A Whole Bunch of Marvelous Fiction
Explore a whole bunch of marvelous fiction books! Discover captivating reads and must-have titles in this curated list of top-notch fiction.
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The Choice
by Nicholas Sparks
Resisting romantic commitments while enjoying a life of boating, swimming, and barbecues, Travis Parker is unable to deny his attraction to new next-door neighbor Gabby Holland, a defensive woman whose long-time boyfriend further challenges Travis's growing feelings. By the author of The Notebook.
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World Made by Hand
by James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler makes an imaginative leap into the future, a few decades hence, and shows what life may be like after these coming catastrophes--the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and resource wars--converge.
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Desperation Moon
by Ken Douglas
When racecar driver Sara Hackett arrives home from a desert road race, she finds her niece and another girl have been kidnapped and a dead man has turned up in her bed. The kidnappers want a million dollars she doesn't have or they say they'll kill the kids.
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Songs Without Words
by Ann Packer
Chronicles the long-time friendship between Liz and Sarabeth, a relationship that is forged in childhood and sustained through the decades that follow, until both women are forced to reexamine their lives in the wake of a devastating crisis.
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Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, on which survival is a daily struggle, eccentric Mr. Watts, the only white man left after the other teachers flee, spends his day reading to the local children from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations.
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Life Class
by Pat Barker
A novel capturing the devastation and psychological trauma of the Great War on every level of British society focuses on a group of young art students, including Paul Tarrant, a Red Cross volunteer, who discovers that life, love, and art will never be the
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Pontoon
by Garrison Keillor
Astonished to learn that her impeccable mother led a secret life marked by her passionate love for a Las Vegas man and a private commitment to pleasure, Barbara elects to end destructive patterns in her own life while honoring her mother's final wishes, an effort that coincides with a veterinarian's efforts to marry her reluctant fianc.
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The Uncommon Reader
by Alan Bennett
From the author of The History Boys and The Clothes They Stood Up In A deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading. When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, Bennett describes the Queen's transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.
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Bulls Island
by Dorothea Benton Frank
A satisfying tale of honor, chance, and star-crossed love infused with Southern wit, grace, and charm from the New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank After twenty years, Elizabeth "Betts" McGee has finally managed to put her past behind her. She hasn't been home to beautiful South Carolina and untouched Bulls Island since the tragic night that ended her engagement to Charleston's golden boy, J. D. Langley. And why is that? Really, this is the story of two old Southern families. The Langley family has more money than the Morgan Stanley Bank. And they think they have more class. The Barrett family made their nineteenth-century fortune in a less distinguished manner—corner grocery stores and liquor stores. It's no surprise that when J.D. and Betts fall in love and decide to marry their parents are none too pleased. And when the love affair comes to an end, everyone is ready to place blame. Now twenty years have gone by and Betts, a top investment bank executive, must leave her comfortable life in New York City to return to the home she thought she'd left behind forever. But spearheading the most important project of her career puts her back in contact with everything she's tried so hard to forget: her estranged sister, her father, J.D., and her past. Once she's home, can Betts keep the secret that threatens all she holds dear? Or will her fear of the past wreck her future happiness? And what about that crazy gator? All will be revealed on Bulls Island.
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The Maytrees
by Annie Dillard
Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems. In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes up painting. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk. In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts nature's vastness and nearness. She presents willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Annie Dillard's original body of work.
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The Secret River
by Kate Grenville
Moving between the slums of nineteenth-century London and the convict colonies of Australia, a compelling historical novel chronicles the lives and fortunes of the early pioneers of New South Wales, in a volume based on the author's own family history. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
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Mistress of the Art of Death
by Ariana Franklin
Sent to medieval Cambridge in order to exonerate Jewish prisoners who have been accused of murdering four children, University of Salerno medical expert Adelia discovers that the killer may be a former crusader.
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Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
by Diana Gabaldon
From the exquisitely talented and award-winning author of the Outlander saga comes this latest addition as Lord John Grey, an 18th-century Englishman, pursues a deadly family secret as well as a clandestine love affair.
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The Gathering
by Anne Enright
A large Irish family is haunted by the past -- something that happened in their grandmother's house in the winter of 1968.
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Skeletons at the Feast
by Chris Bohjalian
Capturing both the power and poignancy of romance and the terror and tragedy of war, Bohjalian's latest work puts a moving face on one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies.
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No One Belongs Here More Than You
by Miranda July
Presents a collection of short works featuring sympathetic protagonists whose inherent sensitivities render them particularly vulnerable to unexpected events.
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Bridge of Sighs
by Richard Russo
After sixty years of living in the upstate New York town of Thomaston, Louis Charles and his wife of forty years, Sarah, prepare for a trip to Italy to visit Louis' childhood friend, an artist who had fled his hometown many years earlier.
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The Tenderness of Wolves
by Stef Penney
A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom,The Tenderness of Wolveswas long-listed for the Orange Prize in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly the Whitbread) Book of the Year. The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the untimely death of the previous owner. A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs. Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield that launches the investigation. Within hours she will regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime suspect. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime or exploit it? One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape -- home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the ages.
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Them
by Nathan McCall
The author of the bestselling memoir "Makes Me Wanna Holler" presents a profound debut novel that captures the dynamics of class and race in today's urban communities.
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The Ghost
by Robert Harris
Having served as Great Britain's longest-enduring prime minister, Adam Lang accepts a large cash advance to write a tell-all memoir of his life and controversial political career, an effort for which he hires a ghostwriter who uncovers dangerous secrets about the former leader's term.
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The Lost Sailors
by Jean-Claude Izzo
"Izzo digs deep into what makes men weep."- Time Out New York In this moving investigation into the human comedy, the men aboard an impounded freighter in the port of Marseilles are divided: Wait for the money owed them, or accept their fate and abandon ship? Captain Abdul Aziz is determined to save his charge and do the right thing by his men. In these close quarters charged with physical and emotional tension, each life begins to resemble a chapter in the complex, colorful, and tragic story of the Mediterranean Sea itself-rich with romance, legend, passion, and drama.