter.

As crisis piles upon crisis, Gamache tries to hold off the encroaching chaos, and realizes the search for Vivienne Godin should be abandoned. But with a daughter of his own, he finds himself developing a profound, and perhaps unwise, empathy for her distraught father.

Increasingly hounded by the question, how would you feel..., he resumes the search.

As the rivers rise, and the social media onslaught against Gamache becomes crueler, a body is discovered. And in the tumult, mistakes are made.

In the next novel in this "constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves" (The New York Times Book Review), Gamache must face a horrific possibility, and a burning question.

What would you do if your child's killer walked free?]]>
437 Louise Penny 1250066212 Jane 4 4.20 2019 A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #15)
author: Louise Penny
name: Jane
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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Becoming 38746485
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.]]>
426 Michelle Obama 1524763136 Jane 4 4.42 2018 Becoming
author: Michelle Obama
name: Jane
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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Animal Dreams 77262 Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.]]> 342 Barbara Kingsolver 0060921145 Jane 4 4.07 1990 Animal Dreams
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Jane
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1990
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)]]> 252577
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.]]>
452 Frank McCourt 0007205236 Jane 5 4.15 1996 Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)
author: Frank McCourt
name: Jane
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian]]> 693208
Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

With a foreward by Markus Zusak & interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney
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230 Sherman Alexie 0316013684 Jane 4 4.05 2007 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
author: Sherman Alexie
name: Jane
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal]]> 28881 Philadelphia Inquirer).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more—except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala—and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.]]>
444 Christopher Moore 0380813815 Jane 5 4.23 2002 Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
author: Christopher Moore
name: Jane
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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The Cider House Rules 4687 1064 John Irving 0786226749 Jane 5 4.16 1985 The Cider House Rules
author: John Irving
name: Jane
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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Cold Mountain 10920 Cold Mountain is a novel about a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved near the Civil War's end. At once a love story & a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.

Based on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman & Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.

Frazier reveals insight into human relations with the land & the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great 19th century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.]]>
449 Charles Frazier 0802142842 Jane 5 3.89 1997 Cold Mountain
author: Charles Frazier
name: Jane
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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Breakfast of Champions 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]>
303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Jane 4 4.08 1973 Breakfast of Champions
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Jane
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China]]> 1848 9780743246989

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents� experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,� a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.]]>
562 Jung Chang Jane 5 4.28 1991 Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
author: Jung Chang
name: Jane
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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Snow Falling on Cedars 77142 460 David Guterson 067976402X Jane 5 3.86 1994 Snow Falling on Cedars
author: David Guterson
name: Jane
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

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

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]>
480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Jane 4 4.21 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Jane
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum]]> 41005592 166 Michael McCreary 1773212575 Jane 0 currently-reading 3.73 2019 Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum
author: Michael McCreary
name: Jane
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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Sipsworth 113877384
Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss.

Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.

Sipsworth is a reminder that there can be second chances. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes the world has plans of its own. Simon Van Booy’s lyrical storytelling is a delight even as it will fill your heart.]]>
240 Simon Van Booy 1567927947 Jane 4 4.11 2024 Sipsworth
author: Simon Van Booy
name: Jane
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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Sandwich 200028726 From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and—thanks to the cottage’s ancient plumbing—septic too.

This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.]]>
240 Catherine Newman 0063345161 Jane 4 3.55 2024 Sandwich
author: Catherine Newman
name: Jane
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #1)]]> 91661 384 Laurie R. King 0553381520 Jane 4 4.06 1994 The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #1)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Jane
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris]]> 60466963 The Clockmaker’s Wife—comes a tale of love and a betrayal that echoes through generations�

Paris, 1940: War is closing in on the city of love. With his wife forced into hiding, Jacques must stand by and watch as the Nazis take away everything he holds dear. Everything except his last beacon of hope: his beloved bookshop, La Page Cachée.

But when a young woman and her child knock on his door one night and beg for refuge, he knows his only option is to risk it all once more to save a life�

Modern day: Juliette and her husband have finally made it to France on the romantic getaway of her dreams—but as the days pass, all she discovers is quite how far they’ve grown apart. She’s craving a new adventure, so when she happens across a tiny, abandoned shop with a for-sale sign in the window, it feels fated.

