Great Memoirs and Classics
Explore timeless classics and captivating memoirs in our curated list of must-read books. Discover great literature and inspiring life stories that have stood the test of time.
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Shantaram
by Gregory David Roberts
The story of a man who escapes from a maximum security facility in Australia and arrives in Bombay, crossroads of the underworld, where he works in an aid station and smuggles drugs and guns.
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What Is the What
by Dave Eggers
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠The epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children âthe so-called Lost Boysâwas forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man. âA testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.â âMichiko Kakutani, The New York Times "An absolute classic. . . . Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression." âPeople
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Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, Callie has inherited a rare genetic mutation. The biological trace of a guilty secret, this gene has followed her grandparents from the crumbling Ottoman Empire to Detroit and has outlasted the glory days of the Motor City, the race riots of 1967, and the family's second migration, into the foreign country known as suburbia. Thanks to the gene, Callie is part girl, part boy. And even though the gene's epic travels have ended, her own odyssey has only begun.
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Cloudstreet
by Tim Winton
Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire. Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans -- running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth -- bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated.
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The Fatal Shore
by Robert Hughes
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠This incredible true history of the colonization of Australia explores how the convict transportation system created the country we know today. "One of the greatest non-fiction books Iâve ever read ... Hughes brings us an entire world." âLos Angeles Times Digging deep into the dark history of England's infamous efforts to move 160,000 men and women thousands of miles to the other side of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Hughes has crafted a groundbreaking, definitive account of the settling of Australia. Tracing the European presence in Australia from early explorations through the rise and fall of the penal colonies, and featuring 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps, The Fatal Shore brings to life the history of the country we thought we knew.
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The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.
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The Power of One
by Bryce Courtenay
âThe Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.â âThe New York Times âUnabashedly uplifting . . . asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independenceââthe power of oneââcan prevail.â âCleveland Plain Dealer In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreamsâwhich are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one. âTotally engrossing . . . [presents] the metamorphosis of a most remarkable young man and the almost spiritual influence he has on others . . . Peekay has both humor and a refreshingly earthy touch, and his adventures, at times, are hair-raising in their suspense.â âLos Angeles Times Book Review âMarvelous . . . It is the people of the sun-baked plains of Africa who tug at the heartstrings in this book. . . . [Bryce] Courtenay draws them all with a fierce and violent love.â âThe Washington Post Book World âImpressive.â âNewsday âA compelling tale.â âThe Christian Science Monitor
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s.
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A mysterious American millionaire tries to recapture the sweetheart of his youth, which results in tragedy.
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Valley of the Dolls
by Jacqueline Susann
Three women seek escape as they learn about the bitterness, corruption, and falsehoods of the show-business world.
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It's Not About the Bike
by Lance Armstrong
The champion cyclist recounts his diagnosis with cancer, the grueling treatments during which he was given a less than twenty percent chance for survival, his surprising victory in the 1999 Tour de France, and the birth of his son.