Best of 2007--July to December

Explore the best books from July to December 2007 in this curated list. Discover top literary picks, must-reads, and hidden gems from the second half of 2007.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Cover
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

by J. K. Rowling

At a time when the forces of evil seem to be gaining the upper hand, Harry comes of age in the wizarding world, and must take on and defeat Voldemort--or be killed himself.
A Judgement in Stone Cover
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A Judgement in Stone

by Ruth Rendell

On Valentine's Day, four members of the Coverdale family are murdered by their housekeeper in the space of 15 minutes. When Detective Chief Superintendent arrests Eunice Parchman two weeks later, he discovers a second tragedy: the key to the St. Valentine's Day massacre is a private humiliation Parchman has guarded all her life.
Mister Pip Cover
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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.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian Cover
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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

by Marina Lewycka

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize “A charming comedy of eros . . . A ride that, despite the bumps and curves in the road, never feels anything less than jaunty.” —Los Angeles Times “Charming, poignantly funny.” —The Washington Post Book World 'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.' Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget . . .
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Run Cover
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Run

by Ann Patchett

Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children—all his children—safe. Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. As in her bestselling novel Bel Canto, Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children.
A Thousand Splendid Suns Cover
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A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. “Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.”—Newsweek Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.
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ID: 0099269309
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6-Dec Cover
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6-Dec

by Martin Cruz Smith

The "New York Times" bestseller from the author of "Gorky Park" is now in paperback--a gripping novel of loyalty, betrayal, and intrigue, set in 1941 Tokyo on the eve of the greatest military conflict in the history of mankind.