Reading Adventures 2024 - SER


Showing 1 - 20 of 40  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 Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals.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 "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:
Envisioning a summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl.
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 "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 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 lacuna"
Star rating for The lacuna
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds -- Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s -- and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the twentieth century's most tumultuous events"--Provided by publisher. Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds--in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America,...
Book cover for "Last bus to wisdom"
Star rating for Last bus to wisdom
Author:
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"In the spirit of The Bartender's Tale, a lively and poignant coming-of-age story about a boy and his great-uncle on a cross-country odyssey. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Doig's beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old's imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for "female trouble" in the summer of 1951, all she...
Book cover for "The last days of Café Leila"
Star rating for The last days of Café Leila
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"When Noor returns to her native Iran for the first time in thirty years, with her very American daughter, Lily, so much about her homeland is different. But Café Leila--the restaurant Noor's family has run for three generations--hasn't changed. A neighborhood café in Tehran is at the center of this powerful and transporting story of love, family, friendship, and homecoming told against the backdrop of Iran's rich, yet tragic, history"--
Book cover for "The last train to Key West"
Star rating for The last train to Key West
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"In 1935 three women are forever changed when one of the most powerful hurricanes in history barrels toward the Florida Keys. For the tourists traveling on Henry Flagler's legendary Overseas Railroad, Labor Day weekend is an opportunity to forget the economic depression gripping the nation. But one person's paradise can be another's prison, and Key West-native Helen Berner yearns to escape. After the Cuban Revolution of 1933 leaves Mirta Perez's family...
Book cover for "Life of Pi"
Star rating for Life of Pi
Author:
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.
Book cover for "Like water for chocolate"
Star rating for Like water for chocolate
Series:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Despite the fact that she has fallen in love with a young man, Tita, the youngest of three daughters born to a tyrannical rancher, must obey tradition and remain single and at home to care for her mother.
Book cover for "The Lincoln Highway"
Star rating for The Lincoln Highway
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon...