Best Reads Ever
Discover the best reads ever with our curated list of must-read books. Find your next favorite novel, classic, or bestseller today!
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Wicked
by Gregory Maguire
When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil? Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
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The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende
Here, in an astonishing debut by a gifted storyteller, is the magnificent saga of proud and passionate men and women and the turbulent times through which they suffer and triumph. They are the Truebas. And theirs is a world you will not want to leave, and one you will not forget. Esteban -- The patriarch, a volatile and proud man whose lust for land is legendary and who is haunted by his tyrannical passion for the wife he can never completely possess. Clara -- The matriarch, elusive and mysterious, who foretells family tragedy and shapes the fortunes of the house of the Truebas. Blanca -- Their daughter, soft-spoken yet rebellious, whose shocking love for the son of her father's foreman fuels Esteban's everlasting contempt... even as it produces the grandchild he adores. Alba -- The fruit of Blanca's forbidden love, a luminous bearty, a fiery and willful woman... the family's break with the past and link to the future.
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The Stories of Eva Luna
by Isabel Allende
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Japanese Lover and one of the most beloved writers of our time, an intoxicating collection of short stories about love, compassion, irony, revenge, and female power. Eva Luna is a young woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and love. Lying in bed with her European lover, refugee and journalist Rolf CarlĂ©, Eva answers his request for a story âyou have never told anyone beforeâ with these twenty-three samples of her vibrant artistry. Interweaving the real and the magical, she explores love, vengeance, compassion, and the strengths of women, creating a world that is at once poignantly familiar and intriguingly new. Rendered in her sumptuously imagined, uniquely magical style, The Stories of Eva Luna is the cornerstone of Allendeâs work. This treasure trove of brilliantly crafted stories is a superb example of a writer working at the height of her powers.
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Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read âIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.â So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austenâs witty comedy of mannersâone of the most popular novels of all timeâthat features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the âmost perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its authorâs works,â and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as âirresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.â
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Wuthering Heights
by Emily Bronte
Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. âOnly Emily BrontĂ«,â V.S. Pritchett said about the author and her contemporaries, âexposes her imagination to the dark spirit.â And Virginia Woolf wrote, âIt is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts, with few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.â
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A Widow for One Year
by John Irving
âA Widow For One Year will appeal to readers who like old-fashioned storytelling mixed with modern sensitivities. . . . Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony.ââUSA Today In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career), and at last in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother (and sheâs about to fall in love for the first time). Both elegiac and sensual, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Praise for A Widow for One Year âCompelling . . . By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, A Widow for One Year is bursting with memorable moments. . . . A testament to one of lifeâs most difficult lessons: In the end, you just have to find a way to keep going.ââSan Francisco Examiner-Chronicle âA sprawling 19th-century production, chock full of bizarre coincidences, multiple plot lines, lengthy digressions, and stories within stories. . . . An engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once.ââThe New York Times â[Irvingâs] characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive. Whatâs more, thereâs hardly a writer alive who can match his control of the omniscient point of view.ââThe Washington Post Book World âIn the sprawling, deeply felt A Widow for One Year, John Irving has delivered his best novel since The World According to Garp. . . . Like a warm bath, itâs a great pleasure to immerse yourself in.ââEntertainment Weekly âJohn Irving is arguably the American Balzac, or perhaps our Dickensâa rip-roaring storyteller whose intricate plot machinery is propelled by good old-fashioned greed, foolishness and passion.ââThe Nation âPowerful . . . a masterpiece.ââSt. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Exodus
by Leon Uris
âPassionate summary of the inhuman treatment of the Jewish people in Europe, of the exodus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to Palestine, and of the triumphant founding of the new Israel.ââThe New York Times Exodus is an international publishing phenomenonâthe towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemiesâthe beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept the world with its fury: the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorious, heartbreaking, triumphant era. Here is Exodusâone of the great bestselling novels of all time.
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Trinity
by Leon Uris
From the acclaimed author who enthralled the world with Exodus, Battle Cry, QB VII, Topaz, and other beloved classics of twentieth-century fiction comes a sweeping and powerful epic adventure that captures the "terrible beauty" of Ireland during its long and bloody struggle for freedom. It is the electrifying story of an idealistic young Catholic rebel and the valiant and beautiful Protestant girl who defied her heritage to join his cause. It is a tale of love and danger, of triumph at an unthinkable cost -- a magnificent portrait of a people divided by class, faith, and prejudice -- an unforgettable saga of the fires that devastated a majestic land . . . and the unquenchable flames that burn in the human heart.
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy
A heartbreaking portrayal of a woman faced by an impossible choice in the pursuit of happiness When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, subtitled "A Pure Woman," is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels. Based on the three-volume first edition that shocked readers when first published in 1891, this edition includes as appendices: Hardy's Prefaces, the Landscapes of Tess, episodes originally censored from the Graphic periodical version, and a selection of the Graphic illustrations. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Expecting Adam
by Martha Nibley Beck
Beck was focused on her career in academia until she discovered her second child would have Down syndrome. This is her account of her pregnancy.
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My Ăntonia
by Willa Cather
The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of immigrants.
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God Went to Beauty School
by Cynthia Rylant
A deeply compelling collection of poems about God and our everyday world from a Newbery medalist. Cynthia Rylant takes teens on an invigorating spiritual journey as she explores what God's life on Earth might be like. Rylant's reflective and often humorous verse follows God as he tries out human activities such as getting a dog, writing a fan letter, and making spaghetti. God Went to Beauty School combines the awesome with the everyday in an accessible, thoughtâprovoking, and intelligent manner.
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Bird by Bird
by Anne Lamott
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER âą An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writerâs world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times). âSuperb writing adviceâŠ. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.â âThe New York Times Book Review For a quarter century, more than a million readersâscribes and scribblers of all ages and abilitiesâhave been inspired by Anne Lamottâs hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anneâs fatherâalso a writerâin the iconic passage that gives the book its title: âThirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that heâd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brotherâs shoulder, and said, âBird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.ââ
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Angels & Demons
by Dan Brown
The explosive Robert Langdon thriller from Dan Brown, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and Infernoânow a major film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones. Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war. This is the book that started it all: we meet Robert Langdon for the first time, caught up in a race against time to find an apocalyptic time-bomb, planted by an ancient secret society that has surfaced to carry out its ultimate threat: to destroy the Vatican.
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The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER âą An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from âthe patron saint of feminist dystopian fictionâ (The New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning the sequel to The Handmaidâs Tale In Margaret Atwoodâs dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gileadâs commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaidâs Tale is a modern classic. Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood
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The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolinaâa town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
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Fast Food Nation
by Eric Schlosser
Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning. Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions, where the business was born, to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike, where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.
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The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
A Magical love story that is as sad as it is joyous.