Simply Outstanding Stories
Discover a curated list of Simply Outstanding Stories - your ultimate collection of must-read books with captivating tales and unforgettable narratives.
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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
In nineteenth-century England, all is going well for reclusive Mr Norell, who has regained some of the power of England's magicians from the past, until a rival magician, Jonathan Strange, appears and becomes Mr Norrell's pupil.
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Lunar Park
by Bret Easton Ellis
A somewhat autobiographical novel about the life of the author, with some things true, other things exagerrated and other things completely fictitious.
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Light from Heaven
by Jan Karon
In the final volume in the phenomenally successful Mitford Years ties up all the loose ends of Father Timothy Kavanagh's deeply affecting life. The novel is filled with old and new characters and the answers to questions readers have asked since the series began nearly a decade ago.
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Tangerine Dream
by Ken Douglas
Best friends Haley and Taylor must deal with a terrible loss when Taylor's twin sister, Dylan, is killed in a car crash. Meanwhile, Taylor and Dylan's father, a senator running for president and supposedly somewhere on the campaign trail, can't be reached because he is in the arms of a prostitute. While the girls and the twins' mother try to recover and avoid the press in New Zealand, Nick Nesbitt, a television news reporter, senses a story and will stop at nothing to get it.
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Until I Find You
by John Irving
Chronicles the life and times of actor Jack Burns, whose unique bond with his mother, Alice, a Toronto tattoo artist, and their search for his missing father, William, shapes his relationships with women and his Hollywood career.
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The Zahir
by Paulo Coelho
When his war correspondent wife goes missing with a friend who may be a lover, a celebrity novelist comes under suspicion, until the friend reappears and invites him to undertake a spiritual journey to Kazakhstan. By the author of Eleven Minutes. 100,000 first printing.
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On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, long-suffering art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son's engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon. By the author of White Teeth. 200,000 first printing.
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The Palace of Dreams
by Ismail Kadare
When it was first published in the author's native country, THE PALACE OF DREAMS was immediately banned. The novel revolves around a secret ministry whose task is not just to spy on its citizens, but to collect and interpret their dreams. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.
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The March
by E. L. Doctorow
In the last years of the Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, cutting a 60-mile wide swath of pillage and destruction. That event comes back in this magisterial novel. High school & older.
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The Mermaid Chair
by Sue Monk Kidd
Jessie Sullivan is summoned home to tiny Egret Island, where she meets Brother Thomas, a monk who is about to take his final vows, and encounters the legend of a mysterious chair dedicated to a saint who had originally been a mermaid.
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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 Carolina—a 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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Wolf Point
by Edward Falco
Tom “T” Walker, a 57-year-old businessman, knows better than to pick up a beautiful young woman hitchhiking with her dangerous-looking boyfriend, but he stops for them anyway. He’s been living alone, his life ruinously off course, in such utter isolation from everyone he has ever loved that he welcomes the company and the excitement. But as T finds himself pulled into the chaos of their world in a way he will barely survive, he comes to see his personal history and experiences in an altered and troubling light. Edward Falco brings stunning emotional depth and tense action to unforgettable characters as they journey through the mundane world to places where illusions fail and they must face their hidden selves.
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Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana
by Anne Rice
Anne Rice's second book in her hugely ambitious and courageous life of Christ begins during his last winter before his baptism in the Jordan and concludes with the miracle at Cana. It is a novel in which we see Jesus--he is called Yeshua bar Joseph--during a winter of no rain, endless dust, and talk of trouble in Judea. Legends of a Virgin birth have long surrounded Yeshua, yet for decades he has lived as one among many who come to the synagogue on the Sabbath. All who know and love him find themselves waiting for some sign of the path he will eventually take. And at last we see him emerge from his baptism to confront his destiny--and the Devil. We see what happens when he takes the water of six great limestone jars, transforms it into cool red wine, is recognized as the anointed one, and urged to call all Israel to take up arms against Rome and follow him as the prophets have foretold. As with Out of Egypt, the opening novel, The Road to Cana is based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship. The book's power derives from the profound feeling its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the presence of Jesus.
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A Feast for Crows
by George R. R. Martin
THE BOOK BEHIND THE FOURTH SEASON OF THE ACCLAIMED HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONES Few books have captivated the imagination and won the devotion and praise of readers and critics everywhere as has George R. R. Martin’s monumental epic cycle of high fantasy. Now, in A Feast for Crows, Martin delivers the long-awaited fourth book of his landmark series, as a kingdom torn asunder finds itself at last on the brink of peace . . . only to be launched on an even more terrifying course of destruction. A FEAST FOR CROWS It seems too good to be true. After centuries of bitter strife and fatal treachery, the seven powers dividing the land have decimated one another into an uneasy truce. Or so it appears. . . . With the death of the monstrous King Joffrey, Cersei is ruling as regent in King’s Landing. Robb Stark’s demise has broken the back of the Northern rebels, and his siblings are scattered throughout the kingdom like seeds on barren soil. Few legitimate claims to the once desperately sought Iron Throne still exist—or they are held in hands too weak or too distant to wield them effectively. The war, which raged out of control for so long, has burned itself out. But as in the aftermath of any climactic struggle, it is not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters start to gather, picking over the bones of the dead and fighting for the spoils of the soon-to-be dead. Now in the Seven Kingdoms, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—are seen emerging from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges ahead. It is a time when the wise and the ambitious, the deceitful and the strong will acquire the skills, the power, and the magic to survive the stark and terrible times that lie before them. It is a time for nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages to come together and stake their fortunes . . . and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors.
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The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The New York Times bestseller “The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice) “One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
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Cotton
by Christopher P. Wilson
Lee Cotton was born of interracial parentage and will have a hard time figuring out which world he can live in comfortably-black or white. His travels and adventures lead him all over the world and he gets to see people and events through his diverse personality and experiences.