Recommendation-Authors

Deadly Decisions

Kathy Reichs' forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is arguably the best of the current crop of thriller pathologists; her third outing, Deadly Decisions, pits her reconstructive skills against a bunch of Hell's Angels with a taste for ultra-violence. Hardly has she pieced together the jigsaw fragments of identical twins, before she finds herself engaged in identifying the teenage girl whose skull and long bones turned up near the grave of some earlier victims of inter-gang strife.

The Dance: Moving To the Rhythms of Your True Self

"What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?" This is the opening question to The Dance. And like a thematic melody, this is the thread that holds Oriah Mountain Dreamer's book together, as she encourages readers to stop trying to change who you are and simply remember that "who you are is really enough."

Broken Wings

Set in turn-of-the-century Beirut, this is the story of a young man who falls in love with a women betrothed to the nephew of a leading churchman. When their secret meetings are discovered, she is confined to the house and their beautiful dreams are crushed by a cruel and repressive society.

The Story of B

The Story of B combines Daniel Quinn's provocative and visionary ideas with a masterfully plotted story of adventure and suspense in this stunning, resonant novel that is sure to stay with readers long after they have finished the last page. Father Jared Osborne--bound by a centuries-old mandate held by his order to know before all others that the Antichrist is among us--is sent to Europe on a mission to find a peripatetic preacher whose radical message is attracting a growing circle of followers. The target of Osborne's investigation is an American known only as B.

The Celestine Prophecy

Drawing on the ancient wisdom found in a Peruvian manuscript, this book tells you how to make connections between the events happening in your own life right now, and lets you see what is going to happen to you in the years to come.

Beneath the Wheel

Hans Giebernath lives among the dull and respectable townsfolk of a sleepy Black Forest village. When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious scholarship. Hans dutifully follows the regimen of study and endless examinations, his success rewarded only with more crushing assignments.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." So begins Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and it becomes even more unlikely as the novel unfolds. This slim volume contains the story of the sad life of an unnamed, only slightly talented Colombian journalist and teacher, never married, never in love, living in the crumbling family manse.

Difficult Loves

One of the warmest and gentlest collections of stories by Calvino, and one of the most grounded in the real world. Lovely and elegant prose that lolls in your imagination like a story whispered into your ear on late spring day.

Life of Pi

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter.

Running from Safety

A half-mile up, suspended by nylon wings and the promise of good lift, life hanges on a pledge. Richard Bach made that pledge, fifty years before, to return to the frightened child he used to be and teach him everything he had learned from living. His promise went unfulfilled until one day, hovering between earth and sky, Richard encounters Dickie Bach, age nine--irrepressible challenger of every notion Richard embraces....

In this exhilarating adventure, Richard and Dickie probe the timeless questions both need answered if either is to be whole: Why does growing spiritually mean never growing up? Can we peacefully coexist with the consequences of our choices? Why is it that only by running from safety can we make our wildest dreams take flight?

Out of My Mind

Richard Bach, the writer who flew to success on the wings of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, once again returns to flight for metaphysical inspiration. Bach begins this journey with a quandary--how to customize his airplane, a small Piper Cub? For example, how can he keep his latch door from slamming shut in midflight? How to stop his oil cap from jiggling loose and disappearing? With each question the solutions appear; they are apparently delivered by a vision of a benevolent woman. Before long, Bach realizes that an aircraft designer from an earlier time and another dimension is tutoring him. Of course, Bach takes the ultimate flight into her parallel universe where he finds an old-fashioned aviation company that solves problems for troubled aviators. He also meets his mysterious muse Laura Bristol.

Enduring Love

Joe planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. The perfect day turns to nightmare, however, when they are involved in freak ballooning accident in which a boy is saved but a man is killed

Ice Princess

True to the genre of Scandinavian crime fiction heavy emphasis is given to characterization and (especially in Lackberg's instance) building up the small-town minutiae in which the crime occurs; so that the claustrophobia is such even a seemingly inconsequential break in the social-infrastructure is a capital felony. Many colorful characters proliferate: from the dotty geriatric Mrs. Petren, whose seemingly endless Santa's plus a Teutonic state-of-the-art coffee machine ensure a steady stream of visitors; to the aging socialite Nelly Lorentz, who is wrapped up in Alex's murder; to Alex's sister, Julia, who is grieving in a highly eccentric way

The Collector

The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of view.

