The Reading Process: Books that Transform

Discover transformative books that reshape your reading process. Explore our curated list of life-changing reads to inspire growth, knowledge, and personal evolution.

The Poisonwood Bible Cover
Book

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
The Lady and the Unicorn Cover
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The Lady and the Unicorn

by Tracy Chevalier

Interweaves historical fact with fiction to explore the mystery behind the creation of the remarkable Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, woven at the end of the fifteenth century, which today hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris.
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ID: 0143039075
(Type: books)
The Robber Bride Cover
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The Robber Bride

by Margaret Atwood

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony—university classmates decades ago—were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a weapon and cheating them of money, time, sympathy, and men. But one day, five years after her funeral, they are shocked to catch sight of Zenia: even her death appears to have been yet another fiction. As the three women plot to confront their larger-than-life nemesis, Atwood proves herself a gleefully acute observer of the treacherous shoals of friendship, trust, desire, and power.
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ID: 0674177649
(Type: books)
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ID: 0374521670
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Reviving Ophelia Cover
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Reviving Ophelia

by Mary Bray Pipher

Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before? According to Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist who has treated girls for more than twenty years, we live in a look-obsessed, media-saturated, "girl-poisoning" culture. Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence--from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school--cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which, ultimately, destroys their self-esteem. Yet girls often blame themselves or their families for this "problem with no name" instead of looking at the world around them. Here, for the first time, are girls' unmuted voices from the front lines of adolescence, personal and painfully honest. By laying bare their harsh day-to-day reality, Reviving Ophelia issues a call to arms and offers parents compassion, strength, and strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost sense of self.
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ID: 0465077145
(Type: books)
Complete Anne of Green Gables Cover
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Complete Anne of Green Gables

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Favorites for nearly 100 years, these classic novels follow the adventures of the spirited redhead Anne Shirley, who comes to stay at Green Gables and wins the hearts of everyone she meets.
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ID: 0520088832
(Type: books)
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ID: 0684863170
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ID: 0849937531
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The Ordinary Princess Cover
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The Ordinary Princess

by M. M. Kaye

Along with Wit, Charm, Health, and Courage, Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness. Unlike her six beautiful sisters, she has brown hair and freckles, and would rather have adventures than play the harp, embroider tapestries . . . or become a Queen. When her royal parents try to marry her off, Amy runs away and, because she's so ordinary, easily becomes the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid at a neighboring palace. And there . . . much to everyone's surprise . . . she meets a prince just as ordinary (and special) as she is! "This delightful fairy tale is sure to please young romantics . . . Neither Kaye's princess nor her book should be considered ordinary." (School Library Journal)
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ID: 0399214011
(Type: books)
The Complete Fairy Tales Cover
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The Complete Fairy Tales

by George MacDonald

George MacDonald occupied a major position in the intellectual life of his Victorian contemporaries. This volume brings together all eleven of his shorter fairy stories as well as his essay "The Fantastic Imagination". The subjects are those of traditional fantasy: good and wicked fairies, children embarking on elaborate quests, and journeys into unsettling dreamworlds. Within this familiar imaginative landscape, his children's stories were profoundly experimental, questioning the association of childhood with purity and innocence, and the need to separate fairy tale wonder from adult scepticism and disbelief.
The Giver Cover
Book

The Giver

by Lois Lowry

In a future society, young Jonas is given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet [BOXED SET](ě „4ę¶Ś) Cover
Book

Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet [BOXED SET](ě „4ę¶Ś)

by Madeleine L'Engle

A boxed set of the four novels in Madeleine L'Engle's classic series challenges concepts of time, space, and the power of good over evil.