And she’s about to learn that the forgotten bookshop hides a lot more than meets the eye�

A heartbreaking tale of love and loss in war, perfect for fans of Kate Quinn and Rachel Hore.]]>
367 Daisy Wood 0008525242 Jane 0 4.10 2022 The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris
author: Daisy Wood
name: Jane
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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The Magus 16286 The Magus is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, where he befriends a local millionaire. The friendship soon evolves into a deadly game, in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas finds that he must fight not only for his sanity but for his very survival.]]> 656 John Fowles 0316296198 Jane 0 to-read 4.06 1965 The Magus
author: John Fowles
name: Jane
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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The Night Before Christmas 196970 32 Clement Clarke Moore 0399231900 Jane 0 4.39 1823 The Night Before Christmas
author: Clement Clarke Moore
name: Jane
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1823
rating: 0
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Cutting for Stone 3591262
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
(front flap)]]>
560 Abraham Verghese 0375414495 Jane 0 to-read 4.32 2009 Cutting for Stone
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Jane
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]>
303 Percival Everett Jane 0 to-read 4.47 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Jane
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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The Nightingale 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]>
564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Jane 0 to-read 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Jane
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]>
337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Jane 0 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Jane
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)]]> 46756 Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.]]> 389 Margaret Atwood Jane 0 to-read 4.01 2003 Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Jane
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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The Education of Little Tree 116236 216 Forrest Carter 0826328091 Jane 0 4.11 1976 The Education of Little Tree
author: Forrest Carter
name: Jane
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1)]]> 10818853 Ěý
Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

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

This book is intended for mature audiences.]]>
356 E.L. James 1612130291 Jane 0 3.68 2011 Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1)
author: E.L. James
name: Jane
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith]]> 10847
A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.]]>
400 Jon Krakauer 0330419129 Jane 0 to-read 4.01 2003 Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Jane
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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The Shipping News 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]>
337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Jane 0 3.88 1993 The Shipping News
author: Annie Proulx
name: Jane
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation]]> 8600 209 Lynne Truss 1592402038 Jane 0 3.86 2003 Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
author: Lynne Truss
name: Jane
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1)]]> 43448 Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror! It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake—a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father. So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic. Just for a little while. But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work—children who—one by one—must be destroyed.... 'Way upstairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent struggling to stay alive....']]> 389 V.C. Andrews 0743496310 Jane 0 3.84 1979 Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1)
author: V.C. Andrews
name: Jane
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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Jitterbug Perfume 8682 Jitterbug Perfume is an epic, which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn't conclude until nine o'clock tonight [Paris time]. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle is actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.]]> 342 Tom Robbins 1842430351 Jane 0 4.24 1984 Jitterbug Perfume
author: Tom Robbins
name: Jane
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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The Agony and the Ecstasy 321552 776 Irving Stone 0451171357 Jane 0 4.08 1958 The Agony and the Ecstasy
author: Irving Stone
name: Jane
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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Doctor Zhivago 130440
Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.]]>
592 Boris Pasternak 0679774386 Jane 0 4.03 1957 Doctor Zhivago
author: Boris Pasternak
name: Jane
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders]]> 105992 687 Vincent Bugliosi 0393322238 Jane 0 4.05 1974 Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
author: Vincent Bugliosi
name: Jane
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales]]> 407429 A revisionist storyteller provides his mad, hilarious versions of children's favorite tales in this unique and riotous collection.

A long time ago, people used to tell magical stories of wonder and enchantment. Those stories were called Fairy Tales.

Those stories are not in this book. The stories in this book are Fairly Stupid Tales.

I mean, what else would you call a story like "Goldilocks and the Three Elephants"? This girl walking through the woods smells Peanut Porridge Cooking. She decides to break into the Elephants' house, eat the porridge, sit in the chairs, and sleep in the beds. But when she gets in the house she can't climb up on Baby Elephant's chair because it's much too big. And she can't climb on Papa Elephant's chair because it's much much too big. So she goes home. The End.

And if you don't think that's fairly stupid, you should read "Little Red Riding Shorts" or maybe "The Stinky Cheese Man."

In fact, you should definitely go read the stories now, because the rest of this description just kind of goes on and on and doesn't really say anything. I stuck it here so it would fill up the page and make it look like I really knew what I was talking about. So stop now. I mean it. Quit reading this. Open the book. If you read this last sentence, it won't tell you anything.

