Hallmark Magazines Editors Picks: Fabulous Fiction
Discover Hallmark Magazine's Editors' Picks: Fabulous Fiction—curated selection of must-read books loved by our editors. Find your next favorite read today!
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The Bookseller of Kabul
by Asne Seierstad
This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details - a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today's Afghanistan.
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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, bringing to mind the large canvases of the Russian writers of the nineteenth century. But just as it is old-fashioned in its narration, it is contemporary in its subject-the devastating history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years. As emotionally gripping as it is tender, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful debut.
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The Madonnas of Leningrad
by Debra Dean
Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .
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Slipping Into Darkness
by Peter Blauner
The award-winning, "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Intruder" delivers his most gripping thriller yet: A detective investigating a brutal murder discovers an impossible link to a case he closed 20 years before.
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A Spot of Bother
by Mark Haddon
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. "The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely." Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has "strangler's hands." Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Haddon's disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely. A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon's unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness - literally - of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon's crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.
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What is the what
by Dave Eggers
A biographical novel traces the story of Valentino Achak Deng, who as a boy of seven was separated from his family when his village in southern Sudan was attacked by government helicopters and became one of the estimated 17,000 "lost boys of Sudan" before relocating from a Kenyan refugee camp to Atlanta in 2001.
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Lives of the Monster Dogs
by Kirsten Bakis
When a group of elegant, anthropomorphic dogs arrives in New York from isolation in the Canadian wilderness, bringing with them the nineteenth-century Germanic culture of their distant creators, they force humanity to reassess its values. Reprint.
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Knots and Crosses
by Ian Rankin
Detective Sergeant John Rebus must solve the case of the "Edinburgh Strangler" before the killer strikes again.
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Tooth and Nail
by Ian Rankin
Rebes accepts help from Dr Liza Frazer in an attempt to catch the 'Wolfman', a serial killer who takes a bit from his victims and leaves them on Wolf Street.
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Hide and Seek
by Ian Rankin
Detective Inspector John Rebus is the only one who see that an drug addict's death is not an accident but murder.
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Set in Darkness
by Ian Rankin
When three bodies are discovered at Queensbury House, home to the new Scottish Parliament, Rebus finds himself digging up secrets twenty years buried.
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Fleshmarket Alley
by Ian Rankin
On a notorious street where propriety and decadence clash, in the basement of a newly renovated bar, the bones of a woman and child are discovered beneath a cement floor. It's an unusually gruesome find, even for Fleshmarket Alley. When Inspector John Rebus is called to investigate, every fact he finds unleashes a host of new questions. Are the bones those of a mother and child? Are they actual human remains or fakes? Were they planted there - and if so, why?It could be nothing more than a ruthless and enterprising pub owner looking to create a local legend that will help lure trade. Or it could be something far worse - something as grisly as the death of a recent immigrant found brutally murdered at a local housing project, or the murder of Donald Cruikshank, a recently paroled rapist whose body is found just as a young woman goes missing. The missing girl is a friend of Inspector Rebus's colleague Detective Siobhan Clarke, and Siobhan is shocked to find herself in the same intricate web of murderers as Rebus - all somehow tied to that pile of bones under Fleshmarket Alley.In a race to stop the killings before more bodies turn up - even as the possibility of romantic entanglements distracts and entices them - Rebus and Siobhan plumb the darkest corners of their beloved city and confront the lawless, conscienceless men who dwell there. Writing with the unstoppable narrative force that has made him one of the bestselling writers in the world, Edgar Award-winner Ian Rankin delivers his most explosive and surprising mystery yet.
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A Question of Blood
by Ian Rankin
When a former soldier and recluse murders two 17-year-old students at a posh Edinburgh boarding school, Inspector John Rebus immediately suspects there is more to the case than meets the eye.
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The Hanging Garden
by Ian Rankin
Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh police hunts for a World War II criminal, a Nazi officer who massacred an entire village in France. At the same time he has to bust a ring which is importing East European prostitutes.
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The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
A Magical love story that is as sad as it is joyous.
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The Tenth Circle
by Jodi Picoult
When the daughter of a comic book artist claims she has been raped at a party and her friends turn against her, she runs away to Alaska and her father must face his own violent past as he tries to find her.
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The Year of Fog
by Michelle Richmond
Heartbreaking, uplifting, and beautifully told, this work is a riveting tale of how life can change in an instant and of one woman's faith in the redemptive power of love.
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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.
