best fiction books according to me
Discover the best fiction books handpicked just for you! Explore captivating stories, must-read novels, and top-rated fiction titles in this curated list.
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God's Debris
by Scott Adams
In God's Debris, best-selling author and creator of Dilbert Scott Adams fashioned a thought-provoking exploration of life's great mysteries (everything from quantum physics and God to psychic phenomena and dating) that quickly captured the attention and imaginations of readers everywhere. The intriguing story of a deliveryman who meets the world's smartest person and learns the secret of reality is threaded with a variety of hypnosis techniques that Adams, a certified hypnotist, used to induce a feeling of euphoric enlightenment in readers to mirror the main character's feelings as he discovers the true nature of the universe.Launched to coincide with the hardcover publication of its sequel, The Religion War (see opposite page), this first paperback edition of God's Debris will soon make the leap to a broader audience. As Adams designed it, the book will "make your brain spin around inside your skull" and drive readers toward The Religion War as they seek to confirm or deny the dizzying impressions and chaotic memories of reading God's Debris.The book provides one of the most compelling visions of reality ever experienced on the printed page. Along the way, readers will enjoy the Thought Experiment: Trying to discover what's wrong with the sage's explanation of reality. This is a book, as Adams says, to be shared and savored with smart friends.
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Chinese Takeout
by Arthur Nersesian
From the author of the cult classic The Fuck-Up comes a vicious new tale of art, drugs, love, and death on the Lower East Side. Orloff Trenchant is a painter who sells books on West 4th Street in Manhattan and is obsessed with mastering his craft. Desperate for cash, Or agrees to take a commission no one else will touch: he has three weeks to carve a headstone for a recently deceased restaurateur -- a Chinese takeout box. As Or attempts to make his deadline, he navigates among a toxic mix of fellow artists, struggling gallery owners, bloodsucking art dealers, his politically active friends, and a haunting addict poet whose life is more out of control than Or's own. Nersesian's prose is sparkling and hypnotic in this brutal and comic story that will make you wonder if life and art are two different things.
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The Fuck Up
by Arthur Nersesian
Doesn't the title say it all? After a series of set-backs, an unnamed slacker pretends to be gay to get a job which launches him on a darkly hilarious odyssey through New York City grit.
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The Losers' Club
by Richard Perez
WHAT IS LOVE? In the game of love, there are winners and losers. In THE LOSERS' CLUB, Richard Perez tries to answer the eternal question. Set in downtown New York City, THE LOSERS' CLUB tells the story of Martin Sierra, an unlucky writer addicted to the personals. His journey brings us into the East Village, pre-9/11-and in contact with Nikki, his dream woman, who remains unattainable romantically yet becomes his friend and confidant during his illuminating misadventures. Populated with characters and surprises few will ever forget, this energetic, comic novel is as much about a generation (we won't say "X") as it is about a specific time and place.
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
Read the cult-favorite coming of age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic. The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. A years-long #1 New York Times bestseller, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and Best Book for Reluctant Readers, and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.
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Dogrun
by Arthur Nersesian
mary bellanova came home to her east village apartment, cooked dinner, and fought with her boyfriend, primo. but soon mary realized that primo's silence in front of the tv set was more than just one of his bad moods: primo was actually dead. other guys had abandoned mary before,but primo's exit was by far the most unique. and suddenly mary's life -- defined so far by a string of temp jobs and unfinished short stories -- takes off on a tantalizing adventure as she follows a trail of primo's ex-lovers. arthur nersesian, who created a howling new york odyssey in his smash hit the fuck-up, captures the spirit of the city itself -- jolting and full of surprise -- in this powerful new novel edged with black humor and poignancy.
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You Remind Me of Me
by Dan Chaon
With his critically acclaimed Among the Missing and Fitting Ends, award-winning author Dan Chaon proved himself a master of the short story form. He is a writer, observes the Chicago Tribune, who can “convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so.” Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel. You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother’s pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother’s backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaon explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of “ordinary” people.
