the very best books
Discover the very best books handpicked for every reader. Explore top fiction, non-fiction, classics, and modern masterpieces in this ultimate reading list.
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
by Richard Phillips Feynman
In this phenomenal bestseller, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman recounts his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums--and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. Photos.
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One Child
by Torey Hayden
Finally, a beginning . . . The time had finally come. The time I had been waiting for through all these long months that I knew sooner or later had to occur. Now it was here. She had surprised me so much by actually crying that for a moment I did nothing but look at her. Then I gathered her into my arms, hugging her tightly. She clutched onto my shirt so that I could feel the dull pain of her fingers digging into my skin. She cried and cried and cried. I held her and rocked the chair back and on its rear legs, feeling my arms and chest get damp from the tears and her hot breath and the smallness of the room.
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The Day the World Came to Town
by Jim DeFede
"For the better part of a week, nearly every man, woman, and child in Gander and the surrounding smaller towns stopped what they were doing so they could help. They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed." When thirty-eight jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland, on September 11, 2001, due to the closing of United States airspace, the citizens of this small community were called upon to come to the aid of more than six thousand displaced travelers. Roxanne and Clarke Loper were excited to be on their way home from a lengthy and exhausting trip to Kazakhstan, where they had adopted a daughter, when their plane suddenly changed course and they found themselves in Newfoundland. Hannah and Dennis O'Rourke, who had been on vacation in Ireland, were forced to receive updates by telephone on the search for their son Kevin, who was among the firefighters missing at the World Trade Center. George Vitale, a New York state trooper and head of the governor's security detail in New York City who was returning from a trip to Dublin, struggled to locate his sister Patty, who worked in the Twin Towers. A family of Russian immigrants, on their way to the Seattle area to begin a new life, dealt with the uncertainty of conditions in their future home. The people of Gander were asked to aid and care for these distraught travelers, as well as for thousands more, and their response was truly extraordinary. Oz Fudge, the town constable, searched all over Gander for a flight-crew member so that he could give her a hug as a favor to her sister, a fellow law enforcement officer who managed to reach him by phone. Eithne Smith, an elementary-school teacher, helped the passengers staying at her school put together letters to family members all over the world, which she then faxed. Bonnie Harris, Vi Tucker, and Linda Humby, members of a local animal protection agency, crawled into the jets' cargo holds to feed and care for all of the animals on the flights. Hundreds of people put their names on a list to take passengers into their homes and give them a chance to get cleaned up and relax. The Day the World Came to Town is a positively heartwarming account of the citizens of Gander and its surrounding communities and the unexpected guests who were welcomed with exemplary kindness.
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Seabiscuit
by Laura Hillenbrand
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuitâs fortunes: Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon. Praise for Seabiscuit âFascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.ââThe New York Times âEngrossing . . . Fast-moving . . . More than just a horseâs tale, because the humans who owned, trained, and rode Seabiscuit are equally fascinating. . . . [Laura Hillenbrand] shows an extraordinary talent for describing a horse race so vividly that the reader feels like the rider.ââSports Illustrated âREMARKABLE . . . MEMORABLE . . . JUST AS COMPELLING TODAY AS IT WAS IN 1938.ââThe Washington Post
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
The American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
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Tis
by Frank McCourt
Frank McCourtâs glorious childhood memoir, Angelaâs Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place on the literary landscape. And now we have âTis, the story of Frankâs American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this âclassless country,â and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frankâs incomparable voiceâhis uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogueâthat renders these experiences spellbinding. When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should âstick to their own kindâ once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he starts to teachâand to writeâthat Frank finds his place in the world. The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angelaâs Ashes comes of age. As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angelaâs Ashes, âIt is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the very best.â Frank McCourt's âTis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
A young girl from an impoverished family comes of age in Brooklyn at the turn of the twentieth-century.
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A Walk in the Woods
by Bill Bryson
The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in Americaâmajestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If youâre going to take a hike, itâs probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide youâll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the wayâand a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).
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Nineteen Minutes
by Jodi Picoult
The daughter of a judge in a New Hampshire school shooting case witnessed the events, but cannot remember the last several minutes of the attack.
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Pigs in Heaven
by Barbara Kingsolver
Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, leading to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's moment of celebrity draws her into a crisis of historical proportions that will envelop not only her and her mother, Taylor, but everyone else who touched their lives in a complex web connecting their future with their past. With this wise, compelling novel, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, and Animal Dreams vividly renders a world of heartbreak and redeeming love as she defines and defies the boundaries of family, and illuminates the many separate truths about the ties that bind us and tear us apart.
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Animal Dreams
by Barbara Kingsolver
Codi returns to her hometown to confront her past and face her ailing father. What she finds is a town threatened by an environmental catastrophe and a man who could change her life.
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The Bean Trees
by Barbara Kingsolver
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places. Available for the first time in mass-market, this edition of Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novel, The Bean Trees, will be in stores everywhere in September. With two different but equally handsome covers, this book is a fine addition to your Kingsolver library.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A modern classicâboth poignant and funnyâabout a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world. âDisorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.... Suspenseful and harrowing.â âThe New York Times Book Review Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
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The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
Now a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts. MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST The perennially bestselling, extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, ânothing short of spectacularâ (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the worldâs most gifted storytellers. The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannetteâs brilliant and charismatic father captured his childrenâs imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didnât want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishingâa memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeperâs Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love Kim Edwardsâs stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a centuryâin which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeperâs Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.
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The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.
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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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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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Wicked
by Gregory Maguire
When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil? Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
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Women of the Silk
by Gail Tsukiyama
Spanning the years between the world wars, this tale of a young Chinese girl forced to work in a silk factory describes the sisterhood of workers she discovers there.