Signed,
Jack (Narrator)
Up the Hill
Fairy Tale Forest
1992


Story List:
- Chicken Licken
- The Princess and the Bowling Ball
- The Really Ugly Duckling
- The Other Frog Prince
- Little Red Running Shorts
- Jack's Bean Problem (including Giant Story / Jack's Story)
- Cinderummpelstiltskin (Or The Girl Who Really Blew It)
- The Tortoise and the Hair
- The Stinky Cheese Man

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: It has been determined that these tales are fairly stupid and probably dangerous to your health.

Edition MSRP: $17âąâą US (ISBN 0-670-84487-X)]]>
52 Jon Scieszka 067084487X Jane 0 4.20 1992 The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales
author: Jon Scieszka
name: Jane
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities]]> 67920 481 Flora Rheta Schreiber 0446359408 Jane 0 3.99 1973 Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
author: Flora Rheta Schreiber
name: Jane
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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Lady Chatterley’s Lover 32049 376 D.H. Lawrence 039460430X Jane 0 3.56 1928 Lady Chatterley’s Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Jane
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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King Lear 12938
The play tells us about families struggling between greed and cruelty, on the one hand, and support and consolation, on the other. Emotions are extreme, magnified to gigantic proportions. We also see old age portrayed in all its vulnerability, pride, and, perhaps, wisdom—one reason this most devastating of Shakespeare’s tragedies is also perhaps his most moving.

The authoritative edition of King Lear from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

-Scene-by-scene plot summaries

-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases

-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language

-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books

-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Susan Snyder

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.]]>
339 William Shakespeare Jane 0 3.91 1605 King Lear
author: William Shakespeare
name: Jane
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1605
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog]]> 12691
Marley quickly grew into an uncontrollable ninety-seven-pound steamroller of a Labrador retriever. Expelled from obedience school, even the tranquillisers prescribed by the vet couldn't stop him.

Yet through the chaos and the hilarity, he won hearts and remained a steadfast model of devotion to his family, even when they were at their wits' end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms.]]>
291 John Grogan 0739461192 Jane 0 4.14 2005 Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog
author: John Grogan
name: Jane
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories]]> 251688 Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's.

In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's... And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveler, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

Also included are three of Capote's best-known stories:
� House of Flowers - Ottilie is entranced by a beautiful young man, and leaves her life and friends to live with him and his old grandmother, who seems to hate her.
� A Diamond Guitar - Hear the story of the prized possession of a younger prison inmate, a rhinestone-studded guitar.
� A Christmas Memory - A poignant tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.]]>
142 Truman Capote Jane 0 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Jane
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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My Ăntonia 17150 219 Willa Cather 1583485090 Jane 0 3.81 1918 My Ăntonia
author: Willa Cather
name: Jane
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1918
rating: 0
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Heidi (Heidi, #1-2) 93 352 Johanna Spyri 0753454947 Jane 0 4.02 1880 Heidi (Heidi, #1-2)
author: Johanna Spyri
name: Jane
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1880
rating: 0
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The Glass Menagerie 92517
The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by the editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Robert Bray, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes."
(back cover)]]>
104 Tennessee Williams 0811214044 Jane 0 3.73 1945 The Glass Menagerie
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Jane
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)]]> 40604658
Until something goes wrong. . . .

In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller.]]>
450 Michael Crichton 0307763056 Jane 0 4.38 1990 Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)
author: Michael Crichton
name: Jane
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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Much Ado About Nothing 12957 Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid.]]> 249 William Shakespeare Jane 0 4.06 1598 Much Ado About Nothing
author: William Shakespeare
name: Jane
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1598
rating: 0
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ShĹŤgun (Asian Saga, #1) 402093
Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, ShĹŤgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, ShĹŤgun is, as the New York Times put it, "...not only something you read--you live it." Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: ShĹŤgun.]]>
1152 James Clavell Jane 0 4.38 1975 ShĹŤgun (Asian Saga, #1)
author: James Clavell
name: Jane
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)]]> 2
Harry has had enough. He is beginning to think he must do something, anything, to change his situation, when the summer holidays come to an end in a very dramatic fashion. What Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down...]]>
912 J.K. Rowling Jane 0 4.50 2003 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Jane
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2)]]> 49041 There is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13 9780316160193 here.

