Must Read Books
Discover must-read books curated for every fiction lover—from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga to Stephen King’s chilling classics, Jane Eyre, and The Great Gatsby. Explore this essential reading list of timeless novels and gripping tales, perfect for your next literary adventure.
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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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Jaws
by Peter Benchley
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The shark-versus-man classic that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg movie—now in a fiftieth anniversary edition with an exclusive foreword from the author’s wife, renowned ocean conservation advocate Wendy Benchley “A tightly written, tautly paced study of terror.”—The Washington Post A great white shark terrorizes the beautiful summer getaway of Amity Island, and a motley group of men take to the water to do battle with the beast. A heart-pounding novel of suspense and a brilliant meditation on the nature of humanity, Jaws is one of the most iconic thrillers ever written. In addition to Wendy Benchley’s foreword, this edition features bonus content from Peter Benchley’s archives, including the manuscript’s original typed title page, a brainstorming list of possible titles, a letter from Benchley to film producer David Brown with candid feedback on the movie adaptation, and excerpts from Benchley’s book Shark Trouble, highlighting his firsthand account of writing Jaws, selling it to Universal Studios, and working with Steven Spielberg. After writing Jaws in the early 1970s, Peter Benchley was actively engaged with scientists and filmmakers, and over the ensuing decades, joined many expeditions around the world as they expanded their knowledge of sharks and shark behavior. He encouraged each new generation of Jaws fans to enjoy his riveting tale and to channel their excitement into support and protection of these magnificent prehistoric apex predators.
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Living Dead in Dallas
by Charlaine Harris
The second novel in #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s “addictively entertaining” (Locus) Sookie Stackhouse series—the inspiration for the HBO® original series True Blood. Even though Sookie has her own vampire to look out for her—her red-hot, cold-blooded boyfriend, Bill Compton—she has to admit that the bloodsuckers did save her life. So when one of the local Undead asks the cocktail waitress for a favor, she feels like she owes them. Soon, Sookie’s in Dallas using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She’s supposed to interview certain humans involved. There’s just one condition: The vampires must promise to behave—and let the humans go unharmed. Easier said than done. All it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly...
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Breaking Dawn
by Stephenie Meyer
When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved? To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs. Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life-first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse-seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever? The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.
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Eclipse
by Stephenie Meyer
This special edition of the #1 "New York Times" bestseller includes the first chapter of "Breaking Dawn," the highly anticipated final book in the Twilight Saga, a limited-edition, full-color print, and two exclusive "Eclipse"-inspired t-shirt transfers. Consumable.
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The Host
by Stephenie Meyer
A member of a species that takes over the minds of human bodies, Wanderer is unable to disregard his host's love for a man in hiding, a situation that forces both possessor and host to become unwilling allies.
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Bastard Out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
Ruth Anne Boatwright--a South Carolina bastard who is attached to the indomitable women in her mother's family--is tired of being labeled white trash and longs to escape from her hometown, and especially from Daddy Glen and his meanspirited jealousy.
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The Shining
by Stephen King
Jack Torrance sees his stint as winter caretaker of a Colorado hotel as a way back from failure, his wife sees it as a chance to preserve their family, and their five-year-old son sees the evil waiting just for them, as they journey into a world in which old horrors come to life to destroy the living. Reissue.
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. “A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times
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The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
From Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison comes the story of a young black girl who longs to be like the blond, blue-eyed children that America loves-a novel "so charged with pain and wonder that it becomes poetry" (The New York Times).
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The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Set in the period between the world wars, this novel tells of two sisters, their trials, and their survival.
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The story of Tom, Simon Legree, and oppressed slaves in the Antebellum South.
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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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The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
J.D. Salinger's classic of adolescent angst is now available for the first time in trade paperback. Holden Caulfield, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.
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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Brontë's moving masterpiece – the novel that has been "teaching true strength of character for generations" (The Guardian). Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre has dazzled generations of readers with its depiction of a woman's quest for freedom. Having grown up an orphan in the home of her cruel aunt and at a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre becomes an independent and spirited survivor-qualities that serve her well as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice. Should she stay with him whatever the consequences or follow her convictions, even if it means leaving her beloved? This updated Penguin Classics edition features a new introduction by Brontë scholar and award-winning novelist Stevie Davies, as well as comprehensive notes, a chronology, further reading, and an appendix. 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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Salem's Lot
by Stephen King
When a writer returns to his Maine home town, he discovers that the peaceful hamlet is being overrun by vampires and sets out to curb this ancient evil before it can spread.
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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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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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A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
A story of friendship through adversity, faith and destiny, and the search for God.
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The Power of One
by Bryce Courtenay
“The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.” –The New York Times “Unabashedly uplifting . . . asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–‘the power of one’–can prevail.” –Cleveland 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 dreams–which 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. “Totally 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.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review “Marvelous . . . 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.” –The Washington Post Book World “Impressive.” –Newsday “A compelling tale.” –The Christian Science Monitor
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The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (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 Handmaid’s Tale In Margaret Atwood’s 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 Gilead’s 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 Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic. Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood
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Midwives
by Chris Bohjalian
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This modern classic from the author of The Flight Attendant is a compulsively readable novel that explores questions of human responsibility that are as fundamental to our society now as they were when the book was first published. A selection of Oprah's original Book Club that has sold more than two million copies. On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby’s life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of stroke. But what if—as Sibyl's assistant later charges—the patient wasn't already dead? The ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt, forcing Sibyl to face the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience. Exploring the complex and emotional decisions surrounding childbirth, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do. Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