Clegg is obsessed with Miranda Grey, a middle-class art student at the Slade School of Fine Art. He admires her from a distance, but is unable to make any contact with her because of his nonexistent social skills. One day, he wins a large prize in the British football pools. This makes it possible for him to stop working and buy an isolated house in the countryside.

Traveling on One Leg

Irene is a fragile woman born to a German family in Romania, who has recently emigrated from her native country to West Germany. Politically and socially isolated, Irene moves within the orbit of three troubled men, while simultaneously embarking on an inner exploration of exile, homeland, and identity.

Miguel Street

Set during World War II and narrated by an unnamed–but precociously observant–neighborhood boy, Miguel Street is a work of mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy and anarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page.

Soul Mountain

The novel is loosely based on the author's journey in rural China, which was inspired by a false diagnosis of lung cancer. The novel is a part autobiographical, part fictional account of a man's journey to find the fabled mountain Lingshan. It is a combination of story fragments, travel accounts, unnamed characters and folk poetry/legends..

The Double

What happens when Tertuliano M-ximo Afonso, a 38-year-old professor of history, discovers that there is a man living in the same city who is identical to him on every physical detail, but not related by blood at all. And what happens when each of these men attempt to investigate each other's lives? How do we know who we are? What do we mean by identity? What defines us as individual, unique people? Could we ever come to terms with the existence of another person with our voice, our features, our everything, down to the smallest distinguishing mark? Could we change places with our double without those closest to us noticing?

All the Names

Senhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily preoccupations. In the evenings and on weekends, he works on bringing up to date his clipping file of the famous, the rising stars, the notorious. But when he comes across the birth certificate of an anonymous young woman, he decides that this cannot have been mere chance, that he has to discover more about her. Under the increasingly mystified eye of the Registrar, a godlike figure whose name is spoken only in whispers, the now obsessed Senhor José sets off to follow the thread that leads him to the unknown woman-but as he gets closer to a meeting with her, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would have wished.

Theo's Odyssey

An advanced student who loves computer games and ancient mythology, 14-year-old Theo is diagnosed with a mysterious terminal illness. But instead of withering away in his bedroom or a hospital ward, Theo is sent off to travel the world with his eccentric and enlightened Aunt Martha. Rather than a generic tour of the world's greatest sights, Theo's aunt takes him on a pilgrimage to learn about the world's greatest religions--from Sufism to Islam to Taoism to the Southern Baptist denomination of Protestantism.

Wild Sheep Chase

This mock-detective tale follows an unnamed Japanese man through Tokyo and Hokkaidō in 1978. The passive, chain-smoking main character gets swept away on an adventure that leads him on a hunt for a sheep that hasn’t been seen for years. The apathetic protagonist meets a woman with magically seductive ears and a strange man who dresses as a sheep and talks in slurs; in this way there are elements of Japanese animism or Shinto.

The Shadow Of The Wind

A stunning literary thriller in the tradition of Umberto Eco. The discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or may not still be alive...

Wild Sheep Chase

This mock-detective tale follows an unnamed Japanese man through Tokyo and Hokkaidō in 1978. The passive, chain-smoking main character gets swept away on an adventure that leads him on a hunt for a sheep that hasn’t been seen for years. The apathetic protagonist meets a woman with magically seductive ears and a strange man who dresses as a sheep and talks in slurs; in this way there are elements of Japanese animism or Shinto.

Snow

The story encapsulates many of the political and cultural tensions of modern Turkey and successfully combines humor, social commentary, mysticism, and a deep sympathy with its characters.

Kar is the word for Snow, but the main character also abbreviates his name to Ka (his initials) with the novel set in the eastern Turkish city of Kars. An opening (and recurring) theme concerns reasons behind a suicide epidemic among teenage girls (which actually took place in the city of Batman).