I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect - not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place.

I FELT LIKE I WAS TRAPPED IN ONE OF THOSE TERRIFYING NIGHTMARES, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough.... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

FOR BELLA SWAN THERE IS ONE THING more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning....

LEGIONS OF READERS ENTRANCED BY THE New York Times bestseller Twilight are hungry for the continuing story of star-crossed lovers Bell and Edward. In New Moon, Stephanie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural spin. passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality.]]>
563 Stephenie Meyer 0316160199 Jane 0 3.61 2006 New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2)
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Jane
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful]]> 32087 The first two memoirs in the New York Times-bestselling series from an English veterinarian--and the basis for the Masterpiece series on PBS.

All Creatures Great and Small: In the rolling dales of Yorkshire--a simple, rural region of Northern England--a young veterinarian from Sunderland joins a new practice. A stranger in an unfamiliar land, James Herriot must quickly learn the odd dialect and humorous ways of the locals, master outdated equipment, and do his best to mend, treat, and heal pets and livestock alike.

All Things Bright and Beautiful: After his first day on the job, Herriot's mentor warns him that the life of a country veterinarian is full of small triumphs and big disasters, but that he'd never be bored. From night visits to drafty barns during freezing Northern England winters to the beautiful vitality of rural life in the summertime to the colorful menagerie of animals--and their owners--that pass through his office, Herriot experiences new challenges and joys every day. In these pages, Herriot trains under his eccentric boss in a rustic English village, courts the woman that becomes his wife, and meets the people he would come to write about for a lifetime.

This witty and heartwarming collection, based on the author's own experiences, became an international success, winning over animal lovers everywhere. Perhaps better than any other writer, Herriot reveals the ties that bind us to the creatures in our lives.

Praise for All Creatures Great and Small:

"One of the funniest and most likeable books around." --The Atlantic

"Refreshingly original . . . Hilarious, touching, athletic and warming . . . Dr. Herriot's characters . . . rival any from British fiction." �Los Angeles Times]]>
820 James Herriot 1567313450 Jane 0 4.31 1972 All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful
author: James Herriot
name: Jane
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1972
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<![CDATA[Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America]]> 1869
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.]]>
240 Barbara Ehrenreich 0805063897 Jane 0 3.65 2001 Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Jane
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2001
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The Jungle 41681
When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary.

The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905.
It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.

A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.]]>
335 Upton Sinclair 1884365302 Jane 0 3.77 1906 The Jungle
author: Upton Sinclair
name: Jane
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1906
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A Light in the Attic 30118 Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?...This 20th anniversary of Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic includes a CD of highlights from his Grammy Award-winning album.

Here in the attic of Shel Silverstein you will find Backward Bill, Sour Face Ann, the Meehoo with an Exactlywatt, and the Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. You will talk with Broiled Face, and find out what happens when Somebody steals your knees, you get caught by the Quick-Digesting Gink, a Mountain snores, and They Put a Brassiere on the Camel.

From the creator of the beloved poetry collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, here is another wondrous book of poems and drawings.]]>
176 Shel Silverstein 0060513063 Jane 0 4.36 1981 A Light in the Attic
author: Shel Silverstein
name: Jane
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1981
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<![CDATA[Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3)]]> 428263 "BELLA?"
Edward's soft voice came from behind me. I turned to see him spring lightly up the porch steps, his hair windblown from running. He pulled me into his arms at once, just like he had in the parking lot, and kissed me again.
This kiss frightened me. There was too much tension, too strong an edge to the way his lips crushed mine - like he was afraid we had only so much time left to us.

As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob - knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?

