Favorite Adult Fiction and True Stories
Explore our curated list of favorite adult fiction books and captivating true stories. Discover must-read novels, gripping tales, and inspiring real-life narratives for every book lover.
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
"Captivating, minutely imagined . . . a novel that refuses to stay shut" ("Newsweek"), "Memoirs of a Geisha" is now released in a movie tie-in edition.
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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 Inferno—now 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 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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Deception Point
by Dan Brown
On the eve of a presidential race in which NASA's budget is a pivotal issue, the space agency announces the discovery of an ancient meteorite filled with fossils deep in the Arctic ice.
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Timeline
by Michael Crichton
When a group of scientists learns how to travel through time, they enter life in fourteenth-century feudal France and threaten the history of the world.
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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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Skipping Christmas
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Imagine a year without Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty; they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash; they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But, as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences–and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined. A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition.
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A Painted House
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world. A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born ... and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives — and change his family and his town forever.... Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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Blessings
by Belva Plain
At thirty-six, Jennie Rakowsky's dreams were coming true. She was about to marry a wonderful man, her career as a lawyer was skyrocketing, and she had never been more beautiful. And then the secret she had hidden for nineteen years threatened to shatter it all.
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Homecoming
by Belva Plain
Annette Byrne is the matriarch of a family divided against itself. Anguished by the unhappiness this causes she tricks her scattered children and grandchildren into coming home one last time, determined to make them admit their love for one another.
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Promises
by Belva Plain
Margaret Crane's life becomes more complicated as she finds out the cousin she raised is in love with a married man, and her husband is having an affair.
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A Town Like Alice
by Nevil Shute
"A harrowing, exciting, and in the end very satisfying war romance." HARPER'S A TOWN LIKE ALICE tells of a young woman who miraculously survived a Japanese "death march" in World War II, and of an Australian soldier, also a prisoner of war, who offered to help her--even at the cost of his life....
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A Walk to Remember
by Nicholas Sparks
A high school rebel and a minister's daughter find strength in each other in this star-crossed tale of "young but everlasting love" (Chicago Sun-Times). There was a time when the world was sweeter....when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats.... Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister....Jamie, who was destined to show him the depths of the human heart-and the joy and pain of living. The inspiration for this novel came from Nicholas Sparks's sister: her life and her courage. From the internationally bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, comes his most moving story yet....
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Chinese Cinderella
by Adeline Yen Mah
Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair.
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The Good Women of China
by Xinran
When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “open up” China took root in the late 1980s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.
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Sky Burial
by Xinran
It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the internationally acclaimed author of The Good Women of China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet a woman who had just crossed the border from Tibet into China. Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet. In Sky Burial, Xinran has re-created Shu Wen’s journey, painting an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love, loss, loyalty, and survival.
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Baby Blues
by Jerry Scott
"Keep this cartoon book with Dr. Spock and all the other baby-care tomes.... You'll like the whole book." --Booklist
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Striking Close to Home
by John McPherson
Hologram Christmas trees? Appendectomy stitches that end at the wrist? Assault lizards that attack through the pet-store picture window? Where does John McPherson get this stuff?Where indeed? The answer is not even close to clear, but that doesn't stop Close to Home fans from howling at the sheer comedic genius they find before them in this daily panel. For instance, they love the way McPherson twists the common everyday situation just enough to push it into the world of wackiness: There's Carol questioning the romance factor in her marriage when she opens her anniversary gift, the electric Yam Master; The maternity ward mother holding a furry newborn exclaiming, We've already had endorsement offers from three shampoo companies; The shipwreck survivor who claws his way onto a deserted island only to find a ubiquitous Nike swoosh emblazoned upon a lone palm tree.The settings of McPherson's offbeat comic panel seem disturbingly familiar to those who live in the 20th century, according to the Daily News in Greenville, Michigan. (His) talent takes the everyday worlds of work, home, and play and finds the unexpected angle from which to view them.This latest Close to Home collection, yet another trip down that crooked path between grotesque and goofy, will have McPherson readers racing from page to page.Now based in Saratoga Springs, New York, McPherson started his professional career as a design engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers. Soon, however, he found his twisted version of reality to be far more fascinating than any technical drawing or specification. Thank goodness he's now much Closer to Home.
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Twelfth Plan
by Zecharia Sitchin
Over the years, startling evidence has been uncovered, challenging established notions of the origins of life on Earth—evidence that suggests the existence of an advanced group of extraterrestrials who once inhabited our world. The first book of the revolutionary Earth Chronicles series offers indisputable documentary evidence of the existence of the mysterious planet Nibiru and tells why its astronauts came to Earth eons ago to fashion mankind in their image. The product of more than thirty years of meticulous research, The 12th Planet treats as fact, not myth, the tales of Creation, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and the Nefilim who married the daughters of man. By weaving together the biblical narrative with Sumerian and Babylonian clay-tablet texts, it challenges the established notions of the origins of Earth and mankind, and offers a compelling alternative history and prehistory of both.