Showing 1 - 20 of 35  There are a total of 84 valid entries on the list.

1. 1984

Book cover for "1984"
Star rating for 1984
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."...
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 "The Autistic Brain"
Star rating for The Autistic Brain
Description:

Temple Grandin may be the most famous person with autism, a condition that affects 1 in 88 children. Since her birth in 1947, our understanding of it has undergone a great transformation, leading to more hope than ever before that we may finally learn the causes of and treatments for autism.
Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the advances in neuroimaging and genetic research that link brain science

...
Book cover for "Bel canto"
Star rating for Bel canto
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked,...
Book cover for "The bell jar"
Star rating for The bell jar
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Esther Greenwood, a talented and successful writer, finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt, as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take womens aspirations seriously. This extraordinary work--echoing Plath's own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s--chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful,...
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the...
Book cover for "The book thief"
Star rating for The book thief
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
Book cover for "Catch-22"
Star rating for Catch-22
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Presents the contemporary classic depicting the struggles of a United States airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II airbase. Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest--and most celebrated--books of all time. In recent years it has been named to "best novels" lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy...
Book cover for "The catcher in the rye"
Star rating for The catcher in the rye
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school.
Book cover for "Cat's cradle"
Star rating for Cat's cradle
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
A young writer decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb
Book cover for "The chaperone"
Star rating for The chaperone
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A novel about the friendship between an adolescent, pre-movie-star Louise Brooks, and the 36-year-old woman who chaperones her to New York City for a summer, in 1922, and how it changes both their lives"--
Book cover for "The color purple"
Star rating for The color purple
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a Southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years. "Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence"--Back cover.
Book cover for "Defending Jacob"
Star rating for Defending Jacob
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. When a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: his fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. As the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own--between loyalty and justice, between the truth and allegation, between...
Book cover for "Eat, pray, love"
Star rating for Eat, pray, love
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Traces the author's decision to quit her job and travel the world for a year after suffering a midlife crisis and divorce, a journey that took her to three places in her quest to explore her own nature and learn the art of spiritual balance.
Book cover for "Fahrenheit 451"
Star rating for Fahrenheit 451
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and...
Book cover for "The glass castle"
Star rating for The glass castle
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities. In the tradition of Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club" and Rick Bragg's "All Over But the Shouting," Jeannette Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and...
Book cover for "Gone girl"
Star rating for Gone girl
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick's wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?
Book cover for "The great Gatsby"
Star rating for The great Gatsby
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
A young man newly rich tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this...
Book cover for "How children succeed"
Star rating for How children succeed
Author:
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
Challenges conventional views about standardized testing to argue that success is more determined by self-discipline, and describes the work of pioneering researchers and educators who have enabled effective new teaching methods.
Book cover for "Invisible man"
Star rating for Invisible man
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. "Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity--powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto". "Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list...