READERS CAPTIVATED BY Twilight AND New Moon will eagerly devour Eclipse, the much-anticipated third book in Stephenie Meyer's riveting vampire love saga.]]>
629 Stephenie Meyer 0316160202 Jane 0 3.73 2007 Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3)
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Jane
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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Tess of the D’Urbervilles 32261 here and here.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her â€cousinâ€� Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.]]>
518 Thomas Hardy Jane 0 3.83 1891 Tess of the D’Urbervilles
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Jane
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1891
rating: 0
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Sophie’s Choice 228560 562 William Styron 0679736379 Jane 0 4.18 1979 Sophie’s Choice
author: William Styron
name: Jane
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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The Raven 264158 This volume reprints all 26 of Doré's detailed, masterly engravings from a rare 19th-century edition of the poem. Relevant lines from the poem are printed on facing pages and the complete text is also included. Admirers of Doré will find ample evidence here of his characteristic ability to capture the mood and meaning of a work of literature in striking imagery; lovers of The Raven will delight in seeing its mournful musing on love and loss given dramatic pictorial form.]]> 64 Edgar Allan Poe 0486290727 Jane 0 4.31 1845 The Raven
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Jane
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1845
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)]]> 8921 256 Arthur Conan Doyle Jane 0 4.15 1901 The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Jane
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1901
rating: 0
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The Story of My Life 821611 240 Helen Keller 0553213873 Jane 0 4.08 1902 The Story of My Life
author: Helen Keller
name: Jane
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1902
rating: 0
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Their Eyes Were Watching God 37415 238 Zora Neale Hurston 0061120065 Jane 0 3.98 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: Jane
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time]]> 49436 349 Greg Mortenson 0143038257 Jane 0 3.66 2006 Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
author: Greg Mortenson
name: Jane
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury]]> 43070 Calvin and Hobbes continues to entertain with dazzling cartooning and tremendous humor.

Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes has been a worldwide favorite since its introduction in 1985. The strip follows the richly imaginative adventures of Calvin and his trusty tiger, Hobbes. Whether a poignant look at serious family issues or a round of time-travel (with the aid of a well-labeled cardboard box), Calvin and Hobbes will astound and delight you.

Beginning with the day Hobbes sprang into Calvin's tuna fish trap, the first two Calvin and Hobbes collections, Calvin and Hobbes and Something Under The Bed Is Drooling, are brought together in this treasury. Including black-and-white dailies and color Sundays, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes also features an original full-color 16-page story.]]>
256 Bill Watterson 0836218051 Jane 0 4.64 1988 The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury
author: Bill Watterson
name: Jane
average rating: 4.64
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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Schindler’s List 375013 Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning novel recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, an Aryan who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, who conrinually defied and outwitted the SS, and who was transformed by the war into an angel of mercy. It is an unforgettable tale, all the more extraordinary for being true.]]> 429 Thomas Keneally 0340606517 Jane 0 4.34 1982 Schindler’s List
author: Thomas Keneally
name: Jane
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Roots: The Saga of an American Family]]> 546018 her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called "the African." She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the "Kamby Bolongo" and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America.

Still vividly remembering the stories after he grew up and became a writer, Haley began to search for documentation that might authenticate the narrative. It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across three continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of "the African"—Kunta Kinte—but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.

Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where his great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him—slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects—and one author.

But Haley has done more than recapture the history of his own family. As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 25,000,000 Americans of African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. But Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all people and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.]]>
729 Alex Haley 0440174643 Jane 0 4.44 1976 Roots: The Saga of an American Family
author: Alex Haley
name: Jane
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)]]> 22034
Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.]]>
448 Mario Puzo Jane 0 4.39 1969 The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)
author: Mario Puzo
name: Jane
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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Eat, Pray, Love 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

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

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]>
368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Jane 0 3.64 2006 Eat, Pray, Love
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Jane
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
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<![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Jane 0 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Jane
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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The Gift of the Magi 143534 O. Henry's classic tale of the wisest gifts of Christmas is itself a gift to share and treasure.

In a shabby New York flat, Della sobs as she counts the few coins she has saved to buy a Christmas present for her husband, Jim. One dollar and eighty-seven cents is all the money she has in the world. A gift worthy of her devotion will require a great sacrifice: selling her long, beautiful hair. Set in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, this classic piece of American literature tells the story of a young couple and the value of love.

Jim, meanwhile, has made a sacrifice for Della that is no less difficult. As they exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, the discovery of what each has done fills them with despair, until they realize that the true gifts of Christmas can be found more readily in their humble apartment than in any fine store. Set in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, this classic piece of American literature tells the story of a young couple and the value of love.