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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Little New York Bastard
by M. Dylan Raskin
Meet M. Dylan Raskin — "MDR" to friends. At 22, he's the opposite of hip: a working-class college dropout who lives with his mother in Queens — "Flushing-Stinking-Queens," to be precise. It's not that he doesn't like New York, exactly, it's just that lately he's felt more and more at odds with everything — his family, his generation, his hometown, even himself. One day he gets fed up and decides to take his freedom on the road, setting off for Chicago in a quixotic attempt to turn his life around. Little New York Bastard is the story of an outsider for the ages, a mixed-up kid who knows what he wants in life but has no idea how to get it. Raskin's anger is palpable and his wounds are unabashedly raw, and readers will appreciate the immediacy and honesty of his story. Equal parts road story, coming-of-age memoir, and existential manifesto — this debut is in the tradition of cult classics like Youth in Revolt and The Fuck Up.
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven
by Mitch Albom
Eddie dies on his eighty-third birthday in a tragic accident - He awakens in the afterlife where he learns that heaven is where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it.
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The Man in My Basement
by Walter Mosley
To save the home that has belonged to his family for generations, Charles Blakey, a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling around him, agrees to rent out his basement for the summer to a mysterious stranger.
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American Soldier
by Tommy R. Franks
"When war comes, you look for certain special qualities in the people you'll be working with. General Tom Franks embodies those qualities: strength, experience, a keen mind, energy, honor, good humor, and a deep loyalty to his troops and to his country. "Tom Franks is truly a soldier's soldier." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld The Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command from July 2000 through July 2003, General Tommy Franks made history by leading American and Coalition forces to victory in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the decisive battles that launched the war on terrorism. In this riveting memoir, General Franks retraces his journey from a small-town boyhood in Oklahoma and Midland, Texas, through a lifetime of military service -- including his heroic tour as an Artillery officer in Vietnam, where he was wounded three times. A reform-minded Cold War commander and a shrewd tactician during Operation Desert Storm, Franks took command of CENTCOM at the dawn of what he calls a "crease in history" -- becoming the senior American military officer in the most dangerous region on earth. Now, drawing on his own recollections and military records declassified for this book, Franks offers the first true insider's account of the war on terrorism that has changed the world since September 11, 2001. He puts you in the Operations Center for the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom just weeks after 9/11, capturing its uncertain early days and the historic victory that followed. He traces his relationship with the demanding Donald Rumsfeld, as early tensions over the pace of the campaign gave way to a strong and friendly collaboration. When President Bush focused world attention on the threat of Iraq, Franks seized the moment to implement a bold new vision of joint warfare in planning Operation Iraqi Freedom. Rejecting Desert Storm–style massive troop deployment in favor of flexibility and speed, Franks was questioned by the defense establishment -- including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Yet his vision was proven on the ground: Within three weeks, Baghdad had fallen. American Soldier is filled with revelation. Franks describes the covert diplomacy that helped him secure international cooperation for the war, and reveals the role of foreign leaders -- and a critical double agent code-named "April Fool" -- in the most successful military deception since D-Day in 1944. He speaks frankly of intelligence shortcomings that endangered our troops, and of the credible WMD threats -- including eleventh-hour warnings from Arab leaders -- that influenced every planning decision. He offers an unvarnished portrait of the "disruptive and divisive" Washington bureaucracy, and a candid assessment of the war's aftermath. Yet in the end, as American Soldier demonstrates, the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq remain heroic victories -- wars of liberation won by troops whose valor was "unequalled," Franks writes, "by anything in the annals of war." Few individuals have the chance to contribute so much of themselves to the American story as General Tommy Franks. In American Soldier, he captures it all.
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Angels & Demons
by Dan Brown
A novel about a symbologist who discovers the existence of an ancient vendetta against the Catholic Church.