Reading Adventures 2024 - SER


Showing 1 - 20 of 51  There are a total of 409 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The 100-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared"
Star rating for The 100-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Confined to a nursing home and about to turn one hundred, Allan Karlsson, who has a larger-than-life back story as an explosives expert, climbs out of the window in his slippers and embarks on an unforgettable adventure involving thugs, a murderous elephant, and a very friendly hot dog stand operator.
Book cover for "The alchemist"
Star rating for The alchemist
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A special 25th anniversary edition of Paulo Coehlo's extraordinary international bestselling phenomenon--the inspiring spiritual tale of self-discovery that has touched millions of lives around the world. Combing magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical...
Book cover for "All the light we cannot see"
Star rating for All the light we cannot see
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six,...
Book cover for "The American Heiress"
Star rating for The American Heiress
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Be careful what you wish for. Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts', suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money,...
Book cover for "And the mountains echoed"
Star rating for And the mountains echoed
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Presents a story inspired by human love, how people take care of one another, and how choices resonate through subsequent generations. Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was...
Book cover for "Anxious people"
Star rating for Anxious people
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix their own marriage. There's a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about...
Book cover for "Before the coffee gets cold"
Star rating for Before the coffee gets cold
Series:
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"If you could go back, who would you want to meet? In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time. Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be...
Book cover for "Bleaker house"
Star rating for Bleaker house
Description:
"A whimsical blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with wry and indispensable writing advice, Bleaker House is a story of creative struggle that brilliantly captures the self-torture of the writing life. Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but somehow life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that let her spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to...
Book cover for "A brilliant night of stars and ice"
Star rating for A brilliant night of stars and ice
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"Based on the remarkable true story of the Carpathia--the only ship and her legendary captain who answered the distress call of the sinking Titanic. Just after midnight on April 15, 1912, the passenger steamship Carpathia receives a distress signal from the largest passenger liner ever built, RMS Titanic, which is on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York. Captain Arthur Rostron is awakened to an enormous maritime emergency with...
Book cover for "Country of Red Azaleas"
Star rating for Country of Red Azaleas
Description:
A riveting novel about two women—one Serbian, one Bosnian—whose deep friendship spans decades and continents, war and peace, love and estrangement, in the vein of Elena Ferrante and Julia Alvarez.
From the moment Marija walks into Lara's classroom, freshly moved to Serbia from Sarajevo, Lara is enchanted by her vibrant beauty, confidence, and wild energy—and knows that the two are destined to be lifelong friends. Closer than sisters,...
Book cover for "Crazy rich Asians"
Star rating for Crazy rich Asians
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country's most eligible bachelor. On Nick's arm,...
Book cover for "Death on the Nile"
Star rating for Death on the Nile
Series:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Linnet Doyle is young, beautiful, and rich. She's the girl who has everything--including the man her best friend loves. Linnet and her new husband take a cruise on the Nile, where they meet the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It should be an idyllic trip, yet Poirot has a vague, uneasy feeling that something is dangerously amiss.
Book cover for "Djibouti"
Star rating for Djibouti
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:

"Elmore Leonard is in a class of one....The greatest crime writer who ever lived."
—Dennis Lehane

"Elmore Leonard is our greatest crime novelist...the best in the business."
—Washington Post

44 novels and still going strong! The incomparable Elmore Leonard—"The reigning King Daddy of crime writers" (Seattle Times)—is back with Djibouti, a gripping, twisting, playful, and always

...
Book cover for "Euphoria"
Star rating for Euphoria
Author:
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"English anthropologist Andrew Banson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers' deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband, Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen...
Book cover for "The expats"
Star rating for The expats
Series:
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Description:
"An international spy thriller about a former CIA agent who moves with her family to Luxembourg where everything is suspicious and nothing is as it seems"--
Book cover for "A gentleman in Moscow"
Star rating for A gentleman in Moscow
Author:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"In all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight.this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility." - Kirkus Reviews (starred) From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility--a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established...
Book cover for "The good earth"
Star rating for The good earth
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Travel to 1920s China, a time when the last emperor still ruled and the sweeping changes of the twentieth century were distant rumblings, with this timeless, evocative classic tale of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his family as they struggle to survive in the midst of vast political and social upheavals"--
Book cover for "The great divide"
Star rating for The great divide
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, following the intersecting lives of the local families fighting to protect their homeland, the West Indian laborers recruited to dig the waterway, and the white Americans who gained profit and glory for themselves"--
Book cover for "His only wife"
Star rating for His only wife
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"An intelligent and funny debut about a relatable, indomitable heroine: a young seamstress in Ghana who agrees to an arranged marriage, only to realize that some compromises are too extreme to accept, illuminating what it means to be a woman in a rapidly changing world"--
Book cover for "The island of missing trees"
Star rating for The island of missing trees
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers, and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when...