O. Henry paints a masterly portrait of unfaltering love, a haven from the harsh world outside. The poignancy of his story is captured in Zwerger's eloquent art, wherein every glance, every gesture, tells a subtle truth.]]>
26 O. Henry 141693586X Jane 0 4.10 1905 The Gift of the Magi
author: O. Henry
name: Jane
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1905
rating: 0
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The Secret Life of Bees 37435 The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.]]> 302 Sue Monk Kidd 0142001740 Jane 0 4.10 2001 The Secret Life of Bees
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Jane
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull 71728
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is no ordinary bird. He believes it is every gull's right to fly, to reach the ultimate freedom of challenge and discovery, finding his greatest reward in teaching younger gulls the joy of flight and the power of dreams. The special 20th anniversary release of this spiritual classic!]]>
112 Richard Bach 0743278909 Jane 0 3.87 1970 Jonathan Livingston Seagull
author: Richard Bach
name: Jane
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[How the Grinch Stole Christmas!]]> 113946 "The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason."

Dr. Seuss's small-hearted Grinch ranks right up there with Scrooge when it comes to the crankiest, scowling holiday grumps of all time.

For 53 years, the Grinch has lived in a cave on the side of a mountain, looming above the Whos in Whoville. The noisy holiday preparations and infernal singing of the happy little citizens below annoy him to no end. The Grinch decides this frivolous merriment must stop. His "wonderful, awful" idea is to don a Santa outfit, strap heavy antlers on his poor, quivering dog Max, construct a makeshift sleigh, head down to Whoville, and strip the chafingly cheerful Whos of their Yuletide glee once and for all.

Looking quite out of place and very disturbing in his makeshift Santa get-up, the Grinch slithers down chimneys with empty bags and stealing the Whos' presents, their food, even the logs from their humble Who-fires. He takes the ramshackle sleigh to Mt. Crumpit to dump it and waits to hear the sobs of the Whos when they wake up and discover the trappings of Christmas have disappeared. Imagine the Whos' dismay when they discover the evil-doings of Grinch in his anti-Santa guise. But what is that sound? It's not sobbing, but singing! Children simultaneously adore and fear this triumphant, twisted Seussian testimonial to the undaunted cheerfulness of the Whos, the transcendent nature of joy, and of course, the growth potential of a heart that's two sizes too small.

This holiday classic is perfect for reading aloud to your favorite little Whos.]]>
64 Dr. Seuss 0007173040 Jane 0 4.38 1957 How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
author: Dr. Seuss
name: Jane
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1957
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The Prophet 2547 The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.

The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.]]>
127 Kahlil Gibran 000100039X Jane 0 4.27 1923 The Prophet
author: Kahlil Gibran
name: Jane
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1923
rating: 0
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1622 298 William Shakespeare 0743477545 Jane 0 3.95 1595 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
author: William Shakespeare
name: Jane
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1595
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Animal Farm / 1984 5472 This edition features George Orwell’s best-known novels�1984 and Animal Farm—with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.

In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith joins a secret revolutionary organisation called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

Animal Farm is Orwell’s classic satire of the Russian Revolution - an account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones’s Manor Farm into Animal Farm - a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. But are they? AUTHOR: George Orwell (1903-1950) was born in India and served with the Imperial Police in Burma before joining the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was the author of six novels as well as numerous essays and nonfiction works.]]>
400 George Orwell Jane 0 4.29 1949 Animal Farm / 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Jane
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1949
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<![CDATA[The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States]]> 285500
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued a unanimous declaration: the thirteen North American colonies would be the thirteen United States of America, free and independent of Great Britain. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration set forth the terms of a new form of government with the following words: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Framed in 1787 and in effect since March 1789, the Constitution of the United States of America fulfilled the promise of the Declaration by establishing a republican form of government with separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791. Among the rights guaranteed by these amendments are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to trial by jury. Written so that it could be adapted to endure for years to come, the Constitution has been amended only seventeen times since 1791 and has lasted longer than any other written form of government.]]>
112 Founding Fathers 0553214829 Jane 0 4.41 1776 The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States
author: Founding Fathers
name: Jane
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1776
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Where the Red Fern Grows 10365 Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann—a boy and his two dogs...

A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river bottoms of Cherokee County. Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains—and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley. Glory and victory were coming to them, but sadness waited too. And close by was the strange and wonderful power that's only found...

Where the Red Fern Grows—An exciting tale of love and adventure you'll never forget.

