Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical busines...more
“The most lacerating tale of drug addiction since William S. Burroughs’ Junky.” —The Boston Globe“Again and again, the book delivers recollections that leave the reader winded and unsteady. James Frey’s staggering recovery memoir could well be seen as the final word on the topic.”—San Francisco Chronicle“A brutal, beautifully writ...more
Since its first publication in 1979, "The Things They Carried" has become an unparalleled testament to the men who served in Vietnam--a classic work that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.
A companion volume to the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel Ender's Game follows the life of Ender Wiggin's comrade Bean, from his escape from the mean streets of Rotterdam, to his student days at the Battle School, and to his role as Ender's right hand ally, strategist, and friend in the epic struggle to save Earth from alien invaders. Reprint.
It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This hilarious novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way--on vinyl--...more
This beautiful and sad first novel, recently adapted for a major motion picture, tells of a band of teenage sleuths who piece together the story of a twenty-year old family tragedy begun by the youngest daughter’s spectacular demise by self-defenstration, which inaugurates “the year of the suicides.”
"Hornby is a writer who dares to be witty, intelligent, and emotionally generous all at once." (The New York Times Book Review) How to Be Good is a story for our times-a humorous but uncompromising look at what it takes, in this day and age, to have the courage of our convictions. In his third novel, Nick Hornby, whom The New Yorker named "the ma...more
On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones,...more