(from the back cover)]]>
272 Wilson Rawls 0375806814 Jane 0 4.11 1961 Where the Red Fern Grows
author: Wilson Rawls
name: Jane
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1961
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Sense and Sensibility 14935 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141439662

'The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!'

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

This edition includes explanatory notes, textual variants between the first and second editions, and Tony Tanner's introduction to the original Penguin Classic edition.]]>
409 Jane Austen 0141439661 Jane 0 4.10 1811 Sense and Sensibility
author: Jane Austen
name: Jane
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1811
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<![CDATA[The Little House Collection (Little House, #1-9)]]> 114345
The nine books in the timeless Little House series tell the story of Laura’s real childhood as an American pioneer, and are cherished by readers of all generations. They offer a unique glimpse into life on the American frontier, and tell the heartwarming, unforgettable story of a loving family.

Little House in the Big Woods

Meet the Ingalls family—Laura, Ma, Pa, Mary, and baby Carrie, who all live in a cozy log cabin in the big woods of Wisconsin in the 1870s. Though many of their neighbors are wolves and panthers and bears, the woods feel like home, thanks to Ma’s homemade cheese and butter and the joyful sounds of Pa’s fiddle.

Farmer Boy

As Laura Ingalls is growing up in a little house in Kansas, Almanzo Wilder lives on a big farm in New York. He and his brothers and sisters work hard from dawn to supper to help keep their family farm running. Almanzo wishes for just one thing—his very own horse—but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

Little House on the Prairie

When Pa decides to sell the log house in the woods, the family packs up and moves from Wisconsin to Kansas, where Pa builds them their little house on the prairie! Living on the farm is different from living in the woods, but Laura and her family are kept busy and are happy with the promise of their new life on the prairie.

On the Banks of Plum Creek

The Ingalls family lives in a sod house beside Plum Creek in Minnesota until Pa builds them a new house made of sawed lumber. The money for the lumber will come from their first wheat crop. But then, just before the wheat is ready to harvest, a strange glittering cloud fills the sky, blocking out the sun. Millions of grasshoppers cover the field and everything on the farm, and by the end of a week, there is no wheat crop left.

By the Shores of Silver Lake

Pa Ingalls heads west to the unsettled wilderness of the Dakota Territory. When Ma, Mary, Laura, Carrie, and baby Grace join him, they become the first settlers in the town of De Smet. Pa starts work on the first building of the brand new town, located on the shores of Silver Lake.

The Long Winter

The first terrible storm comes to the barren prairie in October. Then it snows almost without stopping until April. With snow piled as high as the rooftops, it’s impossible for trains to deliver supplies, and the townspeople, including Laura and her family, are starving. Young Almanzo Wilder, who has settled in the town, risks his life to save the town.

Little Town on the Prairie

De Smet is rejuvenated with the beginning of spring. But in addition to the parties, socials, and “literaries,� work must continue. Laura spends many hours sewing shirts to help Ma and Pa get enough money to send Mary to a college for the blind. But in the evenings, Laura makes time for a new caller, Almanzo Wilder.

These Happy Golden Years

Laura must continue to earn money to keep Mary in her college for the blind, so she gets a job as a teacher. It’s not easy, and for the first time she’s living away from home. But it gets a little better every Friday, when Almanzo picks Laura up to take her back home for the weekend. Though Laura is still young, she and Almanzo are officially courting, and she knows that this is a time for new beginnings.

The First Four Years

Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder have just been married! They move to a small prairie homestead to start their lives together. But each year brings new challenges—storms, sickness, fire, and unpaid debts. These first four years call for courage, strength, and a great deal of determination. And through it all, Laura and Almanzo still have their love, which only grows when baby Rose arrives.]]>
2700 Laura Ingalls Wilder 0060529962 Jane 0 4.35 1971 The Little House Collection (Little House, #1-9)
author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
name: Jane
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1971
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins � someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects� Harry Potter himself!]]>
352 J.K. Rowling Jane 0 4.42 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Jane
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
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Goodnight Moon 32929
In this classic of children's literature, beloved by generations of readers and listeners, the quiet poetry of the words and the gentle, lulling illustrations combine to make a perfect book for the end of the day.]]>
32 Margaret Wise Brown 0060775858 Jane 0 4.31 1947 Goodnight Moon
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Jane
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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